PLURALSIGHT AND DOMO START A NEW WAVE OF IPOS IN UTAH. OAN THE TREND CONTINUE?

• Author: Penrod, Emma

Despite a long hiatus, IPO fever is expected to hit Utah in the coming months. Tech industry leaders say this round will be different than the last--but success could bring new challenges to the Beehive state.

PLURALSIGHT STARTS IPO CRAZE

Pluralsight isn't the first home-grown company to field a highly successful IPO in Utah, but you wouldn't know it for the hype in some sectors.

Experts following Utah's tech industry expect the state to produce as many as a half-dozen in-demand IPOs in the coming year--and that's only the beginning. Pluralsight's accomplishment could prove contagious, triggering an avalanche of public offerings among Utah's unicorns in the years to come.

But while Pluralsight may prove to be the catalyst for this latest outbreak, it wasn't patient zero. Years of slower growth, coupled with a gradual influx of venture capital and the organic rise of Utah's entrepreneurial community, have converged to create what may well prove to be a tipping point for the state. However, it's yet to be seen whether Utah can sustain the projected rate of growth, and not everyone in the industry is convinced the state is prepared to deal with side effects such as an increased cost of living and growing talent shortages.

THIS IS NOT THE FIRST IPO WAVE TO HIT UTAH

It isn't as though Utah's current unicorns came from nowhere. Even before the term "unicorn" was first coined, Utah was home to companies like WordPerfect, Novell, and Omniture--none of which, despite being successful in their own right, resulted in the kind of explosive growth some forecast today.

"We just weren't at that stage," says Troy D'Ambrosio, Executive Director of the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute at the University of Utah. Despite the early success of those companies, he says, Utah didn't have the requisite support systems in place to keep the cycle of growth turning.

When a company goes public, Mr. D'Ambrosio says, it has a tendency to start a "virtuous cycle" in the surrounding company. The founders and funders of the original venture find themselves flush with cash, and often use that money to start new businesses. Those businesses have even greater odds of success than the first--employees of the first company provide a more experienced pool of talent for the second, and investors will be more likely to support start-ups coming out of a proven background.

"[This] creates an almost perpetual motion machine of creating more companies," Mr. D'Ambrosio says. "That's what...