Utah First Friday: April event

• Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Apr 06

This morning I attended the April Utah First Friday event.  This is my second time attending Utah First Friday, so I wanted to put up a review of the event here for anyone who might be interested. 

The location is nice, plenty of space, and having a separate room with lots of seats for the presentation is really a big plus for this event.  The folks running the event seems very professional and prepared (they did have some problems with the RSVP phone number and email address, but I am told they are working those out).  Attendance is also good.  Though I didn’t count, I would guess there were around 70-80 people there.

As to the downside, I have to say, that this may be a matter of preference, or my personal desire as to what I wanted from the event.  There seem to be an awful lot of one-person-businesses there looking to get going.  Now part of this is likely because the location itself is intended to be something of an incubator.  But for me personally, I think I might get more value out of interfacing with companies a bit more established.  The business types were also all over the board, from window washers, to insurance, to office supplies, massage, technology, law, etc. etc.  Again, this may be a pro or a con… it really comes down to what you want out of the event.

As to the speaker: Craig Bott, from Grow Ventures Utah spoke on New Business Growth Strategies.  To me, the presentation really seemed to come down to “I see a lot of Entrepreneurs, and the ones that focus on these three things seem to consistently succeed.”  I felt it was very informative and insightful.  Craig has obviously dealt with a lot of businesses and Entrepreneurs, and I thought he did a good job of cutting to the real heart of the issue.  Of course I don’t want to steal Craig’s “three things”, so I’ll see if I can get him to comment here, and post them himself :). 

There were also some good comments from the crowd (as a side note: several comments came from Rand Bateman, an IP attorney here in town.  I have never used his services, but he has been at several events, and seems not only really tech savvy for a lawyer, but always has really insightful comments.  Clearly a bright guy.)

 As an overall opinion, I think the First Fridays folks do a good job.  The crowd is larger than most other events, and the speakers seem good.  The mix of companies is not as valuable to me as I might hope, but that may well be my personal bias, so take it for what it’s worth.

• Posted in Local Review