Summit makes history with largest Utah tech crowd ever

By Brice Wallace

People involved in Silicon Slopes are known for their big ideas and supreme confidence — some might say hubris — but the turnout for the organization’s recent Tech Summit in Salt Lake City left them expressing a combination of pride and shock.

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Last year’s inaugural summit drew a little over 5,000 people to the Salt Palace Convention Center, despite only a month’s worth of preparation. Silicon Slopes’ executive director, Clint Betts, and several tech company CEOs seemed astonished that this year’s event topped their goal of 10,000 on the way to 14,270.

At the summit’s opening session, Carine Clark of Banyan was happy to hand Betts a $100 bill after losing a bet that the event could even double its first-year attendee total.

“You could say that I owe you twice that because you blew past it and you’re almost at 15,000,” Clark told him.

“I expected a little more, Clint,” deadpanned Dave Bateman of Entrata. “Three hundred percent growth year over year? I mean, come on.”

Betts said that having the largest tech event in Utah history was symbolic of overall tech industry growth in the state. “The people in this room believed  a world-class tech summit and a world-class tech community could be built in the state of Utah,” he told the crowd. “I believe we’ve proved that today. Don’t you?”

No longer are qualifiers or explanations needed when telling people about living in Utah, he said. “We don’t need to add qualifiers anymore, ladies and gentlemen. From now on, let’s just say, ‘I live in Utah, period.’ We should be proud of this state, we should be proud of what we’ve accomplished as a community,” he said before joking, “Maybe we shouldn’t be so proud of your willingness to miss two days of work.”

Josh James of Domo said the idea for the summit came two years ago when he attended “a crappy little conference” in Provo that nonetheless had great content and people. Silicon Slopes leaders decided “we need to do something really big,” he said.

James, who started the organization and coined the term “Silicon Slopes” a decade ago, said he thought the summit would turn into something big quickly. “But two years from now, I would say it exceeded what we were hoping for,” he said. “It’s been interesting to kind of reflect on it. I mean, 14,000 people registered for this. It’s unbelievable. I’m so excited.”

Several speakers said the summit was emblematic of Silicon Slopes and Utah’s tech industry explosion over the past few years.

“I could never had done this business in Montana,” Bateman said of Entrata and his home state. “The tech climate, the engineering resources — they haven’t evolved in that state like they have here. It’s just been a fantastic experience building the company here in the state, and I think it’s a fantastic place for anybody who wants to launch any sort of a tech company, to do so.”

“The way this has grown and emerged over the last year, year-and-a-half, is just incredible,” said Aaron Skonnard of Pluralsight. He noted that Domo, InsideSales, Pluralsight and Qualtrics were all on the Forbes Cloud 100 list this year and that Forbes dubbed Utah “Cloud Computing’s New Capital.”

“What’s amazing is, it’s not just Josh at Domo, it’s not Omniture, it’s not InsideSales,” said Dave Elkington of InsideSales.com. “It’s, like, everybody here. This whole thing is this groundswell. It’s a phenomenon.”

Marcus Liassides of Sorenson Media said Utah is “a fantastic place.”

“You know, we can sometimes moan and grumble about some of the things that we’d like to be better, but I’ve set businesses up in three different countries now and no other country that I’ve operated a business in has anything like this,” he said of the state’s tech ecosystem.

“We have a lot of talent, and we want more. We have great businesses here, and I love the belief. Belief is important to me. When you’re trying to do something as a world first, which many of us do as entrepreneurs, you have to believe in yourself, and Utah just has that culture of belief. Maybe it extends back to the pioneers, I don’t know, but I love that here, and it’s important in both the employee base and in the community leaders, too.”

Ryan Smith of Qualtrics said the summit and movement are “amazing” and that they had been incubating for a long time. “And I think you can get the feeling from everyone backstage and hopefully everyone here [that] it’s pretty incredible,” Smith said.

As for Silicon Slopes’ future, Smith predicted four Utah companies will have initial public offerings this year — “I think that rivals probably everywhere but Silicon Valley” — but the state needs to have more sustainable tech companies. He described Utah as “a state of implants” that needs even more people coming in to help the industry grow. Qualtric brought in 150 transplants last year.

“If every single person in this audience could invite one person to relocate to the state of Utah and help fill some of those pockets where we need help — engineering, executive talent, more diversity, more senior women — that would go a long way to set the road for future generations,” Smith said.

James saw potential in the huge summit crowd, whose members could follow Silicon Slopes leaders and someday run their own successful tech companies. He said many students and budding entrepreneurs at the summit are, like he once was, “young, dumb and broke.”

“That’s where I was when I was in high school and college and right after college, but great things can be done and that’s really exciting,” James said. “I love to say, ‘Shoot for the stars, end up on the moon,’ and I hope there’s a lot of people here that are going to end up on the moon.”

“Silicon Slopes Tech Summit, like the Silicon Slopes community, is rapidly becoming a globally recognized tech hub for tech and innovation,” Betts said. “And we’re just getting started.”{/mprestriction}