TaxBit, RootsTech, Unemployment and More (The Week of Feb. 27-Mar. 5 in Review)
Top Biz news in Utah this week includes a $100 million Series A Funding, an explosion in Family History interest, a dropping unemployment rate, and four other news items.
When a company raises nine figures in a single funding round, it’s hard not to sit-up and take notice.
That was the case earlier this week when Salt Lake City-based TaxBit announced it had raised $100 million in a Series A Round of funding, the largest ever Series A funding in the state of Utah.
TaxBit was co-founded three years ago by brothers Austin and Justin Woodward as an answer to the question,
“How do I handle the accounting and tax implications of cryptocurrency?”
Starting with the 2020 tax filing year, this is no longer a theoretical question as it’s right there in Black & White & Aqua on this year’s Form 1040:
“At any time during 2020, did you receive, sell, send, exchange, or otherwise acquire any financial interest in any virtual currency?
To be clear, this does not just apply to tax filers, but also applies to all organizations that transact in cryptocurrency within America, whether as payments issued or received.
Hence, no wonder that TaxBit has now raised nearly $106 million, with some of its top name investors including
Paradigm,
Tiger Global,
Paypal Ventures,
Coinbase Ventures,
Winklevoss Capital, and
Qualtrics Co-Founder and Chairman (and majority Utah Jazz owner), Ryan Smith,
plus more than 10 other VC firms and private investors.
So congrats to the Brothers Woodward and the entire TaxBit Team. And good luck as you move forward.
RootsTech Goes Virtual & Attendance Skyrockets
By now, it’s clear that almost everything changes when the world is thrust into a global pandemic.
One such example is the cancellation of face-to-face events of every size and across every industry.
Last year, family history and genealogy-focused RootsTech continued its upward trajectory as it attracted 130,000 attendees to its annual 2020 confab held in Salt Lake City.
NOTE: As someone who has attended, marketed and sold at, and helped organize conferences, trade shows, and symposia all over the world, 130,000 attendees at an event in any industry is a big deal.
And yet, slightly more than one year into the worldwide shutdown caused by Covid-19, RootsTech blew last year’s attendance figures out-of-the-water this past week as over 1 million people attended the 2021 event virtually.
Trent Toone of the Deseret News published an excellent write-up on the show that I think you’ll find informative and interesting.
Utah Unemployment Keeps Dropping — That’s Good and That’s Bad
According to the Utah Department of Workforce Services, Utah’s unemployment rate dropped to 3.1% in January 2021.
That’s a drop of two-tenths of a percentage point from the December 2020 revised rate of 3.3%.
The 3.1% unemployment rate puts Utah at less than half of the national average of 6.3% in January.
From a raw numbers standpoint, the Department of Workforce Services estimates that there were ~50,100 Utahns unemployed in January.
Such a low unemployment number is clearly good as fewer unemployed people means more families with full bellies, roofs over their heads, bills being paid on time, and money flowing into and through the state economy.
Historically, economists have typically pegged 5% as the unemployment figure where, on average, the number of people who
Want to work, and are
Capable of working
are all working (or will be working shortly). In other words, full-employment.
Above 5% unemployment and there are more people out of work than jobs for them to fill. Conversely, under 5% unemployment, and there are more job openings than people able to fill such jobs.
Hence, short of bringing new employees from outside of Utah to fill open jobs here, the only way to fill such open jobs in the State of Deseret is through poaching (aka, recruiting someone to a new position).
That puts upward pressure on wages, good for the employees, but not so much for the employers. But that also contributes to inflation.
The explanation above is clearly an oversimplification, but I think it makes the point:
At 3.1% unemployment, the state of Utah is in a Good/Bad situation economically.
Other News Items of Note from This Week
What follows below are four additional Noteworthy News Items taken from the breaking news announcements that hit our radar this past week from Utah’s business community, news items we thought you might find worthwhile if not also intriguing.
Case in point —
VC Fund Mercato Partners Leads $80 Million Funding Round in Ohio
Occasionally we will highlight a non-Utah organization in Deseret Business Watch, but only if there is a natural tie to the business community of Utah. In this case, Columbus, Ohio-based Beam Dental qualifies because it just received a $20 million investment from Cottonwood Heights-based Mercato Partners as part of an $80 million Series E round of funding that Beam just closed. Details on the transaction are included in this news release from Mercato.
Alianza Acquires CounterPath
Pleasant Grove-based Alianza announced this week that it has acquired Canadian-firm CounterPath. With the acquisition Alianza expects to broaden its offerings of cloud-based video and mobile communications to its existing SaaS applications (Software-as-a-Service). No terms of the deal were disclosed, but post-transaction, Alianza will maintain offices in Vancouver, British Columbia (where CounterPath is based today).
We're No. 1 ... in the Number of Vacant Homes ... and That's not Good
Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you know that Utah’s residential market has been red-hot of late, especially along the Wasatch Front and much of the Wasatch Back. Now comes a report from Porch that ranks Salt Lake City as 1 of 9 large metropolitan cities Tied for 1st Place as having the lowest home vacancy percentage in the country at less than 0.05%. In addition, SLC is the No. 2 large metro for home ownership in the country at 69.3%. Here’s a link to the Porch Report.
Upcoming Free Event to Highlight Advanced Materials Research & Manufacturing Opportunities with the U.S. Military and DoD
The Utah Advanced Manufacturing & Materials Initiative (UAMMI) is hosting a free virtual event on March 24 on research and manufacturing opportunities with the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. military. This half-day event will feature presentations from a Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Air Force, and officers and directors from other Air Force organizations, as well as from Oakridge National Labs and Idaho National Laboratory. If you or your organization work in “advance materials,” this is an event you should check out.
ICYMI: “Don’t Sleep on Overstock” Feature Story
Consider this a postscript, but on Tuesday I took a deep-dive into Utah tech industry mainstay, Overstock, and why I think the eCommerce leader might be on the cusp of breaking out, both from a revenue standpoint and from a stock performance viewpoint. If you haven’t read it yet, I hope you’ll check it out here: “Don’t Sleep on Overstock.” Thanks.
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About the Author
David Politis is a Marketing Mercenary, which is a fancy way of saying that organizations and individuals hire him to solve their marketing problems. To learn more, please feel free to visit David’s LinkedIn Profile or the website for his business: The David Politis Company. If you have a story idea for him (or would just like to connect), you can reach him at me@davidpolitis.com.