Silicon Slopes background
Silicon Slopes is a nonprofit organization that exists to empower Utah’s tech community to learn, connect, and serve. They run the annual Silicon Slopes Tech Summit, one of the largest independent technology conferences in the world. In addition to the Silicon Slopes Tech Summit, they facilitate multiple technology-oriented events throughout Utah. They also have a media component with a magazine, podcasts, and an active website. Finally, Silicon Slopes leads many community service events focused on helping the technology community give back to the broader community.
Accounting before LedgerGurus
Clint Betts, Executive Director of Silicon Slopes, is blunt about where things started:
“Our accounting before LedgerGurus was awful. In fact, I don’t even know that you would call it accounting.”
That changed once LedgerGurus came in: “Once we got LedgerGurus and they showed us the magic of keeping track of things, our organization has been forever changed and blessed by that.”
LedgerGurus results
LedgerGurus freed up Silicon Slopes’ time to focus on their mission by operating as their accounting department. LedgerGurus introduced fundamental accounting best practices and technologies, giving Silicon Slopes financial and business insights. This allowed Silicon Slopes to experience massive growth.
LedgerGurus operates as the accounting department for Silicon Slopes by providing quality services including accounts payable, invoice preparation, donations receivable, bookkeeping, expense management, financial tracking and review, financial analysis, budgeting, forecasting, pricing analysis, and cash flow management.
Clint describes what LedgerGurus introduced: “Some of the things that LedgerGurus has introduced to Silicon Slopes that have benefited our organization immensely are really kind of like the basics of how do you keep track of everything, what are the best technology tools to use as you’re running an organization like this, which receives a decent number of invoices, also shoots out a lot of different cash to a lot of different vendors. How do you track all that? LedgerGurus, more than anything, has kind of been the one that organizes everything for us, makes sure everything is happening, and basically the train is running on time. And again, kind of frees us up to focus on what we’re good at, because we know LedgerGurus is focusing on what they’re good at.”
The Tech Summit
LedgerGurus operates as a strategic partner helping Silicon Slopes as they grow and expand. With the Silicon Slopes Tech Summit 2018, there was a 200% growth in attendees. With that growth came an accompanying increase in budget and financial complexity. LedgerGurus helped Silicon Slopes execute that event successfully and within budget.
Clint remembers what the summit looked like before: “Like the first Tech Summit we did, tracking all the invoices, just a short amount of time it took to put that summit together, we didn’t even have time to track anything, and everything was just kind of coming in and out, and it was a huge mess.”
And after:
“The second time around was unbelievable, and that’s just Tech Summit. What they’ve done for the organization, what LedgerGurus has done for the Silicon Slopes organization, is nothing short of phenomenal, and we would not be where we’re at today were it not for LedgerGurus.”
Exponential growth and freedom to focus
Clint sees the growth in the community, not just the numbers: “The growth of Silicon Slopes since we started using LedgerGurus has been exponential, again, and not even in terms of like revenue that we’re seeing, our ability to bring in more clients or more sponsors, all of that has happened. But really just the overall growth of the Silicon Slopes community, which is far more important. So that’s what we’re focused on, allowing us to free ourselves really of a lot of these challenges that no one here at the organization is really built to handle.”
“Were it not for LedgerGurus, I feel like we’d still be in the weeds of figuring out organizational structure and things like that. So the growth of Silicon Slopes, particularly the past year, year and a half, a lot of it can be attributed to LedgerGurus.”
Recommending LedgerGurus to everyone
Clint’s recommendation is as broad as it gets: “Anyone, including the biggest companies in the world to the smallest company in the world, should use LedgerGurus. I mean, and that is a little bit of hyperbole, but honestly, like what I’ve seen LedgerGurus do for us and other folks that we know and work with within the Silicon Slopes community, you would never hear anyone say anything bad, and you would never hear anyone saying that they regret using LedgerGurus.”
“Instead, you hear just the opposite, that LedgerGurus changed, benefited the company immensely, and they would never go without LedgerGurus.”