Spotlight on Entrepreneurship in Utah

The Economist recently did an article titled Why Startups Are Leaving Silicon Valley. The positive message in the article is that entrepreneurship has now spread around the world. Compelling ventures are getting built everywhere.

Today, we put the spotlight on Utah.

Utah’s first major break came with Omniture which Adobe acquired in 2009 for $1.8 billion. Founder Josh James went on to start Domo almost right away. The company is now approaching an IPO, although it has seen some tough times recently.

Bootstrapping an Online Education Company to $12M: Pluralsight CEO Aaron Skonnard tells the story of an EdTech company that we have covered for a long time. The company has since gone public and holds on to a $3.5 billion market cap.

Bootstrapping a Billion Dollar Unicorn with Services from Utah: Dave Elkington, CEO of InsideSales.com tells the story of another hot Utah SaaS company.

We speculated in May: Billion Dollar Unicorns: Is Microsoft Planning to Buy InsideSales?

Some other Utah startup stories:

1. 2018 IPO Prospects: Qualtrics Acquires to Add to Customer Experience Offering
2. Bootstrap to $25 Million from Utah, Raise Money Later to Scale to $100 Million: John Pope, CEO of Jive
3. Building a Fast Growing FinTech Company from Utah: MX CEO Ryan Caldwell
4. Capital Efficient Entrepreneurship from Utah: Ben Dilts, Founder and CTO of Lucid Software
5. Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later from Utah: HireVue CEO Mark Newman
6. Building a Marketing Software Company from Utah: Convirza CEO Jason Wells
7. Entrepreneurship in Utah: Blackrock CEO Andy Gotshalk
8. Built to Enjoy in Utah: Jana Francis, Founder, Steals.com
9. 1Mby1M Deal Radar: Orabrush, Provo, Utah

You can also read:

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ron Heinz of Signal Peak Ventures

Business Incubator Series: John Richards, BoomStartup, Provo, Utah

Utah benefits from its relatively close proximity to Silicon Valley. Money flows easily, especially for Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later scenarios. Utah startups are very good at bootstrapping, so by the time they go out to raise capital, they usually have strong validation already in place.

I am strongly of the opinion that any region that is trying to get on the global startup map should follow its example. Create a bunch of strong bootstrapped companies. Some of them would draw capital from other hubs like Silicon Valley, New York or Boston. And voila, the machine starts to move.

Of course, it takes time. Omniture was founded in 1996. Pluralsight in 2004.

But those regions that have been active now for a couple of decades are starting to show real momentum.

Utah ranks amongst the top of the new technology startup hubs.