Adventures in Entrepreneurship with Jeremy Hanks

Utah entrepreneurs and Utah investors: The Main Event

Fact: Wherever you find entrepreneurs, you will also find investors—angel investors, venture capitalists, private equity, etc. This is especially true in regions like Utah where there is a lot of entrepreneurial activity and an economy–and a Governor–focused on technology companies. One of the interesting dynamics that I like to always better understand is how the sometimes love/hate relationship between entrepreneurs and investors can be different from region to region. Most people would agree that the Holy Grail of this dynamic between entrepreneurs and investors exists in the Silicon Valley region of California. The sheer quantity and quality of companies started there and of investors located there give it this undisputed designation.

One only has to go there and drive down any freeway and you will see from the window of your car the who’s who of technology companies and those companies with legendary status in entrepreneurial circles (such as HP, Google, Cisco, eBay, Oracle, Adobe, Yahoo, Quicken)

One also only has to go there and head to Sand Hill Road to find the highest concentration of investors and venture capitalists on Planet Earth.

Anyway, this past Sunday one of Utah’s early stage angel investors and an Associate Professor in Business at Brigham Young University (my alma mater), John Richards, posted an article called
Utah entrepreneurs face venture hurdle in the Salt Lake based paper the Deseret News. The Utah blogosphere (Ryan Money, Chris Knudsen) is abuzz with reaction to this article, and I’m sure more discussion is coming. (this is not a new issue here in Utah, see one of Doba’s advisors take on it a year and a half ago with Poison in the Well and then some local investors–including John’s–response with The Antidote)

My main thought related to John’s most recent article in the Deseret News: As I’ve posted about before, I like the idea of face to face meetings. And I can tell you that what I’m about to say comes from personal experience of doing just exactly this for Doba. For around $250 on the high end, and after an hour and 45 minute flight from Salt Lake to San Jose, and after a 30 minute drive to Sand Hill Road, if I’m a Utah Entrepreneur with a ‘hot deal’, I can get Silicon Valley standard terms too. And if I think of the companies that come to mind if you asked me who the most recent top 10 technology companies and entrepreneur success stories in Utah are, every single one of them did just exactly that too.

So my question to John is this: IMHO, your article came across as one that can alienate the dynamic between entrepreneurs and early stage investors in Utah. As someone that is in a position to help make the venture hurdle better for entrepreneurs AND for investors, why publish something that comes across very much as Utah’s dynamic just is what it is? Get used to it budding entrepreneur. It’s just supply and demand.

Utah will be well served when entrepreneurs and investors follow the advice given by another one of Doba’s advisory board members, Guy Kawasaki, when he talked a while back about How to Kick Silicon Valley’s Butt.

If we don’t figure out how to kick their butt, or if any region doesn’t for that matter, Silicon Valley is a plane ride away waiting to continue kicking ours.

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5 Comments; Filed under Entrepreneurship, Investors, Utah

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