For many in the Miami community, these words feel like an era coming to an end. Wifredo Fernandez (Wifi) and Daniel LaFuente created and managed a space, LAB Miami, unlike any other in Miami. LAB Miami is a place where entrepreneurs, creatives and the career adventurer can come in, find a desk and work on their ideas. It is a place where strict and conventional norms of a workspace are broken, and new ideas–as odd as they may sound–are encouraged. It is a place where it is okay to take a leap of faith, maybe fail, and yet find a support system to pivot and move on. It’s an entrepreneurial circus, where all you need to be accepted is courage, passion and a great idea.
Co-working spaces are customizable for the needs of the individual entrepreneur. LAB Miami has not only fulfilled the needs of their own entrepreneurs — also known as LAB Rats — but it has become the center for the city’s tech ecosystem in Wynwood as well. The LAB has been a catalyst for collisions, through their events or the occasional walk-ins where people have made valuable connections. LaFuente and Fernandez created this mini epicenter of exchange of ideas. Today we lose our ringmasters, but the show must go on.
