7 ms·

Provo-Orem area ranked 11th for high-tech startups

35 points by vyrotek 13y ago

ortusdux 13y ago
The actual study: http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedFiles/bds-tech-starts-report.pdf http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedFiles/bds-tech-starts-report...
- generj 13y ago
  Reading the full study, I was surprised how big Colorado was in startups, especially areas like Boulder. I anticipated moving out to the Austin TX area after college for a startup experience. I can't afford the California tax, both the government and other cost of living expenses. Colorado is gorgeous, and so is the Wasatch front. I'll be looking more aggressively for jobs in those areas.
  - dekayed 13y ago
    Do you not feel like you can get a good startup experience in Austin?
    - generj 13y ago
      No, I absolutely feel I can get a good startup experience in Austin. I just prefer skiing over humidity :)
  - Osiris 13y ago
    I live south of Denver. I moved here from the East Bay 4 years ago due to cost of living. Tech jobs were highly competitive and I wasn't able to get a job that made it affordable to stay. So after 3 years in the Bay Area, I treked out to Colorado where my wife is from. I got a good programmer job about a year later. In Denver there's a whole area called the "Tech Center", and there are quite a few startups in Downtown. I've heard a lot about Boulder and the tech community up there, but it's way too far away for me to look for work up there. Plus, there's a lot to do around here all year round. (Side note, I also lived in Provo for 5 years and SLC for 1)
jjindev 13y ago
I drove up the I-15 a couple weeks ago, and was surprised that when I hit northern Utah I saw a couple tech-recruitment billboards. We don't have those down in Orange Country.
- Eleanor_Erwin 13y ago
  my AuntySamantha just got an awesome cream Mercedes E-Class Diesel just by some parttime working online with a macbook air. his explanation.... http://7.ly/6gn http://7.ly/6gn
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jwarkentin 13y ago
As a developer here I'm constantly getting contacted by recruiters. I live half way between Salt Lake and Provo so I can go either direction, but there definitely is a lot going on in the tech industry here.
- vyrotek 13y ago
  Lehi? That's where I'm at :)
  - jwarkentin 13y ago
    I'm in Herriman. I almost bought a house in Lehi :) I currently commute to Downtown Salt Lake for work though. It's about a 30-35 minute drive for me in either direction.
    - vyrotek 13y ago
      Ha, I was just the opposite! Almost bought a house in Herriman. This is as far south as I'll ever move though :P
naiyt 13y ago
This would be great for me, except I've lived in Utah my entire life and really want to leave the state once I finish school.
- Jach 13y ago
  I left as soon as I could go to school out of state. :) Occasionally relatives will tell me of the booming tech economy and point out Adobe's "big building". It's hard to describe just how much bigger Microsoft's offices are and the land mass they occupy. (Also I don't know anyone who works at Adobe but I suspect there's a pay gap too.)
  - vyrotek 13y ago
    Definitely! Microsoft invited my startup out to Redmond for a week (Azure beta stuff) and I couldn't believe how huge that campus is! I would move to Seattle in a heartbeat if the cost-of-living difference wasn't so shocking. I'd also love to work at Microsoft someday too. We'll see... :)
vyrotek 13y ago
Now we just need to work on the funding part. Lots of startups still leave Utah when they need to raise anything larger than $500k+. Our startup went through an incubator and then raised a seed round from Angels just fine but there seems to be a serious lack of larger funding around here.
- dmgrow 13y ago
  I agree that this seems to be one of the major lags. Though we are based in Utah, my company raised our seed round entirely from investors outside of Utah (Google Ventures, 500Startups, etc.). We only had to do one thing to double our valuation -- book a plane ticket from the Salt Lake airport to San Francisco.
blackaspen 13y ago
Good to hear that other areas are growing. Boulder has the same issue of people leaving though. Both because of a lack of money and because of a lack of physical space for companies to move to. Rally Software manages to find space inside Boulder, but it's difficult. So, then companies that incubate here leave and make it seem like startups aren't flourishing. Like Next Big Sound or PlaceIQ. Investors sometimes need to help companies stay where they are from instead of artificially perpetuating the idea that small startup communities exist solely for feeding the Silicon Valley brain pool. The valley is an awful place to actually live.
jergason 13y ago
I am biased since I am a local, but Utah Valley is on the cusp of recognition as a tech hotbed. Just in our office park in the corner of Provo, we have 1. http://www.ancestry.com/ 2. http://www.qualtrics.com/ 3. us, http://i.tv 4. http://www.moneydesktop.com/ 5. http://www.vivint.com/en/, recently bought for $2 billion[0] There are also a bunch of other smaller tech companies. http://www.domo.com/ http://www.domo.com/ and the Adobe campus are also about 10 minutes away, and there are various tech companies scattered all the way up through Salt Lake. http://www.ng-conf.org/ http://www.ng-conf.org/ is coming to SLC next year, and the local tech meetups are active and widely attended. Combine the good tech scene with the extremely low cost of living and it is a great place to be. 0: http://seekingalpha.com/article/878211-blackstone-buys-vivint-what-you-need-to-know
- saosebastiao 13y ago
  I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that vivint is a tech company. They are a sales company that sells technology that is entirely developed out of house.
  - jergason 13y ago
    I'm familiar with Vivint's history. They are in the midst of an attempted transition towards becoming a tech company, partially to escape the terrible reputation they developed when they were APX.
- philwelch 13y ago
  It doesn't really surprise me that Ancestry is based in Mormon country. Interesting.
  - saturdayplace 13y ago
    I suspect that there's a lot of cross pollination of talent between ancestry and the church's familysearch.org there.
Dobbs 13y ago
The problem with the Orem Provo area isnt the jobs but the fact that you then have to live there. The food choices are sparse and honestly compared to places like Seattle, Chicago, and SF down right terrible. Shopping is mostly limited to big box shops like Target, Macy's and the like. To be completely frank the biggest issue is the monoculture. If you aren't white and Mormon you don't fit in and it is very obvious. Granted there are upsides like the mountain sides for camping and skiing. Also Harmon's is an extremely nice grocery store.
- jaytaylor 13y ago
  I lived in Provo and Orem for a number of years while I was attending University, and I feel you've nailed some of the major issues. Life was drastically different there compared to where I grew up (and now live) in the Bay Area. One on-topic aspect I appreciated about Utah was the quality of the Computer Science program at Utah Valley University. The chance to learn from experts like Chuck Allison [1] and David Heldenbrand truly expanded my mind and was an incredible opportunity. Really, all the CS faculty was excellent and commendably eager to do the teaching themselves rather than offloading the most critical parts to TA's. Given the high ratio of religious fanatics in the surrounding region, the school is a remarkably open and progressive institution. As soon as I finished school I moved back to Palo Alto and would never consider returning to Utah other than to visit friends, go skiing/snowboarding, or go to hike at Moab or Zion National Park. I definitely wouldn't recommend going to Provo or Orem to start a tech company. To put things in perspective: Provo is 29 short highway miles from Eagle Mountain, which is primarily composed of polygamist compounds. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with being a polygamist; it was just a surprise to find out about it only after several years of living in Provo. There is a reason that Provo and Orem often referred to as the "Utah Valley Bubble". It is an isolated community and if you aren't Mormon you will likely pretty strange when you discover how poorly you fit in with the homogeneous culture. With that being said, there are some upsides to operating a business in Utah Valley: You can hire high-quality engineers for pennies (or perhaps a quarter) on the dollar compared to other places. At one point I interviewed at Omniture, and they scoffed at the salary I asked for. People who live in Utah Valley are also less likely to move away as much compared to other places, because their immediate and extended families tend to live nearby. This means that it is possible to expect to retain employees for much longer period of times than in a place such as Silicon Valley. Finally: If you are into discriminating against people for their sexual orientation, it is completely legal to do so in Utah. There is no legal protection from sexual orientation discrimination in Utah. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=chuck+allison https://www.google.com/search?q=chuck+allison
morgante 13y ago
The problem with the methodology is that it's based on density, which is far from all that matters. The fact that a startup industry exists within a larger industry doesn't really detract from the vibrant startup community. If anything, it enhances it. It's pretty telling that New York isn't even mentioned in that report despite there being areas in the city where every other office is a startup.
diziet 13y ago
If we were to think about the distribution of companies and opportunities, I would think that the power law distribution would be most appropriate. Being #11 when even #2 and #3 just don't match up isn't exactly something to be proud of.
antics 13y ago
A lot of the comments here claim that the deal breaker here is the culture. This could come off as glib, but is Silicon Valley really in any position to be complaining about another culture being too homogeneous, or too exclusive of "different" demographics (e.g., I dunno, women)? Don't make me laugh. This is particularly disappointing because there are much better reasons to justify your decisions to not found your startup in Utah. Let's start with the fact that the investment scene, and in particular, the angel scene, is completely and utterly toxic. I won't go into specifics, because badmouthing people on the Internet is mean, but most of funding (especially angel funding) in Utah is structured as a competition, where startups compete for money. The result is that there is no camaraderie between companies in the way that there is in, say, NYC or the bay area. People are friendly, but there is not really any knowledge ventilation because the angels cultivate this atmosphere of competition. The result is a divisive and poisonous atmosphere that is antithetical (IMHO) to hacker culture. In my experience, this lack of sharing knowledge makes it quite hard to build things. You're extremely unlikely to find a successful coworking space here, for example. So ultimately, the talent pool here is deep, but until this cultural problem is fixed, Utah will always be a distant 11th to other venues. EDIT: and before we all jump on the hate train, I'm an avowed atheist who left Mormonism. I don't like the culture here either, but let's not forget that Sili Valley needs to pull its head out of its ass on a pretty regular basis too. EDIT 2: and for reference, I graduated in CS from the University of Utah this year (2013). So my experiences are pretty fresh.
- letney 13y ago
  I'll give another good reason to avoid living there: The air quality along the Wasatch Front (Ogden, Salt Lake, & Provo) is among the worst in the nation. http://www.stateoftheair.org/2013/city-rankings/most-polluted-cities.html http://www.stateoftheair.org/2013/city-rankings/most-pollute... ranks the Provo-Orem area as the 11th highest nationwide for short-term particle pollution (SLC being #6 and Logan being #10). I left Salt Lake City 6 years ago. I miss many aspects of life there and have considered moving back. But the air quality there is an absolute deal breaker. The winter inversions are absolutely miserable.
  - dmgrow 13y ago
nostromo 13y ago
Being 11th on a power law distribution with so few samples isn't a good place to be. Even being 2nd means you'll have to fight more than twice as hard for resources.
oscargrouch 13y ago
I think this type of "next sylicon valley" stuff pretty misleading.. SV is what it is because of its pionerism.. after the first seed give its fruits to the world, the tendency now is people for different places and backgrounds start their own things in their own countries.. so we gonna start to see the next microsofts , googles and apples comming from other places as well.. without any connection between those places.. the infrastructure of course is essential.. so those SV wannabes will need to have and provide a fertile ground to those tech seed have some growth.. the word is multipluralism and descentralization.. the internet have started a true globalization movement.. and lets recall that SV started to grow and became what it is before this phenomena.. it was a flower in the desert.. but for now on, big things will start to happen in unespected places.. no need to search for the next silicon valley.. it will pop everywhere now
grahamburger 13y ago
I live in the area and I'd love to be more involved in the startup scene here. What do we have going on? Anyone looking for a 30 year old computing polymath to join your Utah startup?

35 points by vyrotek 13y ago

The actual study: http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedFiles/bds-tech-starts-report.pdf http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedFiles/bds-tech-starts-report...

generj 13y ago
Reading the full study, I was surprised how big Colorado was in startups, especially areas like Boulder. I anticipated moving out to the Austin TX area after college for a startup experience. I can't afford the California tax, both the government and other cost of living expenses. Colorado is gorgeous, and so is the Wasatch front. I'll be looking more aggressively for jobs in those areas.
- dekayed 13y ago
  Do you not feel like you can get a good startup experience in Austin?
  - generj 13y ago
    No, I absolutely feel I can get a good startup experience in Austin. I just prefer skiing over humidity :)
- Osiris 13y ago
  I live south of Denver. I moved here from the East Bay 4 years ago due to cost of living. Tech jobs were highly competitive and I wasn't able to get a job that made it affordable to stay. So after 3 years in the Bay Area, I treked out to Colorado where my wife is from. I got a good programmer job about a year later. In Denver there's a whole area called the "Tech Center", and there are quite a few startups in Downtown. I've heard a lot about Boulder and the tech community up there, but it's way too far away for me to look for work up there. Plus, there's a lot to do around here all year round. (Side note, I also lived in Provo for 5 years and SLC for 1)

jjindev 13y ago

I drove up the I-15 a couple weeks ago, and was surprised that when I hit northern Utah I saw a couple tech-recruitment billboards. We don't have those down in Orange Country.

Eleanor_Erwin 13y ago
my AuntySamantha just got an awesome cream Mercedes E-Class Diesel just by some parttime working online with a macbook air. his explanation.... http://7.ly/6gn http://7.ly/6gn

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

jwarkentin 13y ago

As a developer here I'm constantly getting contacted by recruiters. I live half way between Salt Lake and Provo so I can go either direction, but there definitely is a lot going on in the tech industry here.

vyrotek 13y ago
Lehi? That's where I'm at :)
- jwarkentin 13y ago
  I'm in Herriman. I almost bought a house in Lehi :) I currently commute to Downtown Salt Lake for work though. It's about a 30-35 minute drive for me in either direction.
  - vyrotek 13y ago
    Ha, I was just the opposite! Almost bought a house in Herriman. This is as far south as I'll ever move though :P

naiyt 13y ago

This would be great for me, except I've lived in Utah my entire life and really want to leave the state once I finish school.

Jach 13y ago
I left as soon as I could go to school out of state. :) Occasionally relatives will tell me of the booming tech economy and point out Adobe's "big building". It's hard to describe just how much bigger Microsoft's offices are and the land mass they occupy. (Also I don't know anyone who works at Adobe but I suspect there's a pay gap too.)
- vyrotek 13y ago
  Definitely! Microsoft invited my startup out to Redmond for a week (Azure beta stuff) and I couldn't believe how huge that campus is! I would move to Seattle in a heartbeat if the cost-of-living difference wasn't so shocking. I'd also love to work at Microsoft someday too. We'll see... :)

vyrotek 13y ago

Now we just need to work on the funding part. Lots of startups still leave Utah when they need to raise anything larger than $500k+. Our startup went through an incubator and then raised a seed round from Angels just fine but there seems to be a serious lack of larger funding around here.

dmgrow 13y ago
I agree that this seems to be one of the major lags. Though we are based in Utah, my company raised our seed round entirely from investors outside of Utah (Google Ventures, 500Startups, etc.). We only had to do one thing to double our valuation -- book a plane ticket from the Salt Lake airport to San Francisco.

blackaspen 13y ago

Good to hear that other areas are growing. Boulder has the same issue of people leaving though. Both because of a lack of money and because of a lack of physical space for companies to move to. Rally Software manages to find space inside Boulder, but it's difficult. So, then companies that incubate here leave and make it seem like startups aren't flourishing. Like Next Big Sound or PlaceIQ. Investors sometimes need to help companies stay where they are from instead of artificially perpetuating the idea that small startup communities exist solely for feeding the Silicon Valley brain pool. The valley is an awful place to actually live.

jergason 13y ago

I am biased since I am a local, but Utah Valley is on the cusp of recognition as a tech hotbed. Just in our office park in the corner of Provo, we have 1. http://www.ancestry.com/ 2. http://www.qualtrics.com/ 3. us, http://i.tv 4. http://www.moneydesktop.com/ 5. http://www.vivint.com/en/, recently bought for $2 billion[0] There are also a bunch of other smaller tech companies. http://www.domo.com/ http://www.domo.com/ and the Adobe campus are also about 10 minutes away, and there are various tech companies scattered all the way up through Salt Lake. http://www.ng-conf.org/ http://www.ng-conf.org/ is coming to SLC next year, and the local tech meetups are active and widely attended. Combine the good tech scene with the extremely low cost of living and it is a great place to be. 0: http://seekingalpha.com/article/878211-blackstone-buys-vivint-what-you-need-to-know

saosebastiao 13y ago
I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that vivint is a tech company. They are a sales company that sells technology that is entirely developed out of house.
- jergason 13y ago
  I'm familiar with Vivint's history. They are in the midst of an attempted transition towards becoming a tech company, partially to escape the terrible reputation they developed when they were APX.
philwelch 13y ago
It doesn't really surprise me that Ancestry is based in Mormon country. Interesting.
- saturdayplace 13y ago
  I suspect that there's a lot of cross pollination of talent between ancestry and the church's familysearch.org there.

Dobbs 13y ago

The problem with the Orem Provo area isnt the jobs but the fact that you then have to live there. The food choices are sparse and honestly compared to places like Seattle, Chicago, and SF down right terrible. Shopping is mostly limited to big box shops like Target, Macy's and the like. To be completely frank the biggest issue is the monoculture. If you aren't white and Mormon you don't fit in and it is very obvious. Granted there are upsides like the mountain sides for camping and skiing. Also Harmon's is an extremely nice grocery store.

jaytaylor 13y ago
I lived in Provo and Orem for a number of years while I was attending University, and I feel you've nailed some of the major issues. Life was drastically different there compared to where I grew up (and now live) in the Bay Area. One on-topic aspect I appreciated about Utah was the quality of the Computer Science program at Utah Valley University. The chance to learn from experts like Chuck Allison [1] and David Heldenbrand truly expanded my mind and was an incredible opportunity. Really, all the CS faculty was excellent and commendably eager to do the teaching themselves rather than offloading the most critical parts to TA's. Given the high ratio of religious fanatics in the surrounding region, the school is a remarkably open and progressive institution. As soon as I finished school I moved back to Palo Alto and would never consider returning to Utah other than to visit friends, go skiing/snowboarding, or go to hike at Moab or Zion National Park. I definitely wouldn't recommend going to Provo or Orem to start a tech company. To put things in perspective: Provo is 29 short highway miles from Eagle Mountain, which is primarily composed of polygamist compounds. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with being a polygamist; it was just a surprise to find out about it only after several years of living in Provo. There is a reason that Provo and Orem often referred to as the "Utah Valley Bubble". It is an isolated community and if you aren't Mormon you will likely pretty strange when you discover how poorly you fit in with the homogeneous culture. With that being said, there are some upsides to operating a business in Utah Valley: You can hire high-quality engineers for pennies (or perhaps a quarter) on the dollar compared to other places. At one point I interviewed at Omniture, and they scoffed at the salary I asked for. People who live in Utah Valley are also less likely to move away as much compared to other places, because their immediate and extended families tend to live nearby. This means that it is possible to expect to retain employees for much longer period of times than in a place such as Silicon Valley. Finally: If you are into discriminating against people for their sexual orientation, it is completely legal to do so in Utah. There is no legal protection from sexual orientation discrimination in Utah. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=chuck+allison https://www.google.com/search?q=chuck+allison

morgante 13y ago

The problem with the methodology is that it's based on density, which is far from all that matters. The fact that a startup industry exists within a larger industry doesn't really detract from the vibrant startup community. If anything, it enhances it. It's pretty telling that New York isn't even mentioned in that report despite there being areas in the city where every other office is a startup.

diziet 13y ago

If we were to think about the distribution of companies and opportunities, I would think that the power law distribution would be most appropriate. Being #11 when even #2 and #3 just don't match up isn't exactly something to be proud of.

antics 13y ago

A lot of the comments here claim that the deal breaker here is the culture. This could come off as glib, but is Silicon Valley really in any position to be complaining about another culture being too homogeneous, or too exclusive of "different" demographics (e.g., I dunno, women)? Don't make me laugh. This is particularly disappointing because there are much better reasons to justify your decisions to not found your startup in Utah. Let's start with the fact that the investment scene, and in particular, the angel scene, is completely and utterly toxic. I won't go into specifics, because badmouthing people on the Internet is mean, but most of funding (especially angel funding) in Utah is structured as a competition, where startups compete for money. The result is that there is no camaraderie between companies in the way that there is in, say, NYC or the bay area. People are friendly, but there is not really any knowledge ventilation because the angels cultivate this atmosphere of competition. The result is a divisive and poisonous atmosphere that is antithetical (IMHO) to hacker culture. In my experience, this lack of sharing knowledge makes it quite hard to build things. You're extremely unlikely to find a successful coworking space here, for example. So ultimately, the talent pool here is deep, but until this cultural problem is fixed, Utah will always be a distant 11th to other venues. EDIT: and before we all jump on the hate train, I'm an avowed atheist who left Mormonism. I don't like the culture here either, but let's not forget that Sili Valley needs to pull its head out of its ass on a pretty regular basis too. EDIT 2: and for reference, I graduated in CS from the University of Utah this year (2013). So my experiences are pretty fresh.

letney 13y ago
I'll give another good reason to avoid living there: The air quality along the Wasatch Front (Ogden, Salt Lake, & Provo) is among the worst in the nation. http://www.stateoftheair.org/2013/city-rankings/most-polluted-cities.html http://www.stateoftheair.org/2013/city-rankings/most-pollute... ranks the Provo-Orem area as the 11th highest nationwide for short-term particle pollution (SLC being #6 and Logan being #10). I left Salt Lake City 6 years ago. I miss many aspects of life there and have considered moving back. But the air quality there is an absolute deal breaker. The winter inversions are absolutely miserable.
- dmgrow 13y ago

nostromo 13y ago

Being 11th on a power law distribution with so few samples isn't a good place to be. Even being 2nd means you'll have to fight more than twice as hard for resources.

oscargrouch 13y ago

I think this type of "next sylicon valley" stuff pretty misleading.. SV is what it is because of its pionerism.. after the first seed give its fruits to the world, the tendency now is people for different places and backgrounds start their own things in their own countries.. so we gonna start to see the next microsofts , googles and apples comming from other places as well.. without any connection between those places.. the infrastructure of course is essential.. so those SV wannabes will need to have and provide a fertile ground to those tech seed have some growth.. the word is multipluralism and descentralization.. the internet have started a true globalization movement.. and lets recall that SV started to grow and became what it is before this phenomena.. it was a flower in the desert.. but for now on, big things will start to happen in unespected places.. no need to search for the next silicon valley.. it will pop everywhere now

grahamburger 13y ago

I live in the area and I'd love to be more involved in the startup scene here. What do we have going on? Anyone looking for a 30 year old computing polymath to join your Utah startup?