BRIDGETOWN – The Caribbean could discover its very own Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, when 300 people from the tech industry, including power players like Jack Dorsey, CEO, Twitter, convene in Jamaica from November 30 to December 2, for the second biannual Tech Beach retreat.

A USD35,000 grant provided by the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) will make it possible for 16 young entrepreneurs and innovators from across the region to attend the event, through scholarships. The two-day retreat will focus on teaching participants how to build successful fintech, medtech and consumer tech companies, with special features on cybercrime and data security, robotics and automation, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.

Scholarship awardees will present their business ideas to key participants and a select group of speakers at the retreat, and will receive constructive feedback and mentorship. This type of access to global partnerships and potential investment is vital to the region making its mark, said Tech Beach Co-founder and Director, Kirk-Anthony Hamilton. Following the inaugural retreat in 2016, a post-event survey confirmed that 56 percent of the participants had gone on to establish joint ventures through connections made at the event. Hamilton is himself an example of what regional entrepreneurs can achieve with adequate investment and support. He was named one of the 75 Emerging Global Entrepreneurs by the then President of the United States of America, Barrack Obama in 2015…[+]