Keith Rabois says Miami is still a great place for startups, even as a16z leaves

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 does it take to create a whole new Silicon Valley? Is it 10,000? 100,000?

Rabois didn’t know, but he decided to accept the challenge and set about trying to make Miami the next Valley. 

And despite other big name investors like Andreessen Horowitz decamping and shutting down its office in Miami a mere two years after setting up shop, Rabois said he’s still bullish on the south Florida city. 

At Primary Venture Partners’ NYC Summit on Thursday, Rabois claimed that 11% of all seed investments in the United States have come out of Miami, which is “up basically from zero,” and he hopes to raise that to 20%. 

Although according to PitchBook data, seed investments into Miami startups to date this year accounted for only 2.6% of total U.S. seed investment. In 2023, they accounted for 3.5%.

“And the stats you should be looking at if you care about the future of tech are [the] fraction of seed investments, where do they happen?” Rabois said, adding that later-stage investment reveals less about the future of technology. 

Rabois also said Khosla Ventures was gearing up to invest in its fifth company in Miami that will “reinvent education,” but didn’t provide specifics. 

In April, Khosla and Founders Fund, where Rabois worked from 2019 until January, led the $150 million investment into spend management startup Ramp. Rabois said that Ramp, which is based in New York, has an office in Miami, which adds to the city’s appeal.  

Rabois said he is often active on X/Twitter hyping up Miami as a great place for founders because he feels it takes work to build a new tech hub. He added that he wanted founders and investors to know there are opportunities in vibrant cities where you don’t wake up everyday and fear being “assaulted and abused,” clearly making a dig at the homeless and opioid epidemic in San Francisco. 

For as much as Rabois still believes in Miami’s tech hub future, he hasn’t abandoned San Francisco altogether and reportedly spends about a quarter of his time at his home there. 

As an aside, Rabois said he would be backing Daniel Lurie as San Francisco’s mayoral candidate, who has a hard stance 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 bunch of different skills within a company – engineers, designers, business people, sales people. It’s really hard to start an ecosystem,” he said. “So proselytizing is important.”

Update: This article has been updated to provide more context into the percentage of total U.S. seed investments that were in Miami startups. This article was originally published September 12, 2024 at 12:37 pm PT.