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St. Pete early stage investors launch Seedfunders Miami

Margie Manning

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Seedfunders co-founders Dave Chitester (left) and Irv Cohen

Dave Chitester and Irv Cohen, co-founders of Seedfunders, have created a partner location in Miami.

Seedfunders Miami is the third early stage investing organization launched by Chitester and Cohen in three years. It joins the original Seedfunders in St. Petersburg and SeedFundersOrlando, which began operations in June 2019.

The new market is ripe for investment opportunities. According to an eMerge Americas report, the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale metro area ranked seventh in the U.S. for dollar value of deals for 2019 with a record-breaking $2.39 billion invested in South Florida startups. About two-thirds, or 66 percent, of those deals were early-stage deals, the report said.

Seedfunders focuses on pre-revenue stage concepts and scalable, cutting-edge technology. The organization has 19 investments, with term sheets totaling $2.35 million, and 40 partners, according to its website.

In late April, in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, Seedfunders had its best week ever, closing three funding deals totaling nearly $500,000, Chitester said. All the deals were done using Zoom and other remote technologies.

“We had been planning to launch Seedfunders Miami for some time. We put it on hold due to the shutdown but when we successfully went virtual in St. Pete and Orlando, we realized we could do the same thing in Miami. So, we decided to proceed, and we already have a strong interest from investors and plan to ramp up quickly,” Chitester said.


Related: Seedfunders co-founder explains how startup investing continues during Covid-19


Chitester is a local pioneer in angel investing. He and Cohen, former president of  JPMorgan’s Treasury Technology Corp., co-founded Florida Funders in 2013. Florida Funders, a hybrid of a venture capital fund and crowd-funding platform.. While Seedfunders invests statewide, a key part of its strategy is local partners who can provide funding and mentoring to tech startups.

Potential Seedfunders Miami partners can email Chitester at dave@seedfunders.com.

Companies interested in learning more can click here for the Seedfunders website.

 Note: St. Pete Catalyst publisher Joe Hamilton is a partner in Seedfunders.

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