Hybrid Venture Studio & Accelerator
About Silicon Beach
Silicon Beach is a hybrid accelerator and venture studio focused on helping disruptive, technology-based companies move from early promise to real commercialization.
We partner with founders when validation gets serious, go-to-market becomes urgent, and scale is the next milestone. Our work sits at the intersection of community-powered innovation and studio-level venture building—so startups grow faster, and the region grows stronger.
Our Mission
Our mission is to strengthen North Florida and the broader Southeast as a launchpad for high-potential startups.
We do that by co-building alongside founders, connecting them to customers and capital, and expanding the local innovation flywheel of talent, pilots, partnerships, and mentorship.
We believe the least expensive funding is sales—so our focus is on building a real pipeline, market acceptance, and the traction investors want to see on the road to Series A and beyond.
What We Do
We combine accelerator momentum with venture studio leverage.
That means hands-on support across product strategy, pitch development, business development, go-to-market execution, fundraising readiness, and scalable growth.
Whether a company starts inside our studio or comes to us with traction, we meet founders where commercialization begins and help them build repeatable revenue and durable scale.
Direct Engagement With Founders
We work directly with founders and executive teams through a high-touch, commercialization-first model.
That can include:
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co-building a venture with studio support,
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accelerating GTM and revenue for an existing startup, or
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preparing a company for growth capital through Series A readiness.
If you’re building something disruptive and ready for real validation, pipeline, and scale, we’re built to engage.
Events & Ecosystem Building
Silicon Beach hosts and supports events that bring founders, operators, investors, universities, and industry partners into the same room because great ventures are built in connected ecosystems.
From pitch events and founder showcases to industry meetups and studio-thesis conversations, our events exist to surface talent, validate ideas faster, and create real opportunities for founders to grow locally while competing nationally.
Sponsorship & Partnership Opportunities
A strong innovation ecosystem doesn’t happen by accident—it requires people and institutions to show up. Sponsoring, mentoring, and participating are essential to creating the next generation of breakout companies in North Florida and beyond.
Silicon Beach offers sponsorship and partnership opportunities for organizations that want to:
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support founders and emerging ventures,
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gain early access to innovation and talent,
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contribute to regional economic growth, and
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help shape the future of technology in the Southeast.
Whether you’re a corporate partner, university, investor, or civic leader, we’d love to collaborate in ways that create measurable venture outcomes and lasting community impact.
Our Founder
Jason Engelhardt
Founder
Jason Engelhardt
Jason’s path to founding Silicon Beach is the result of a career spent building at every level—creative, operational, commercial, and financial.
He began in the entertainment division of Gelfand, Rennert & Feldman (then part of Cooper & Lybrand), where he learned how ideas become marketable products and how talent, storytelling, and business intersect. He then moved into international finance leadership roles across multinational media and American Express, building a global operating lens that would later shape Silicon Beach’s platform approach.
Over more than 20 years on Wall Street, Jason deepened the “venture mechanics” of Silicon Beach—how to structure, launch, and scale real businesses. In senior roles at the Bank of New York and JPMorgan, he developed and launched dozens of financial products that produced $100M–$500M in annual recurring revenue and helped scale a $52B business.
His final institutional role as CFO of Wealth Management at TIAA sharpened his focus on growth systems, performance discipline, and scaling teams and distribution—core ingredients in Silicon Beach’s commercialization-first model.
In parallel, Jason built in the creative economy, reinforcing Silicon Beach’s belief that narrative, product, and distribution must move together. He founded Rockstarz, Inc., producing music education content featured on A&E, MTV, VH1, and developed television concepts that advanced to ABC’s upfronts. These ventures strengthened the storytelling and go-to-market instincts that now help founders cut through noise and earn market attention.
Since stepping away from institutional finance, Jason has applied these building blocks directly to startups—supporting fundraising for an NBA franchise acquisition and serving as President of multiple AI and FinTech companies.
Those operator years cemented Silicon Beach’s hybrid accelerator–venture studio stance: hands-on partnership once validation is real, GTM is urgent, and scale is in reach.
Today, as a founding partner of Silicon Beach, Jason brings the whole arc of his experience, product creation, commercialization, capital strategy, and scale, to co-build disruptive, technology-based ventures and help founders turn traction into enduring companies.
CTO - In Residence
Matisse VerDuyn
CTO in Residence
Matisse VerDuyn
With over 15 years of experience in software architecture and development, Matisse VerDuyn is the creator of PackageJS.Ai—a powerful low-code meta-framework that enables developers to build full-stack web and mobile applications in days rather than months.
Designed for flexibility and scale, PackageJS empowers startups to rapidly test and iterate on new ideas, while also offering on-premise deployment options for enterprises prioritizing security and compliance.
A seasoned entrepreneur, Matisse has founded and contributed to multiple successful startups, bringing deep expertise in both technology and venture building to the Silicon Beach community.
