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Comment by tntn | Hacker News Reader

Right on. "Silicon Slopes" is surprisingly effective attempt by Utah County people to get investors to dump money there.

Quick summary of the companies in "Silicon Slopes": Qualtrics (surveys), Domo (vapor), Adobe, Micron (fab only, but claim to "silicon" in the name), Nu Skin (MLM cosmetics/diet supplements) , doterra (essential oil MLM), NatureSunshine (MLM).

Great place to be. Lots of innovation in MLMs.

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I hate MLMs as much as the next guy, but "Silicon Slopes" does have some legitimate tech companies as well: Podium, Canopy Tax, MX, InsideSales, Pluralsight, Lucid, HireVue, Entrata, Workfront, Ancestry, Jolt, Teem to name a few.

I know. I also listed some (Qualtrics, Adobe). However, I have no way of telling if some of the companies on your list are any more legitimate than Domo, which has for years been heralded as a legitimate tech company in the area.

To clarify (since not all of the companies you listed are in Utah Valley), my criticism was directed specifically at Utah County, not the whole state (i.e. not Salt Lake City or Davis county).

I don't know why people never mention https://instructure.com for Utah startups but I work for them and they seem great!

s/seem/are/ imnsho . best place i've worked at in 25+ years :)

strong engineering culture. great products. really, really smart people. management that understands the value of management (and what can be detrimental of management).

Again to clarify, I didn't mention them because they are based in Salt Lake. There are lots of great places in Salt Lake, but the discussion above was focused on Utah County (Provo, Orem, Lehi, etc.)

To clarify, you are the only person who has mentioned this split between Utah County and Salt Lake City. You've clearly got a chip on your shoulder, and I feel it is detracting from a productive conversation.

There is a split between Utah County and Salt Lake City. Though according to a friend (I moved away a decade ago) the "Silicon Slopes" locally refers mostly to the area in between (centered around north Lehi where Adobe's building is). However there's always https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Slopes -- while the region spans SLC and Provo, the claim by 'tntn that the marketing purpose of "Silicon Slopes" was largely to concentrate on the more rural areas in between (i.e. most of Utah County) doesn't seem that unreasonable.

To clarify, I started this trend of listing companies, and failed to recognize that apparently "Silicon Slopes" refers to larger region than Utah County. Before looking into it more, I would have said that it was only Utah County, since there are massive billboards on I-15 southbound around Draper that say "you are now entering silicon slopes" and the phrase was coined by the founder of Domo.

My mistake. Since the edit window on my original post closed, I tried to explain in subsequent comments what I had in my head when making that first list so that people would realize they don't need to explain to me that all of Utah is not like MLMs.

Lehi is much closer to Salt Lake City than San Francisco is to Palo Alto (or, for that matter, Cupertino is to Palo Alto). In fact, you can get from Lehi to Salt Lake City faster than you can get from San Jose to Palo Alto. If you're looking to subdivide regions by a 20 minute drive on the freeway and call one bad and the other good it's going to be a difficult argument to make.

Instructure has an office in pleasant grove now too (but you are right, they are HQ in SLC)

Honestly differentiating between Salt Lake City and Utah County is splitting hairs and pointless. The vast majority of people in Utah live on a 40 minute stretch off of I-15, and the "Silicon Slopes" brand is centered right in the middle of it. Basically any tech company in Utah in that stretch from SLC to Provo is considered "Silicon Slopes".

I don't work there, but Instructure is the epitome of an all around great company.

They had a billion dollar IPO in a few short years, they hire good engineering talent, and they pay their people well and with great benefits.

It takes more than not being an MLM to be a legitimate company. Many you named overspend, spread massive hype, and acquired funding with a story that doesn't match their product and its quality. All traits they share with Domo. As a Utah native I hope we can all start thinking a bit more critically about the companies we work for. Domo's collapse will be felt.

> Many you named overspend, spread massive hype, and acquired funding with a story that doesn't match their product and its quality.

Sounds a lot like SV to me?

The history is important. Silicon Valley has a history of creating undeniably valuable innovations and legitimate companies dating back 60+ years: HP, Shockley, SRI, Fairchild, Intel, Cisco, Apple, etc. This is the backdrop for Silicon Valley.

In contrast, Utah Valley has a history of MLMs. This is the backdrop for Silicon Slopes.

What about Qualtrics (profitable) MX (profitable) Omniture (IPO, sold for $1.8B), and if we're digging as far back as Fairchild Utah has Novell, Wordperfect, etc.

I left Utah to come to Silicon Valley, and definitely hate MLMs more than you, but to claim that Utah is only MLMs is just silly.

> but to claim that Utah is only MLMs is just silly.

I agree. That's why I have not made that claim.

Adobe? It’s not a startup, and it wasn’t headquartered in Utah, they were in Mountain View, CA when I met with Warnock.

It’s like having Oregon claim EBay because a tiny fraction of the company is in Portland.

It doesn't have to be headquartered there, nor a startup to be relevant to the tech scene. Its not like its a small office building or anything, its a giant, state of the art campus that employs thousands and they've already committed to expanding further.

Are we going to say Amazon isn't going to be hugely influential in the tech scene of wherever they choose their HQ2 to be, simply because they aren't a startup and are based in Seattle?

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