1. Dubbed tech’s hidden gem in Utah Qualtrics entered 2012 with guns blazing by securing $70 M in investment from Accel Partners and Sequoia in April. The ease of use coupled with their happy customers left competitor SurveyMonkey wondering how to stop hemorrhaging market share in the marketing research arena.
2. Happy Valley’s software kingpin Josh James is at it again. First it was Omniture–now it’s Domo, a business intelligence solution that delivers critical data in real time. Named BI start of the year by BI Group Domo took another round of venture capital worth $20 M, this time from Institution Venture Partners.
3. InsideSales.com took its first round of funding totaling $4.2 M from Hummer Winblad and Josh James. The company has captured a large segment of organizations using Salesforce.com looking for a way to make more sales. At Dreamforce InsideSales.com released gamification and social selling tools into the PowerDialer platform. With the high ROI of inside versus field sales, InsideSales.com is hedging its bet on the growth remote sales to fuel their growth.
4. Fishbowl has arrived. It took them a bit to get here, but now that they’re here they’re not going anywhere but up. They specialize in inventory automation, an extremely narrow but deep niche of small and medium size businesses who can become more profitable through tighter inventory management. Co-CEO David Williams also started writing online for Forbes this year.
5. 2012 was make or break for Pleasanton-based Workday, and they made it in a big way. The human resources software company was the second major IPO after Facebook flopped. Investors got very rich with the stock popping 72% on the first day of trading and has only gone up since. It’s competitors, SAP and Oracle, have competing products, but they are like tortoises on their backs and it will be way too late when they finally are able to turn over. Most recently, Workday has opened a sales office in Salt Lake City.
6. MoneyDesktop racked up awards this year taking home Finovate’s best of show. The company’s new PFM app launched November 2012 gives consumers greater visibility with their money. They are making banks too–with customers changing banks to use the app. A quiet year on the investment front MD’s last investment was in just shy of 200K in 2011 from founders Dave Jaynes and Ryan Caldwell according to an SEC filing.
7. Salt Lake City based Experticity hit it big at the Citi/Bain Capital Advanced Retail Technology Conference in June. The online retail training platform company helps sales reps become experts on different products, driving sales. While no investment round this year is on the SEC website, it is rumored the company is expected to take $10M from Bain in the near future.
8. Fan based sales chat Needle snagged $10.5M in funding in June, postering on TechCrunch with the headline, “No More Call Centers: Needle Grabs $10.5M To Turn Your Fans Into Customer Service Reps.” Adding to additional $2M earlier in the year founder and former HP Logoworks-er Morgan Lynch is betting on fanatic fan bases to be more knowledgable and credible than internal customer support and sales departments.
9. Elearning company MasteryConnect makes a snap of online assessments. Think Khan Academy resources with Smart Board and Bubble Score Technology. Watch out Instructure!
10. Attask raised $13M in August and made a few key executive changes this year. In addition to the investment this year the Lehi-based project management company continued to build out their sales department with eye on corning a few new verticals including healthcare and high-tech.
Paul Fischer 