MIAMI—Once the capital of pastel shirts, white shoes and retirees, Miami’s drive to become the next hub of finance is attracting record investments and a growing population of venture capitalists like 2013 Northeastern graduate Julian Jung.

Jung, who moved to Miami six months ago after two years in Mexico, is currently a partner at Republic and co-founded its institutional division, Republic Capital, which manages over $800 million and has invested in more than 150 portfolio companies globally.

He works with accredited investors, family offices and institutional investors at Republic, providing them with access to private venture opportunities and fund-related products.

Republic’s core business is building a platform that allows for non-accredited investors to invest in private venture opportunities, Jung says. The company also has multiple business lines, including an institutional division, an accredited investor only division, a crypto division, a broker dealer and a merchant bank. 

“Republic is building the infrastructure to allow non-accredited investors to participate in private venture type opportunities—normally something that was only allowed for the wealthy and people with access,” Jung says.

He refers to the possibilities that are opening up as the democratization of venture capital and says it’s the type of frontier he’s been drawn to since he was a student at the D’Amore-McKim School of business concentrating in entrepreneurship.

Jung started in the real estate market by helping investors purchase multi-family investment properties in and around the Boston area while he was still a student at Northeastern. 

While in college he also worked with his roommate Daniel Trostli—who also has moved to Miami—to develop a cigarette smoking tracking device called Layla.

He says his professors and mentors encouraged his entrepreneurial efforts, advising him—wisely, it turned out—to get in Boston real estate even though it was in a down market.

“Northeastern was a perfect fit because I was able to learn a lot of fundamental business skills I’ve used throughout my career. It also helped me identify weak spots I needed to improve,” Jung says.

He says he was an entrepreneur from an early age. “I remember giving piano lessons to all the kids in my neighborhood in middle school. In high school, I taught tennis lessons and sold t-shirts.”

After graduating from Northeastern, Jung started Tablelist, a venue management platform for the hospitality industry with seed funding from the Northeastern network.

“Realizing that I enjoyed investing more than operating, I took the plunge to be a full-time angel investor back in 2015. After doing that for a few years, I ended up linking up with my business partner Boris Revsin. The two of us went on to co-found Republic Capital, the institutional arm of Republic.”

He has worked for Republic, which is headquartered in New York City and has offices in five countries, for six years, Jung says.

“I love working with brilliant founders and strategic investors,” he says. 

“I love identifying great entrepreneurs and helping them grow their business. When I get involved with a company, my Rolodex becomes their Rolodex.”

After the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Jung moved from New York to Mexico, working remotely in Tulum for 15 months and spending almost seven months in Mexico City.

He says Miami called to him for a number of reasons, opportunity chief among them.

Realizing his company did not have a strong footprint in Miami, Jung says he decided to move to the city so that his company would have exposure to a rapidly growing market.

“Miami was going through this renaissance,” Jung says. “You have all the major investment banks, top founders, investors, venture groups migrating to Miami. It’s become such an incredible hotspot.”

During the launch of Northeastern’s Miami campus last month, Jung was one of the featured speakers and called the university’s partnership with the South Florida city “a powerhouse combination.”

The Miami campus will focus on graduate courses in technology, health care and finance in a city nicknamed “Wall Street South.”

Leading hedge fund Citadel is relocating its headquarters from Chicago to Miami, and financial companies Blackstone and Goldman Sachs—which employs Northeastern co-op students in Miami—are expanding their presence in the ocean-side city.

The nonprofit RefreshMiami says the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area is “now solidly in the top 10 U.S. metros for venture capital,” and logged $5.5 billion in 2022 across 423 deals, “a new record at a time when larger tech hubs are seeing 25% to 40% decreases.”

“This is the next place to be,” says Jung, 33.

Miami embraces the kind of innovation his company champions, he says.

 “We believe that the next major capital infusion into private opportunities will come from retail investors, no one has unlocked that yet to its full potential, but Republic is at the forefront.”

Jung says that he works with a lot of family offices in Latin America, which is another aspect of Miami living that makes it a natural fit.

He lives in Edgewater, 10 minutes from the beach, 10 minutes from midtown and 10 minutes from Northeastern’s new campus in the Wynwood section of Miami.

Jung says he feels lucky to have attended Northeastern when he did and is excited to see it establish a footprint in Miami.

“It was just a matter of time,” he says. “With Miami going through such a boom, the campus will be at the forefront of all of it.”

Cynthia McCormick Hibbert is a Northeastern Global News reporter. Email her at c.hibbert@northeastern.edu or contact her on Twitter @HibbertCynthia