The Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum (UVEF) has been running this program for nine years now, and the Top 25 Under 5 event is designed to recognize the top 25 companies in Utah that are less than five-years-old. {DISCLOSURE: I served as a UVEF board member at the time the UVEF decided to launch this program.}

This year’s No. 1 ranked company was Agel Enterprises. This three-year-old provider of gel-based nutritional and skincare supplements had $9 million in revenue in 2005 and closed 2007 with revenue of $89 million. Agel’s products are sold by independent representatives in 150 countries today, and the company predicts it will have sales of $150 million in 2008.

The other technology companies (by this writer’s reckoning) in the UVEF’s 2008 Top 25 Under 5 listing are

No. 2  — Control4

No. 3  — Skullcandy

No. 5  — Mindshare Technologies

No. 7  — Aribex

No. 8  — Cymphonix

No. 9  — Alianza

No. 10  - Navigator Business One Solutions

No. 11  - InsideSales.com

No. 12  - Procerus Technologies

No. 13  - OrangeSoda

No. 14  - Experience Dental Studio

No. 15  - Q90 Corporation

No. 18  - Ad Hoc Electronics

No. 20  - LineaGen

No. 21  - Renasis

No. 23  - Ciralight

No. 25  - Rocketship

{NOTE: For some reason, the UVEF ended up with two sets of companies tied within its rankings. However, the UVEF decided to actually include 27 companies within its 2008 Top 25 Under 5 rankings. Go figure.}

Congrats to all companies included in this year’s Top 25 Under 5 ranking — particularly the tech firms. Clearly, this has become one of the most prestigious award/recognition programs in Utah for young companies.

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BACKGROUND INFO:

For the record, the UVEF decided to simplify the entry process for the Top 25 Under 5 program this year, while conversely complicating its ranking system.

Specifically, this year companies only had to submit revenue figures, which made the entry process a lot easier. However, what made the process more complicated this year was the fact that a judges committee then subjectively decided which companies should be ranked and in what position based upon the benefit/value said companies delivered to Utah’s business environment and economy.

{NOTE: In the past, firms were ranked based upon a scoring system that assigned point totals for information submitted in several categories, ranging from monies raised to salaries for non-executives. The end result was an entry system that was often difficult for anyone outside of a company’s top executives to be able to enter. Hence, by limiting the data required to the year a company was formed and its revenues per year, the UVEF hoped to increase the number of entries and it was successful in this regard.}

Personally, I think the new judging system makes sense, and I applaud the UVEF board for taking a new approach. 

One of the most interesting technology-related news items to come out of Utah last week was the fact that the Mormon Church has turned to a mixture of internet video and good-old-fashioned public relations to combat lingering misperceptions between “the Salt Lake City-based church and the polygamous group in Texas that calls itself the FLDS.”

In a news release distributed last week by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also commonly known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church), the LDS Church announced that it had published seven videos on its Website highlighting typical members of its faith who live in Texas versus “members of the isolated polygamous group.

According to the release, Texas-based Mormons featured in the videos include “a director of community theater, an orthopedic surgeon, a Justice of the Peace, a former Houston Oilers quarterback, a news anchor and a young woman with aspirations for medical school.”

By the way, although I had difficulty getting some of the videos in the LDS Church’s newsroom to play in Internet Explorer, I had no such difficulty in Firefox.

Several dozen additional internet videos from the LDS Church can also be found on the Mormon Church YouTube Channel as it appears the church began its YouTube-social media PR program nine months ago.

In addition to expected coverage of the story in LDS-owned media outlets, the Associated Press picked up the story (as shown in this USA Today article), as did Salt Lake City-based KSTU Fox 13 in this news report.

For a religious organization that is so conservative, it’s interesting to see the LDS Church begin to embrace Web 2.0 technologies and methodologies.

Some forecasters have predicted that the outcome could thrust more than two million homeowners into foreclosure. Sounds like a tough time to be in residential real estate, right? Not if you’re the geniuses at Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK).

That’s why last week the company that gives consumers everywhere access to discounted retail products in all categories launched an online resource for researching and finding residential real estate, from foreclosed or distressed properties to homes available via short sales or auction.

Here’s the link for the text for the Overstock.com news release, while the page for the new Online Real Estate Resource can be found at http://realestate.overstock.com/. And it’s really easy to use.

Merely type in your targeted Zip Code (or the city and state you’re researching) and click on go. It’s that simple.

For example, within the 84092 area (my home zip code), there are more than 200 homes listed for sale captured from 31 Websites and ranging from a price of $169,900 to $6 million. In neighboring Draper, Utah (the 84020 zip code), there are more than 550 homes for sale.

And unlike the publicly available MLS (multiple listing service) Websites, the “For Sale” section of the Overstock.com site provides street addresses, which are crucial in identifying the specific location for a house or property.

In 84092, 22 homes are included in the foreclosure listing (priced from $234,900 to $699,00), while 84020 shows nearly 80 properties in foreclosure at prices ranging from $172,000 to $1.5 million. Other categories include listings for Distressed properties, Auctions and Online Auctions.

According to Bill Floor, Overstock.com’s real estate director, this new offering “allows the value conscious Overstock.com customer to find great real estate deals” whether someone is looking for a real estate investment or a dream home.

Obviously, Overstock.com is either scraping existing sites on the Internet aggregate the data or it has entered relationships with other companies to do the same thing.

Regardless, the bottom line is that Overstock.com’s real estate search application is a fairly easy to use site that can be quite helpful to a homebuyer or a real estate investor. Hence, I offer kudos to CEO Patrick Byrne and the entire Overstock.com team.

The parties expect the company to break ground this summer and “go live” sometime in 2010.

Sure, it’s most likely going to be a glorified data center for Oracle and will probably house Web-based Software as a Service (SaaS) applications and data for clients around the world.

The Utah location is going to provide significant cost savings for the database behemoth, both in salary and benefits, as well as in general operational costs (think power, taxes, etc.)

Oh yeah, and the state plans to kick-in up to $15.1 million in tax rebates every year for 12 years once the facility is built, hires its people and begins operations. This was part of the State’s package to recruit Oracle to Utah.

Sounds like a sweet deal for Oracle, and it is.

However, unlike the influx of call centers the previous Governor’s administration foisted upon the state as if they were some economic godsend, this forthcoming Oracle facility promises to deliver benefits far beyond the call centers of old.

To start with, the Daily Herald’s article on the announcement suggests that average salaries at Oracle’s West Jordan facility will come in around $64,000 per year (or close to $30 hour), far above the $10/hour to $15/hour wages most call centers offer. (Just to be clear here, $10 to $15 an hour is not bad if you’re young and single, maybe even in college. Heck, two of our kids have spent some time working at local call centers. But 10 bucks an hour is nowhere near enough to get ahead, let alone enough to support a family.)

On top of that, most major tech companies have solid benefits programs, with Oracle’s benefits including a cafeteria-style health/insurance program, 13 days of paid vacation for new employees (growing to 18 days after three years), a 401K program, a stock purchase plan and employee counseling programs.  

These are the two clearest benefits to Utah citizens and Utah’s tech economy.

On the other hand, the likelihood that an Oracle data center employee could (in the future) move into an even more promising, high-paying job or business opportunity is much, much greater than someone who’s been employed by a call center. That’s the other potential long-term benefit of the state recruiting a company like Oracle to launch a 100-person facility in Utah.

To me it’s a fairly straightforward proposition:

• Call Centers =Lower salaries/benefits, minimally transferable skill sets and lower long-term benefits (to employees and to the state’s technology industry)
• High-end Data Centers =Higher salaries/benefits, greater transferable skill sets and higher long-term benefits (to employees and to the state’s technology industry)

These are the reasons why I believe that Oracle’s planned $285 million West Jordan facility matters to Utah, its citizens and to the state’s technology industry.

Good job, GOED and Gov. Huntsman.

Giaque’s story was triggered by an editorial entitled “Issues for DSM-V: Internet Addiction” written by Jerald J. Block, M.D. and published in the March 2008 edition of The American Journal of Psychiatry. (NOTE: Apparently, DSM-V refers to the fifth version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is targeted for publication about 2011. DSM-IV is the current manual used by mental health professionals.)

Dr. Block suggests that excessive use of e-mail/text messaging is just one of three common types of Internet-connected “compulsive-impulsive spectrum disorder(s)” that “involve online and/or offline computer usage,” the other two being excessive computer gaming or “sexual preoccupations” (his term, not mine).

Each of these three Internet disorders exhibit four characteristics (Dr. Block claims), namely

1. Excessive use,
2. Withdrawal,
3. Tolerance, and
4. Negative repercussions.

For Part 1 of his piece, Giaque focused specifically on text messaging, and we had a long and wide-ranging on-the-record interview on the subject in our Draper, Utah offices about a week-and-a-half ago.

If you check out Giaque’s story online, you’ll note that there are more than 90 comments on the subject in a little more than 24 hours, meaning it generated a higher than average interest among KSL listeners.

Interestingly, none of the comments centered on Twitter, which was the main focus of my section of the Part 1 story.

It made me wonder if Twitter has yet to crossover to mainstream usage yet? Curious.

Chances are if you’re reading Utah Tech Watch you already use text messaging as another vehicle for staying in touch. But do you Twitter (or “tweet” as us Twitterians say), either as a user or a follower, as a way of staying connected and in touch?

If so, I’d like to hear from you. And if not, I’m also curious to hear why not. Thanks.

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UPDATE:

I guess I should have dug a bit further, as Part II of Giaque’s story is running today and is up on the KSL Website already at http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=148&sid=3367797.

Hmmmm. It’s generated more than 25 comments already today.

Anderson is the first woman to receive Entrepreneur of the Year honors from the MWCN. Past honorees include Dr. Wayne Evans, co-founder of Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp. (NASDAQ: ESCC), Ray Noorda, former chairman, president and CEO of Novell (NASDAQ: NOVL) and Alan Ashton, co-founder of WordPerfect Corp. (among others).

Speaking before an audience of close to 200 business/community leaders and professional colleagues, Anderson sprinkled her acceptance speech with humorous personal anecdotes and professional insights.

Born into a family of 10 children that moved frequently due to her father’s career, Anderson entered Brigham Young University at age 17 with the focus on leaving school with her so-called “M-R-S” degree. And by the time she was 19, she was married, having gained her self-coveted “Mrs.” degree.

As a young stay-at-home mom with two children, Anderson hit upon a new business idea and decided to hit up several relatives, including her father, for start-up capital. With a staggeringly small $23,000 in seed capital from her family, Anderson went on to establish PerfectPractice.MD, an Web-based practice management software company designed to meet the needs of physicians in private practice.

Eventually, Anderson went on to raise $12 million for PerfectPractice.MD.

In spite of the fact that Anderson has now raised more than $50 million in venture capital, she called the $5,000 she raised from her dad for PerfectPractice “the toughest money she ever raised.”

Anderson joined MediConnect in 2004 at the request of serial investor Greg Warnock, then a parnter at vSpring Capital.

At the time, South Jordan, Utah-based MediConnect was struggling to hit its stride as a medical records retrieval, scanning and storage company.

Part of Anderson’s success with MediConnect was seizing upon the idea that she could outsource much of the company’s work by establishing offices in parts of the world where she could achieve a much lower cost structure than what she found inside the United States. For MediConnect, that meant establishing a base of operations in Dehli, India.

“. . . in the end, you should listen to the people who have been there, done that, made the mistakes, and learned what actually works firsthand.”

Amy Rees Anderson, CEO, MediConnect Global

The year before Anderson joined MediConnect (2003), the company hit $2.8 million in revenue. By 2006 (under Anderson’s direction), MediConnect had grown nearly 850 percent, with 2006 revenue surpassing $26 million. 

Among the tidbits of wisdom shared by Anderson: “Education, research, data, and spreadsheets are all great things,” she said. “But in the end, you should listen to the people who have been there, done that, made the mistakes, and learned what actually works firsthand.”

Anderson also pointed out that most people give up just shy of the threshold of success.

“Successful people just don’t give up,” she said. “They keep trying different approaches to achieving their outcomes until they finally get the results they want.”

I first met Amy more than a decade ago when she was at the helm of PerfectPractice, a then 20-something person company located in a cramped office on the corner of Highland and Creek Road in Sandy, Utah.

Today, Anderson oversees a global enterprise with more than 1,200 employees, and she’s now been recognized as the 2008 MWCN Entrepreneur of the Year.

Good for you, Amy. Congrats on receiving this well-deserved award. 

Read the article about PC Laptops in the Daily Herald.

This past Saturday (5-10-08) found me and 3,500 of my closest friends –  ;-)  — jammed into the McKay Events Center at Utah Valley State College as participants in the Republican Party’s state convention.

This was my first time to attend such an event, let alone my first participation as a state delegate.

Although the doors opened around 7 a.m., I arrived close to 10, after spending several hours in the morning working on a new business proposal. And then for the next seven hours, I was swept up in the festivities of the Grand Old Party.

Shortly after arriving, I ran into long-time friend and associate, Phil Windley, former Chief Information Officer for the State of Utah. As a delegate for many years, he offered me some good advice and perspective on what to expect throughout the day. He also mentioned he’d enjoyed following my micro-posts on Twitter (known to those of us using the microblogging service as “tweets”).

This comment was enough to remind me that I had the ability to microblog on-the-fly from the convention and provide a running commentary (as it were) from my perspective should anyone be interested. So that’s what I did, at least as best as I could.

What is Twitter?

For those of you not familiar with the service, Twitter is a free online Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering that makes it possible for anyone with a mobile phone or personal computer to write and publish short items of 140 characters or less onto the World Wide Web.

These incredibly short posts (or “tweets” as they’re sometimes known) are hosted on Twitter.com, but can also be forwarded to one’s own Website or blog for re-posting. (I have not done this yet, but expect to do so in the next couple of weeks.) And anyone who is a Twitter subscriber can sign-up to “follow” or track the online tweets (or microblog posts) of other Twitterians.

Some long-time Twitter users and/or highly influential high-tech mavens are being followed by literally thousands of people. Others are viewing Twitter much like the early gold rush days of MySpace and Facebook and seem to be trapped in a race to see who can build the greatest list of people they follow, as well as building up the number of individuals following them.

Me? I’ve been using Twitter for about two months now, and as of this moment I have 35 followers, while I’m following 32 people.

Among those I’m following (in no particular order) are Windley, Scott Lemon, Steve Spencer, Cyndi Tetro, Russ Page, Jason Alba, and Kris Beldin, just to name a few.

Some people (like Alba) tweet ALL THE TIME, and yes, at times it can be a bit overwhelming. Others tweet from time to time (like Tetro). And still others seem to fluctuate in their frequency and intensity in their microblog posts (like me).

For me, I’ve decided to use Twitter primarily as a professional service. So although I have occassionally posted personal items through Twitter, these have been few, a trend I plan to continue into the future.

For anyone looking for a way to create blog posts from anywhere with a cell phone, Twitter is a good, quick alternative, even if you’ll be greatly limited by the 140-character space limit per tweet.

That said, it is not uncommon to find people produce back-to-back-to-back posts with Twitter to create a stream-of-consciousness-like flow of microblog posts one after the other to begin to approximate a traditional blog post.

For me, I like Twitter. It’s quite easy to set-up and to use. It’s fairly easy to find people to follow, even if determining who best to follow is a bit more complicated.

For these reasons and more, I recommend getting on the Twitter bandwagon. And if you’re interested, my Twitter user name is dpolitis.

Now back to my thoughts on microblogging from the Republican State Convention.

More Thoughts on the Convention

All told, I ended up writing/posting 23 different tweets from the state convention.

For those of you keeping score, it looks like Windley created 14 Twitter posts during the convention.

That said, Phil brought his laptop to the convention, which apparently allowed him to tweet on-the-fly and write a very detailed blog post about the convention on Technometria.com entitled “Final: 2008 Utah State Republican Convention.” I highly recommend it for a blow-by-blow account of the day’s events from very connected political techie.

If you want to know my sense of the convention, your best bet is to go back and ready my tweets on Twitter for May 10.

However, I will confess the following:

I voted for Bill Dew for the Republican nominee for the Second Congressional District to go against incumbent Jim Matheson (D) in the general election this November. Although he’s a newcomer to the political game, I was impressed with Dew’s commitment to put $500,000 of his own money into his campaign.

Part of the reason I voted for Dew versus Merrill Cook in spite of the fact that Cook had two prior terms as U.S. Representative under his belt was that I was not convinced that Cook could unify Republicans within the district behind him. And according to one of my sources, that’s the biggest challenge 2nd District Republicans have had when going up against Matheson and prior Democrats elected in the district — they switch over during the general election.

In addtion, I voted for Gov. Jon M. Huntsman, Jr. for Governor and Mark Walker for State Treasurer. As expected, Huntsman gets a pass directly into the general election, while Walker captured 59 percent of the vote. Not enough for Walker to avoid a primary runoff against Richard Ellis, but enough votes to give him a lot of clout going into the primary this June.

In addition, although I could not vote for incumbent Chris Cannon in his 3rd District race, I support Chris and would have voted for him if I lived in his district.

Like Windley, I too have met and worked with Cannon. And although his interpersonal communication skills could use some polishing, Cannon’s definitely a friend of business (in general) and of the high-tech industry arena specifically.

Rich Nelson from the Utah Technology Council is a big Cannon supporter — I ran into him at the convention — and he pushed me to wear a Cannon button, which I did. Most importantly, Cannon is quite savvy when it comes to technology and tech issues, and he’s a big supporter of Utah’s tech industry.

In the end, Cannon was nearly eliminated at the convention with Jason Chaffetz capturing 59 percent of the delegates’ votes.

I believe this makes three conventions in a row where Cannon has not been able to garner enough support from the delegates, which tend to lean more conservative than Cannon or the party members within the 3rd District. In other words, don’t be completely shocked if Cannon goes on to win the primary election and goes on to win the general election for a 7th term in office.

Finally, congrats to my friends and neighbors, Bruce Hough and Howard Headlee, who were elected during the convention as National Committeeman and Alternate Delegate, respectively. Way to go guys!

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed my participation as a state delegate, and I’m hopeful I can be tapped to serve again in the future.

Next go-round, however, I aim to recruit more individuals from the high-tech industries to get involved in the political process as well, to run for delegate positions (in either of the two parties), and/or elected office, and to push for candidates and legislation that are friendly to the high-tech industries in the state.

The theme this year is Engage. [Disclosure: Politis Communications is a sponsor of the conference] Isn’t that what we’re trying to do as marketing professionals? In most cases we want to engage customers, but to do this we need to first engage the media and with the advent of social media this includes many influential bloggers across the Web.

As a special treat, this year’s conference will feature a keynote address from GM’s Director of Social
Media, Christopher Barger. GM recently sent a shockwave through the ad industry by announcing that half of their annual ad budget, $3 Billion, would go toward online advertising.

The conference is designed for marketers, advertisers or public relations practitioners. Blogging can be a very effective tool, so whether you’re an agency, in-house or an executive this conference is the place to be to learn how to effectively Engage the media and your target audiences through blogs.

Read more on the Blogging for Business Conference’s official blog.

So . . . although I still want to find a way to have such releases published here at Utah Tech Watch, I’ve come to realize that’s more of a task than I want to handle personally at this time.

Secondly, I realize now that the last week of March took a lot more out of me than I expected (getting ready to take our family vacation), which meant little or no focus for posting/blogging. On top of that, I

• broke my toe playing beach volleyball while on vacation,
• got a touch of Montezuma’s Revenge while south of the border, and
• have since come down with a nasty sinus infection/head cold,

each of which took their toll as well.

And third, I really did try to actually go on vacation, which meant not logging onto the ‘Net every morning and evening. And with a 10-minute exception last Thursday (and the time spent while in the airports), that’s exactly what I did.

Now, to be perfectly honest, I did take my BlackBerry with me.

T-Mobile is my carrier here in the States, and I had pretty decent service most of the time while in Cancun and on the Yucatan Peninsula.

However, at $1.50 per minute per call, I made/took very few calls in Mexico.

Each text message opened cost an additional $0.35, which was closer to reasonable. But sending text messages, even back to the States, incurred no additional charges. Ditto for sending/receiving email messages from my BlackBerry.

So email was my primary means of staying in touch, but even then, I wrote/sent very few while on the road.

However, I had just signed up for Twitter the week before departing for Mexico, so I did have some Tweeting moments. 

Regardless, I’ve now gotten through most of my stacked up email messages and all of my voice mail. And I’m back to blogging again, which includes writing about tech issues, events, products, services, people and companies. (I have also started blogging again on The Betty Factor as well.)