Startup weekend NEXT program comes to Utah

Now is the time to learn proven techniques to grow your business. Startup Weekend NEXT is an intensive, in-person, mentor-driven course meant to assist startups in the beginning stages of development.

The Utah Science Technology and Research initiative (USTAR) along with Startup Ogden is pleased to partner with Startup Weekend to bring this exciting program to Davis County. Startup Weekend NEXT lean startup training program is a five-week program focused on customer discovery methodology developed by Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Steve Blank.

Startup Weekend NEXT will be held each Wednesday evening starting March 13 through April 10, at the Northfront Business Resource Center at the Davis Applied Technology College in Kaysville, UT. The cost is $250 a person with team discounts available. The registration fee also includes dinner and registration is capped at 10 companies. Utah Policy

Three Project Wins, More than 800 New Jobs

Last week EDCUtah, in partnership with the Governor's Office of Economic Development, announced three major project wins that will add 819 new jobs – many of them high-tech – to Utah's economy.

Two of the projects involve homegrown Utah companies: Instructure and Orbit Irrigation Products, Inc. The third project involves The Boeing Company, headquartered in Chicago. Instructure will add 655 jobs to the state, while Orbit will add another 60 jobs. Meanwhile, Boeing will add 104 jobs to its Utah manufacturing operations.

Instructure: EDCUtah President & CEO Jeff Edwards says Instructure plans to expand in the Old Mill Corporate Center at 6330 South and 3000 East, in Cottonwood Heights. The company, which produces learning management software, currently employs 200 Utahns within its software design, R & D, operations, software support and sales operations. This expansion will add 655 more jobs to the state and the company will invest $2.1 million in its new 150,000 square-foot location.

Orbit: Meanwhile, Orbit's decision to build a new manufacturing facility in North Salt Lake will be a boon to Davis County economic development. The facility will employ 60 new people and manufacture pipe, connectors and sprinklers for irrigation systems. The company will make a $37 million capital investment over 15 years.

Boeing: As for Boeing, the company manufactures its 787-8 and -9 Dreamliner vertical fins at its factory near Salt Lake City International Airport and last March announced it would assemble horizontal stabilizers for the 787-9 in Utah as well. Boeing employs 575 Utahns and the new agreement creates the path to grow by another 104 employees immediately. Total head count would be about 679 employees. Utah Pulse

Entrepreneurs Buy Powder Mountain to Set Up Startup Community

A conference operator targeting Silicon Valley entrepreneurs said Monday that it has acquired Powder
Mountain, the Eden, Utah-based ski resort, as the new headquarters for its entrepreneurial efforts. The
Summit Series, which runs a series of events aimed at Silicon Valley technology entrepreneurs, said it has
acquired Powder Mountain as the "home base" for the organization, which is headed by Elliott Bisnow.
Financial details of the buy were not announced, however, reports placed the price at around $40M.
Powder Mountain is about 44 miles north of the Salt Lake International Airport, just northeast of Ogden.
The Summit invests in companies, and lists such companies as Warby Parker, Zaarly, Uber, ecomom,
Gobbler, SCribd, and others as portfolio companies. TechRockies

UTOPIA Completes Network in First City

UTOPIA, the fiber-optic broadband service built by 11 Utah cities, announced Friday it has completed the network in its first city. Trunk lines, which are the network’s backbone, have been built out in 100 percent of Centerville.

That means all of Centerville’s residents and businesses can subscribe to the high-speed Internet service, save for areas that need approval from home owners associations or private-property owners with multiple-dwelling units.

"Twenty-two percent of our single-family homes take advantage of UTOPIA’s lightning-fast speeds and significant savings, and we expect that number to increase to more than 40 percent," Centerville Mayor Ron Russell said in a statement.

UTOPIA (the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency) is a consortium of 11 municipalities, from Tremonton to Payson, that have joined to build the taxpayer-funded fiber-optic network. Customers connected to it can experience download and upload speeds up to 100 times faster than other Internet connections through providers such as Comcast or CenturyLink.


Nine percent of Centerville businesses subscribe to UTOPIA, according to the company.

The build out of Centerville was completed in part with federal stimulus money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. In all, $16 million from the federal government, along with $8 million in local bond proceeds, was used to help build the network in Centerville, Layton, Midvale, Murray, Orem and West Valley City.

As a result, those six cities will have 250 miles of new fiber lines connecting about 400 community sites, which include 161 public safety buildings, 39 schools, one library, 55 health-care facilities and 104 government buildings.

Although UTOPIA is making strides to add to its network, the consortium has been deep in financial problems since work began in 2002. The network has a negative net worth of $120 million and has had nine consecutive years of operating losses. Its member cities are obligated to use sales tax revenue to pay for 30-year bonds issued for the network. Salt Lake Tribune

Space technology in insulation markets cuts energy bills

NASA technology is taking the Northern Utah insulation market by storm, saving valuable energy in its wake.

Consider a metal building used as a youth basketball gym in Northern Utah. Although insulated to code, the facility was unusable in the months of July and August. Air conditioners couldn’t keep up with the heat.
In May, a thin, reflective material was installed in the building’s rafters. Even during the hottest summer on record, the building was continuously used.

The reflective material, called RadiaSource, acts as a reflective shield, keeping heat out in the summer and in during the winter. The same technology has been used for suits in the space program to prevent heat gain and loss in the extremes of outer space.

Although the technology has been around for a while, practical applications outside of space have developed only in the last couple of years, as manufacturers learned how to handle the problem of oxidation.

The Department of Energy concluded during a roof study that this technology provides the best opportunity for return on investment when compared with cool-color roofs, ventilation or mass insulation. Standard Examiner

Key to economic success: Providing space for existing businesses to expand

It may be the land and business that is already here that shapes the economic growth of the Top of Utah, not what new industry is yet to come.

While Weber County officials are looking to develop an agritourism ordinance directed at diversifying a farm’s income through broadening its offerings and adding value to its products, Davis County economic gurus are marshaling resources to preserve strategically located land banks that can be used to provide space to existing businesses needing to expand.

Weber and Davis county economic officials share the same belief that it is government’s role to facilitate commercial growth, not pay for it.

“Davis (County) is looking to expand our manufacturing, distribution, Hill Air Force Base support businesses and services, as well as our information technology and communications,” says Kent Sulser, county director of Community and Economic Development.

“We are seeking growth in various clusters of advanced composites, aerospace, manufacturing, digital media, financial services, sports and outdoor products. Standard Examiner

Tax incentives awarded for high tech employment growth

Three high tech companies — Hexcel Corp., L-3 Communications and Futura Industries — are either considering or preparing to launch major expansions of their Utah operations that combined could see those corporations investing nearly $700 million in the coming decade and creating more than 1,200 jobs.
 

Hexcel Corp. is contemplating investing as much as $650 million in its West Valley City operations over the next 10 years. If that investment is completed in its entirety, it could result in more than 600 new jobs, which would double the number of its Utah employees. At a meeting Thursday of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) board, Hexcel official Brett Schneider signaled that his company was accepting a $7.7 million tax incentive from the state, which GOED awarded based on the company hiring more than 600 employees over a 10-year period in conjunction with a projected $650 million expansion.

L-3 Communications, which already employs some 4,000 Utahns at its Communications Systems West division in Salt Lake City, expects to invest $5.6 million to $6.1 million in an expansion program that will begin next year and result in the hiring of 500 employees over the next decade. On Thursday the GOED board approved a $5.5 million tax incentive package for L-3. 

Futura Industries, a Clearfield-based company that turns raw aluminium into extruded parts for a variety of industries, said it is preparing early next year to launch a two-phase $23 million expansion of its aluminium production lines. The GOED board on Thursday approved a tax credit of $1.7 million for Futura over the eight-year life of the project. Salt Lake Tribune

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Utah offers incentives to lure hundreds of new jobs

The state of Utah on Thursday approved an incentive of as much as $3.2 million for Lifetime Products Inc., which plans to add 282 jobs in Davis County in the coming years. The company, which already has 1,700 employees in Clearfield, accepted the state’s incentive offer immediately after it was approved by the Governor’s Office of Economic Development Board, which reviews incentive applications and is made up of business people and community leaders. State officials said the average wage of the new jobs is about $41,800 annually, including benefits. The company anticipates adding about 40 people a year over the next two decades.

The economic development board also improved an incentive of as much as $2.2 million for SAIC, a Fortune 500 technology company that also already has a presence in Utah and has plans to expand. As with Lifetime, SAIC company officials said they accept the state’s incentive offer. The company said it plans to add nearly 300 new full-time technology positions over the next 10 years and make a $10 million capital investment in an expansion in Salt Lake, Davis or Utah county. Average wage for the new jobs at SAIC is about $52,000 annually, including benefits, state officials said. Salt Lake Tribune

A third incentive of as much as $522,000 was approved for The Home Depot, which said it plans to open a customer service center in Ogden to handle calls. The company accepted Utah’s incentive offer, payable over 10 years in the form of a tax credit. A spokeswoman said a facility in Ogden will handle inbound customer-service calls and employ nearly 700 people, 600 of which are expected to be hired by fall of next year. Hiring for those positions will begin in August 2012. Only 181 jobs out of the nearly 700 being added by The Home Depot meet the income threshold set by the state for companies receiving incentive money. The incentive money is based on those 181 positions, which average about $41,000 annually, including benefits, the state said.

Tech company opens Ogden office

UtopiaCompression Corp., formed in Los Angeles in 2002, has opened an office inside Ogden's Business Information Center at 2036 Lincoln Ave. The company will initially employ three to five workers in Ogden and  is expected to grow to about 40 by 2016.