Qualtrics looms large as a tech employer in Utah Valley, where they're based out of. I went to school in the area and almost ended up doing my first internship there.
Utah has experienced a tech boom as well. They have multiple unicorns. Qualtrics, Domo, pluralsight, as well as a large presence from Adobe, Microsoft, and eBay among others.
Would you mind linking? I'd love to read that article. I've anecdotally begin to notice more and more B2B startups from Utah make it onto the map that fit just that profile.
What about Qualtrics (profitable) MX (profitable) Omniture (IPO, sold for $1.8B), and if we're digging as far back as Fairchild Utah has Novell, Wordperfect, etc.
I left Utah to come to Silicon Valley, and definitely hate MLMs more than you, but to claim that Utah is only MLMs is just silly.
This is huge! Congratulations to a
Ancestry! This is one of a few billion-dollar-plus exits of a startup company in Utah over the past 2 years, with others such as Qualtrics and PluralSight also coming to mind. We're starting to see more unicorns come out of Utah. As someone who lives in Utah, that's great!
> within 50 miles of the company’s new headquarters in Draper, Utah
For context, this encompasses the entirety of the Salt Lake Valley, most of Utah Valley, and most of Davis County (north of Salt Lake City). I don't know where I would find hard numbers but this sounds to me like the majority of the population of Utah.
I'd love to see the LA Times go back and revisit the Utah Valley region and the culture that helped contribute to this. The Utah Valley is chock full of startups with a serious inferiority complex to their big brothers in Silicon Valley, hence derivative name. More importantly, Utah is the “multi-level marketing capital of the world [1]” This kind of sales and growth tactic is not limited to the diet smoothie and cosmetics world, but is absolutely pervasive in the valley. Note- SLC and the Utah Valley may be united in the Silicon Slopes moniker, but they are about as similar as Austin and Waco, TX.
A few observations on Domo
1) The product is weak. It’s pretty dashboards with very limited “real” BI capabilities. The connectors are custom, not OOB/end user configurable – unless end user happens to be IT.
2) They seem to be aware that the product is weak, as their demos include an NDA. Until recently there was almost no “real” information available on what exactly Domo is or does. Only void marketing speak.
3) Their absurd domopalooza (or DP for short, no joke) events included artists like Kesha and Macklemore.
4) Their totally overblown marketing hype surrounds an incoherent me-too product roadmap. Rather than focusing on building a quality product they are going for checkboxes and chasing after Slack etc with features like Chat
5) They have a billboard that reads “If Hillary Had DOMO She would have won.”
I've been predicting for a while that DOMO’s hubris would cause it to be one of the first in the scene to fail spectacularly. What worries me about that prediction is the economic harm that would do to the rest of the Valley especially given the impact of MLM economics.
Southern Utah is way different/smaller than northern. Is there even a $1billion company HQ'd in southern Utah? I'm in Seattle but my company is HQ'd in Utah Valley. There is lots of tech talent in Northern Utah. Heck, Angular Conf and React Rally are in SLC every year for a reason.
It's enormously healthy when you compare cost of living.
In 2015, I bought my unexceptional starter house for under $200k. (Fifteen minutes from Salt Lake city center, built 1970s, average condition, 2k sq ft, two car garage, 0.2 acre.)
Utah has always been big in tech (relatively to its size). Novell and WordPerfect were the homegrown giants of yesteryear. Now it's Pluralsight, Qualtrics, Instructure, Domo, and bunch of up and comers.
Lots of Utah companies have to reach outside the state for engineering muscle because the demand is so high.
It's a fair point, nobody should be confusing the Salt Lake City area for Silicon Valley. Trajectory matters though, Utah is obviously doing well. Their annual venture capital raised has increased by roughly 300% in ten years and is likely to continue climbing.
To put $1 billion into perspective, it's more VC than these countries have per year:
Utah seems to be one of those great places to start a tech company outside of the Bay Area. Great to see a full-fledged program like BoomStartup there.
Right on. "Silicon Slopes" is surprisingly effective attempt by Utah County people to get investors to dump money there.
Quick summary of the companies in "Silicon Slopes": Qualtrics (surveys), Domo (vapor), Adobe, Micron (fab only, but claim to "silicon" in the name), Nu Skin (MLM cosmetics/diet supplements) , doterra (essential oil MLM), NatureSunshine (MLM).
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