Utah’s long-running Silicon Slopes Summit moved back to its traditional January schedule this year with two days of speakers and networking opportunities at Utah Valley University followed by a two-day Startup Alley segment that kicked off at the Salt Palace Convention Center on Thursday.
Startup Alley provides budding entrepreneurs the opportunity to pitch potential investors and supporters from around the world in one-on-one interactions at an event that, for the first time since launching in 2017, was free for attendees.
Founders from scores of newly-launched businesses manned booths at the convention center and their efforts ranged from brainy AI startups to consumer product innovators and even a few representatives of specialized trades that can track their origins back centuries.
How to spot a parking space
A trio of underclassmen representing both Brigham Young University and the University of Utah set up their area with a live video feed from a camera monitoring a BYU student parking lot in Provo. The camera is part of a network utilized by Spot Parking for a software platform the budding company has developed that powers an app that allows students to identify and locate available parking spaces and also aids parking enforcement officials in monitoring unpermitted use of their campus parking facilities.
Launched by BYU students Cooper Young and Ryan Hagerty along with U. student Dean Smith, Spot Parking uses AI-powered software to solve both sides of the parking dilemma that plagues any high-traffic facility and is a particular point of frustration for university parking managers and the students that attend their schools everywhere, according to the founders…