Ilana Kowarski

FLORIDA TODAY

As you walk into TrepHub, a startup incubator in Melbourne where technology ventures are born, what you find is a casual and communal space with rolling whiteboards and portable desks.

Inspirational posters hang on the wall, the shelves are cluttered with microwavable snacks and cans of Campbell's Soup, and light bulbs hang uncovered from ceiling cords.

People in t-shirts, khaki shorts, and blue jeans sit side by side in front of laptops.They call themselves "hackers," but the reality is many are founders of fast-growing startups.

One of them is technology entrepreneur Ahmed Reza, a Palm Bay software engineer and developer who built two software companies from the ground up on the Space Coast, and who is determined to help others do the same. His latest venture, Call Sumo, is a marketing technology company which allows businesses to screen phone calls to determine if it's a viable lead before anyone picks up the receiver.

"The system makes your dumb phone smart," Reza said. "This is caller ID on steroids. I just started this company, and we're already getting signups from across the world. We're getting customers from Melbourne, Australia."

Reza is one of the co-founders of TrepHub, a nonprofit organization established in 2012 to help Space Coast entrepreneurs pursue their ambitions within a community of like-minded people. It is one of many Brevard County organizations trying to foster a "startup culture" here - others include Melbourne Makerspace, Groundswell, Fab Lab, weVENTURE, the Titusville Entrepreneurs Clubhouse, the Business Acceleration Summit, the Space Coast Tech Council, and the Startup Quest program at CareerSource Brevard.

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Innovation will be the subject of a special event, hosted by FLORIDA TODAY and the USA TODAY NETWORK, on July 13. The event will explore how Brevard and the United States can harness the creativity of its people to improve the economy and society. One Nation: American Innovation, presented by Harris Corp, will be held at Port Canaveral Cruise Terminal One from 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Brevard County entrepreneurs say the startup community locally is growing quickly, and that the region's low cost of living makes it an attractive place to start a business. Entrepreneurs can focus more resources on labor, equipment, and expansion, and less on rent. An added bonus, Brevard is flush with engineering talent thanks to companies like Harris and Northrop Grumman, a university like Florida Institute of Technology and NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

"Having a community like this was a big part of why I was successful," said Chris Dunkel, a Melbourne-based entrepreneur and a TrepHub member.

Dunkel is the co-founder of Career Fair Plus, a company which creates specialty phone applications for college career fairs that allow students to find background information on the participating companies. He started his company in 2013 by designing a customized application for Florida Tech, and now he has more than 100 colleges as clients, including Columbia University and Georgia Tech.

"The nice thing about the startup community in Brevard is that everyone is very open," Dunkel said. "You're doing it because you love it so you're excited to share."

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Engineer Sanjay Gopal, whose company designs information technology for the health care industry, said that Brevard is unusual among communities with big clusters of engineers because there is not as much cutthroat competition.

"The traditional start-up in Silicon Valley is trying to make a billion dollar business," he said. "But here, what people are doing is mostly lifestyle businesses... They want to be part of the community."

But many in Brevard's startup community add that, although they value Brevard's collaborative startup atmosphere, they want to boost the ambitions of its entrepreneurs.

That's the idea behind the newly established Business Acceleration Summit, an organization which began offering a series of business conferences in Brevard last year. It occasionally brings high-profile investors into town as guests.

The summit was created by business and marketing consultant Shannon Burnett-Gronich, a businesswoman who has lived in Brevard for 18 years and who sees limited local access to capital as a major obstacle to economic growth.

Burnett-Gronich invites business consultants and venture capitalists to speak at her conferences and recent speakers at the Business Acceleration Summit include Berny Dohrman, founder of CEO Space, a company which produces trade shows and training seminars for business executives; and Ernest Chu, founder of the Soul Currency Institute, a national nonprofit which offers business coaching.

"I just sold them on the vision of how amazing it is when we come together, and I sold them on the idea that Brevard is a very unique community, with our space and technology," she said. "We've got something very special here."

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Chu said that he was impressed with what he has seen of Brevard's startup potential during his visits.

"I can tell you I've been to a lot of areas over the years, New York and Silicon Valley, and Brevard County has the potential to be one of the next great places to do business," he said. "They just need more investment."

Capital is the lifeblood of a startup ecosystem, and helping entrepreneurs get the capital they need to grow is one of the primary goals of Groundswell, a nonprofit which aims to catalyze the growth of Brevard startups.

Jenna Buehler, co-founder of Groundswell, said it is hard to overstate the importance of investors for startups. "It is the funding that exists in an ecosystem that's a game changer for entrepreneurs," she said. "We're giving them the pipeline."

Buehler said that the three vital ingredients of a thriving startup scene are funding, mentoring opportunities, and a culture of innovation

The challenge in Brevard, she said, is that although there are a variety of resources available to local startup founders who need help getting their businesses off the ground, there is a scarcity of resources for local startups that have already launched and want to expand.

"A lot of those programs don't have a really strong pipeline to funding," Buehler said. Another challenge, Buehler said, is the need to recruit more business managers with startup expertise to Brevard.

"I think it's going to take a village to attract business talent," she said. "We already have the lifestyle in our playbook, because this is a beautiful place, and it's an affordable place to live."

Michelle Crawford and Jessica Kane say Brevard has been a wonderful place to start their fashion business venture, Society+, an online retail company which sells plus size clothing and which has garnered international media attention for its marketing campaign since its launch in 2015.

Kane added that they have discovered untapped talent in Brevard and in the central Florida region. "I think the creative class within Brevard and within the larger area is not really known or appreciated and so we've been able to tap into that," she said, "and I think it's a sleeping giant of this area."Crawford said, "We initially set up here because this is where my husband's job is and with an e-commerce business, you can go anywhere. ... There are not many companies in this area competing for the kind of talent we want so that has helped."

Contact Kowarski at 321-242-3640 or ikowarski@floridtoday.com. Follow her on Twitter @IlanaKowarski.