Utah CEO says distance from Silicon Valley has made the state ‘a really strong community of entrepreneurs’

Our program featured speakers like Eugenia Kuyda, a founder who is using A.I. To combat loneliness (think chatbot “companions” who are always there for you), climate tech investor (and former Vice President) Al Gore, and Bryan Johnson, an entrepreneur who is trying to crack the longevity code (hint: he eats 70 pounds of veggies a month and takes 61 pills per day). We also heard from the CEOs of tech companies like Anthropic, Atlassian, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Twilio, Ancestry, and many more.

These timely discussions, coupled with our outdoor activities, breakout sessions, and other opportunities to mingle, provided the perfect backdrop for Brainstorm Tech, which was created as a conversation and a community, not just an event, back in 2001.

To be sure, we also delved into the state of Utah: Our opening session featured four tech leaders who are rooted in the Beehive State, and they had plenty to share about the emerging hub.

“I think one of the things that’s made Utah so great during this time is the fact that it wasn’t the Bay Area, we didn’t have access to the capital, we didn’t have access to a lot of the influential pioneers in tech,” Aaron Skonnard, the CEO of Utah-based Pluralsight, told the audience. “So we kind of had to find it ourselves…I think that has made Utah just a really strong community of entrepreneurs.”

There was another new tech hub front and center at this year’s Brainstorm Tech. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who is also a Republican presidential hopeful, took the stage to make the case for his hometown: “We’ve grown our venture capital pipeline by about 500%,” Mayor Suarez told the audience, adding that it takes time to become an epicenter for capital. 

Luckily, as was evidenced by the abundance of A.I. Conversations at Tech, there is no one region that can contain the explosion of interest and investment in the burgeoning technology—even one as majestic as Utah.

For more from this year’s Brainstorm Tech, please listen to a special episode of our Leadership Next podcast, available on Apple or Spotify. Or read more here.

Alan Murray
@alansmurray
[email protected]

TOP NEWS

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Microsoft A.I.

Users of Microsoft’s Office suite will soon need to pay an extra $30 a month if they want to access new A.I.-powered features, the tech giant announced Tuesday. The company also previewed a confidential version of its Bing chatbot that will better protect private information from corporate clients. The news sent Microsoft’s shares up almost 4% to close at a record high. Bloomberg

China’s COVID toll

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This edition of CEO Daily was curated by Nicholas Gordon.