Paeans to Utah's entrepreneur-friendly culture are nothing new. – Ilan Mochari, Inc.
Utah boasts a lot of great things — epic national parks, high-class ski resorts and top-notch cuisine, to name a few — but it’s also a great place for business. Not only did Forbes rank Utah third in the nation for businesses and careers last year, but it also recognized many of its cities this summer; namely, Provo as the third best place (e.g. metropolitan area) and Logan as the fourth best small place in America for businesses and careers.
Businesses that seem to do especially well in Utah are startups, including Vivint and Omniture. According to Inc.’s Ilan Mochari, home security company Vivint was acquired in 2012 for $2 billion and analytics firm Omniture was purchased by tech giant Adobe in 2009 for $1.8 billion.
Mochari explains in his article that while companies in San Francisco and Silicon Valley (San Jose, California) broker more deals with venture capitalists than companies in Utah, Associated Press numbers show that companies in the Provo and Salt Lake City areas get more money per deal. In the first three quarters of 2014, San Francisco-based companies did 506 VC deals and Silicon Valley did 237, while Salt Lake City and Provo did only 16 and nine, respectively. However, Provo had the highest average dollar amount per deal — $51.3 million — followed by San Francisco, Salt Lake City and Silicon Valley, respectively.
“Paeans to Utah's entrepreneur-friendly culture are nothing new. Nor are the leadership lessons you can cull from Mormon principles,” said Mochari. “Yet the astronomical per-deal averages in Utah indicate something bolder is afoot.”
Read Ilan Mochari’s article “Move Over, Silicon Valley: Utah Has Arrived” on Inc.