Silicon Slopes: Voice of Utah's high-tech industry going strong

Carine Clark, an executive board member of Silicon Slopes, makes a point during a panel discussion at the inaugural Silicon Slopes Tech Summit with (from left) Dave Elkington, founder and CEO of InsideSales.com; and Aaron Skonnard, co-founder and CEO of Pluralsight. The two-day summit, held at the Salt Palace Convention Center, attracted about 5,000 people. It was organized by Silicon Slopes and Beehive Startups.

Brice Wallace

What is Silicon Slopes?

Is it a brand? A description of an area and its specialty? A way to lure needed high-tech workers to Utah? A way to connect tech professionals? A way to bring diversity to the state? A lobbying voice for the industry? A group that, in only one month, organized an event that could attract 5,000 attendees?

It is all of those and more, according to panelists at the inaugural Silicon Slopes Tech Summit, a two-day event at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City that was organized by Silicon Slopes and Beehive Startups.

Silicon Slopes is one way to empower the Utah startup tech community, which is going strong, according to Clint Betts, executive director of Silicon Slopes.

“There’s never been more money, talent or resources available for startups in Utah’s history,” Betts said. “It’s hard to believe there’s ever been a more exciting time to be an entrepreneur in the Beehive State.”

Betts noted that Silicon Slopes represents more than 5,000 tech companies along the Wasatch Front. “We’re no longer a small community with just a couple of success stories,” he said. “We’re rapidly becoming a vibrant, diverse global innovation hub with some of the greatest entrepreneurs and companies in the world.”

Josh James, founder and chief executive officer of Domo, said Utah’s tech sector once was well-known for producing WordPerfect, Novell, Iomega and Evans & Sutherland, and later Overstock.com and Altiris. “There’s been good companies here and there … but now it seems like there’s a ton coming and it’s really fun,” he said.

Likewise, recognition of Silicon Slopes has advanced rapidly. Dave Elkington, founder and CEO of InsideSales.com, said he mentioned Utah at a conference in the United Kingdom last fall and an audience member replied with a Silicon Slopes reference.

“It’s actually getting out there. It’s working,” he said of the brand. “You go talk to investors, I think people get that it’s a thing. When you talk to customers, it’s like, ‘Oh, yeah, that Silicon Slopes thing.’ So I think the word’s getting out. I think it’s beginning to work. But to the point here, I think we need everybody in the room to engage in this. It can’t just be us on the stage. It’s got to be the entire community really promoting and pushing it.”

Promoting the brand, panelists said, can help Utah in attracting out-of-state skilled talent into the Beehive State. Aaron Skonnard, co-founder and CEO of Pluralsight, said Silicon Slopes “is definitely the brand that has the most global awareness for Utah right now, and it can act as the very sharp tip of the spear for this state as we go out and communicate and try to draw more talent into the state.”

“We all face the challenge, every day,” Skonnard said. “The top reason, I think, is that executives we talk to, that we are committed to recruiting to the state, just find Utah a great place to vacation but not necessarily a place they’d want to live. And a lot of that is because of incorrect stigmas or just perceptions around the state, so I do think fundamentally it’s a branding issue.”

Ryan Smith, founder and CEO of Qualtrics, said one way to measure Silicon Slopes’ success is to measure outsiders’ willingness to move to Utah. His company is recruiting engineers from Princeton, Harvard and Yale, as well as Brigham Young University.

“We’ve got to get to the point where that becomes the norm, where I can send someone an offer and say, ‘Do you want to go to Seattle or Utah?’ and they pick Utah every single time,” he said. “If you’re a small tech company, if you’re not relocating people [in], you’re not adding to the state.”

Dave Bateman, CEO of Entrata, said the scramble for talented workers is “not just a Utah problem. This is an everywhere problem. There are just not enough engineers.” But Silicon Slopes, he added, “can open so many doors for us. It can strengthen that ability to bring people in. And if we’re bringing people in, we’re not taking them from the other companies in Utah, which can be debilitating to those other companies.”

Several panelists spoke about the need for more diversity in Utah, adding that bringing in outsiders is one way to accomplish that goal. “We need to recruit outside the state to make it more diverse,” Smith said, eliciting applause.

Silicon Slopes can lead the state “to be comfortable” with increased diversity, Skonnard said.

“That’s really where the rub is,” he said. “The current political atmosphere or structure may not be more comfortable with that, and those are the things we really need to drive towards. We need to make the state more comfortable with what Ryan’s describing, and we can start that within our companies and hopefully lead to a much bigger place.”

However, Elkington warned about wanting diversity for diversity’s sake.

“By creating a diverse environment in a company, you get new ideas, you innovate differently, you solve problems in a really different way. I think there’s a core value to diversity that I think a lot of people forget. I think they think about the political aspect of diversity but not the innovative aspect and the relation to customers and their environment and that kind of thing,” Elkington said.

“We have to have people now in the state that could bring capabilities to this state that may not exist here,” Skonnard said. “And it’s not a knock on the population that’s here. As someone here working at one of these companies in Utah, it might feel uncomfortable to hear us talking about wanting diversity, because what we’re really saying is we need to go hire a bunch of people outside Utah to come into Utah, and that may make you feel threatened.”

But recruiting outsiders actually can help those Utah natives, he added.

“You can’t learn and connect and really grow as a professionally and reach your full potential without being surrounded by a lot of other amazing people who are further down the path than you. So, we as a community should want this. It will make all of us better, in each individual job and every individual role, if we have more amazing people come into this state. And we’re going to grow our future generations in a really powerful way at the same time.”

Panelists marveled at the first-ever summit’s turnout and spoke about at time when the event could attract 50,000 or 100,000 attendees. That enthusiastic outlook is buoyed by the belief that the Utah tech sector is both strong and strengthening.

“In the business community, particularly here in Utah, all boats rise with the tide,” Bateman said. “We need the tide here in Utah, and Silicon Slopes is that tide.”

Bateman suggested that the tech sector could be a strong government lobbying organization, with Silicon Slopes leading the way. It also could help bolster other business organizations in the state, he said. Betts said Silicon Slopes needs to ensure that it doesn’t rise “while the rest of Utah falls or remains stagnant.”

“We have a responsibility,” Betts said, “to care for and lift up those around us, whether they work in tech or not.”