Miami has been making national headlines lately, and it’s not for 80-degree winters. Some of tech’s biggest names keep pointing south as the best destination to build. When California amended a new ballot initiative proposing a one-time 5% billionaire tax in January, the relocation chatter began with names like Peter Thiel and David Sacks, surfacing in the conversation and reigniting the “move-to-Miami” narrative.
For those who’ve been building here, none of this is surprising. Miami has been compounding momentum for years. And at the heart of that momentum are the communities making it happen. Here are five tech communities pushing the city’s innovation engine forward.
Born from a simple need to give Miami coders a consistent place to build, hello_miami [pictured above] functions as a “third place” outside of work and home. In this community, individuals show up, open their laptops, swap feedback, and move projects forward. “Miami’s tech scene is often discussed in terms of hype, funding and headlines. hello_miami represents the quieter side of that story,” community co-host Sergio Leon explained.
The community originated in 2024, when co-founders Alie Gonzalez-Guyon and Jose Sirven identified more than 10,000 engineers in Miami with advanced careers, spread out geographically and working in silos. At the time, there were few deeply technical spaces dedicated to sharing skills. hello_miami has since grown to about 1,000 members, composed of senior engineers, founders and students who meet weekly at The DOCK in Wynwood on Tuesdays and Moonlighter FabLab in South Beach on Thursdays for build sessions and thoughtfully curated hack nights that last six to eight hours. In 2025 alone, they hosted 75 Hack Nights, as well as several larger partner-sponsored hackathons and workshops.
In the future, Leon hopes to see hello_miami become a permanent pillar of Miami’s technical ecosystem. “We want to give builders a space they can return to, not just attend once. hello_miami exists because building is better when it is shared,” Leon said.
In a city where Spanish is spoken in nearly every household, ÁgoraÑ [pictured above] was created to fill a gap hiding in plain sight. Patricia Tavira Muñoz, president of Innovapreneurs, launched the community after speaking on an AI panel in Spanish at Miami Dade College’s AI Center and realizing there was no consistent space for Spanish speaking professionals to learn about artificial intelligence in their native language. Within months of that event, ÁgoraÑ was born, becoming an AI community conducted entirely in Spanish.
Today, the group meets monthly at MDC’s Wolfson Campus and brings together founders, students, professionals and the AI curious, all sharing the belief that AI literacy is the new literacy. “We didn’t want our community to miss out on the AI revolution due to linguistic or cultural barriers,” Tavira Muñoz said.
With nearly 500 active members, ÁgoraÑ has grown beyond a monthly meetup into a hands on learning hub for Spanish speaking professionals navigating emerging technologies. In addition to ÁgoraÑ’s regular gatherings at the Miami Dade College AI Center, Tavira Muñoz runs AI Clinics through Innovapreneurs, offering intensive programs focused on practical AI literacy. Innovapreneurs also hosts coworking days at Mana Tech, where members participate in skill building workshops and wellness activities such as healthy cooking classes. Special keynote sessions bring senior technology leaders into the room, giving the community direct access to advanced concepts without language or cultural barriers. In a city powered by Spanish speakers, ÁgoraÑ is ensuring that language is not a barrier to innovation, but a bridge to it.
For founders and builders south and west of Miami’s usual tech corridors, Purple Horizon’s South Miami Tech Tuesday [pictured above] brings the ecosystem closer to home. Co-founded by Gianni D’Alerta and Ralph Quintero, the community was born out of a practical reality: not everyone lives in Wynwood or Brickell, and traffic, parking, and time can become barriers to participation. Rather than forcing people to cross the city, Purple Horizons flipped the model. The group meets on the first Tuesday of every month in South Miami, most often at Bougainvillea’s Old Florida Tavern, creating a space that feels like a neighborhood gathering. “We decided to bring the tech closer to home,” the founders shared, describing Tech Tuesday as something “local, consistent, and human.”
The community has more than 2,500 members, with 100 to 300 people regularly engaging in person through hands-on tech demos, AI panels, buildathons, founder conversations, and what they call “networking with intent.” It is designed for people who want to use technology and want to understand what’s coming next. As the founders put it, “technology is moving fast, and most people feel either overwhelmed or left out. Purple Horizons exists to close that gap, so people don’t feel like the future is happening to them, but with them.”
If you have ever attended a networking event and felt as if it was purely transactional, you are not alone. Saif Ishoof and his team at Lab22C had a similar feeling in Miami’s growing tech ecosystem. Longing for a place where genuine connections and care are the norm, Ishoof launched Cafecito & Pastelitos [pictured above]. In many cultures, cafecito is how families connect, how conversations begin and how community is nurtured. Pairing that with pastelitos felt like a natural way to gather people, Ishoof said.
“From the beginning, the goal was to build something that felt more like family than networking. By showing up consistently, month after month, strangers became familiar faces, and familiar faces became a community that supports one another far beyond the gathering itself,” Ishoof said.
Dozens of founders, operators, investors, students, creatives and nonprofit leaders gather once a month at the peak cafecito time of 8:30 a.m., typically at Chug’s in Coconut Grove. There is no formal agenda, panels or programming. People check in on one another, share challenges, celebrate wins and offer support. For Ishoof, the most rewarding part has been seeing how consistency has turned casual conversations into lasting relationships that extend far beyond the morning gathering. “Cafecito & Pastelitos is a reminder that community is currency and we must all spend time investing in building that form of treasure. Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is sit down, share cafecito and be part of the family,” Ishoof said.
The Kitchen [pictured above] is a community built for strategists and executioners. Ernesto Mandowsky, founder of Million Dollar Machine, created it after meeting countless business owners with strong ideas but no clear path to turn them into reality. “They understood that systems mattered, but they were completely buried in day to day execution,” Mandowsky said.
The community, made up of more than 100 entrepreneurs, business owners, coaches, consultants and service providers, meets on the first Monday of each month, with additional quarterly sessions focused on deeper strategy and implementation.
When you attend a Kitchen event, you leave fed, literally and strategically. During the quarterly Recipe for Growth workshops, attendees slow down to speed up, carving out time to map the next 90 days of their business. While planning, participants get their hands dirty baking challah bread, reinforcing the idea that growth requires patience, process and intention. Each attendee also receives access to a Notion template designed to help track progress and measure success throughout the quarter.
Looking ahead, Mandowsky plans to expand The Kitchen beyond Miami and grow it into a thriving ecosystem focused on helping hundreds of businesses build systems that last.
READ MORE IN REFRESH MIAMI:
I am a University of Florida graduate and Miami native who is passionate about writing stories that highlight Miami’s thriving tech ecosystem. I especially enjoy writing stories about technologies creating a social impact, digital assets, and EdTech. Have a story to share? Contact me via Twitter @anathemarketer or
[email protected]. Latest posts by Anayansy Hernandez (see all)