2016 Azbee Awards of Excellence
Category
Print > Individual Profile > Southeast
Awarded to
Mike Vogel
Entry details
$500 Million Man
Issue date (if applicable): 8/1/2015
Publication name: Florida Trend
Publishing company: Times Publishing
Website home page: FloridaTrend.com
Please describe the publication's mission and readership:
Florida Trend magazine is the only publication that covers business-related news and public policy issues in Florida from a statewide perspective. In that role, it has two major responsibilities:
One, to reflect the diversity of the various city-states within Florida, which have widely varying business communities and interests. Two, to foster a sense of statehood and promote democracy by illuminating the issues shared by all of Florida's communities. This has traditionally meant a strong commitment to investigative reporting, analysis and context.
The magazine enjoys an audience of the state's most influential business and political leaders and decision-makers, from the governor to the CEOs of virtually every significant company in the state.
Please describe the enterprising work that went into this entry and its significance or impact on readers:
Florida is not a state known for big venture capital funding deals nor for producing “unicorns” or The Next Big Thing. So it was a shock when a little known augmented reality company, always referred to as “secretive,” by the name of Magic Leap raised more money in a venture capital deal than all but four companies up to that point. Founder Rony Abovitz and his company aren’t called “secretive” for nothing. He refused us, and indeed neither he nor the company have talked beyond older, single pieces in the MIT Technology Review and The New York Times. Florida Trend, to get the story, contacted every venture capital player behind the company, Abovitz’s family and people Abovitz had worked with or encountered. It also found archived accounts dating to Abovitz’s high school and college days, Abovitz’s old college column and cartoons and archived blog postings, found videos online of talks he had given or that people who had seen his technology had given, watched a video of a bizarre bit of performance theater he was involved in, researched the people he had hired for clues about the direction the company was taking, reviewed scores of patent filings and of course talked to experts in the field about the technology landscape. The result was a comprehensive personality profile of an unusual figure who, if his promise is realized, will have a dramatic impact on hiring and technology development in Florida and the way the world does computing.
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$500 Million Man
Category
Print > Individual Profile > Southeast
Description
Publication name:
Florida Trend
Company:
Times Publishing
Winner Status
- Regional Silver Award
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