11 Oct 2007, Posted by Matthew Reinbold in Tech Clusters,UT, 0 Comments
Silicon Valley vs(?) Wasatch Front, Part 2
Today I attended the Utah Tech Spotlight event on Jeremy Hanks and his company, Doba. He had a number of insightful things to say. However, the question that caused me to really sit up and starting jotting notes on the laptop was asked by Steve Spencer from Twelve Horses. It went something like (I’m paraphrasing):
Having done technology business in both California and Utah what are the differences?
A similar question was asked of Josh Coates, CEO and founder of Utah’s Berkley Data Systems – the people behind Mozy, the dead simple computer backup solution that sold to EMC for a rumored $76 million. Both Wasatch Front success stories reiterated the same thing: that maybe the cultural work/life pendulum has swung a bit too far toward the ‘life’ part. Jeremy, however, intriguingly branched off into unique territory (at least to me): Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as applied to workplace performance in the book Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow by Chip Conley. It is a nuanced and interesting argument that I want to dwell on a bit more before I feel comfortable commenting on.
The argument of Jeremy’s that has my gears really churning, however, is the notion that it is useless for Utah to try and compete with a place like California in certain sectors because they’re so much bigger. He explained that when its 40 million (CA) to 3 million (UT) they’re naturally going to be better because they are drawing talent from a much larger pool. For example, a firm looking for copyright expertise may pay 3x as much for a CA firm but get 10x better return because of an increased level of sophistication and ability. The hour and a half flights west start making a lot of sense with those numbers. (Mozy’s Josh Coates overcame this area’s talent crunch with an event designed to snipe find and recruit the best coders in the state: the ‘Programming Deathmatch‘.)
This reality should give anyone that is seeking to establish an institution in their backyards pause. For example, on October 22nd Jason Alba and I will be holding the inaugural Blogging for Business Conference. Its the first step toward a flagship event through which sustainable expertise can propogate. There are cultural aspects in Utah – young, technology savvy populace, large number of bilingual speakers, the repeated emphasis community – that point to not just a possible national but worldwide leadership in social media. That is an extremely long-term and lofty goal. But, we need to tread carefully and make sure that our efforts are toward making something truly unique and valuable. As Jeremy correctly points out (and stated elsewhere) there’s no sense in badly replicating here what is only a in-flight movie away.