Utah Tech Spotlight

Utah Tech Spotlight Events

Local Review: EO Utah

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Feb 20

As followers of this Blog know, we strive at the Spotlight to bring more visibility to Utah in two key areas:

1- What cool companies and products are there in Utah.

2- What events and organizations in Utah seem to be worth attending to bring value to your business.

For this post I want to focus specifically on the second of those two items.  About a year ago I joined EO Utah (Formerly known as YEO, or the Young Entrepreneurs Organization.)  EO is basically aforum that allows fellow business owners to get together wit other business woners in a sae environment, and learn from eachothers’ experiences.  It has a very strict non disclosure policy, and is a wonderful,  safe environment to discuss things with people who have gone through things like what you might be facing.  It can be hard as a business owner sometimes… who do you confide in?  If you are troubled about your financing, or that new sales VP, or what have you, is there anyone in your company you can really discuss it with?  Do your friends or spouse really have any valuable insight?  Well, here is a group of a dozen or so people who will, over time become your closest friends, who have faced just those types of challenges and opportunities.

EO is no easy to get into.  You need to have $1m in revenues (amoung other criteria), and it costs $2k per year to be a member.  Additionally, it really takes time to get value out of.  Unlike most organizations where I can write a glowing or a scathing review after one or two meetings, EO really takes about a year to really hit your stride.

I can say that, becuase I feel I really have now.  If you had asked me even six months ago I would ave given EO a mixed review.  But having just come back froma  three day offsite with my group, I can say that this is one of the most valuable organizations I participate in.  I learn so much, and feel like I am building such valuable relationships with very special people.

Sorry, I can’t share much mroe detail than that… that’s what makes it safe, and that’s what makes it so valuable.  If you’re abusiness owner you should check it out.

As a note:  When I linked to the EO site, I noticed how terribly out fo date it is.  Please don’t judge it by that :)  after all, these people all ahve companies to run… just like you do.

Local Review: Utah First Friday (Guest Post by Jason Alba)

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Feb 07

As I have often said in reviewing local events, it is hard to really say that an event is good or bad in some respects, as it really comes down to rather or not you are really the target audience or not.  As such, I asked a great friend of mine, Jason Alba from Jibber Jobber to help me out a bit.  I know Jason often attends and has spoken highly of the Utah First Friday events.  As such, here is a review of Utah First Fridays from Jason (Thanks much Jason!!):

I went to the Utah First Friday meeting at the Miller Center last week.  The featured guest was John Arnold, flown in from Denver.  John works for Constant Contact, wrote E-Mail Marketing or Dummies, and regularly gives seminars in Salt Lake to help businesses get more out of their e-mail marketing campaign.

I needed to go to this presentation for several reasons:

As an author, this was one of my first opportunities to see how a “big” author does presentations.  I have a bunch of presentations this month in Silicon Valley and I really wanted to see John – he does this all the time, he has a Dummies book… I figured he’d be an excellent example to learn from.
I’m presenting at UFF next month, on March 7th, and I wanted to get an idea of what the quality of the presentation would be.  At the very least, I wanted to know what I would be compared with.
I’m always looking at different marketing techniques to incorporate into my own business.  I figured this would be an excellent opportunity to hear from the expert on something that I think is kind of boring, but I know companies are using it effectively.
I’m always curious to see what kind of people end up at a First Friday meeting.  I’ve been about five times now, and the mix is always diverse.  I wanted to see if that’s changing.

Regarding the presentation style, it was great.  Definitely the type of caliber you hope to see at an event like this.  The audience was engaged, and at the end with Pat Vaughn asked if there was any interest in learning more from John almost half the audience raised their hands.

Two things I found interesting.  First, he only had one book for sale. I’m sure it gets old lugging around a bunch of books for sale.  He did have a slip you could fill out to get an autographed copy. I’m not sure I’ll do that.  Second, he gave away $20 in a little experiment/contest.  The guy that got the $20 didn’t know he could keep it – this was actually pretty cool.

Regarding the content of John’s presentation, it was really good.  He basically had five main points and shared examples, stories and “how-to’s.” I don’t remember any examples that were similar to my company, but just hearing the specifics of what other companies are doing, and things that he thought was cool, was good to hear.  I think I’m on-track with what I’m offering.  His examples had a more local, store-front appeal to them but still it was good stuff.

Regarding the people, I didn’t actually get to do much networking.  The roads were horrible and I ended up quite late.  I recognized a buddy, who introduced me to Carl Baumeister, CEO of Fruition Consultants.  This was all the networking I did :)


I would actually like to hear about e-mail marketing from Twelve Horses, seriously.  John is going to be more at the beginner, small business level, the Dummies.  Twelve Horses is doing stuff at the huge company, very interesting stuff that goes beyond the basics.  Not that I’m as big as those companies, but I want more leading edge information.

Overall, though, I was glad I went.

If you come next month, March 7th, you’ll see me present on LinkedIn.  I’ll even have a few books with me, if you haven’t picked one up yet.  Hope to see you there!

Speed Pitching this week. A bit you may not know…

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Feb 05

Just a reminder to everyone that there will be another investor speed pitching event tomorrow.  For those that are not yet aware of what these are, just real quick:

It’s like speed dating, but between investors and local entrepreneurs.  You have 5 minutes each to pitch your idea to a table of investors.  Then you move on to the next table and pitch again. If you would like to participate head on over to Funding Universe to learn more.

For those that have heard me gush a bit about these in the past, I wanted to pull together a bit of info to make sure I was being entirely objective on these… so here’s to scoop:  Of the last 150 ideas pitched, 147 of them got at least one of the investors to request a followup meeting to learn more.  Additionally, I have spoken to a couple of different companies who have received funding through the event, and asked them to tell me the good, bad and even the ugly.  The only negative vibe I got back at all is that Funding Universe decides what ideas to include in the event based solely on reading the business plans, rather than hearing all of the presentations (I am guessing due to time constraints,) so make sure your plan reads well if you want to make it in!

I’ll be at the event again this week, so be sure to say hi!