Utah Tech Spotlight

Latest Blog Entries

Utah Entrepreneurial Challenge

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Apr 14

One of the programs that I really love here in Utah is the Utah Entrepreneurial challenge.  I was really pleased and blessed this year to have been given the opportunity to be a mentor to one of the teams.  The team I was working with is called Qgia.  Qgia’s product is pretty slick.  It’s a very inexpensive solution for companies (and even individuals in the case of yahoo or ebay stores) to be able to either upload video they have produced, or even point at video hosted somewhere else, and then have it played on their site/online store.  What makes it cooler though, is that you can upload images to be used as “buttons”, and tell how many seconds into the video there popup, where, and what url they should direct to.  So imagine a Convention/visitor’s bureau video that hi-lights Utah destinations, and then as each one is show there is a button right on the video for a call to action for that section of the video.  Further, this can be directly integrated into a shopping cart… so if the image is someone boarding at Brighton, the “buy now” button might jump right to a cart with a pass in it already.  I know their website is still under construction, but if you want to talk to these guys sooner, just let me know and I’ll help.  I know that Mark and his team are headed for grea things (Heck, I’m ready to star using it!)

Another company that I have written about several times is Klymit.  These guys have got a really neat product that uses Argo, among other gasses inside of a jacket liner.  Combine this with a small pressurized canister (the size of a  CO2 can that might be used ina  BB gun), a adjuster dial, andSHAZAM!  What you have is an unbelievably lightjacket (so they tell me… I am still waiting in line to buy one) that let’s you literally “dial-in” the appropriate level of insulation.  Dial it up while riding the lift up, dial it down when you’re carving moguls.  Cool stuff. (as a note: Nick Sorenson’s presentation was very polished.  Nice job.)

The winner this year was Amwell (not sure if they have a website… anyone know of one?)  Amwell is one of those companies that really makes you feel good to be a human bieng.  They have developed a product with innovative technology for vaginal application of medecines.  They use case they are headed into trials for is supposed to prevent pregnancy, HIV, and other STD’s.  I apologize that I don’t know more about it… but I’ll see what I can find out as far as web resources to point you to.

The winner this year walked away with $50,000.  Second and Third took $10,000 each, and the rest of the top ten walked with $2,000 each.  Not a bad jump to your business.  Good job to everyone involved, and a shout out to Qgia, good job for making the top ten!!

Local Review: Utah Technology Council: Marketing with Domain Names

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Mar 12

Yesterday I attended a UTC event at the Desert Star Theater in Murray.  I few notes before I event get into the topic or the speakers: This was my first time at the Desert Star.  It is really neat inside, plus even though it looks tiny from the street, there is a ton of parking in the back.  I am definitely planning to hit some of their upcoming shows.

This event was dedicated to the use of domain names, and how they can help you:

  • Market your business
  • Protect your IP
  • Make money by “squatting” (although the speakers felt that squatting was not the right definition… in my opinion I think it is.)

The speakers were Chris Finken, CIO and co-founder at Orange Soda, and Michael Taylor Alvarez from Ochoa and Taylor.  This was my first time meeting either of these gentlemen, but I found them both to be very intelligent, and extremely knowledgeable about the topic of discussion.

I want to pass along a few key items fromt he presentation that I thought were really good:

Keywords

When getting a domain name for your website, or a domain name for a secondary site about your company that then links into you main site, it’s important to remember that not everyone cares who the heck you are.  You ahve to ask yourself what they are really looking for.  If you think they will be specifically looking for your comapny by name, then a domain name that is your company makes sense.  But that may not be the case.  If for example you produce frozen meals that can be cooked quickly, even though you company name is Susan Foods, a domain name like “fastmeals.com” might make more sense for you, as that is what the customer is really looking for.

Additionally, even if you don’t get the value from a domain like “fastmeals.com” it is a domain name that someone else might want in the future and you might be able to monetize in other ways.

Missssspellings

You can protect your own company from losing intended traffic, and potentially capitalize on intended traffic for other domains by grabbing common misspellings.  What are some of the ways that people misspell you company, product or value proposition?  Grab those domain names to make sure people end up were you want them to be.

My opinion on the event:

My opion on the event would have to be that I was very impressed with the people they found to speak on the topic.  Very sharp guys.  I was also pleased with the presentation on domains.  But where I was left wanting a little bit was the narrowness of the scope.  Domains are very very key to driving SEO, which we know is Orange Soda’s specialty.  but since the scope of the presentation was just on domains, we never got into the questions that were right there, waiting to be answered in regards to URL structure, blogs, and so many other areas.  It was like we had a meeting to explore baking cakes, but chose to focus this first meeting on only discussing what eggs to use.  This may sound more harsh than I mean it.  The meeting was wonderful.  I just hope they follow it up with a few more int he “series” to round the picture out, and that as the series progresses there are recaps on the other, relevant data that has been presented.

All in all, nice job UTC, Chris, and Michael.  Also, thanks to the Desert Star.

Local event review: Utah First Friday… a bit about linked in

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Mar 10

At the end of last week I had the pleasure of going to hear Jason Alba from Jibber Jobber speak at Utah First Friday on Linked In.

Now, many of you have heard me speak before as to what a huge mentor on social media Jason has been to me over the last year, and I am pleased to say that he did not disappoint.  Jason realy does a great job of conveying some of the core key value propositions of Linked in.  He really cut right through the crap, and into the meat of the matter.  It was not a speech on “What can Linked in do?”… it was a speech on “What can linked in do for ME, and why the heck should I care?”

I am a very acive user of linked in.  I don’t mean that I have more connections that everyone else… because that’s counter to how I use linked in.  What I mean is that I actually USE it, and derive value.  If I am looking to hire people wit key skill sets, I look for them on linked in.  If I have a business meeting with someone later in the day, I first research them on linked in to find out about them, and possibly even call connections we have in common for more details.  Applicants?  I always call people who I know and have in common with them to find out what they are really like.  But tha’s just what I do.  Jason pointed out so much more.

Linked in is a great job finding tool, applicant tool, and marketing tool.  Additionally, Jason is one heck of an engaging speaker… although he is fairly new to this, and I know will improve with polish and time, it is his personality and wit, and genuineness that keep the audience engaged.  Jason, if you are reading this… I have a question:  I would guess that sales, marketing , and even HR teams in many companies could really benefit from a short, personal level perentation to their group on what you went over.  Is that something you’re interested in doing?  How might people contact you for that?

A few updates on local events and the Tech Spotlight

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Mar 03

Howdy all!

Wow.  I don’t know about everyone else, but altough there may well be a financial downturn around the corner, we are definitely not feeling it yet.  I have never in my life been busier.  But I did want to update you on a couple of local events that I attended recently, and an upcoming item for the Tech Spotlight.

40 under 40:

Utah Business Magazine held their awards luncheon for the annual 40 under 40 last week.  The luncheon was really nice, and it was a great bunch of people to hang out with.  I also really like how diverse the field was.  There were companies represented from all different areas from Tech, Financial, Health, Modeling, Outdoor, Construction, and pretty much everything else under the sun.  What I would really LOVE to see as a side benefit of this type of event is a quarterly Alumni type get together.  It was just so neat to hang out for a couple of hours with these folks, that it would be good to keep in touch.  UTC, here’s a suggestion for you, Utah Business, and Digital IQ: You guys do sucha great job with your CEO Peer 2 Peer meetings, and really get discussion and comradery going.  A similar event to get the 40 under 40’s interacting at that same level would be inredible!

Utah Entrepreneurial Challeng, Meeting of the Minds:

The Utah Entrepreneurial Challenge had their Meeting of the Minds event last week.  This is an opportunity to pair up local entepreneurs to brainstorm with these up and coming companies.  Officially, the entrepreneurs are referred to as “Mentors”, but I think I speak for all of us who were sitting at a table, brainstorming with our team, that the learning was definitely flowing both ways.  Perhaps, “older pupils” is more apt :)

I am working wit Qgia, a really exciting idea around video (sorry can’t share much more than that yet.)  I am really impressed with how events like the Entrepreneurial Challenge, Funding Universe’s Speed Pitching events, and so many of the student mentoring programs that folks like Alan Hall and others put in place to help grow the future innovators of this state.  It’s amazing how much some people are doing to ensure the futures of our children for generations to come.

You oughta be in pictures:

The last week of March I am having my crew ready to do a several video podcast sessions.  We will then be trickling these out once per month.  So if your company is super cool, or you know of one who is, let us know.  Will do a video with them, and have it transcribed (so anything said will also be searchable), and get them plenty of exposure, all for free.  Just trying to help bring more visibility to Utah and all the cool stuff going on here!

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!

Local Review: UTC PR event on New Media

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Jan 18

Okay, so as you guys have seen, I tend to give pretty darned good reviews to most UTC events.  Additionally, their attendance this year has really picked up, and I see that meaning even more of a reason to attend the events.  As to the PR event this week however, I think there were definitely some good parts, but I have a few nits to pick as well.

Let me start by saying that if you are wondering if the UTC is right for your company, I would say that the two events that I have been to thus far this year just show the UTC gaining momentum.  Attendance is up, and they always do a great job of pulling these together.  How anyone could not get sufficient value from these events to justify the meager annual fee is beyond me.  Definitely one worth joining.

Additionally, I have to say that the speakers knew their content.  And for the most part presented well.

My concern lies in the overall effectiveness of the event.  I’m not sure rather it was because there were three presentations, and they all needed to rush so fast that none of them could go deep enough, or what the reason was… But I feel like we walked into the room with a lot of PR people who were interested in, and concerned about New Media and how it affects their industry.  The presentations accomplished sending the message “Yes, New Media is cool, and is gaining power.  You should be scared if you don’t understand it.”

But that’s it… very little of that “understanding” was passed on.

I would have loved to have seen us go into enough detail on 3 or so New Media topics for people to have a take away.  Let’s just take twitter, blogs, and Stumble Upon as three examples:

While the meeting touched on the fact that blogs and bloggers are powerful and scary and you should be careful how you deal wit them, I would have liked to have seen something that imparted information more along the lines of:

If you have a client that you think should be blogging, or they think they should be blogging, do this first: Have them take a week and research blogs relevant to their area and value proposition.  Have them then take 60 days and actively read and intelligently comment on those blogs.  This serves a couple of key purposes: 1: you get comfortable with “blogging voice” and what people are responding well to, and 2: It actually turns your competition into your lead-gen.  Popular blogs that were drawing eyes of your potential customers are now actually driving traffic to you due to your comments that link back to your website.  Oh, and lest we forgive reason 3: you learn more about what people are thinking.  If at the end of the 60 days the company has not actively commented several times per week, and has not learned of a bunch more key blogs they were not even aware of due to their interaction over that time, then they should not start a blog.  Someone has to really be willing to be consistent to blog, and they need to understand that it is much more than just writing.  It includes a huge social component of link, and giving love to get love (link wise :) )

I won’t go so indepth in twitter or Stumble Upon, or this post will turn into a novel.  I would have like to have seen examples though.  Don’t just tell us twitter is cool…Give us an example of a sign that could be put up in a retail store, what it might say to get people to “follow” the merchant on twitter, and how it might be leveraged.  Perhaps use an example for a stadium, and how a solution like this could help fill seats at Jazz games or something similar.  Teach people rather than just hinting at it.

Okay, so enough ranting.  I want to wrap up in the positive here… There were about 40-50 people there.  Great crowd.  Great people to meet.  Sharp presenters.  I just think the format, or perhaps the goal asked to the presenters might have been tweaked a bit to add more value.

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.

Transcript: Control4

  • Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Jan 04

Okay, so apologies in advance… this is a long one.

As most of you know, we did various podcasts over the last year about various Utah companies and the cool stuff they are doing.  Several people have asked us if there is a way to get a transcript of those podcasts.  As such, over the next several days we will be posting podcast transcripts here from the last year.  Again, these are fairly lengthy, but we hope they are of some value.

Steve Spencer: Good afternoon everybody. This is Steve Spencer with the Utah Tech Spotlight. I’m here today with Eric Smith from Control4. Eric, thanks for joining us.
Eric Smith: Sure. Thanks!
Steve Spencer: Eric, Control4. I guess for starters, why don’t you just talk to us a little bit about the name, what it means and how that really ties in to what the company does.
Eric Smith: We started the company about fours years ago. A little more than four years ago and we basically manufacture home automation. It’s stuff that controls all the stuff in your house. Most people aren’t very familiar with it but bottom line is, everything in the house talks to each other and you can really get some synergies out of making things work together.
We’re talking about your home theatre and your audio and your video and your security and your intercom and your lighting and your temperature control, kind of, all the things work together. Make it so that you can have a cool lifestyle. It’s kind of sometimes hard to explain without going through a few scenarios.
01:11 Steve Spencer: Do you want to maybe walk us through a scenario?
Eric Smith: I’ll give you a couple. One in my house, if the smoke detectors go off. Instead of just beeping really loud and annoying you, they do some actual valuable things. You know, most people know that you get trained when you’re a kid that if you have a fire in your house it’s not the fire that kills you, it’s the smoke. Right?
Steve Spencer: Right.
Eric Smith: Well, most of us in the United States, at least, have nice forced, air heating and ventilation systems for cooling your house and doing those kinds of things. I like to call those equal opportunity killers because they just makes sure the smoke gets everywhere evenly. When smoke detectors go off, turning off the A-Track system is a pretty good idea. So you don’t circulate smoke.
Steve Spencer: Sure, that’s huge.
Eric Smith: Another issue that happens is lighting. It’s dark at night and night is usually when fires kill people. Even if there is a fire in the day, someone figures it out and puts it out. Or they see it and they can get out. The time that most people die in fires is the night. So, in my house, smoke detectors go off, the heating system stops circulating air, the lights come up part way. Not all the way so they don’t blind me. Wake me out of bed but they come up 25%.
02:14 The house actually announces over the audio system exit routes and tells me even where the fire is so I know which detector sensed it. Even all the motorized blinds in the garage door pop open and things like that to help me get out of the house quickly.
Steve Spencer: Now, talking about this different pieces of automation, can you just list off for us, I know there are several pieces that you folks either manufacture or partner with other companies that tie into your course system. Do you want to touch on what some of the key things are? I know you touched on smoke detectors, that are H-backer or there are some real corner stones of what your integration strategy works with.
Eric Smith: The foundation of our system is usually a thing called the Home Theatre Controller. The truth is that most people don’t wake up in the morning saying I need to get me a home automation system. It’s not even a category most people are aware of but most people are going out and buying flat panel TVs and other things like that for entertainment because we are kind of moving to HD-TV right now.
03:10 Almost all consumers understand having the problem having a TV and a receiver and a tape deck and a tuner and a DVD player and a satellite receiver and a Tevo and they’ve got all this gear. They got, like, eight remote controls and only their fourteen year old son knows how to turn on the TV and watch a movie.
So, our entry point often is, a simple little box that makes us so that one button pushed on the remote turns on the TV, sets all the surround sounds right, turns on the receiver, flips the inputs, makes it all correct and kind of greets you with an onscreen interface. Through that interface then you can have access to all your movies and all your music.
Eventually, if you add other things, your lighting control and your temperature control and your security and IP cameras and all kinds of things. That’s kind of our core foundation and that’s usually how our dealers who sell our products into the home is by basically solving that problem of the Home Theatre.
Then it’s very easy to start adding other products, like we make a thermostat. You just take your current thermostat off the wall, put ours on and now while you’re sitting in your theatre, you can change the temperature if you’re feeling a little cold or a little warm. You can also log onto your house through the internet and control your temperature. So, while you’re on vacation you can turn the air conditioning back on the day before you come home.
04:16 Steve Spencer: If I could just get it to bring me a bag of chips, I think I would never move.

[Laughter]

Eric Smith: You’d be set! We make light controls. So you can take out your existing light switches and replace them with ours. Now those lights would just work like normal light switches but they also have dimming capability but more importantly, they also talk back to the controller. So now they can be turned on based on a schedule.
So, when you’re not home it can make your house look occupied. When you start the movie the lights can slowly fade over twenty seconds to kind of create an ambiance. We also make touch screens for user interfaces around the house for controlling the music through your home and lots of other devices.
Steve Spencer: So, one of the things that I thought was really interesting when you and I spoke about this before was that really a key component to the solution is WiFi. As people listen to this and they think, “Oh yeah but this is probably for those new homes that have the wiring all built in and so on and so forth. Really, most of the components that we are talking about are WiFi enabled, is that right?
05:11 Eric Smith: We actually use two wireless standards. We use WiFi for some thing where a higher bit rate is needed. Then there’s another standard called Zigbee. You know WiFi is 802.11, Zigbee is 802.15.4. It’s another iTripoli standard. What’s cool about Zigbee is that it’s a mesh networking control technology.
So that’s what’s in our light switches, our remote controls and some of our control devices but leveraging the two makes it possible to actually put this in any home. So, you don’t have to have a brand new home to do this. That’s really what has limiting the market historically. It’s really only been a pretty high end phenomenon.
So, it’s essentially rich people that just happen to be building new homes this year. By just solving that wireless problem, if we didn’t solve some price problems, we could at least sell to all rich people not just the ones that happen to be building a new home this year. We have also solved some price problems where we can actually get into a much broader market not just the multi-millionaires but regular people can have this stuff.
06:04 Steve Spencer: So, there are lots of different verticals that I want to explore further in our conversation here but let’s start with just the home users. So, if I am a home user, one of the easiest entry points for me, really is that if I’ve got mp3s on my computer, which I probably do. I’ve been putting them on my mp3 player.
I’ve been inputting them into iTunes so I that I can load them on my iPod. If I set up a window to share on my computer, and if I take my DVDs that my kids are always scratching anyway. My little girl has taken to actually shoving the DVD movies in the VCR which is wonderful. So, I can load my DVDs in a changer. I can share on my Windows box and all of a sudden, it’s all integrated. I can access all my movies on screen and my music.
Eric Smith: So, so this Home Theatre Control will automatically then catalog on your Window share on your PC or on USB hard drive if it’s plugged into the back also. Catalog it, we’ll get the cover and get the rich meta data with information about the album and what year it was made and all that kind of stuff so you can even browse your media.
07:06 So, it does that, catalogs it all, makes it all available so you can now browse it your TV. You can build play lists on your TV. You can then stream it around the house too for the other products we make. You can also, like you said the DVD changer. If you add a DVD changer to the system — you just put in your DVD in and automatically our system will load that DVD into the changer and then go out into the internet and find out all the information about it, bring in the cover art.
So now, you have rich meta data about your movies too. In fact, my kids, that’s how they do it. They don’t touch the DVDs anymore. They just hit the button on the remote. They go to videos and they can browse the DVDs by cover art. So, my two-year-old can go find Barney and start Barney and never scratch a disc and I don’t have to worry about it. My two-year-old does know how to hit the four button, just turn on the whole thing. He knows how to hit videos and chose that.
Steve Spencer: Now, what about the speaker components because one of the problems with not just Home Theatre but home sound systems has been distribution of the speakers. To use these same wireless capabilities. Can I take a speaker set upstairs and plug into the wall and once I’ve got AC power I’m good to go?
08:10 Eric Smith: Absolutely you can. We make two versions of that, basically. We make a big centralized amp like an eight-room amplifier. Where if you do have wires in the walls and have speakers you can put that in and it’s a very cost effective way to add audio to all the rooms but we also do have a product called Speaker Point.
It’s basically a box that plugs in the wall that has a WiFi receiver in it and an amplifier. So, imagine you want to add music to your kitchen, all you literally have to do is you go buy one of these boxes from us, plug it into the same spot the microwave’s plugs in. Set it on top of the kitchen cabinets, place two speakers up there and your done or put them in the bookshelves in the living room.
If you have some attic space you can even go up and actually do custom installed speakers but you don’t have to pull wire anywhere. You just need to find power, which there’s power all over your house.
Steve Spencer: So from a Home Theatre Home Sound System, stop having to repurchase DVDs because my kids are no longer destroying them. Perspective obviously. From those respects, this makes a lot of sense for the home consumer but some of the other features that maybe the cameras, I guess, it depends on the person. The light switches is, at least for me, as a home consumer maybe a little bit of a questionable luxury.
09:15 Where have you seen more uptake? What verticals have you seen that really have different needs that people may want to hear about other than the home consumer?
Eric Smith: Well, we sell into several other places. MDUs is a place we go into which stands for Multiple Dwelling Unit. We’re in a lot of condo complexes where they put us in every single unit. We’re in a lot of hotels and resorts are putting us in their properties. We also have a deal with Johnson Controls where Johnson Controls will actually, they OEM our products, put their names on them and they are going after light commercial.
Kind of the sub hundred thousand sq. ft. office building and doing things like scheduling lighting. But what’s there is also interesting is there is a whole new thing happening right now. People wanting to be green. There’s the whole take care of the environment kind of thing happening. One thing we can show is putting 25 of our light switches and just having the system automatically set them back instead of running them full bar, dimming them 15%.
10:11 Also in your common areas — doing things like we’re in a hallway. The lights trip with the motion sensor than turn back off after a little while. We have a study we’ve done and just by purchasing 25 light switches, you doing it fairly moderate. Just dimming the lights 15% which is not even noticeable to the consumer.
Then managing lights more effectively in some of the common areas. Reduces CO2 emissions because you are not using the energy equivalent of driving a car a thousand miles.

Steve Spencer: Really?
Eric Smith: That’s our yearly savings. So, it’s almost like taking a car a thousand miles off the road every year that you have one of these.
Steve Spencer: Interesting. Well, and not to mention the cost savings as well. I can guarantee you right now the light in my walk in closet is on. I’m sure of it.
Eric Smith: But taking a simple contact sensor and tying that to that light so that, basically, every time you open the door it trips the light for a certain amount of time and turns it right back off. It can be smart enough where if there is some ambient light coming in from a bathroom into a closet or something. It doesn’t turn on the light during the day but if it’s after sunset then it will turn on the light but it only turns it on for three minutes and shuts it back off again.
11:10 Things like that are very easy and you save a lot of energy. You can even save more when you start managing the heating system and the air conditioning system aggressively. So when you arm the security system, it automatically sets it back. So, there’s a lot of people starting to get interested in the lighting, not so much from just the luxury side. It’s not that we can’t save tons of money for people today. Our lighting stuff is a little bit expensive still today but to go out and put your whole house in lighting might be $3000.
So, it could take quite a few years to pay this back but you are saving the environment and you are being a better citizen. It’s just like buying a Honda Civic. You know the hybrid Civic versus the regular Civic. You have to drive it like half a million miles before you get the payback. That’s not why most people buy those cars. They buy them because they want to be good to Mother Earth.
Steve Spencer: A couple other aspects I’d like to touch on with Control4. In addition to the products that we’ve already talked about is a little bit about Control4 from a business perspective. I think you mentioned Control4 has been around for four years. Can you give us a little input on the size of Control4? What it’s up to? I don’t know how much you want to share from a financial perspective with everybody.
12:16 Eric Smith: We generally don’t disclose financial numbers but what I can say is that we are at a 175 employees. We had, for our first year of revenue, we had three x growth the second year. We expect to double again this year and we are the largest, by far, vendor of these kinds of systems in the world.
We ship thousand of systems a month now. We shipped over half a million devices at this point. So, shipping lot of products, having lots of success. We’re leading in the industry that we’re in.
Steve Spencer: Okay. Here in Utah when you look at the skills sets and the types of employees that can draw for employees in Utah versus the skill sets or the equipment or the products. Do you need to bring from somewhere else? What do you find is valuable and worthwhile to produce in Utah and what do you find is more economical to have done somewhere else?
13:12 Eric Smith: Pretty much all the physical products we sell, all the items we sell come from overseas. Unless they are in Mexico but the bottom line is we build our stuff overseas. We do keep all of the engineering and even the mechanical design, industrial design — all that’s done here. Except for one product. We do have one product the we OEM and put our name on.
Everything else we have and our whole product line is stuff that we’ve engineered here. So I’d say all the high value added work is done here and we like Utah. We’ve always thought it was a great engineering bed. As a matter of fact it’s kind of a joke in the home automation industry and in that kind of home controls industry that Utah is the capital of home automation.
It is stunning the percentage of tech companies that build products for this space that are based in Utah. Probably most Utah people don’t even know that but that’s the case.
14:00 Steve Spencer: Interesting. I imagine we destroy more DVDs with our children and need more bedrooms in our home with more individuals that are leaving the lights on than anybody else.
Eric Smith: In the home lighting market, I’d say three of the top five manufacturers of lighting controls in homes are in Utah. Us being one of them. The other being Lite Touch which is a company based in Salt Lake and Vantage which is this company based in Orem. Several major multimedia product installed speaker companies are here.
One of the biggest cabling companies called Kimber Kable is here. I mean there is like five or six speaker companies. The highest in speaker in the world is based in Utah.
Steve Spencer: Really? And who’s that?
Eric Smith: It’s Wilson Audio and they’re in Springville. They make speakers that range from in the low end $ 20,000 a pair up to $ 200,000 a pair. They’re kind of world leader in the really high end speakers. So, in building a company here in Utah, I’m with you. I love the environment. That’s why I live here.
I mean, we’re sitting in your office looking out the window of some absolutely stunning-looking mountains right now but looking past a wonderful, stunning-looking plasma TV to do that.

[Laughter]

15:10 Steve Spencer: What do you find the core components of a business? Everything from getting initial capital to, you know, on the management team you’ve got marketing, you’ve got sales, you’ve got financial, you’ve got technical. Then the resources like you mentioned, the engineering. If you just looked at those and said, “Hard versus easy.” Which of those have been easy and do you thing Utah does a good job of and where was a little bit more of a challenge?
Eric Smith: You know, I feel we’ve had a pretty good experience as far as like being able to see the market and understand what the need is for the market and building a product that meets it. So, I and my business partner for fifteen years now, we’ll last. I think we’ve been pretty good at that piece and so we’ve had not needed to looking for that so much.
I find engineering talent to be very good here. I found it to be pretty good to find sales we put all over the country. So, we’ve haven’t had any real challenge and in all the places we’ve tended to go outside of the state is we’ve tended to go outside the state for legal. Just because of some of the deals we’ve been doing.
16:15 There’s not been that many deals done here in Utah as big as the ones we’ve had to do and so we’ve found hiring expertise outside we’ve done. Same with intellectual property lawsuits. We’re in the middle of a lawsuit right now. We’re being sued by a big competitor and we’ve gone out of state for that kind of a thing.
We’ve had a lot of good experience, actually using PR here locally. We’ve had a lot of experience building marketing and add campaigns. We found it pretty easy to do that. We’ve found it pretty easy to hire for most of the roles within the company here.
Steve Spencer: Great! So, for those that don’t know, we’re actually recording this podcast the day before the Tech Spotlight. So, we’re going to sit down tomorrow and get a really good look at your product and go hands-on through it and I know I’m very excited about that but in addition to what people are going to come away from that seeing. Can you give us any kind of sneak-peek. What’s on the horizon? What’s the future got in store?
17:11 Eric Smith: You know, we’re careful about that too. Occasionally, some of our dealers find these things and I get in trouble [Laughter] but one of the things we do is we move music around the house digitally. So, over the network and making it possible to have all your music on a hard drive and then access it from any room in the house.
We’re definitely working on doing the same thing on video. So you can take you’re entire collection of DVDs and not just having them in a DVD changer but have them sitting on a hard drive and access those from all over the house. We’re working on some other cool features where more things with remote access. Ability to log onto an IP cameras so you can remotely view your house and see what’s going on.
We’re continually working on new user interface devices that will make people happier to be able to access their content better than what we have today. Those are the kinds of areas we’re working on right now.
Steve Spencer: Great! You mentioned media and music specifically. As you look at media and what media is available and I know there’s a big battle right now about DRM or not DRM. Can I get a raw mp3? Does that affect at all the ability to integrate with your system?
18:11 Eric Smith: It definitely does and it causes challenges. We’d really like tighter integration with iTunes but Apple just won’t budge. Now Apple is really leading the charge to remove DRM from music too and so we like that. But we are bringing in this fall and we’ll be introducing downloadable music services because I do believe that the way the world’s moving, is just like if you use Rhapsody or some of these other services.
You don’t need to buy music anymore. You just can just buy subscription and every song ever written will always be available to you and I think that’s the wave of the future. I think it will be the same with movies and videos. You’ll pay one subscription and pretty much every TV show that’s ever been recorded and every DVD, every movie that’s ever been made and every documentary that’s ever been made will be available to you.
You’ll pay a monthly fee. It’s kind of like your cable fee now but right now those are linked. The distribution piece and the content piece are usually one. You have cable. They’ve got a cable on the ground that brings it to you and they also provide you with the services. I’m not sure whether those will be linked or not but I think they’ll be both models.
19:07 I think sometimes you’ll buy bandwidth from someone and possibly you’ll buy content from someone else in the future and it may be bundled. I really don’t know but what I do know is that the next five to ten years you won’t watch, except for news and sporting events, I don’t believe you’ll mostly watch.
Content has been provided for you that’s on at 7pm or on at 8pm. You’ll just go to a site and you’ll go to Today and if it’s not Katie Curic or Matt Lauer or whatever his name is that’s on there. You’ll go to Today and they’ll just show you the top stories and you’ll pick the story you want to watch.
You won’t deal with this whole watching it the moment they choose to give it to you and if you want to watch Gilligan’s Island episode 76 you can go get Gilligan’s Island episode 76. I really do believe that’s the way it’s going. It’s systems like ours will create that kind of capability.
Steve Spencer: Now what’s your take on user created content? Podcast is a big buzzword out there right now. As we move forward with a vision like what you express there where content is just content. It’s available. I buy my pipe to get stuff. Do you really see that user created content getting traction?
20:13 Eric Smith: Absolutely but I think this kind of thing is what opens that model up because now if your providers are set on the internet, you can go get it from anywhere. But the challenge right now is bringing it to your TV. Right now we tend to like to watch our video type things sitting at a TV and not at a computer and we tend to do other kinds of content on the internet.
You talk about the lean-forward-lean-back experience but right now that link is still challenging. Right? How do you watch your YouTube in a format that looks okay and is acceptable on your TV. So, your just sitting there being entertained and find it.
And how do you find the content? I think those things need to be solved but, yeah, I do believe that the model is going to be — there’s content out there, you’ve got a receiver sitting here in your living room and you go pick it. That really levels the playing field. So now NBC has no better ability to distribute it in your home than you yourself have to then distribute it in my home.
21:04 Steve Spencer: One of the other things I want to touch on in the podcast, Eric, is so that everybody listening really understands that Eric Smith and Will West really bring a lot more to the Utah Valley than just Control4. You guys have done some other companies here. I know you are working very actively with the school districts. Can you fill us in a little bit on some of that?
Eric Smith: Will and I met sixteen years ago, I think it was now, and started a company together and this is our fourth company. So in Control4, the real reason for the name is that it’s control for lighting and control for entertainment but it does have this fun side. Meaning, it’s the fourth company we’ve started together and all four companies have been the world leader in what they did.
One that most people would know about is our last company which is now know as iBAHN . When we started it we called it STSN. It’s kind of the world leader in internet for hotels. So, when you go stay in a hotel and pay $9.95 for the internet, we’re the pirates on the other end collecting that fee.
22:07 We built that company. Started back in ‘98 and did it. Will is really famous. I’m kind of his sidekick on raising money but one of our claims to fame that we don’t like to claim very much but others give us is that we’ve raised more money in Utah than anyone else. At least private equity. We’ve raised in our careers about $ 330 million.
Steve Spencer: Wow, I’m a little shy of that number.

[Laughter]

Eric Smith: So, we’ve raised a lot of intra capital and we’ve worked hard though to try to make more capital available to others too. Will was very involved to getting the Fun To Funds kicked off for the listeners who don’t know about that. The Fun To Funds is basically a $ 100 million fund that the estate of Utah invests in venture capital firms who are willing to locate an office in Utah and invest in Utah companies.
Will is currently the chairman of the Fun To Funds and so that has done a lot to help. There’s at least five different VC funds now have moved and put offices in Utah that were not here earlier…

Steve Spencer: And that’s you.
23:07 Eric Smith: …based on that. Will is also the chairman of the UTC. So, he spends a lot of time on that and helping that get going. Helping tech companies grow. I spend most of my spare time working on the state charter school board involved in the charter school movement and helping create more school choice in Utah.
Steve Spencer: I want to make sure that we touch on that a little bit just so everybody knows it. When I walked in Eric’s office today, he was telling me some really exciting stuff going on with the school board. Is that something you can talk about Eric?
Eric Smith: Yeah, I mean, for listeners who don’t know what a charter school is. Basically, the cool thing about a charter school it’s like injecting free enterprise into public education system. What happens is a group of parent can essentially create a charter application which I like to equate to a business plan for a school.
So, it’s just like a group of entrepreneurs going to a venture capitalist with a business plan for an idea to run a business but the difference is you’re coming with a plan for a school and the goal is not to make a profit at all. As a matter of fact, you’re not supposed to make a profit. It’s just how will we take state dollars and create a school that will educate children and further the education in Utah for children?
24:14 The concept is to procreate different ideas and different approaches, essentially inject choice because all kids are not the same. The districts are really good at educating the broad market but there’s going to be different kids that want different kind of niche needs and I found out about this years ago.
Charter school movement in the country started ten to fifteen years ago and when I found out about it I thought this will be a great thing to have here in Utah and I found out that some efforts have already been made to create a pilot program in Utah for charter schools but I felt like it should be a broader thing.
So, I got involved with a group of parents and we actually pushed for a broader legislation to kind of open charter schools up. Back in that day there were a couple thousand kids in charter schools that were in this small pilot program that was a three year program. Today, there’s more than 25,000 students in Utah in charter schools
The cool thing that’s happening is not only are the kids in those schools really getting a unique environment and a unique learning experience. I’ll give you an example. Tuacahn in St. George. Most people are familiar with the musicals that go on down there but there is also a performing arts high school that any parent that wants to send their kids to can sign the kids up for and it’s free because the government pays for it.
25:16 That’s a charter school and kids can go learn about performing arts. There’s one in West Valley called East Hollywood High School. East Hollywood High School is honestly built originally for troubled kids that were not doing well in high school and were bored of high school and were thinking about dropping out.
What it does is it puts a film spin on all of their courses. So, when their studying physics they’re studying lighting about shows and when they’re writing, they are writing scripts. When they’re doing art, they are designing sets and so it really focuses the curriculum around film production. So kids really get excited about it.
There’s a new one we approved today. This morning at the state charter school board we approved of a school called Venture Academy. Venture Academy is an expeditionary learning school. Where what you do is each term you basically do a two-week expedition. You might go to the Colorado River and study all kinds of things.
26:06 Then, from then on, that term, your biology lessons and your writing lessons and your mathematics lessons and lot of your things are built around that expedition you did. It’s just been a great experience. The other thing that’s happened though is also some other schools that are more traditional.
What they try to do it to bring more of a private school, academically more rigorous approach to a school but to make that available to more people not just parent who can afford a private school. The schools I’ve built have been like that. There’s a school called Timpanogos Academy in Lindon that I started.
It’s just an academically, rigorous, back-to-basics study the evil, white guys kind of school and it’s been very successful. What’s interesting to see happen though is not only the kids that get into this school have been benefited and seeing really good test scores and things like that but we’ve seen changes within the districts around these schools.
We’re the districts of awesome students and they started asking questions, “Why are we losing all these students? Why do all these parents want to go to this other school?” So, we are even seeing improvement within the district schools. So, what’s happening is not only the education improving in these schools but education, as a whole, in Utah is getting better because of charter schools
27:13 Steve Spencer: So how do individuals listening to this recording right now find out more about this?
Eric Smith: I would do a search. I’d go to Google. I don’t even know the web site. Go to Google and go USOE. Utah State Office of Education and under there there’s a charter school section that’ll show you about the different charter schools you can find in your area and find out information.
Unfortunately some of them are still way oversubscribed. The wait list and they can only handle so many students. Many of them are not and it’s a neat thing but if there’s on in your area that’s oversubscribed, write an application and build your own. It’s such a neat experience.
Steve Spencer: Wow, that’s huge. Speaking of finding more information, anybody who listens to the podcast today. Anybody who listens to the podcast today. Anybody who sits in on the Tech Spotlight event that we’re having on the 18th who is interested in doing exactly what I did which is having my credit card leap into my hands so that I could swiftly go out and buy a DVD changer and your control unit and several other pieces of hardware, ones I can Google for my spouse.
28:19 Where can somebody go to purchase some of the equipment that we’ve talked about today?
Eric Smith: We have a thousand resellers in the United States and the best way to find them is go to www.control4.com and there’s a dealer locator. Like there’s a where-to-buy link.and you can punch in your zip code and it will show you the local guys. I will tell you there are different level of guys.
There’s some guys that focus on the really high end and if you don’t want a couple hundred thousand dollars on them, they won’t even look at you. There are other guys that would love to come in and just help you with the Home Theatre and sub-thousand dollar kind of thing.
Steve Spencer: Great, Eric. We’re right at the end of our time today. I want to thank you for not only meeting with me today but for all of the exciting things that clearly Control4 is clearly doing in the industry and all of the exciting things that yourself and Will have and continue to do in the state of Utah.
29:11 Eric Smith: Well, I’m glad to talk to you and I’m excited about tomorrow too.
Steve Spencer: Going show it to the guys. Good night. Thanks so much.
« Previous Entries
Next Entries »