Utah Tech Spotlight

Utah Tech Spotlight Events

Local Review: UTC CTO P2P

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Jan 16

Last friday I attended a CTO function put on by the UTC.  The presentation was by Alex Barnett of Bungee labs who was speaking on “Trends in Software as a Service (Saas).”

The turnout was very impressive.  There was probably 50 or so local CTO’s in the room.  The interaction was intelligent an interesting.  The presenter was entertaining and well informed on the subject matter.  Honestly, the only thing I think I would have liked to have seen more of was a presentation on what Bungee is actually doing in this space.  Bungee is doing some really cool stuff, and developing some great tools to allow developers to leverage the new “componentized” trend of SaaS inside their applications.  Alex was so respectful of being objective and not hi-lighting his own company that I think we missed out a bit on those gems.  But it was still a great event.

My personal opinion on Saas: I think we are currently6 seeing a whole new trend in Saas… whereas in the past Saas has basically meant “My application can be used online”, and has since expanded to “You can get and put some basic data through my online API to sort of integrate with me,”  I think we are now seeing this being to become more granular, and companies are building “building blocks” as services to allow them to be part of a solution.  This is very very cool, but I see some hurdles:

Cool side: This allows companies to build things very quickly.  There’s no need to wait for hardware, or order servers.  It’s all just there.  Additionally, it allows for scaling up very quickly if needed.  The new services offered by Amazon as an example, even allow an application to “self provision” more copies of itself.  So if you get hit to hard your application can actually spawn onto more servers as needed.

Concerns: Pricing is definitely one.  I think companies will need to be very careful to look at when these building blocks become more expensive than just doing it yourself.  It may well be that they make sense in the early stages, or in an application that hard huge periodic spikes in usage, but it may be less cost effective in a mature application wit more consistent needs.  Additionally, I think there will be a la of a year or so in the acceptance of the VC world to fund companies who have their own IP that is then reliant on the “building blocks” supplied by other companies.  It can be a bit scary when a key piece of your IP is so very much out of your control.  I also think that companies like Amazon are really going to how to prove that they are reliable… as much as Salesforce.com is touted as a great example of Saas, I can tell you from personal experience that the reliability of the APIs at times have been terrible.

As a note, I am also really looking forward to the  event later this week on New Media and where it is headed.

Review: IT home runs, Utah First Friday, and Speed Pitching

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Dec 13

Salt Lake ValleyI was pleased to have the chance to attend several events here in the valley last week, and I wanted to take a few minutes and give you my review of them. My hope (especially with recurring events) is that this might be helpful for you in determining what local activities migh be worthwhile for you and your company.

IT Homeruns: There was an event on th Novell campus last week, that highlighted IT, and IT companies here in the valley. It appeared that the purposes for this event were two fold: 1 to educate people, and 2 to act as a recruiting tool. Now, I did not attend the entire event, but here is what It hought of what I did attend:

I caught a brief speech about Entice. Apparently this is a local company… but what they do or intend to do is completely shrouded in mystery… but they say will be huge. The presentation was entirely a recruitment tool. They touched on the fact that they give all employees free gym memberships, steak and salmon dinners, everyone gets a dual quad core computer with dual 24 inch monitors, and so on and so forth. I have to say… I might be jaded, but I was right in the heart of the bubble. I worked with Critical Path as the company bought everything that stood still long enough, fed everyone all of the time, had a massage therapist come into the office, and even had someone come and adjust the feng shui of the office once per week. This presentation seemed all too familiar to me. I will say again, however, that I have no idea what Entice does. If anyone from Entice reads this, and wants to blow my mind with what they do, then I look eagerly toward the chance to eat crow on this blog. Until then, I really don’t work at another company with an official “chill room.”

The rest of the event was great however (at least what I was there for.) I saw a great long-tail presentation by Phil Windley, and some really good Q&A with VC’s. Kudos to all who pull that together!

Speed Pitching: The IT Home runs event ended and rolled right into the speed pitching event by Funding Universe. The event was a bit smaller this time, with 6 presenters rather than 10, but I am guess that is because of the time constraints. You all know I love these events… but that aside, the real question is do they work? Well, I can say that several people I have personally heard present have gotten funding and follow-up meetings with investors from these events. Not only that, but I ahve heard incredible advice given out to these presenters. If I were looking for funding I would definitely present at one of these. The feedback is incredible, even if you don’t get funded from the specific event.

Utah First Friday: Okay, so I have not attended the Utah First Friday events for a while… It’s not because I think they are poorly done, it just comes down to who you are hoping to network with, or what you are looking to learn. UFF tends to get a good crowd (there were probably a couple of hundred people there.) But the crowd seems mainly made up of individuals, or very small businesses (a lot of SOHO) rather than small, mid, or large companies. If that fits what you are looking for, then these events are very well done. Otherwise, I would recommend the UTC or Corporate Alliance.

Final note: before I wrap up, I want to mention that Jason Alba, of Jibber Jobber (one heck of a bright person BTW) is making an effort to make everyone aware that Andy Sernovitz is coming to SLC on December 17th. Jason raves about Andy’s presentation, and Jason is one of those folks that if he tells me something is a don’t miss, I really believe him. Find out more about it here.

Park City Chamber, Speed pitch, and more!

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Dec 07

Happy Friday all!  Today we have a guest-post review from Eric Morgan for the Park City Chamber new member orientation.  This Chamber has some real interesting aspects of it, so expect us to keep a close eye on them.  Additionally, I attended a Funding Universe Speed pitching event last night, and the Utah First Friday Extravaganza this morning… so expect write-ups on both of those int he coming days.  But enough from me… here’s the good word form Eric:

Through attending a new member orientation conference with the Park City Chamber of Commerce you realize that they are somewhat of a unique chamber compared to most in Utah.

The meeting itself was very nice, located at the Stein Erickson Lodge in Deer Valley.  There were about 30-40 people there; all of which were new members within the last 3-4 months.  They provided a continental breakfast and there was no charge to attend the event.

I learned some cool facts and data about the organization; here are some key points that stuck out to me.  They are the 3rd largest chamber in Utah, most of their revenue, approximately 80%, comes from lodging taxes in Park City. Only about 7-8% of their revenue came from membership dues which is amazing. They also claim to have 1,100 members which was far more than I expected.  I am guessing that they have many members that are not located in Park City, such as us, to reach that number.

There was a very surprising variety of businesses in the meeting though; I was expecting hotels, lodging facilities, ski related organizations, restaurants, shop owners, etc.  In reality it was a very large mix of businesses.  A few examples were concierge services, dog training, office supplies, beauty products, banks, high end cabin builders, credit unions, insurance companies, non-profit organizations, car rentals, etc.  There were very few technology companies though and we were one of the only ones.

Through talking with others one of the most desirable benefits of being a member is that they provide their mailing list to any member free of charge, you can even use the chambers bulk mailing rate for mail pieces you may want to send to other members or you can obtain an email list.  They also provide member-member discounts that you can take advantage of on their website.  Plus the three major ski resorts give season pass discounts to chamber members.

Overall I think it was a good event, the networking was great as every person had the opportunity to introduce their company to everyone else in the room.  Many cards and brochures were exchanged at the end between different members.

Review: BYU Web Idea Competition

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Nov 26

idea.jpgWelcome to the second guest post here on the Tech Spotlight.  Our good friend Nick, from Argon Gear did a writeup on the BYU Web Idea Competition.  As a reminder, if you attend an event we haven’t and want to make sure people hear about it, please let us know.

Without further noise from me… here’s the review from Nick:

Last Friday BYU hosted a web idea competition that awarded a student with $3,000 simply for having the “best” idea for an e-business. The winner ended up being an MBA Student with an idea named “E-take.”

He invisions a future where individuals traveling to various locations will become package/goods deliverers as a part of their everyday life. People will create an online account, stating where they regularly travel to, and others will post requests for package delivery. This supposedly will be an answer to the pain of paying expensive shipping costs and out-of-the-way drop-off/pickup locations.

Well, why not? People are already traveling in their cars, motor homes, etc. Why not earn a few bucks on the side for simply adding a few things to your cargo? I must say that not everyone was convinced that this idea will ever fly, but that was not the purpose of the competition anyway. The purpose was to get students thinking up ideas for online businesses.

Although there were various questions regarding the feasibility of some of the ideas, Etak won out of four finalists. The other ideas included an online virtual team building application, a privately funded online student loan transaction interface, and a streaming music application for application in various usage situations. These other finalists brought home $5,000 in combined winnings.

The judges for the competition were none other than: Nick Efstratis (Wasatch Venture Fund); Morgan Lynch (founder of LogoWorks); and Ben Peterson (founder of MingleMatch). As for their decision, we can rest assured that the judges know what’s going on in the e-business world.

This was the first year that this competition has been held at BYU. The competition started because of a push by the BYU e-business center founder, Kevin Rollins (former CEO of DELL Computers Inc.), to increase the number of e-businesses coming out of BYU. He was reported as saying, “Why can’t the next YouTube, or EBay come out of BYU?” Well, these competitions will certainly help the chances of that happening and I look forward to other universities and organizations in the state to follow!

Chambers of Commerce: A mixed bag

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Nov 19

As I mentioned in my blog post last week, I was planning to hit another event put on by the Park City Chamber of Commerce.  If you’ll recall, my last experience with the PC Chamber was really incredible.  I have to say though… that this one was less than worth the drive.  The event was basically a couple of dozen booths, and many of them had very small companies, and in some cases even companies that really weren’t off the ground yet.  In fairness to the PC Chamber, if I could have walked ten minutes to the event, I probably wouldn’t have minded.  But the fact that it was a 40 minute drive, combined with the fact that my expectations were set so very high by their last event, really left me feeling a bit silly for spending a good chunk of my afternoon to, from, and at the event.

Now reading this, you might think, “Wow, Steve is being a bit harsh on the Chamber.”  If so, let me clarify myself.  The chamber did a nice job.  They were clear in their advertising as to more or les what the event would be, and for what they had, they did a great job of doing it professionally.  So no slight to the Chamber.  If anything, this was a bit of a wakeup call for myself, and advice that I would give to others.  Chambers, far more so than other groups, tend to have lots of events of differing sizes and shapes.  It is very very unlikely that they will all be a good fit for your business.

Local Review: Corporate Alliance

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Nov 01

mind_meld.jpg  Many of you here in the valley have probably heard of Corporate Alliance.  But what you may or may not be aware of is that they are in the process of opening a Salt Lake chapter (they have traditionally been down in Utah County.)  I have heard good things about CA, so I jumped on board this opportunity and signed up my company.  Although the chapter official opens in January, there was a big kickoff party earlier this week for the first 100 companies to join the new chapter (I guess Utah County has around 1600 companies in that chapter!)

Well, it was my first event with CA, so I wanted to let you know what I think… bearing in mind of course, that this was a “kickoff” event, and my first experience with them, so it may or may not be indicative of the norm.

Well, I have to say that CA puts on one heck of an event.  There were a lot of people there, everything was very professionally done, and well organized.  The mix of companies was everything from small to huge, and a huge slice of industries from banking to marketing, to sports teams, accounting, and darn near anything else you can think of.

CA was very clear that their goal was networking.  They intended to ge good people and good companies together to meet each other.  I have to say they do very well at facilitating that goal.  They do more than just get everyone in the same room… as soon as you walk in the door they handed us a sheet of paper listing all of the companies in attendance.  The goal was to get a signature from someone from as many of the companies as possible.  The exercise really broke down barriers and pushed people to interract more than they would have otherwise.

Then, at our individual tables, they did “speed introductions.”  Everyone had two minutes… during the first minute you needed to share a story about holiday traditions in your family.  Then the second minute you told about our company.  It was a great way to really get to know the people you were sitting with.

Whenever reviewing local groups and events, I feel it is important to point out that there is an element beyond good/bad, that makes an event stellar or ho-hum depending on your specific needs.  As such, I would have to say that if networking is only one of the values you like to get from an event, and you also really want to learn something from a speaker or presentation, then this event might leave you feeling a bit like you had eaten dessert, but skipped the meal, and went away feeling a bit unfulfilled.  If however, networking with an amazing cross-section of various industries, and various sized companies in an event that really makes networking fun and open is what you are looking for, then CA really hit one out of the park.

Review: Investors Symposium (and ravings about Klymit)

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Oct 29

einstein_baby.jpgToday on the Tech Spotlight we have a review written and sent in by a guest poster (I know, exciting, huh?) But first let me introduce the writer of the post below (mainly because I think his company is really neat.) Last week I wrote about the Speed Pitching event I attended, and how neat some of the businesses there were. Well, one of them is Klymit, by the guys over at ArgonGear. For those of you who may not know, I am an avid snowboarder. As such, I was on the edge of my seat when these guys came in with a fuly functional jacket liner that is three times more insulating than thinsulate, AND actually allows you to dial in the level of insulation you need (there is actually a dial on the jacket! functional, effective, and cool enough to impress the best of the techno-geeks, and the Extreme sports crowd!!!) Summary: freaking cool jacket liner. I will be buying one.

But, enough drooling over their products… On to the post about the event (Written by Nick Sorenson):

(As a note:  If you would like to see your review of a local event here, please let us know.)

I attended the Utah Inventor Symposium on Oct. 26 at the SLCC Miller Campus not realizing how valuable an investment my $20 membership fee would be.

I heard about it through Connect Magazine’s newsletter and decided to attend because of its relevance to a startup venture I’m currently working on. Throughout the conference I was overwhelmed at the caliber of speakers Vaughn North and his team had assembled.

Some of the big-hitting speakers included Dr. Stephen Jacobsen—who holds over 200 patents; and Woody Norris—the 2005 MIT inventor of the year. Topics included cutting-edge technology, product development, and commercialization of inventions.

Here are a few of the many insights I gained from the two (out of 12 available) breakout sessions I attended:

Dennis Wood, Human Capital VP, Vspring Capital

• The management hiring process for a startup follows a general pattern. You should probably think about building a team in this order:
o During Product Development: CEO & Advisory Board
o BETA Phase: Board of Directors, CFO (or outsourced comparable services), Sales & Marketing VPs
o Shipping Product: HR & Administration
o Profitability: looking for new members to take it to the next level
• Utah has an economic and community climate that is very attractive to potential companies and executives—use it to your advantage
• A good manager with broad startup skills and excellent ability to build a team may end up being more valuable to your startup than a “big ticket” executive with enormous industry/product experience at a successful company, but less of the team-building/manager skills.

Dennis gave a very entertaining breakout and is a super-kind individual. He spent over 20 minutes talking with me afterword and I really learned a lot from him. A top-quality man!

Brad Bertroch, The Wayne Brown Institute

Tips for Raising Capital

• When in doubt, everything is a security
o You need to know the laws that govern the money you will take and how you’ll take it
• Seek competent legal counsel
• Beware of finders
o Those who help you raise money for a fee; this may violate securities laws
• Deal with people who can afford the risk
• Keep it simple
• Keep good records

Brad was an energetic speaker with very extensive knowledge. He handled a lot of good questions and explained many difficult concepts simply.

Overall, I felt like I had received a couple thousand dollars worth of training by the time I left the symposium. I will definitely be there next time. I would encourage all of you who are starting a business or creating new products to attend, because, after all, you’re inventing things too. Visit www.utahinventor.org for more resources, video links to the presentations given, and updates on future events.

Nick Sorensen
Argon Technologies Inc.
www.argongear.com

Kaysville Speed Pitching Event

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Oct 26

smileball.jpgThis week I had the distinct pleasure of attending my second Speed Pitching Event put on by Funding Universe.  This month’s event was held in Kaysville, and focussed on what is going on in our sister cities to the north. Now, you might think me a bad person for saying this, but I haven’t always been the biggest fan of the Ogden area. Well folks… I am having a heaping helping of crow today. It is amazing what is going on up there. the Salomon Center hosts such things as a vertical wind tunnel, and a surf pool! And that’s just the start! Add to that the fact that Salomon is moving their headquearters there, as are several other companies, plus the amazing local companies and ideas. The businesses I saw were not just neat ideas, a huge number of them are very much in synch with capitalizing on the new youth, energy, and unique extreme-sports kind of spirit that is infusing our state just a short drive away.

As for the event itself… should you try to attend if you are an investor or entrepreneur? Let me say this: I saw several people receive EXCELLENT guidance that will surely help them be more successful. I saw several people agree to have followup meetings with interested investors. I saw several investors whose interest really seemed peaked at some of the ideas, and I met a lot of really amazing people. If those things are not of interest to you, then don’t both coming. But if that were the case you’d still be over in front of the TV anyway!

Thanks and massive kudos go out to Blake for the events he puts on, as well as Lindsey, and the many others who help him make it all happen! Keep up the good work!

Catching Up

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Oct 23

I know it has been a couple of weeks since I have posted here… so much has been going on, that I just keep waiting for a break in the action so I can gather my thoughts and post it all here. But as it seems there is no end in sight, I wanted to at least get some hi-lights out here.

Blogging 4 Business:

For those of you who missed it, Matthew Reinbold from Voxpop Design, and Jason Alba (no relation to Jessica) from Jibber Jobber did one heck of a job pulling together a conference downtown. Believe me, I know what a harrowing experience that can be. Excellent job guys!

Park City Chamer of Commerce:

Last week I attended my first event put on by the Park City Chamber. Wow. Very impressive (further assisted by a beautiful in the Deer Valley background.) I am really impressed with the PC Chamber. Expect to see more reviews on their events in the future.

Speed Pitching Event:

Tomorrow I will be in attendance at my second Grow Utah Ventures’ speed pitching event being held in Kaysville. I’ll have a full review later this week. If it is anywhere near as interesting as the last one I will have plenty to write about.

Unspam Podcast done:

Yes, I know… it took me forever. But we finally have the podcast done from the Unspam tech Spotlight. I’ll have it online before the end of the week. Additionally, I am narrowing in on dayes to get myself and Jeremy Hanks from Doba together to record that podcast. Sorry to be running behinds on these… anyone know a good coach on plate spinning?

Review: Funding Universe Speed Pitching

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Aug 30

smileball.jpgYesterday I had the pleasure of attending a Funding Universe Speed Pitching event.  This was my first such event, and I have to say that I had a lot of fun.  The interesting thing about this event, is that I almost need to review it from both sides individually:  Investor and Entrepreneur.

Investor: I really thought this was great from the perspective of an investor.  It gave the opportunity to really see perspectives and people from a lot of different industries.  It gives an investor a chance to meet local folks, and hear what they have to say in a far less formal, less time consuming environment.  Looking at this as an investor: do I think it likely that I will walk away from the event having found that “diamond in the rough”?  Hmm… Maybe, but probably not.  More likely however, I walk away having learned a lot of things about other people’s business ideas that get me thinking about my other investments, or directions I have considered going as far as other investments.

I guess what I’m saying is that while it is possible that you might find something to invest in at any given event, don’t necessarily going into it expecting that… but there is some real value anyway.  You get to hear ideas without being hounded.

Entrepreneur: There are so many different investors, from so many different backgrounds, that it is almost impossible to walk away form the event without some really valuable advice, or a “You know, I know someone you should call to help you with your [such-and-such] issues.”  This is a great event to pick people’s brain, hone your message, and by all means, capitalize on an opportunity to read the body language of a lot of very bright people.  If you go to an event like this, and don’t come away with funding, don’t count yourself as having missed out.  The value you should still be able to come away with is immense.

I really want to thank the Funding Universe folks for letting me be involved… let me know if you have an open seat int he future… I really got a lot out of it.

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