He built a manufacturing company. Now he’s building a startup ecosystem in Jacksonville (Courtesy of the Jacksonville Business Journal) — In a city where an engineer’s prototype lab might sit 40 minutes from a coder’s coworking space, collaboration too often dies in traffic.
For years, Jacksonville’s innovation scene has been bursting with ideas but falls short in connective tissue — a startup community full of promise but scattered across a city that stretches nearly 900 square miles. Now one local entrepreneur is putting millions on the line to change that.
First Coast Metalworks founder Ryan Smith (pictured above) is preparing to launch the Jacksonville Innovation Hub, a 25,000-square-foot facility designed to take startups from idea to execution under one roof.
The multimillion-dollar project is slated to open in early 2026 near Beach Boulevard and Interstate 295. It’s being designed to centralize coworking, fabrication and business-support resources, giving entrepreneurs a place to prototype, collaborate and scale without leaving town.
Smith’s vision: a home base for Jacksonville’s fragmented innovation ecosystem, one that unites the city’s talent, tools, and investors into a single, accessible network.
From conception to reality
The idea for this innovation hub didn’t start with a pitch deck, it started with a welder. When Smith launched First Coast Metalworks in June, he was helping a friend from Maine transition his skills into Jacksonville’s industrial market.
As Smith began working with local developers and manufacturers, he saw a deeper need: a lack of accessible, scalable resources for startups.
His realization came into sharper focus when he met Paesol Veerakitti, founder of Robocore, a local robotics startup. Veerakitti needed help manufacturing his robots and Smith’s team stepped in, helping redesign it for manufacturability.
That was right around when Jax Tech Fest happened, and the introduction immersed Smith in Jacksonville’s tech scene. He quickly realized Robocore wasn’t alone.
“I started meeting people, and (Veerakitti’s) not the only one that needed help with manufacturability, but it wasn’t just that,” Smith told the Business Journal. “It was space — it’s scattered all over Jacksonville.”
At that point, Smith had reached out to a broker about a building downtown. A week later, the broker reached back with a list of properties.
“He said, ‘Here’s a PDF of a listing I have coming up in a month,’” Smith recounted. “And I said ‘that one.’ So I went and looked at it and I’m like, ‘this is it.’”
Though not the original property he was asking about, Smith said the spot is central to Jacksonville, about 15 minutes to downtown, 15 minutes from the beach and minutes from UNF.
Smith wouldn’t confirm its exact location yet but anticipates closing on the building for $4.5 million in the next month. Of the available 25,000 square feet, about half will be reserved for First Coast Metalworks with the remaining 13,000 square feet left for his innovation corridor.
Aside from being a community space, Smith hopes the hub will also introduce new customers for his company.
“There’s no ulterior motives,” he said. “I want product companies to succeed so they end up doing some of their manufacturing with First Coast Metalworks, that’s where the value comes in. We’re creating a platform, that’s all it is.”
Diverse experience
While the local manufacturer has an array of offerings planned for the space, the true draw of his innovation space is access to its deep bench of talent.
A Jacksonville University alumni, Smith’s already tapped into the city’s diverse array of sectors to assemble a Rolodex of experts, from education and business advising to artificial intelligence and fintech, to name a few.
Among them is Joey Sanchez, who’s also a JU alumnus and sits on the private university’s board of trustees. Currently living in Houston, Sanchez spent two-and-a-half years as senior director of ecosystems for The Ion, the anchor of Houston’s innovation district. Now leading his own startup, Sanchez has had a hand in a few different innovation hubs, accelerators and makerspaces in Texas, according to Smith.
“He’s going to take me to all of them and really show me how they made the startup ecosystem in Houston,” Smith explained. “How they grew it, how they made it succeed. He wants to come back to Jacksonville part time and help me build this.”
The hub’s advisory board is literally growing by the day. It now includes names like Silicon-Beach.ai Founder Jason Engelhardt, University of Florida Blackstone Launchpad Director Sierra Calhoun-Pollard and independent fintech advisor Annie DeStefano, among others.
“What Ryan is doing is unique in the sense that he’s talking about really bringing in the ability for folks to do, depending on their business, something that they need to actually produce their products,” said DeStefano, a former FIS executive who left to spin out her own consulting firm earlier this year. “It’s not necessarily all about just software companies.”
What’s next
The Jacksonville Innovation Hub is privately backed, funded by a group of close associates to Smith that he declined to disclose the names of yet. For startups seeking to use the space he’s building out, they’ll be charged a monthly fee still undetermined at the moment.
That would cover access to the space, including conference rooms, a podcast studio, fabrication and prototyping equipment, a large event space called ‘the Courtyard’ and more. Manufacturing would come at an additional cost, he said, because of raw materials.
Smith plans for the space to also have 17 private offices, for companies that are more well-established, and eventually incorporate secure, round-the-clock access.
“Dealing with entrepreneurs and startups, I get a lot of emails at three o’clock in the morning because they haven’t gone to bed yet,” he said. “That’s how it works. We want it to be the space that you can come and go.”
This pitch for a new one-stop-shop for innovators’ needs arrives at a time when companies across the region are investing in entrepreneurs.
There’s been a multi-year-long push to grow the sector’s support base: continued investments by PS27 Ventures; the 2021 debut of the link in Nocatee; the downtown reopening of the Florida Small Business Development Center at UNF; four Entrepreneurship Workforce Development Centers from the city; and JAX Hub from London-based L Marks, just to name a few.
Boiled down, Smith wants his new space to be one that reduces friction for startups while creating a pipeline for local talent, ideas and investment.
“I’m looking for a legacy piece,” he said. “I’m looking for a stamp piece. I’m looking for something that, as my kids grow up, they see. Supporting economic development, innovation the ecosystem in Jacksonville, I think I’m going to achieve my goal with that.”
Photo courtesy of First Coast Metalworks