Meet Florida Man 2.0: the executive working to replace retirees and Disney tourists with Fortune 500 HQs
Forget the viral headlines about alligator wrestling or convenience store mishaps. The new “Florida Man” wears a suit, works in finance or tech, and likely used to live in the Northeast.
This is the archetype Mike Simas, president of The Florida Council of 100, is betting the state’s economic future on (as well as his own). Partnering with billionaires Ken Griffin and Stephen Ross, Simas is shepherding a high-stakes campaign to rebrand the Sunshine State, on behalf of top leaders from more than 200 companies across the state. The goal? To convince the world that Florida is no longer just a haven for retirees and Disney tourists, but the premier destination for corporate headquarters.
A big problem is what everyone thinks they know about “Florida man.” You know, the one that began as an X.com account on 2013, moving the meme from basic cable programs such as The Soup into nationwide meme status. HBO even has a late-night comedy series, It’s Florida, Man, in which actors recreate the local-news headlines that went viral.
Washington Law professor Ira Robbins has explained that the phenomenon most likely stems from Florida’s Public Records Law, “known as one of the most expansive open records laws in the country.” This implies that there is probably a California Man and a New York Man that we just don’t know about yet, due to different public records access in those states.
This hits home for Simas, he told Fortune, a transplant from the Northeast (he’s actually a Rhode Island Man) who is well aware of the need to tell the story of what he’s found since moving to Florida at the beginning of the pandemic and starting a fascinating new stretch of his career. “If we don’t step into this moment and do a good job telling Florida[‘s] story based on facts, things like the ‘Florida man’ meme will dominate the conversation,” Simas said. “And then we won’t be able to attract the types of investment that we’re looking to attract.”
The ‘Florida Man 2.0‘
Simas doesn’t just represent this demographic; he is the demographic. A former executive vice president of the Partnership for New York City, Simas spent 15 years advocating for the Manhattan business community. Like many, he moved his family to Florida during the pandemic, assuming it was temporary. (He moved to Sarasota, the city with an outsized presence in American pop culture from the Ringling Brothers Circus to Pee-Wee Herman.)
“I’m literally the story in real life that you’ve been hearing about Florida,” Simas said. “If you asked me five years ago, ‘will you ever live in Florida?’ my answer would have been a hard ‘no.’ … And now looking back, it’s incredible because I don’t think I could ever go back to New York.”
He describes the Sunshine State as much more than a great environment for business leaders to balance high achievement with a quality of life that has become increasingly difficult to maintain in legacy markets. “We think Florida is the next place for American exceptionalism to take off, and the place where the next generation of really innovative companies are going to be built and scale,” Simas said. That’s why Ken Griffin and Stephen Ross put their money where their mouths were.
The bold vision for the future
Simas’ campaign, backed by the Council of 100—a non-partisan organization of CEOs that has advised Florida governors since 1961—wants more executives to consider the “Gold Coast,” the moniker for a unified economic bloc consisting of Palm Beach, Broward (Fort Lauderdale), and Miami-Dade counties. Simas argued that the state is moving beyond its historical reliance on tourism and hospitality, industries that usually dip during downturns.
The executive revealed that the council partnered with McKinsey several years ago, looking closely for the first time at the state economy and the key sectors to emphasize. Their research and resulting report, for instance, found that over the past five recessions, the total GDP declines from dips in tourism averaged a 10% dip. And consumption-driven sectors — construction, real estate, retail, and tourism — accounted for 38.4% of real GDP in 2024, per the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
More broadly, the conclusion was that it was time for a new Florida Man. “There’s a huge gap in what people think about Florida and what actually exists in Florida,” Simas said, adding that he thinks the image is that Florida is a place only for tourism, not historically viewed as a place for business. Southeast Florida, where Griffin moved his Citadel hedge fund operations and where Ross, the owner of the Miami Dolphins, oversees his real-estate empire, Related, is just the start.
“We’re going to tell the story around the whole state,” Simas said, like his new home on the west coast in Sarasota. Simas said it reminds him of Providence “in a lot of weird ways that I didn’t expect,” with a deep-rooted culture and design community dating back to the early 20th century.
The New York and California questions
Simas said the real draw for CEOs is certainty. “Uncertainty leads to hesitation on decisions,” he said, but Florida offers a very business-friendly climate where “the rules are clear and they’re not changing.”
He argued that Florida will allow companies to grow without capping their growth and nodded to his old hometown of New York. “We’ve been having this conversation for 25 years around 45% of entire state budgets relying on 1% of New York families paying the personal income tax. So the tax law in New York is inelastic. It is at capacity.” (It was actually 46% in 2023, the last year for which data is available.)
He noted recent comments from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul about the state losing income from people moving out. The Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan think tank founded during a New York fiscal crisis in 1932, found in August 2025 that New York had been outgained by California and Texas in new millionaires since 2010, while its share of millionaires fell from 12.7% to 8.7%, and an estimated $13 billion of tax revenue had left the state.
“I think they’re recognizing that as a problem,” Simas said of New York’s departing wealth. “You get to a point where people have to make a hard decision on where they invest next … Our view is that there are other options for you, and if you want to look at those other options, Florida should be on your list.”
Simas contrasted Hochul’s proposed budget of $260 billion, released last month, against some 20 million in the state population, whereas Florida’s budget is $115 billion for 23 million Floridians—a way lower cost of government per capita.
Then there’s the case of California, with several high-profile billionaires decamping to Florida to escape an escalating tax burden, especially the proposed ballot initiative directly targeting billionaire wealth. Among them are several of the richest men on earth, including Google co-founder Larry Page and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg. It would be “extraordinarily challenging” to impose an income tax, let alone a billionaire wealth tax, he said, noting the state constitution forbids it. Beyond that, Simas said, “we don’t have potholes.”
While it’s true that Florida has attracted a wave of executives, financiers, and tech founders since the pandemic, Florida’s economy remains built on consumption, not creation. Finance and tech may be expanding in Florida’s “Gold Coast,” but the New York City metro area has more finance than Silicon Valley and Southeast Florida combined. The Council of 100 told Fortune that the Gold Coast has more finance than Silicon Valley, however, citing proprietary data from Chmura Economics & Analytics.
The influx of billionaires and fund managers has lifted luxury real-estate prices significantly, with even former Mayor Francis Suarez admitting to Fortune last October that “there’s definitely a gentrification happening in Miami.” The Council noted that productivity, wages, and personal income have all increased in the the Gold Coast from 2022 to 2024. Florida has a long history of asset bubbles, raising the question of how these trends would fare in a severe downturn.
Florida’s default positioning, Simas said, is: “how much of this money can we keep in people’s pockets in the state while still doing a great job delivering services? And that’s been consistent through the years.” Since 2003, when Florida’s budget was $54 billion and New York’s was $100 billion, the populations of the states have forked in opposite directions. “It’s really remarkable when you look at it, because it’s just not a sustainable growth curve when you look at public revenue and funding.” Florida’s approach to government and its relationship to business “isn’t going to be anything that changes quickly, which gives investors, CEOs and founders confidence to deploy capital in this market.” The water’s warm, in other words. Are you ready to be Florida Man 2.0?
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com