Drive 40 minutes south of Salt Lake City, and you’ll eventually land in Provo, Utah, the state’s third largest city with a population of just over 120,000.  With the Wasatch mountains covering the eastern side of the city and Utah Lake sitting just to the west, Provo’s natural setting and proximity to top notch skiing make it a dream destination for lovers of the outdoors.  However, having spent the past few months traveling weekly to Provo for work, I came to realize the town is home to much more than mountains, missionaries, and an odd condiment called fry sauce.  It’s also the setting of rapidly growing tech startup and entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Numerous high tech businesses such as Adobe, Ebay, and Microsoft found the triple threat of low unemployment, an improving economy, and relatively cheap cost of living too good to pass up.  They have all set up offices in the Utah Valley over the past few years.  Large companies with global call centers or aspirations for international expansion have been quick to leverage the large number of multilingual missionaries belonging to the omnipresent LDS community in Utah.  The emergence of a strong business environment can be found on a single street in North Provo that houses three billion-dollar companies (Ancestry.com, Vivint, and Qualtrics) all within 1,000 yards of each other.  Moreover, just last year Google selected Provo as its third location to receive the highly sought after Google Fiber, a major benefit to companies both large and small seeking ultra-fast internet speeds.

The secret of Provo and its entrepreneurial hub has been difficult to keep as more and more media outlets have covered the rapid growth of Provo and the Utah Valley, officially naming the region “Silicon Slopes” for its growing population of high tech companies and proximity to skiing meccas like Park City and Sundance. In 2013, Forbes rated Provo the No. 2 city on its list of Best Places for Business and Careers.  Additionally, Fortune magazine recently ran a cover story on Utah’s rockstar business owner Josh James and his business intelligence company Domo that landed a cool $125 million in funding last year.  James, a Mormon who served his two year mission trip in Tokyo attended BYU before co-founding web analytics company Omniture which went public with James as its CEO at 33 and then was acquired by Adobe three years later to the tune of $1.8 billion. 

James is a part of a lengthy list of former BYU Cougars that are helping to shape the tech scene in Utah.  The prevalent Mormon community helps to create a heavily shared town and gown atmosphere in Provo that has delivered a noticeable impact on the blossoming startup community.  According to an annual state report, approximately 80% of students at BYU are multilingual, supporting a more nimble and proficient workforce required by many young tech focused companies. The highly regarded Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at BYU also helps to fuel the startup scene in Provo.  Ranked as the #4 Undergraduate programs for entrepreneurship by Business Insider, the center features a 100% rate of faculty who are entrepreneurs and doles out over $175,000 annually for business plan competitions.  “Throughout the school year the center is constantly holding competitions for ideas and startups at all stages of the lean lifecycle” says 2nd year entrepreneurship student Blake Hampson. "The events encourage participation from all over campus and are probably some of the best advertised and best attended of any BYU events."

Growing startups like Money Desktop, Tute Genomics, and IActionable show the broad swath of industries being impacted by companies getting their start in the Utah Valley area.   In order to foster the growth of the various early stage ventures that call Provo home, startup accelerators such as Camp 4, a collaborative co-working space offering discounted office space to early stage ventures, have been popping up in recent years. Born out of a partnership between Innovative Network, Provo City Mayor’s office and BoomStartup, a competitive five year old startup, Camp 4 serves as an outstanding example of the benefits of blending government support, established academic involvement, and a talented community.  As corny as it may be, “Silicon Slopes” seems like an apt name for this beautiful town with big aspirations.  

Nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains sits Boulder, Colorado.  Ranked highly for healthy residents, happy people, and hippy lovers, Boulder can add haven for startups to its many illustrious titles.  Just yesterday, The Kauffman Foundation ranked Boulder No. 1 on its list for Top 10 Metro Areas for High-Tech Startup Density. (Doubtful reader: “But Will, I really question the validity of this argument, what even is the Kauffman Foundation? “ A. Chill out, I ask the questions around here, B. go be a member of the digital age and Google it, and C.  Bloomberg Businessweek also ranked Boulder at the top of its list for best startup cities, so there)  Whether it’s the awesome national research labs or the high percentage of residents working in tech, Boulder and its relatively small population of less than 100,000 (11th biggest city in Colorado) would be right to argue that bigger is not always better.

Boulder didn’t become a destination for tech startups overnight.  In the Mid-1990s, Boulder’s software industry was growing steadily and bringing in talented employees from all over the country.  Being home to prestigious research labs like the National Institute of Standards & Technology didn’t hurt either when it came to drawing in well educated talent.  As more and more of these biotech, telecom, and data storage employees began to branch out and begin their own businesses, a “bottom-up” revolution (as explained by Bloomberg writer Virek Wadhwa) eventually took hold.  Despite the lack of major city or state investments often seen in other cities, Boulder's rise as a startup destination quickly gained steam and never looked back. The city now boasts the highest concentration of software engineers per capita in the entire nation.  Venture capitalists, startup mentors, and massive companies like Google, Microsoft, and Oracle are flocking to this town just 25 miles outside of Denver to manage, support, or acquire groundbreaking startups on a long list that are calling Boulder home. According to the NY Times, Venture Capitalists from Silcon Valley to Manhattan invested nearly $2 billion in 275 Colorado startups from 2007 to 2009.

TechStars, arguably the best startup accelerator around, got its start in Boulder back in 2006 and still churns out exciting new companies that decide to remain in Boulder.  TechStars Founder David Cohen makes a convincing argument for Boulder as the ideal setting for startups, citing a host of resources and events that support entrepreneurs.  Perhaps Cohen’s most convincing argument though is that Boulder easily draws in some of the best and brightest people in the tech world because it is such a fun place to live (Think about the one or two people you know who have lived in or currently live in Boulder and the great reviews they give it).  Not many towns can offer the enjoyment of hitting the slopes or hiking great trails in between grueling meetings over user experience or scalability issues.  All in all, founders looking to get in on a tech scene that prides itself in sharing, collaborating, and helping each other out don’t have to look very hard when they’re in Boulder.

Andy Reid isn't the only big thing to hit to Kansas City recently.  Selected from over 1,000 applicants, Kansas City, Missouri became the first official google fiber community back in September 2012 (Kansas City, Kansas was subsequently added a few weeks later).  For further explanation behind Google Fiber & Kansas city, check out this brief WSJ Video.  The presence of an all-fiber internet network delivering super high speed connection to the community has been a direct catalyst driving the emergence of Kansas City's budding startup community (along with comparatively low levels of rent of costs of living).  

Intended or not, the presence of Google fiber has lead some residents to open their doors to those looking utilize such crazy fast internet speeds to get their companies off the group.  "Home for Hackers" (not a habitat for humanity for down on their luck programmers) is a program where startup founders can live rent free in the fiber-wired houses as they develop their businesses and hopefully move on to bigger locations in downtown Kansas City.

Startups looking to call Kansas City their home need to look no further than the Kansas City Startup Village.  KCSV provides a community for startup founders to work side by side with other entrepreneurs and share resources and space in a collaborative and welcoming environment. Click here for a list of startups currently in KCSV.  Tyler Van Winkle, Director of Product Development at KCSV's hometown hero Leap2, summarizes the benefit of KCSV nicely: 

While Kansas City does provide a less cutthroat and competitive community for startups to develop, the city is not without challenges to its many entrepreneurs.  The area lacks the kind of VC capital and local talent seen in San Francisco or New York; consequently, many startups emerged as spin offs of large, established institutions (Sprint, Marion Laboratories, MRI Global).  It will be interesting to see if a strong sense of community support along with wicked fast internet speeds will allow Kansas City to emerge as the proud and hotly debated owner of the title "Silicon Prarie".  

Share your thoughts on Kansas City's startup culture in the comments section below.