Venture firm a16z just announced that it will be "moving its headquarters to the cloud." At the same time, it announced 3 new offices in Miami Beach, New York, and Santa Monica. These will be in addition to their existing offices in Menlo Park and San Francisco.

Part of their argument is that hybrid work is weakening the network effects and agglomeration economies associated with being right in Silicon Valley. So they've deiced to be virtual, but still have offices where they can "materialize physically" when needed.

They acknowledge that physical presence is important for developing a company's culture, building relationships, and helping entrepreneurs (their core business).

What's interesting about all of this is that it's further validation for Miami (Beach). Here is one of the most important venture firms out there saying that when they quickly materialize in real life, they want to be able to do that in Miami Beach.

It also raises some interesting questions. Because even if the network effects of Silicon Valley are weakening when it comes to tech, this announcement still speaks to the importance of agglomeration economies. These three new office locations were chosen for a reason.

Here is an interesting chart from the WSJ showing how much net income migrated to the state of Florida between 2019 and 2020:

I'm not sure what the exact dates are for this dataset, but it seems to again suggest that this migration was already a trend before the pandemic happened.

Either way, Miami is red hot and the continues to lead the US in residential rental rate growth. But all of this growth is now apparently starting to catch up to the city. Here is just one example from the same article (though developers here in Toronto would gladly take this sort of timeline):

Right before the pandemic, when he moved to Miami, he said it took no more than four months from when he submitted development plans to when he got city approval. Now, with the number of projects swamping Miami Beach’s staff and resources, that same process takes nearly a year, Mr. Curnin said.

This frenetic run-up is also causing some in the city, including Barry Sternlicht of Starwood Capital Group, to pause:

“Everyone and their cousins are looking to build a building here,” he said. “I’m getting nervous.”

Miami has historically always been a boom and bust kind of market. I don't know if this is one of those times, but there's clearly no denying the allure of palm trees, warm winter weather, and no state income tax.

If you happen to find yourself in Miami or London in the near future, I would highly recommend that you check out Superblue. Neat B and I visited Superblue Miami this past weekend and it was an incredible experience.

Above is a short video of one of the immersive installations (click here if you can't see it embedded above). This one is by the Japanese art collective teamLab and what you're seeing is a whole year's worth of seasonal flowers coming to life and then dying off.

It's meant to show you the continuous change and cycle of life and death that we all live through every day, and you certainly feel that as you go through the space. The installation itself also responds to how you move and interact with it, with some actions encouraging more blossoms.

It's, of course, all very Instagrammable.

But I think this descriptor is old news and doesn't do the work justice. Superblue is a serious cultural experience. One of the other works on display right now is a piece by light and space artist James Turrell. And for this one, there were no photos and talking allowed. The timed experience was meant to be more meditative.

It was the first time that I had seen something by James Turrell in real life and it didn't disappoint. It made me feel things, as did the entire Superblue experience. So again, a top experience that I would highly recommend.

On a related real estate note, the 50,000 sf Superblue space is located in an area of Miami called Allapattah (which is west of Wynwood and 5 miles east of MIA). I'm an outsider to the city building undercurrents of this city, but I keep hearing people talk about the area as the next Wynwood.

The other cultural institution in Allapattah is the Rubell Museum, which I wrote about in 2019 as it was moving over from its original home in Wynwood. Supposedly the family now has the largest private collection of contemporary art in North America. So that's something.

Maybe these two anchors will be what does it for Allapattah. When we walked around the area there didn't seem to be much else going on. But we all know how quickly that can change.