Inc. magazine - July/Aug 2018

WHO TO KNOW

BYU grads Josh James 13 and
Ryan Smith are considered
the godfathers of Silicon Slopes. Smith, whose Qualtrics
is now a $2.5 billion analytics
behemoth, is a longtime buddy
of James, who sold his first data company, Omniture,
for $1.8 billion. James—now on
to his second data play, Domo —is known for his wit and
panache. “People see him as
this Willy Wonka character,” says Banyan’s Carine Clark, a
fellow board member at the
Lehi-based startup network
Silicon Slopes. “He does a lot for people that they don’t even
know about, including support-
ing education, technology in schools, and women in tech.”
Salt Lake City
Why Silicon Slopes—the region between the
Utah state capital and Provo—is bustling with hot
brands and data nerds. By Zoë Henry
The Destination

; Dozens of companies are based in and around River-woods, a commercial and residential paradise with

192,000 square feet of retail, at the base of the Wasatch Range and just an eight-minute drive from BYU. A mile down the road are the headquarters for Vivint, a smart-home company valued at $3 billion.

; One of Salt Lake
City’s artsier neigh-
borhoods, Sugar
House is home to a
cluster of startups,
along with fashion
boutiques, a street-
car, and gastropubs
that sell local craft
beers Polygamy
Porter and Big Bad
Baptist.

; Lehi-based farm, garden, museum, golf, and shopping complex Thanksgiving Point,

hatched decades ago by WordPerfect founder Alan Ashton, has become a bustling hub for Utah Valley founders, not far from the northern stretch of Utah County housing dozens of companies, including genealogy website Ancestry.com.

STARTUP NEIGHBORHOODS

; When Washington, D.C., native

Jeremy Andrus— the former CEO of headphone maker Skullcandy— acquired Traeger Grills in 2014, he relocated the now

$350 million company from Portland, Oregon, to Salt Lake City to access more experienced talent. “I knew I could hire great people here,” Andrus says.

; Entrepreneur couple and BYU

grads Vanessa and

Nate Quigley were living in Florida when they decided to move back to their old college town to launch their digital photobook company, Chatbooks. “We were having a hard time finding people in Florida to help develop and design this app,” says Vanessa. “I never thought I would relocate to Utah, but we had ties to the entrepreneurial community here.”