Tampa Bay Wave, Inc.

Tampa Bay Wave and its partners will launch the I-4 Innovation Investors Collaborative (I4I2), a regional investor collaborative focused on directly addressing Central Florida’s early-stage capital funding gaps. Florida ranks comparatively low in access to early-stage capital despite its size, partly because many of Florida’s accredited investors often focus on real estate or other low-tech investments because they are unfamiliar with equity-based investment mechanisms and opportunities in innovative technology companies. With a goal to catalyze early-stage investment activity throughout Central Florida for local innovation-based, high-growth potential startups, I4I2 plans to: leverage established seed/early-stage funds and accelerators to launch a regional, collaborative seed fund model to serve Central Florida’s innovative startups; educate regional accredited investor prospects about innovation-based investment opportunities to grow the region’s investor pool; and pilot a minimum of 30 investments by accelerator seed funds in the collaborative that deploys at least $2 million during the three year grant period. Within five years after the grant, the I4I2 Collaborative expects to deploy $17 million in capital, investing in 105 companies and supporting over 350 jobs.