South Florida Angel Investors 2026: New World Angels' $65M Merger and Where to Apply

New World Angels and Miami Angels merged into a single $65M statewide platform on March 12, 2026 — combining a 93-member Boca Raton network with Miami's angel community into one point of entry for South Florida founders. That's the short answer. The longer answer is more interesting.

South Florida's angel scene has spent two decades as three or four disconnected pockets — Boca, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach — each with its own group, application, and check-writing culture. The March merger is the first real attempt to fix that fragmentation, and it changes how founders in the region should think about raising a seed round before institutional VCs get involved.

Who Are the Active Angel Investors in South Florida in 2026?

South Florida's most active angel investors in 2026 are New World Angels (now merged with Miami Angels into a $65M statewide platform), Gold Coast Angel Investors, Black Angels Miami, and Florida Funders. Together they write checks from $20K to $2M across fintech, healthtech, and SaaS, concentrated in the Miami-to-Boca-to-Palm Beach corridor.

Figures are 2026 estimates blended from New World Angels, PitchBook, Tracxn, Refresh Miami, and each group's public application pages. Check-size ranges reflect typical deal participation, not fund minimums.

The March 2026 Merger: Why New World Angels and Miami Angels Combined

New World Angels was founded in 2003 out of Boca Raton and built a reputation as one of Florida's longest-running angel groups — members, many of them former engineers and operators, take board seats in roughly 75% of the companies they fund. Miami Angels launched a decade later in 2013 and had funded around 100 startups with about a dozen exits by the time of the merger.

Rather than compete for the same South Florida deal flow, the two groups combined into a $65M statewide vehicle on March 12, 2026. The stated goal was to fix two decades of geographic fragmentation — Miami Angels Board Member Juha Mikkola now sits on the combined board — and to give founders a single application that reaches investors across four Florida corridors: Miami-to-Palm Beach, Naples-to-Tampa, Orlando-to-Tallahassee, and Melbourne-to-Jacksonville.

For founders, the practical change is fewer applications and bigger checks per group. For LPs and members, it means depth: a $65M vehicle can lead rounds that a $2M-max angel group used to have to syndicate piecemeal.

Who's Running the Combined Platform: Ron Tarro

The combined platform is led by Ron Tarro, New World Angels' President, Board Director, and Investment Committee Chair, based in Delray Beach. Tarro's background runs through software engineering, product management, and a CEO stint that took a telecom software company through a successful public-company exit before he moved into early-stage investing — he joined New World Angels as VP of Screening & Selection before being named President, succeeding longtime President Steve O'Hara, who moved to Chairman. Tarro also sits on the board of the Florida Venture Forum and the advisory board of FAU's Runway Business Incubator.

According to a Refresh Miami profile of Tarro, the group reviews roughly 40-50 qualified deals a month, presents about three companies a month to its full membership, and members ultimately invest in about a quarter of the companies that clear due diligence — a real filter, not a rubber stamp. As of September 2026, that discipline hasn't slowed deal flow: the group has closed at least seven disclosed investments since the merger was announced, launched a dedicated Space & Defense Ventures Group, and picked up an industry award along the way.

What New World Angels Has Actually Funded Since the Merger

Beyond the headline $65M platform number, New World Angels' own news archive shows a steady cadence of disclosed checks running through 2025 and into 2026 — plus a $50K-$100K “Innovation Fund” that bridges founders coming out of top Florida accelerators before they're ready for a full group vote.

One caveat worth flagging: as of September 2026, Miami Angels' own site still presents itself as a fully independent organization with no mention of the merger — the deal is well confirmed by New World Angels' press release and Refresh Miami's coverage, just not yet reflected on Miami Angels' own web presence.

Where South Florida Angel Investors Are Writing Checks in 2026

Maximum check sizes vary sharply by group structure. New World Angels, now backed by the combined $65M fund, can write up to $2M into a single deal — well above what a typical angel syndicate can absorb. Florida Funders and Gold Coast Angel Investors cap out around $500K, and individual angels writing through informal syndicates typically check in at $25K to $250K, in line with the Angel Capital Association's 2025 Angel Funders Report, which put national individual angel checks at $25K–$100K and syndicate checks at $250K–$500K+.

Values represent maximum typical check size per group ($), not total fund size.

Is There a Florida Angel Investor Tax Credit?

No. Florida is one of roughly half of U.S. states without a dedicated state-level angel investor tax credit — unlike states such as Georgia or Virginia, which offer direct credits against angel investment. That absence is part of why federal treatment matters more here: qualifying early-stage stock held for five years can be eligible for the Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) exclusion under Section 1202, which is the primary tax lever South Florida angels actually use. For a deeper breakdown of how QSBS treatment works, see our QSBS guide.

How to Get in Front of South Florida's Angel Investors

This is a partial list. For warm introductions across the South Florida angel and VC network, reach out to Trace Cohen. See also our broader guide to Miami VC firms for the institutional layer above angel checks.

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