BEST TECH STARTUPS IN PROVO, UTAH, RANKED

Previously Published to Benzinga Money.

You’ve heard of Silicon Valley, but how about Silicon Slopes? This popular skiing destination near Provo, Utah, is a hotbed of entrepreneurial activity. Roughly 10% of Provo’s employees work in the tech industry.

Read also: BEST ACCELERATORS IN SILICON VALLEY, RANKED

Looking to get in on the action? Use Benzinga’s list of the best tech startups in Provo to learn more.

The Top Tech Startups in Provo, Utah

Our editorial board found the best tech startups in Provo by looking for companies filling a gap or disrupting an industry by leveraging technology. These are the best of the best startups in Provo, Utah.

1. Best All-in-One Business Startup: Podium, founded 2014

Hitting the scene in Q4 of 2019 right before the onset of the pandemic, Podium increased in value to $1.5 billion by April 2020. This is impressive considering only $218 million of this number was capital the company raised.

Podium is a scalable interaction management platform, tailored to the needs of various industries and the roles within them.

Podium empowers businesses, both large and small, allowing users to collect payments, schedule appointments, resolve customer concerns and solicit reviews — all in one place. 

Easily integrated into existing systems and platforms, Podium provides users with a more productive user experience, increased efficiency and communication across all business types.

2. Best Upcoming Startup: StockMotion, founded 2020

StockMotion gamifies the stock market, allowing you to make speculative trades without actually taking risks. 

StockMotion uses financial education to teach users to:

• Manage Risks
• Diversify Portfolios
• Maneuver Volatility

StockMotion rewards traders  for making sound investment decisions, allowing them to earn experience points (XP). Each player starts with $10,000 and can unlock new features, including new investment tools, themes, equities, tokens and power-ups, using their accumulated XP. 

Traders can also enter into tournaments for cash prizes, cool swag and real devices. Born of a stock market simulator, StockMotion came to life as the product began evolving into a full-on investing game.

StockMotion is great for both professional and newbie investors. Novice investors will learn the fundamentals of investing and gain a heightened sense of financial literacy. Long-term investors can sharpen their technique and apply it to their real-world strategy.

Still in the testing phase, StockMotion is a tech startup you’ll definitely want to keep your eyes on.

3. Best Legal Startup: Filevine, founded 2014

Filevine is a startup eDiscovery platform allowing law firms to investigate and manage cases directly within a cloud-based system. Here, firms and lawyers can monitor both intake and lead-tracking, control billing and time-keeping and engage in advanced reporting activities. 

Built on AWS, users can feel safe knowing they’re using one of the largest, most dependable cloud platforms on the market. This comes with the speed, security, trust and reliability law firms place most concern.  

Filevine gives legal professionals the space to grow and build their networks. Lawyers have access to the Filevine Community, client referral programs, strategic technology partners and attendance at the renowned Legal X Conference.

4. Best Crowdsourcing Startup: Yoodlize, founded 2018

Own something expensive that you never use but can’t get rid of? Yoodlize (pronounced “utilize”) is a localized peer-to-peer rental platform for…whatever you want to rent. 

Yoodlize is great for both making money and saving money. Make money by renting your things out and save money by renting expensive equipment or rarely-used-but-needed objects instead of buying them.

While this app hasn’t gained much traction outside the Utah-Idaho area, audiences grew significantly through 2020. This trend will likely continue as peer-to-peer marketplaces become more popular.

5. Best Contact Center Startup: Aktify, founded 2017

Aktify is a conversational AI and SMS-powered sales agent. Aktify allows businesses to increase conversions by automating cold-calling and mobile messaging techniques.

Aktify’s claim to fame is their easy-to-adopt system. There’s no training for your sales team, and Aktify works in the background to identify natural customers, meaning you’re not harassing anybody to buy your product.

This AI-based platform helps get interested leads on the phone and ready to convert. Messages are sent directly to existing sales teams and intelligence is gathered at the start of each new conversation for future use.

As their slogan goes: “Chats like a human. Thinks like a robot.” Another upside? Virtual agents can’t call-off work, don’t reschedule appointments and can manage thousands of simultaneous conversations at once.

Aktify promises not to be another chatbot gimmick. These SMS AI agents  absorb the context of a conversation and the intent of communication to generate each new message, simulating a conversation with a real, living, breathing human being.

SMS AI agents respond to leads, automatically interpreting the text and taking the appropriate steps to schedule future appointments, nurture personal relationships and drive conversions. 

6. Best Warehouse CMMS Startup: Limble CMMS, founded 2015

Limble CMMS is an all-in-one platform for:

• Maintenance & Logistics
• Preventative Maintenance
• Asset & Inventory Management

With the click of a button, work orders sync between connected devices. Limble CMMS intuitively assigns an order to whomever is best to fulfill that order. Inventory is streamlined and logistics coordination is automated.

Limble CMMS is eliminating outdated phone and email-based systems that tend to result in: 

• Lost Ticketing & Work Orders
• Miscommunication
• Constant Daily Interruptions
• Duplicate Workloads

For those using this system, communication has been both improved and reduced by more than 41% on average. Time spent carrying out each work order has also declined by almost 34%. 

Limble CMMS processes information in real-time. Granular reporting and details are easily and quickly accessible using barcode scanners and QR.

7. Best Business Intelligence Startup: Grow, founded 2014

Grow’s no-code, full-stack business intelligence (BI) software allows businesses to analyze critical data and take immediate action. Grow uses big data to apply the exact solutions necessary to help any company succeed. 

Grow visualizes data through real-time dashboards and reporting for improved, on-the-fly decision-making. Grow integrates with existing clouds, ad platforms, social networks and native databases to store data, powering the remote workforce and providing accessibility across the corporate hierarchy. 

As companies return to “business as usual,” we’re going to see an increased need for both transparency and scalability. 

Grow enables businesses to improve social media efforts, customer service engagements, marketing and public relations strategies while maintaining crucial accounting and finance-related data. Businesses are able to identify KPIs and bridge gaps across the corporate infrastructure. 

8. Best Remote Workforce Startup: vSpatial, founded 2016

Designed for remote VR environment, vSpatial uses virtual reality to expand existing workspaces with:

• Multi-Monitor Setups
• Visual Backdrops
• Spatial Audio

Actual co-workers (or their avatars) will be by your side. You can communicate in real-time and even share documents and screens, as if you were in a physical office building.

vSpatial works best with popular headsets like Oculus and Windows MR, connecting up to 16 users at once. 

9. Best ESL Startup: Hallo, founded 2017

As borders reopen, you may want to consider Hallo to brush up on your language learning. 

Hallo is an ESL-friendly platform, teaching users to become fluent through English-only immersion, private lessons with both ESL-certified teachers and 1-on-1 discussions with fellow Hallo users across the country.  

Hallo invites students to attend 8 structured English language classes with up to 4 other users. Private lessons are available.

Hours are flexible and lessons are available 24/7. Hallo provides students with feedback and grades them using AI by engaging in discussions.

10. Best Speech Technology Startup: Canary Speech, founded 2016

Canary Speech is a patented speech analysis and machine learning engine. It uses one’s own voice in the early identification of conditions that cause cognitive decline.

Through speech pattern analysis, researchers can detect the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s as well as general stress and exhaustion. This helps providers treating PTSD and in suicide prevention efforts.

Completing FDA clinical trials and IRB studies, Canary Speech implements HIPAA-compliant tools to identify biomarkers that allow healthcare professionals to diagnose, treat and provide patients with an improved quality of life. 

With an industry-recognized team in place, Canary Speech has been deploying its technologies to both domestic and international audiences. Their platform implements multi-lingual, medical and disease diagnosis capabilities to deliver patients with enhanced solutions for improved cognitive health and decline.

Hit the Silicon Slopes

Provo, Utah might just have it all. Beautiful landscapes, a killer outdoor sports scene and a super active entrepreneurial community. Sound good to you? Provo is the place to be if you’re looking to invest in startups — and maybe hit the slopes after. 

Interested in startups nationwide? Check out more of Benzinga’s Ranked content to learn more.

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