According to the Kauffman Foundation’s 2017 Index of Startup Activity, the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area ranked No. 1 among the 40 largest metro areas in the United States. By contrast, Kauffman’s 2016 Growth Entrepreneurship Index, which measures the rate of growth over a company’s first five years, shows that the same South Florida area ranked 36th among the 40 biggest metro areas. So while there is strong new business creation, a lot of those companies are not seeing high levels of growth, by employees or revenue. In a nutshell, local start-ups are struggling to scale.

Start-Up FIU and similar local organizations are trying to reverse this trend by providing the necessary tools and access to entrepreneurial education, mentorships, investor interactions and boot camp/accelerator programs to better prepare entrepreneurs to receive funding, and scale their businesses.

In order to improve start-up visibility and the probability of success, Macias Creative, in collaboration with StartUP FIU, have announced Spike: a program that seeks to help start-ups reach the next step on their entrepreneurial journey. Macias Creative and partners will be providing marketing, creative, and technology support.

Spike Program:

Empower Award

StartUP FIU’s Empower program start-ups will be eligible to apply for Spike’s Empower award starting on Friday, May 4th for StartUp FIU’s Cohort 4. Winning start-up(s) will be selected by a joint committee between StartUP FIU, Macias Creative and Brager_Briz the month of June, 2018 and will receive the following benefits:

• $15,000 Macias Creative agency services to support the winning startup(s) with branding and marketing support such as marketing campaigns for brand launch, branding, content development and overall creative, communications and marketing strategic support. For example of brand work Macias Creative has developed, please visit: www.maciascreative.com

• $15,000 Branger_Briz agency services to support the winning startup(s) with technology and software development consultation needs such as app/web code review, UI/UX guidance, technology Infrastructure review with scalability goals ,and technology improvements. For examples of technology platforms developed, please visit: https://brangerbriz.com/

Applications are now open and will close Sunday, May 13th. To submit your application, click here.

*StartUP FIU’s founder, Robert Hacker, at Start-Up FIU Pitch Day.