Tech Beach Retreat is aiming to drive more foreign direct investment, including from the Diaspora, into the Caribbean tech ecosystem through its recently launched networking platform TBRconnect.net.

The official launch of the website took place at the opening ceremony of Tech Beach Retreat Jamaica 2022 in Rose Hall, St James, earlier this month. At the event, Tech Beach Retreat head of community Amanda Spann shared that the platform is not exclusively for people in the tech industry or the Caribbean but will be for start-up entrepreneurs, tech-curious, investors, and job seekers.

“There’s a place for you at TBR Connect,” she told the gathering.

Spann would later inform the Jamaica Observer that TBR Connect is a “global connectivity platform” aimed at supporting the innovation and entrepreneurship thrust in the Caribbean.

“No matter where you are across the world, if you have an interest in this and you want to be a part of that conversation and you want to move the region forward and its people forward, we want you to be part of the community,” she stated.

By being inclusive, she said, the organisation not only attract strategic partners, advocates and allies but will also ensure that entrepreneurs in the region are properly served and represented on global scale.

On this note, Spann pointed that TBR Connect has three major objectives: facilitate deal flow and partnership by providing regional start-ups with access to global corporate entities; facilitate thought leadership and research that will foster capacity building and training in entrepreneurship; and stimulate economic growth in the region.

“There are a lot of innovators across the globe and the Caribbean very much suffers from brain drain a lot of the time [because] people have amazing ideas here but they feel like the only way they can execute them is if they leave the region. They go to the States, they go to Canada, they go to Latin America,” the head of community noted.

As such, TBR Connect will pull on resources from outside the region and connect people digitally and in so doing, act as a deterrent to emigration.

Additionally, Spann pointed out that while the aim is to facilitate deal flow to the region in terms of capital, it can also foster collaborative partnerships that will provide start-ups with other resources. One such way, she shared, was that start-ups would not need someone else to introduce them to angel investors and venture capitalists, but they could do so themselves through the platform.

One of the challenges, Spann pointed out, that stunted the growth of the tech industry in the region was fragmentation. In this regard, she said that while there have been pockets of innovation across the region, the conversations surrounding technological advancements tend to happen in silos.

“But those conversations should be happening among all of us and they are a catalyst with sparks for growth, for partnerships, for collaboration and we want to take that conversation online and give it a home so that we can build things out of that, whether it be workforce development programmes or new collaborative corporate innovation partnerships. We have to start the conversation somewhere and we can’t just wait for a couple times a year when we convene at a Tech Beach Retreat to do that,” she argued.

On the matter of capacity development, Spann disclosed that while TBR Connect will now act as a funnel for new cohorts into the TBR Labs training programme, the website will also roll out tutorials, e-learning fora and fireside chats with talking heads in the global tech industry.

Moreover, as the organisation continues to pursue developing start-ups, the website will also facilitate them finding new markets and employment. At present, TBRconnect.net has a job and opportunities portal for people searching for employment.

At the time of Spann’s announcement, she revealed that there were postings for software engineers and IT specialists from a partner company.

“We can build these start-ups, we can build their capacities but if they have no one to service that’s a problem, and if they have no one to work for them in the region and have the skills and understanding of what they’re trying to do and what they’re trying to build …then we’re back at square one,” she told Business Observer.

“When you think about how TBR Labs start-ups are going to be growing they’re going to need to hire people. They’re going to need to bring people in house, and we want to make sure we provide the resource for them to amplify those jobs and find the right people who are in our communities,” Spann added.

When asked what to expect from the platform post-conference, she said that TBR Connect will host tutorials on e-commerce and e-mail automation, again emphasising that the website is not just focused on hard tech and high-tech subjects but will also cater enabling businesses with digital tools.