Great way to get ahead

A Tampa firm that offers coding classes for the masses, gr8code, is in a unique spot: It recently received a four-year, $5.4 million capital commitment.

“I'm pinching myself,” gr8code co-founder and CEO Virginia Barnett tells Coffee Talk. “I'm ridiculously happy to have this opportunity.”

The unusual part for gr8code, run out of a historic bungalow in Ybor City, is that it's a tech startup, it's a woman-owned business, and it's in Florida. Entities with those three attributes, says Daniel James Scott, associate director of entrepreneurship at University of South Florida St. Petersburg, aren't traditionally high on the list for most investment firms. Scott, in a statement, says he believes this funding, from Lithia-based OmniElite, is the largest for a women-owned tech startup in the state.