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Venture Capital in Florida

Summary: If you would like to learn about the venture capital market in Florida, this interview is for you. Our guest today is Dan Rua who is the Gainesville (Fla.) Partner with Inflexion Partners. His other senior partners are in Tampa and Orlando. Inflexion specializes in venture investments in Florida. They are particularly interested in early stage companies with valuable intellectual property. Dan also authors the Florida Venture Blog. Over the past five years I have interviewed hundreds of Digital Media industry executives and experts. Fewer than ten have been located in Florida even though I live in Tampa and the state is the nation’s fourth most populous one. There just did not seem to be a lot happening down here. But things may be changing. AuthenTec and Intellon recently completed successful IPOs and both appear to be leaders in their respective fields of fingerprint authentication sensors and power line computer networking. Additionally, the University of Florida was recently named one of the top five universities in the country in terms of patents issued. Similarly after some of its students created The Blair Witch Project, Orlando’s University of Central Florida was given enough of a boost to form an impressive Digital Media Lab. Finally, the presence of the space program in Brevard County created a culture of technology that has supported privately-owned Florida Institute of Technology for 50 years and led to the formation of the Technology Research Development Authority which is an incubator of small companies.