What is the Tech Summit?

The Silicon Slopes Tech Summit is a global gathering of great tech leaders and the community. This two-day conference is dedicated to learning, service, and action. It's a great place to be if you want to learn how to grow your business and strengthen the community.

Mark Zuckerberg

Over 20,000 attendees gathered together to listen to industry leaders, including Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook. Zuckerberg had great things to say about the importance of open communication. He also talked about how to choose company values. I've honestly never seen a more authentic version of Mark Zuckerberg in my life. Check out the video below for an awesome keynote.

Mark Zuckerburg at Silicon Slopes Tech Summit 2020

In 2006, Zuckerberg rejected Yahoo's $1 billion offer to buy Facebook. This tore apart his executive team because they all wanted him to take the offer. This experience taught Zuckerberg that everyone's goals need to be aligned for good cohesion to exist within a company. He also talked about company values being something that people should be able to disagree on. After the Yahoo incident, Zuckerberg decided that company-wide transparency is an important value. Other companies may disagree, but everyone at Facebook is guided by that value. Honesty, however, may be too ubiquitously accepted to be a guiding value. Almost everyone agrees that you should be honest. It's hard to argue against, so it should just be a given in everyone's minds according to Zuckerberg. Among other things, Zuckerberg also mentioned that he has become more religious because of his role as CEO at Facebook.

TL;DR

In addition to Mark Zuckerberg, tech leaders from all over Utah delivered talks and breakout sessions. Here are some of the lessons I learned:

Community is Key
Quality Content is Hot, Especially Audio
Computer Science Education in All Utah Schools K-12
Find a Better Business Model, Not a Better Product
Be a Good Team Player

I also added some other Honorable Mentions from the event near the end. Check out the learnings below!

Lessons Learned

1. Community is Key

My NUMBER ONE takeaway from the summit was the power of community. When you engage the community, you find friends, you find mentors, and you build your business in ways that you couldn't have before.

The community at the Silicon Slopes Tech Summit was incredible! Josh James, Ryan Smith, and the Silicon Slopes team have done amazing work building a community of inclusion, learning, and service. Business leaders were rubbing shoulders with people who want to build their businesses. They were sharing knowledge of what is working and what isn't in the industry. Competitors in the same industries came together for the betterment of everyone.

“A competitor is a competitor, not an enemy.”

— Gail Miller, Chairwoman and Owner, LHM Group

If you don't have a mentor or a networking group that you're a part of, go out and find one. It will help your business, and you'll get to help others as well.

2. Quality Content is Hot, Especially Audio

Almost all the speakers at the tech summit talked about the power of quality content. Quality content includes blogs, social media groups, podcasts, etc. If you create content that informs and empowers your users, you build credibility. If people trust your content, they will likely choose to buy from you (or the people you suggest). They may not be ready to buy immediately, but they will remember where to go when they are ready to buy.

Image Source: businesswire.com (original)

Gayle Troberman, CMO at IHeartMEDIA and previous Chief Creative Officer at Microsoft, gave an incredible talk about the power of audio content. She based most of her talk on an IHeartMedia study where a group of people listen to a one-minute audio track periodically throughout the day. The audio track contained short snippets of music, bells, voices of radio show hosts, and other interesting sounds. During the study, the participants wore body sensors to track their heart rate, skin galvanization, and other metrics. These tests generated insights into what triggers a person's interest. The biggest insight for me: listening to a radio broadcaster say, "Good morning San Francisco!", had the same effect on the body as listening to Nirvana. These types of results popped up over and over again in the study. The explanation: people like to hear authentic, unscripted conversation. Podcasts and radio conversations are good examples of this.

She also said that only 10% of people will skip ads delivered by podcast, radio, or talk shows. Hosts of these audio channels deliver ads as a natural part of the conversation, so listeners keep listening. Compare this to the huge number of people that skip video ads! I mean, how many YouTube ads have you watched lately?

If you haven't built a content marketing strategy yet, start now! People are tired of getting interrupted by ads, and most have installed an adblocker anyway. Now is a great time to start making quality content so you can reach customers where they are listening.

3. Computer Science Education in All Utah Schools K-12

If you have kids and want a good education for them, consider moving to Utah. Aaron Skonnard, Pluralsight Co-Founder & CEO, announced a community goal to have Computer Science programs in ALL schools, K-12, by 2022. Silicon Slopes and most of the big companies in Utah are working with state lawmakers to make this happen. Silicon Slopes already has a $4 million fund dedicated to this cause. They are also backing a bill that would provide $10.2 million yearly for this goal.

This is huge for Utah! Silicon Slopes and state lawmakers are working together to affect the community for good. They believe that everyone should be able to learn the basics of Computer Science, regardless of circumstance or location.

The coolest part about this initiative is that the Business, State, and Educational sectors have joined together to work towards a common goal: strengthening the growing generation of Utah. This unity of vision is incredible, and it will produce more well-educated, higher-paid workers going forward.

Dave Elkington, Founder of InsideSales.com, also expressed how excited he is for this initiative. He believes that programming skills builds confidence in youth, and that this confidence will allow them to succeed in other areas of life as well.

4. Find a Better Business Model, Not a Better Product

Finding innovative products today can be hard. When you find a great idea, you search Google only to find that someone else already thought of it. During Karl Sun's (CEO of Lucid Software) interview of Brian Halligan (CEO of HubSpot), Halligan shared that you don't need an innovative product to start a business. You can find an innovative business model instead.

Image Source: allgoodtales.com (original)

To prove this idea, Halligan told us about his morning routine. He wakes up, takes a shower, then shaves with razors he got from Dollar Shave Club. After that, he gets dressed in an outfit sent to him from a company like Trunk Club. Then he goes downstairs to eat his meal delivered by Freshly. These companies don't provide the most innovative or highest quality products. Instead, they provide a more convenient business model for busy people like Halligan, and that's why he uses those businesses.

NOTE: The companies listed above are similar to, but may not be the exact companies Halligan talked about.

If you can't compete on the originality of your product or idea, try innovating on the business model of something that already exists. You just might find an under-served niche that will love your idea.

5. Be a Good Team Player

New York Times Best-selling Business Author, Patrick Lencioni, gave an incredible and entertaining speech on what you need to do to be an ideal team player. Here are the three main takeaways:

Be Humble: listen, work for the good of everyone, and don't be afraid to speak up.
Be Hungry: work hard towards important goals and try to get a lot done in the time you have.
Be Smart: be able to read the mood in a room, interact with others, and tell how people are feeling.

Lencioni emphasized humility as the most important of the three. He also said, "If anyone is missing ANY of these three traits in an egregious way, they can hurt the team." The graphic below describes what people look like when they have different combinations of the three traits.

Lencioni asked our crowd, "Everyone has a worst trait. Which one is yours?". He does this with companies he consults with and said that he is always surprised by how honest people are with each other! They talk about these areas openly, and that helps them to improve. He encourages people to find an accountability partner to point out when they are displaying their worst trait—a.k.a. slacking. This creates a lighthearted atmosphere at work that allows people to improve as they get called out.

Lencioni also spoke about the importance of changing how we do interviews so we can find if people have these three traits. Here are some ideas he proposed:

Invite the candidate to go grocery shopping with you (sounds crazy right?)
Have them spend the day with their potential team.
Show up early to a meal with the candidate and ask the waiter/waitress to mess up their order.

I laughed when I heard the third option. Apparently, it was a favorite technique of Charles Schwab. Whatever your technique, find new ways that will help you determine if a person has these three traits before you hire them.

Honorable Mentions

I heard a ton of amazing speakers and learned a lot of lessons at this two-day event. Here are some honorable mentions:

AncestryHealth has started providing personalized medical treatments to people based on their genes. The University of Utah Huntsman Cancer Institute also consults people on their likelihood to get cancer based on their genes.
Utah has a lot of resources for under-served groups, but those resources can be hard to get. Joining or starting a Social Venture that helps people get access to government resources could do a lot of good in the world.

Conclusion

If you ever get the chance to go to the Silicon Slopes Tech Summit in Salt Lake City, take it! You will connect with some amazing people and an amazing community. You will network, learn strategies for building your business, and hear what works from influential tech leaders from all over.

Silicon Slopes Tech Summit 2020: 5 Key Takeaways for Entrepreneurs