Utah is the number-one state in which to start a business, according to Thumbtack.com. With help from The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, about 7,800 people were surveyed in small businesses across the country — most of which had fewer than 10 employees. Utah earned eight As and three Bs out of the 11 indicators, while New York state scored mostly Ds and California largely Fs.
One notable aspect of Utah’s A+ ranking is its high grade in training and networking programs — something for which the U’s Pierre Lassonde Entrepreneur Center takes some credit. The center acts as a link between research breakthroughs and businesses and brings students and faculty with different expertise together to form business plans and commercialize their innovations.
“Does it play the biggest role in that ranking? Probably not,” said Thad Kelling, manager of marketing and public relations at the Lassonde Center. “Does it play a role? Certainly, and a very direct role by training the next generation of entrepreneurs through a whole variety of student programs.”
Many intriguing startups have been born at the U with the help of the Lassonde Center, including Navillum Nanotechnologies, which has found a more efficient and inexpensive way to produce nano crystals used in television and lighting, and LiveWire, which has produced a device that can detect faulty wiring in a device while power is running through it. Startup company Vaporsens is developing a device that can sniff out illegal substances like a bloodhound, and Xandem Synergistic Sensing has developed a security system that uses radio waves to detect intruders.
“People care about innovation here,” said Joey Wilson, founder of Xandem. “There’s a culture here that’s starting to develop where people want to see new startups happening. The University of Utah and BYU and Utah State — our major universities here — they do care about making things happen with technology, and the state of Utah cares.”
Another indicator of the growing business-starting fervor is the increasing popularity of the Utah Entrepreneur Challenge. Josh Hadley, co-chairman of the Utah Entrepreneur Series at the Lassonde Center, said submissions for the techTITANS portion of the challenge received a 33 percent increase, and the Opportunity Quest portion saw a 70 percent increase.
Though other universities have entrepreneur centers, many of them look at the U as a model.
“Oftentimes, a lot of different universities will come here to the University of Utah to see how we run the Lassonde Entrepreneur Center so they can start something similar at their university, so it is very unique to the University of Utah and fairly unique nationwide,” Hadley said.
Another factor contributing to Utah’s ranking is the ease of hiring new employees. Though it’s not what Utah is known for, the workforce is educated and has more international experience.
“I don’t think you look at Utah and say, ‘Wow, there’s a lot of smart people,’ because we don’t have the name that Stanford or MIT or these big universities have,” Wilson said. “But I do think that there is world-class talent here in Utah.”
Wilson had one complaint about investor tendencies in Utah.
“I don’t think there’s enough people that are playing the game right now that really are willing to take risks,” Wilson said. “There’s a lot of really conservative investment going on, even in the startup world, and so what that does is, I think, it makes people overthink things, it makes a lot of our investors formulaic.”