Embarc Collective, a startup incubator and accelerator that has helped cement Tampa Bay’s status as an entrepreneurial hub, will soon have its first new leader since it launched in early 2019.
Lakshmi Shenoy, the Tampa-based organization’s founding CEO, announced Wednesday that she will step down from the role Jan. 1. The nonprofit’s board appointed Dr. Tim Holcomb as her successor.
Holcomb has 35 years of experience building and supporting nationwide startups and incubators. Shenoy noted that she “put everything” into building Embarc from scratch and formed relationships with team members who “really, really matter to me.”
“So, it was definitely a challenging conversation,” Shenoy told the Catalyst. “But one also filled with a lot of excitement.”
She credited that enthusiasm to her confidence in Holcomb. He is a Miami University professor in Oxford, Ohio, and chairs the Department of Entrepreneurship.
Shenoy said Embarc’s board “heavily vetted” Holcomb. He also serves as director of the John W. Altman Institute for Entrepreneurship, ranked 7th globally by The Princeton Review.
“I wouldn’t have made the decision if we didn’t have somebody as strong as Tim coming on board,” Shenoy said. “This will be his third time living in Florida, and he’s an amazing cultural fit for the Embarc Collective community and team.”
Jeff Vinik, owner of the Tampa Bay Lightning, committed $10 million to establish the nonprofit. He lured Shenoy from 1871, a prominent tech entrepreneurship hub in Chicago, in 2018.
Embarc Collective has profoundly impacted the area’s tech and entrepreneurial community under her watch. Member businesses boast a 96% five-year survivability rate and have raised over $220 million in funding.
Shenoy opened the doors on Embarc’s 32,000-square-foot facility six weeks before a global pandemic. The organization has since supported over 230 early-stage startups through more than 6,000 coaching hours and helped create nearly 1,000 net new jobs.
However, Shenoy asserted that the nonprofit is “much bigger than me.”
“This is an organization that was built for our community and, frankly, is owned by the community,” she said. “So, as much as I had an amazing experience building this … the mission is just so much bigger than one individual.”
Holcomb has served as a board member and advisor for several companies, including Tampa-based ReliaQuest. He also cofounded Telcom Global Solutions, a $30 million design-build firm acquired by Flex, a Fortune 500 company, in 2001.
“Embarc Collective is my first baby,” Shenoy explained. “I wanted to make sure the next person to grow this baby is a known entity that we trusted.”
Brian Murphy, founder and CEO of ReliaQuest, chairs the organization’s board. In a prepared statement, he said it is “easy to forget that just five years ago, nothing like Embarc Collective existed in Florida.”
Murphy believes Shenoy cleared a “path of growth and scale” that will generate “more impact on our state than any other initiative over the past decade.” Shenoy likened the transition to the “you should hire people who are better than yourself” adage.
Her new role will also allow Shenoy to spend more than nights and weekends with her husband, Ryan Jacobs. He founded SpotMyPhotos, and Shenoy will become more involved with the company.
She called change an energizing force that strengthens people and teams. “I haven’t figured out all the pieces for me, but I’m also an entrepreneur,” Shenoy said. “So, I don’t need to have all the information to jump into the future. I’ll be just fine.”
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