On Tuesday, we reported that ��was shutting down after the autonomous vehicle startup it would be laying off its 90 employees later this week, as by the San Francisco Chronicle.

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Now it appears that the company’s assets have been purchased by Apple for an undisclosed sum, according to and . It’s not new news that Apple was interested in the company, as that had been reported on previously. But it was unclear yesterday what was going on with that deal considering Drive.ai was seemingly planning to shut down.

According to , Apple “has hired dozens of Drive.ai engineers” as part of the acquisition.

Founded in 2015 by a group from Stanford’s AI lab, Drive.ai had made a name for itself in the self-driving vehicle space with its AI-powered software.

The company’s most recent round, a capital injection from Singapore-based ridesharing giant in September 2017, the company’s international efforts. Prior to that round the company picked up a led by . Previous investors in the company also include , , and , among The Mountain View-based company had raised a known over its lifetime and was valued at $200 million in 2017, according to the Chronicle.

Last July, Drive.ai had launched its first vehicles in Frisco, Texas, near Dallas.

Illustration: .

Disclosure: Mary Ann Azevedo’s husband works for Apple in the Austin office.

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Today Lehi, Utah-based an enterprise banking-focused data analytics platform, has scored $100 million from. Other participants in the round include , , and others.

Founded in 2010, MX on providing banks with personal financial management software.

“At the beginning, a lot of banks and credit unions weren’t…thinking about data yet,” said MX CEO in an interview. “They wanted to make their online banking and mobile experiences better, and to provide basic tools to their users to help them understand and manage their money.”

So the company went to market with that personal finance management product, with a larger data-centric thesis in mind. Since then, though, MX has added a host of data-based services to its platform. The company aims to add context to what Caldwell called “strings” of unreadable, unrefined transaction data to help banks understand who their customers are and their transaction behaviors.

“People get incredible levels of service from Amazon, incredible recommendations…from Netflix. Those types of companies are so data driven…so that they can help understand what you might do and be ready to serve you according to what you need, not just the products that they want to push towards you,” Caldwell explained.

MX has raised a known total of , and the company is planning on using the recent tranche of capital to double down on sales and marketing, adding to its customer base that includes 2,000 enterprises.

MX last raised more than four years ago in , and Caldwell said that laying a solid foundation for growth was top of mind for the Utah-based company over the past few years.

“We have four conference tables with incredibly thick, concrete bases,” Caldwell expressed. “Part of the reason [for that is to] remind everybody that we’re building on something really solid–we’re not intending to build a quick wooden hut on a beach. This is 300-foot-deep pylons drilled straight through rock to support a 1,000 story building. I mean, our intent is to build something massive and large.”

Caldwell told Crunchbase News the company has been cash flow positive and profitable for about two years, though he declined to provide specific metrics about revenue or valuation.

The company’s focus on building a solid foundation based on operational efficiency isn’t surprising when you take into account the CEO’s influences. Utah has a history of being home to huge SaaS companies that eschewed venture funding altogether. And while the narrative around venture funding and paths to growth may be shifting in Utah as more Silicon Valley investors flock to the state, the bootstrapping mentality still serves at the core of many Utah-based companies.

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While there’s no way of knowing how exactly Slack will perform on the market, it’s expected to do quite well. Per the company’s S-1, Slack has a ton of cash on-hand. So much, in fact, Alex Wilhelm reported that “it will never, ever run out of money unless it loses focus and crashes itself into the side of a mountain.”

Here are other details from Crunchbase News’s last dive into Slack’s S-1 filing:

• Slack Q1 Revenue: $134.8 million
• Slack Q1 Calculated Billings: $149.6 million
• Slack Q1 year-over-year (YoY) revenue growth: 66.6 percent
• Slack sequential-quarterly revenue growth: 10.7 percent
• Slack Q1 net loss: $31.9 million
• Slack year-ago net loss: $24.9 million
• Slack Q1 net margin: -25 percent
• Slack Q1 free cash flow (FCF): -$34.2 million
• Slack year-ago FCF: -$15.0 million

Founded in 2009, the popular business management and communication software has raised a known total of nearly $1.4 billion. At the company’s most recent funding event, a $427 million Series H led by and , the company was valued at over $7 billion, post-money. Slack is backed by a number of high profile Silicon Valley-based investors including and , which made early bets on the company. (previously known as Google Ventures), , , , and, of course, , also bought in.

As mentioned before, this is an uncommon way to enter the public markets. The traditional IPO process helps you fundraise, with the extra support of a bank to make sure when you start trading you don’t totally tank. Last January, an IPO expert told Crunchbase News that a direct listing could be employed for a variety of reasons: growth, revenue size, and the general climate of an industry. He also said that companies that pursue this method might not be “strong enough” to go through the traditional process. Wilhelm bets that Slack’s direct listing to avoid further dilution (see the long list of investors in the paragraph prior), particularly given that the company doesn’t need to fundraise.

That said, another company that opted for a direct listing in the past is music streaming service Spotify. Some theorized it did so because it lacked strong growth to go the traditional route. However, Spotify’s solid performance on the market since direct listing tests that theory.

More when Slack begins trading.

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Security training company picked up funding to become a fresh unicorn. And CrowdStrike, a leading player in the endpoint security space, officially hit the public markets at a $6.6 billion valuation that it quickly outstripped. The company raised $612 million in its debut.

This is just the latest news in the cybersecurity startup industry, which has experienced significant activity over the past couple of years.

Recent History

Last May, endpoint security company went public at a $1.3 billion valuation, raising $152 million and popping 30 percent in its debut. Identity management company,, also made an exit, being acquired by Cisco last August for $2.35 billion. Duo’s main competitor, Okta, made its splash in the public domain when it went public in 2017.

There are a few reasons cyber is hot right now. First of all, data breaches and cyber attacks have been top of mind. From and to , organizations have struggled to keep sensitive data protected.

“It’s evident that the B2B security industry is experiencing a renaissance. While the market is stronger than ever, there is a massive market cap shift from legacy security vendors like Splunk, McAfee, Symantec, and Check Point… to the new breed of leaders,” General Partner at �� told Crunchbase News in an email.

And that’s because, he wrote, many of those previous leaders were founded before the massive data influx that started in 2005.

“Keep in mind, 90 percent of the data ever generated was created in the last two years,” Miller expressed. Couple that with the fact that enterprises have broadened the scope of their services with cloud, mobile, and APIs, malicious activity has increased both in the private and public sector, and data requirements have grown exponentially, added Miller, those legacy players are ”falling behind.”

And where legacy players fall behind, startups rush ahead.

New Tech, Fresh Funding

It’s clear that investors are interested in new tech in the cybersecurity industry, and corporate investors are betting on new innovation as well. In April, Crunchbase News’s Natasha Mascarenhas wrote about Okta’s new $50 million venture fund, which it will use to invest in early stage security companies. The company told Mascarenhas that the company recognizes the value AI and other advancements can add to its own platform.

That understanding by corporate entities and investors alike has led to a flurry of funding rounds in the space. Take a look at some of the companies that have banked funding since the beginning of 2019. 1

According to Miller, next-gen players are addressing the changing nature of attacks with AI and other predictive and automated technology. And they’re doing it across security categories including firewall security, endpoint security, identity management, and security information and event management. Just last week, Crunchbase News spoke to SentinelOne, an enterprise security platform using machine learning technology that can detect threats and mitigate them.

What’s interesting about KnowBe4, in particular, is that it’s addressing an issue that founders like Exabeam‘s have told Crunchbase News is a billion dollar issue: humans. Its enterprise service trains and analyzes employee responses to phishing attacks. The company is going after a category of security that can cost companies a chunk of money and that’s difficult to address.

While the cybersecurity industry may not be as outwardly interesting as scooters or food delivery, it’s deservedly gaining a lot of recent traction. With legacy players trying to catch up to the changing nature of security and B2B SaaS stocks peaking investors’ attention, it’s the perfect storm for founders with innovative ideas and new tech to back them up. Miller agrees.

“It’s an exciting time to be an investor in the space, and I hope many others follow suit.”

Illustration Credit: Li-Anne Dias

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The company, founded by , launched a year ago. Mohan was introduced to the construction industry through his family business in the UAE after leaving his position with a startup in San Francisco.

“I noticed us renting out equipment to other contractors who didn’t have equipment or who had projects on hand,” explained Mohan. “We also noticed that when we had to rent equipment from other contractors we were usually using a broker who was doing it as a side hustle while working in another company.”

The process lacked transparency for renters, as it was primarily facilitated through the broker’s personal network of contractors and equipment rental companies. Additionally, those companies were spending significant amounts of money renting the equipment out themselves.

Mohan saw an opportunity.

Through Tenderd, contractors can rent equipment, which ranges from asphalt paver machines to laser scanners, from companies that have available, idle equipment. Mohan said that the company’s customers are usually focused on earthworks, including solar plants, roads, and other equipment-heavy projects.

Currently, the company operates only in the UAE, across all seven emirates. However, Mohan said that the company is aiming to expand to other nearby regions in the near future.

Aside from that rental service, the company has also developed an analytics dashboard which it says allows companies to “increase overall equipment productivity” and “track and regulate emissions to run equipment more sustainably.” Mohan said that the company supplies all of its clients with a live stream dashboard through which they can monitor equipment based on performance and how long the machinery is idle. This, he said, helps them make more informed, transparent decisions. And Mohan envisions more applications for this software in the future.

“The next step of this project ties into our larger vision of creating more and more intelligence in every aspect of project management, eventually enabling autonomous equipment… and retrofitting [of] old equipment with technologies that would enable them to be more intelligent,” he said.

Mohan says that the company is looking forward to hiring more individuals to scale rapidly and to double down on value-added services, including in its analytics software and dashboard.

Beyond the fact that the company is claiming that this is the largest seed round for a MENA-based startup, the news is interesting for a different reason. On the other side of the world, the construction industry has been heating up, as our Mary Ann Azevedo has chronicled.

According to her research, companies in the U.S. construction tech sector banked nearly $1.2 billion last year. That $1.2 billion was a 55 percent increase on funding totals for the year prior, and it does not include for two giant rounds for California-based Katerra and View, which accounted for an additional $1.96 billion.

And construction companies here are working on everything ranging from prefab homes to building tools that help stakeholders in the building process communicate more effectively and manage projects more efficiently.

It’s clear that from renting machinery to project management, the construction industry has been ripe for disruption for years. And giving that construction is a global industry, it’s likely that innovation like this will continue.

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Today,, a SaaS company taking on enterprise endpoint security, announced that it has scored a $120 million Series D led by . Previous investors, including , , , and others also participated in the round.

SentinelOne, founded in 2013, has raised a known total of about . The company last raised a $70 million . SentinelOne CEO and co-founder told Crunchbase News in an interview that the company has been on a massive growth trajectory.

So what does SentinelOne bring to the table that other cybersecurity companies, particularly legacy companies, don’t?

“Having a highly advanced system that’s based in machine learning, that can not only detect anomalies, but also mitigate them in real time, independently, and autonomously–this is just stuff you really don’t get with almost any security solution out there,” Weingarten expressed.

Weingarten said that automation, particularly where it concerns the company’s ActiveEDR (endpoint detection and response) product, means that security teams can potentially refocus their efforts.

“It allows [companies] to really, in some cases, automate away the tier one analyst role and really focus on high-level investigation,” Weingarten said.

SentinelOne’s platform includes cloud and data center protection, and the company has also introduced products for endpoint security for IoT devices, which are being used more frequently.

“[There’s] a lot of emphasis on better securing the classic endpoint devices like laptops and desktop, and that’s obviously needed, but there’s this barrage of devices laying around dormant on the same corporate networks. And they’re, in a sense, another attack surface that no one’s really paying attention to,” Weingarten said.

He declined to release specific dollar metrics about ARR, but said the company grew more than 200 percent year over year, and that it’s working with three of the Fortune 10.

SentinelOne doesn’t just offer it’s software to enterprise security teams, it also partners with other security providers, called MSSPs, or managed security service providers, allowing them to build on top of the SentinelOne platform for their own services.

“When you partner with someone like SolarWinds, you’re serving [the market], but it’s SolarWinds that’s actually selling and carrying the solution,” Weingarten explained. “It’s just a very effective go-to-market that really enables us to scale pretty quickly.”

As for the funding, the company will continue to invest in sales and marketing, while doubling down on its product innovation.

“Given that we’ve been able to win about 70% of opportunities–and that’s against every vendor out there, legacy and next-gen alike–when you build on top of the matrix you obviously want to double down,” said Weingarten.

And while he believes that SentinelOne is doing a first-rate job at helping enterprises mitigate risks, he says there’s a lot of room to grow for all cyber companies, particularly where it concerns patching.

“Attackers are taking advantage of vulnerabilities in applications that are not getting patched on time,” he expressed.

While that’s not great, it does mean that the market potential in cybersecurity is huge and growing as the risks become more severe and the attackers, more intelligent. And where potential exists, funding follows.

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In our analysis of the Utah tech ecosystem last week, it became clear that tech pioneers have brought it into a new era. But beyond proving that Utah’s low cost-of-living, balanced lifestyle culture, and supportive community can produce profitable and fast-growing companies, they brought another big advantage into the fold: venture.

Legacy tech companies in Utah may have bootstrapped themselves for the early years, but the movement by Silicon Valley investors into Silicon Slopes has changed the landscape for their successors. Many individuals who grew up in those companies and graduated to start their own are finding their way in this more capital-heavy landscape.

Beyond The Headlines

With that, we looked beyond the companies that made waves last year, namely Pluralsight, Domo, and Qualtrics, to see which startups are riding the funding wave and speak to a few founders with great expectations for Utah.

is a Lehi-based company looking to disrupt the expense and subscription system of businesses by expanding the idea of the “corporate credit card.” It’s a pretty interesting platform, which our EIC Alex Wilhelm outlined here when the company raised a earlier this year. That capital infusion came just months after it picked up a . In 2018 alone, the company raised .

Divvy’s CEO told Crunchbase News that because of its product-market fit and the surge in early adoption, the company had a fundraising strategy before it raised its first institutional round. Murray said he bootstrapped the company before raising its seed round.

“If we were going to raise, it was going to be if we could skip a round of dilution,” Murray explained of his strategy. “Where a normal series A is in a dilution range that’s, say, 20 to 35 percent dilution, and you’re kind of just grateful to be invited to the dance at that point. We said, okay let’s go build a bench, and that bench just kind of built itself with inbound requests from dozens of venture capital firms.”

All in, the company has raised a known total of including debt. While Murray said many Utah founders “love the story of the sweat equity” and the delayed road to venture financing, that’s just not the case for startups in the Silicon Slopes these days.

“Week in and week out there are so many literal investors that have boots on the ground in Utah that are constantly trying to exploit and explore this market, figure out what’s here, and get in early, that I think that’s going to be the outlier instead of the norm. Now, the norm will be venture-backed businesses.”

, founder of seed stage SaaS company , echoed that sentiment. Prior to founding her own B2B SaaS company, Ibanez held leadership roles at and , two companies that have made names for themselves in the Utah tech scene and beyond. Ibanez is one of many entrepreneurs who found their footing working for Utah’s tech incumbents and aspired to eventually start their own companies.

“We both knew we were going to start our own B2B SaaS company someday,” said Ibanez of herself and her co-founder . “We wanted to learn the playbook from other greats in the area that have done it. We wanted to learn as much as we could, and frankly, just do it better when it was our turn.”

That strategy included taking advantage of the resources available to them, which were not readily available to their “grandfathers”– like venture capital, for instance, Ibanez said.

“Elkington and Ryan – those guys didn’t raise a ton early on. It took them 12 or 15 years,” Ibanez said, referring to of InsideSales and of . “This generation of entrepreneurs has these metrics in our head like the ‘triple, triple, double, double, double,’ to get to $100 million company and be valued at over a billion dollars.”

“I think our landscape is going to be completely different,” she continued. “I think we’re going to be chasing venture a little bit–a lot more than our ‘grandfathers’ did.”

And raise they have. Take a look at some of the startups that have banked early-stage funding since the start of 2018.

Of course, this activity in Utah has also opened up channels for discourse about what should become of the community in the future.

, CEO of , told Crunchbase News that companies’ ability to raise capital has obviously impacted the venture ecosystem in the state.

“It’s great for the ecosystem. It’s forced the people locally in Utah to step up their game as well,” he said. “Now they know that there are other people entering to invest in Utah companies too.”

Ibanez and Murray also said interest from outside investors has been a call-to-action for local investors to hop in early, especially as home-grown companies want Utah investors to be a part of their cap tables.

Another important point to consider is diversity. As a relatively young, but growing tech community, startups in the state may have the opportunity to bake the ideals of diversity and inclusion into their vision. According to Bolivia-born Ibanez, diversity is part of the ongoing conversation.

“I think the leaders in Utah are doing a good job of talking about it. But that’s just the first step. The second step is acting on it. And that’s where I think all of us can and should do better,” she said.

While Ibanez said major metropolitan areas like San Francisco and New York are more likely to be ethnically diverse, she pointed out that inclusion was incorporated into her company’s culture and values from the beginning.

“It’s harder to find a female leadership candidate, but we’re not going to close a position until we actually have a chance to interview at least one qualified female candidate or one qualified candidate of a diverse background,” said Ibanez.

Beyond that, Divvy’s Murray said he believes another aspect of Utah’s work culture may need shifting. Namely, the level of interest that Silicon Valley investors have had in Utah startups must be matched by the willingness to sacrifice work-life balance, an ideal which is ubiquitous among startups in the Bay Area and other hubs.

“Work-life balance is a healthy and necessary discussion to have, but I think there’s an unhealthy understanding of what that means to go build a winning, profitable, and massively scalable company,” Murray said.

He thinks that there is an unrealistic expectation in Utah that a massive company can be built on the back of a mere 40-hour work week. While he believes that concept is rooted in good, honest principles that emphasize family and that there is a scale between total balance and complete sacrifice, he thinks some change needs to happen.

“For Utah to not just constantly be on the cusp of the potential that everybody sees in Utah, I think there actually needs to be a cultural shift with larger groups of people embracing that the 40 hour work week is a bit of a fallacy. For us to really emulate some of the success of some of our peer markets, we have to embrace that,” he said.

But Murray has high hopes for the future of the Utah tech scene. He believes investments by universities and leaders in the tech world alike that emphasize computer science and engineering at all educational levels will have lasting effects.

“Three, five, ten years from now, I believe that Utah won’t just be known as an awesome tech hub with strong sales and marketing… but it will actually be known for the engineering talent. For true senior principal engineers.”

It’s that investment and belief that he said will make Utah not just one of the best secondary or tertiary markets in the U.S., but one of the most sought after tech hubs nationwide.

Illustration Credit:

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It’s going to cost Smith around an estimated $40 million to pay off that debt, and that’s just . Thousands and thousands of other students won’t have a multi-billionaire step up to the plate to take care of of a system which has people, particularly in the . In fact, debt from student loans has reached an all time high of over $1.5 trillion, according to the .

That’s why founded . After his wife graduated from law school with $300,000 in debt, the two felt lost doing research to find an effective way to pay it off. So, he dropped out of Stanford Business School just shortly after starting to found a consumer fintech company that aims to help people pay off their student debt more quickly.

Today the company announced that it has raised $5.5 million in a sizeable seed round led by . Other institutional investors include, , , and along with individual investors that include the former CEO of and board member, , and ’s Head of Growth, , and Head of Finance, , among others.

“The student loan industry in the US has been fundamentally unchanged for over 15 years at this point,” Bloch expressed in an interview with Crunchbase News, adding that people distrust giant lenders. “These [massive] companies literally make money by keeping people in debt where every dollar that somebody tries to pay back towards their loan is a dollar that these companies are not going to get in interest from you in the future.”

Pillar syncs with users’ student loan and financial accounts. The software analyzes an individual’s income, spending behaviors, loans, and interest rates.

“We then present them with a recommendation in the app, and if [they’d like to move forward], we’ll then handle all the implementation in the back end,” Bloch explained. “We’ll move the money from point A to point B, and we’ll fill out whatever paperwork is necessary. Our job is to automate away as much of the process as possible.”

But the company also wants to make loan repayment feel less like a black hole, and more deliberate and optimistic.

“We found that by saying, [for example], a $5 contribution today might actually save you $50 in the future, and a year off your repayment actually makes it super clear and easy for users to understand exactly how their today actions will affect their financial future.”

Bloch said that the average borrower can save about $6,000 on their loan and reduce the length of repayment by about four years with Pillar.

In terms of monetization, the company says that all recommendations will be completely free, but premium features, or the backend work that facilitates paperwork and payments, will be a low monthly charge of about $1 to $2 per month.

Debt Management Consumerized

Of course, Pillar isn’t the only company that is aiming to solve people’s problems with loan debt. Yesterday, Sofi announced a $500 million investment for its loan refinancing platform.

Another company, Goodly raised $1.3 million for a debt repayment benefit program for employers. But Pillar’s Bloch said that in the case of debt management, he believes consumer-oriented technology is the way to go.

“In our opinion, the only way to really build a billion dollar company in the space that’s going to be able to impact all of the borrowers that are out there is by building a consumer product in the likes of a Robinhood, Acorns, or Stash and really take it from a consumer perspective, rather than an employer one,” said Bloch.

For now the company is focusing exclusively on student loan debt, but Bloch said the company’s long term vision is to be an automated debt management platform for people with student debt, auto loans, credit cards, mortgages and more that acts as a layer on top of a person’s bank account.

Pillar is currently available for download on the iOS and Android app stores. Individuals can sign up for a waitlist for now, as the company doubles down on solving edge cases prior to Pillars full public launch, which will happen within the next few months.

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“Mark, you have to come to California.” (That’s paraphrased, but if memory serves, it’s basically what he said).

Oh, how times have changed–and I’m not talking about Facebook’s valuation.

Fifteen years ago, it may have been necessary for Zuckerberg to fly out to California to convince VCs to invest. But more often we here at Crunchbase News learn that entrepreneurs don’t need to move to the Bay Area for VC funding.

In fact more VCs, like Steve Case, are encouraging investment elsewhere, as companies also migrate outside of the Bay.

From interviewing founders and VCs alike spanning Colorado to Canada to Latin America we’ve found that the rest of the country, and world, isn’t the capital-dry desert that Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and VCs have said it is.

In fact, over the course of reading, interviewing, and writing about venture capital and tech outside of Silicon Valley, our coverage has revealed a collection of interviews detailing the opposite.

VC Roadtrip

We’ve seen vibrant VC activity in Colorado, Utah, and Texas. These are three U.S. states with a heck of a lot of startup and venture growth, and a lot of people who are content living, working, and getting funding outside the Bay – surprisingly even for some of them.

Last year, Utah startups banked more than $700 million with multiple IPOs and exits, Colorado pulled in $1.9 billion in venture capital during the same period, and startups in Texas picked up $800 million in Q1 alone. It’s likely from a funding perspective that those regions are only going to gain momentum.

Another point worth making centers around talent acquisition. Texas, Utah, and Colorado are home to huge universities with highly technical talent. Not to mention, larger tech companies, ranging from Apple and Google to Facebook and Oracle, have opened up offices and second headquarters in these locales. While that may create competition for talent, it also keeps workers in-state.

Beyond talent and funding, founders point to a number of aspects that make basing a startup outside of the Bay Area an attractive option. Mainly, it’s just too damn expensive in the Bay.

According to Zillow, the median home value in San Francisco is $1.3 million, and with the density of people and startups, it’s not surprising that paying for an office in Austin, Boulder, or Provo makes better financial sense.

Salary also goes a long way outside the Bay. Texas, for example, has no state income tax. That’s a win for investors and employers, and it means employees aren’t necessarily forced to pay insane amounts for rent or bear long commutes while stressing about student loans or saving to buy a house.

Work-Life Balance Matters

When we spoke to Boulder-based s , he said Colorado startups, in general, have a much better track record when it comes to employee attrition rates compared to San Francisco.

That employee churn could stem from several factors. Notably, when people see a financially viable future in a place, they may be more likely to stay put.

Several founders and VCs also pointed to a difference in industry culture outside the Bay. Specifically in San Francisco, everyone works in tech or venture. If they don’t, they certainly know a lot about it. While that may be a perfect atmosphere for many engineers, marketers, salespeople, designers, and VCs–escaping the tech bubble has its appeal.

One of the best selling points for smaller hubs is the community aspect of “growing together.” Unlike many companies in big hubs like the Bay Area and New York, when one company scores funding or an exit in these “fringe” regions, it generally raises the tide for the rest– that means more momentum, more attention, and more prominent investors.

That was certainly the case for Utah, which has experienced a lot of growth in funding, in large part due to the attention that Bay Area VCs have paid to the state.

So whether you’re starting a company or searching for a second headquarters, it looks like Silicon Valley isn’t the final frontier after all.

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“We found ourselves in a very uncomfortable situation a few months into the investment.” ����Krommenhoek recalled in a phone call with Crunchbase News.

The team ended up negotiating with their investors to give back the money they had raised, plus 10 percent. Afterward, they raised again, this time from different investors, and when it came time to scale up, add engineering talent, and raise again, the company moved to San Francisco.

It ended well for Zinch–the to Santa Clara-based in 2011, and in 2013 Chegg at a $1.1 billion valuation, raising $187 million in its IPO.

Paying back investors is not a common tale, but the story of entrepreneurs moving to Silicon Valley from Utah (and other places, for that matter) was commonplace back then, said Krommenhoek. Now, times are changing.

When he co-founded Lehi, Utah-based early-stage venture firm in 2014, the ecosystem was beginning to gain momentum and, thanks to returning entrepreneurs like him and others that stayed home, it hasn’t stopped.

Last year the venture ecosystem birthed two high profile IPOs — Pluralsight and Domo— and the massive $8 billion acquisition of , which turned our eyes here at Crunchbase News directly to the Beehive State. In an effort to figure out what’s fueling its activity, we explored the numbers and spoke with entrepreneurs and VCs that have seen, and taken part in, the rise of Silicon Slopes.

Take a look:

In 2014, companies in Utah raised a known total of more than $1 billion, according to Crunchbase–a historical record and triple what companies in the state pulled in two years earlier. In the immediately preceding year, one round for , pushed that total up to almost a billion, but 2014 was a big year for startups all around, with 152 deals compared to the 90 deals closed in 2013.

In 2015, venture volume remained high, with startups banking a known total of more than $1 billion for the second time across 124 deals. That momentum carried Utah’s venture scene into subsequent years, with dollar volume remaining above the $500 million mark and peaking again in 2017.

So far in 2019, more than $340 million has been directed toward startups in Utah, per Crunchbase, with business management software company picking up a $200 million Series C at the end of April.

The overarching industry theme is, by and large, B2B enterprise SaaS applications, with companies also growing in spaces like healthcare IT and other categories.

Founders and VCs in Utah say current venture activity and the state’s business culture is in large part rooted in the legacy of tech companies past.

“You had these great pioneers, like Novell and WordPerfect several decades ago, then you roll forward to kind of the next generation of great companies, which included Omniture and Altiris,” said Utah-based ’ It’s also notable that Oracle, Adobe, Google, Facebook, and others have acquired startups or built out large footprints in Utah, further contributing to the rise of entrepreneurship and tech in the region.

Those legacies combined with the lack of access to capital gave rise to tech companies like Qualtrics and Pluralsight, which relied heavily on operational efficiency as the guiding metric for growing successful businesses. In fact, these companies were bootstrapped for years before the executives decided to raise significant venture capital for the first time in the early 2010s.

By the time Qualtrics was acquired and Pluralsight went�� public last year, they had collectively raised almost $600 million. And Domo, founded by (who sold his previous startup, Omniture, to ), raised nearly during its life as a private company before hitting the public markets last year. That capital came from venture heavyweights in Silicon Valley like Accel, Insight Venture Partners, Benchmark and others. The attention had ripple effects for rising entrepreneurs in the ecosystem.

“I remember the day when it was very difficult to get follow on capital to come into the state of Utah,” Modersitzki told Crunchbase News. “Today, that’s not so much the case.”

, who cofounded in 2014, told Crunchbase News that following its initial seed investment from Peak Ventures and , he and his cofounder were unsure of their ability to raise again.

“We honestly kind of thought we tricked them into giving us money in the first place because we were these two inexperienced founders with a great idea and a lot of drive, but not a lot of experience,” Rea recalled.

But outside investors becoming more interested in Utah changed that. Podium went on to raise a $32 million in 2017 and a the following year from investors including , , , , and others.

“Today, it’s so much different. Every firm has a person or two that’s dedicated to Utah,” said Rea about Silicon Valley’s interest in the state. “VCs know that Utah is on the map. There’s no question now.”

That sentiment is confirmed by our previous reporting. Mary Ann Azevedo spoke with Bay Area-based VCs last year about the opportunities in the state. Partner told her that Utah has “some of the most promising startups that have launched in the country.”

Investing From The Inside Out

While outside investment has bred follow-on opportunities for many startups, venture growth has risen at the local level, too. Pelion Ventures invests in early-stage companies across the United States, but according to Modersitzki while the percentage of portfolio startups that were based in Utah hovered around 20 percent from 2002 to 2012, it has increased to about 40 percent since then.

“The tech ecosystem has grown so much. And the value proposition to investors and growth as a primary investment thesis has been proven out a number of times now,” said CEO of . He pointed to one of his company’s investors, , a private equity firm that has raised funds for venture investment at earlier and growth stages. Sorenson Capital’s Managing Director believes being a local investor provides the firm with a unique position.

“For our sophisticated counterparts, the ‘secret’ of Utah has been out for a long time,” wrote Sorenson Capital’s Matt Marsh in an email to Crunchbase News. “While we welcome the benefits of more capital providers turning attention to our state, we feel very fortunate to be positioned locally in a way that resonates in a profound and differentiated way.”

There are a lot of aspects of Utah that are attractive for entrepreneurs, and the VCs that fund them.

Much like in Colorado, operational costs are not as high in Utah, which is an attractive feature for companies and investors. There’s also a sense of work-life balance, which many say has led to lower employee attrition rates compared to Silicon Valley companies. Finally, the founders and VCs we spoke to all pointed to one aspect of Utah that is driving entrepreneurship beyond capital, costs, and balance: community.

The founders that have paved the way for venture investment in the state are heavily invested in the success of the Utah tech ecosystem as a whole. This is exemplified in, an entrepreneurial organization led by those pioneers which serves as a local network for entrepreneurs seeking support.

“I actually could go and get advice from Josh James from Domo, or from Pluralsight, or , the CEO of Vivint,” he explained. “They were happy to spend a couple of hours with me at any point, which I think is very, very rare.”

This supportive culture runs counter to what some consider to be a much more cut-throat culture in the Bay Area. This further solidifies for many budding entrepreneurs in Utah that they don’t have to leave to be successful. In fact, it may be better for them to stay.

According to Pelion’s Modersitzki, who sits on the advisory board of Silicon Slopes, the number of people that attend the organization’s annual conference has increased from about 500 to nearly 25,000 in just a few years.

“There is always a dandelion effect as success breeds success,” wrote in an email. “Young entrepreneurs who cut their teeth on the leadership at Qualtrics, Pluralsight, and Domo will be leaders in the next generation of successful tech startups on Silicon Slopes.”

And with the Qualtrics acquisition, the Pluralsight and Domo IPOs, and other startups like Canopy, Podium, and Lucidchart gaining significant momentum, it’s likely that time will give way to opportunities for new innovators. And with more investors shining a spotlight on the state, we can expect a lot out of those rising founders.

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