Keith Rabois, managing director of Khosla Ventures, was having dinner with a “very successful CEO” in October 2018 when the CEO asked him a question: How many people would it take to create an entire new Silicon Valley? Is it 10,000? Or 100,000?
Rabois didn’t know, but he decided to take the challenge and set out to make Miami the next Valley.
And despite other major investors like Andreessen Horowitz closing their Miami offices just two years after setting up shop, Rabois said he remains bullish on the South Florida city.
At the Primary Venture Partners Summit in New York City on Thursday, Rabois claimed that 11% of all seed investments in the U.S. came from Miami, “up from almost zero,” and that he hopes to raise that to 20%.
According to PitchBook data, Miami-based seed investments in startups so far this year have only accounted for 2.6% of total U.S. seed investments. In 2023, they will account for 3.5%.
“And the statistics you should look at if you are interested in the future of technology are: [the] “While later-stage investments reveal little about the future of technology, where do they occur?” Rabois said, adding that later-stage investments reveal little about the future of technology.
Rabois also said Khosla Ventures is preparing to invest in its fifth Miami-based company that will work to “reinvent education,” but he did not provide details.
In April, Khosla and Founders Fund, where Rabois worked from 2019 until January, led a $150 million investment in the spend management startup Ramp. Rabois said Ramp, which is based in New York, has an office in Miami, adding to the city’s appeal.
Rabois said he is very active on Twitter and Express to promote Miami as a great place for founders because he feels it takes work to build a new tech hub. He said he wants founders and investors to know there are opportunities in vibrant cities where you don’t wake up every day fearing “attack and abuse,” an apparent reference to the prevalence of homelessness and opioid addiction in San Francisco.
Although Rabois still believes in Miami’s future as a tech hub, he hasn’t given up on San Francisco entirely. It is said that he spends He spends about a quarter of his time at home there.
On the sidelines, Rabois said he would support San Francisco mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie, who has Difficult situation On addressing the opioid crisis.
“To create a tech ecosystem, you need angel investors. You need founders. You need Series A investors. You need a range of different skills within the company — engineers, designers, entrepreneurs, salespeople. It’s really hard to create an ecosystem. So evangelism is important,” Rabois said at the summit.
Update: This article has been updated to provide more context on the percentage of total U.S. seed investments that were in Miami startups. This article was originally published on September 12, 2024, at 12:37 p.m. PT.