Start School Sessions

Steve Daly changed his major six times in college.

He started as a pre-med, hit organic chemistry, and decided that wasn't going to work. He went into psychology. Then mechanical engineering. Then got an MBA because he thought he wanted to start an engineering firm. Then decided he no longer wanted to be an engineer. Then spent seven interviews getting rejected before Intel finally hired him.

Then Intel fired him.

His wife said she had been praying for a change.

That firing became a startup. That startup got funded by Gavin Christensen. That startup got sold to a company in Alabama. That company bought Landesk. They asked Steve to come back to Utah and run it. He ran it for 13 years. He retired in 2020. That lasted six months. Then he took the job running Instructure, the company behind Canvas, the learning management system used by two-thirds of all U.S. higher education students and a third of all U.S. school districts.

They were losing money when he arrived. They are now doing 800 million in ARR at over 40 percent EBITDA margins. A billion is the next target.

In this Start School conversation, Steve sits down with Clint Betts for one of the most honest and practically useful conversations we have had about leadership, fear, identity, and what it actually takes to build something that lasts across multiple stages of a company.

They cover:

Why the emotions of a leader get amplified across the entire organization, and how to down-regulate yourself on both sides

What getting fired from Intel taught Steve about self-worth and where not to find it

The three things that keep people from starting something new, and why human connection is the only thing that overcomes all three

Why you have to be married to solving the problem and not to solving it a certain way

How Canvas went from two BYU students who hated Blackboard to owning more share in North American higher ed than the next three competitors combined

The fatal flaw of almost every founder Steve has seen across 20-plus acquisitions

Why giving more credit and authority to your team changed his culture, his business performance, and his own mental health

How to think about raising capital now that you do not always need it to get started

What return to office actually looks like at a 2,000-person company and why Steve has strong opinions on both sides

The hayride moment he cannot forget, and what he missed with his kids because he was too wrapped up in worry to be present

Why therapy and faith were both part of how he got through the hardest stretch of his career

Steve Daly is one of the most thoughtful and self-aware leaders we have had on this stage. He does not pretend the journey was clean. He talks about depression. He talks about therapy. He talks about the board meeting where his CEO told him he sucked. He talks about the morning he woke up convinced his startup was a dumpster fire and how that fear infected everyone around him.

And then he talks about what he did about it.

Start School is Silicon Slopes' free entrepreneurship program built for founders at every stage.

Andrew Smith started his first company in 1998 because his roommate figured out how to put a Jaguar commercial on the internet. He called Jaguar 400 times until someone picked up. They said how much. He said $125,000. They said cool. He had no idea what an impression was.

That was the beginning of a career that would take him from streaming media to wealth management software to construction tech to 87 Little Caesars to Neater's Bakery to Swig to a private equity fund that has owned and operated over 600 restaurants and generated more than $3.5 billion in sales.

He also started in the dish pit. His wife made him.

In this Start School conversation, Andrew sits down with Clint Betts for one of the most wide-ranging and practically useful conversations we have ever had about building companies, scaling brands, raising capital, and what money actually feels like when you finally get it.

He bought a Ferrari at 26 years old. He was done with it in a week. He has never forgotten that lesson.

They cover:

- The wild west of Utah tech in 1998 and what it was like to almost beat Mark Cuban to YouTube
- Why the dot-com bubble popped 45 days before his IPO and what he did next
- How his wife opened a restaurant in October 2008 and crushed it while his tech company was burning down
- Why food and beverage fails less than every other industry in years one through five and nobody knows it
- The dish pit lesson and why you should always start at the bottom in a new industry
- How Savory Fund went from 16 Swig locations to 155 and counting with 700 more coming
- Why venture capital is race fuel and what happens when your car is not ready for it
- How to know when a restaurant brand is worth investing in and what disciplined scale actually looks like
- Why copying your competitor is not a strategy and focusing on your own guest is the only thing that works
- What Utah does better than anywhere else and where the next decade of opportunity actually lives
- Why SaaS is under pressure and where Andrew would build if he were 26 years old today
- How to use AI as a force multiplier without letting it replace your judgment
What money actually feels like when you get it and why it is always a false summit

Andrew Smith has been in this community for nearly 30 years. He has built tech companies, restaurant empires, and a private equity fund that is closing its third fund right now. He still shows up to give back because he believes that is how it works.

He is right.

Start School is Silicon Slopes' free entrepreneurship program built for founders at every stage. New episodes every week.

Gail Miller was a stay-at-home mom for 44 years.

She raised five children while her husband Larry worked 90-hour weeks building what would become one of the most consequential business empires in the history of Utah. She was on paper the co-owner and president of the company from the beginning. But she never worked in it. She lost her voice somewhere along the way. She saw a psychologist for her child and the psychologist told her she was the one who needed help.

Then Larry died.

And Gail Miller stepped in and ran everything.

She took a company that included car dealerships, the Utah Jazz, movie theaters, and real estate holdings and shepherded it through one of the most complex succession and transition processes any family business has ever navigated. She sold the Jazz for $1.6 billion after buying it for $22 million. She built a foundation that gives away money across five areas of focus and has taught her 45 grandchildren and great-grandchildren how to give. She has chaired Intermountain Health. She has served on Salt Lake Community College's board. She wrote a book called Courage to Be You. She is building toward bringing Major League Baseball to Utah.

She did all of it by staying grounded in four values. Integrity. Hard work. Stewardship. Service.

In this Start School conversation, Gail sits down with Clint Betts for one of the most honest and wide-ranging conversations we have ever had about money, marriage, ethics, courage, and what it actually means to build something that lasts.

They cover:

- Why money is the lubricant of free enterprise and how to make sure it never changes who you are
- How Larry and Gail stayed frugal through every pay increase and reinvested the difference for 25 years
- What it was like to be married to a workaholic entrepreneur and what Larry said he wished he had done differently
- Why ethics is the foundation of everything and how to codify your values before you need them
- The imposter syndrome Gail faced stepping into leadership after 44 years as a stay-at-home mom
- How a 360 review and a coach named Marshall Goldsmith changed everything
- The story of buying the Utah Jazz for $8 million and selling it for $1.6 billion
- Why she sold the Jazz and how the family made that decision together
- The hard leadership lessons of succession, building a board of directors, and finding a new CEO
- What it takes to find your voice after years of living in someone else's shadow
- How to give more than you take and why the cycle is impossible to break once you start

Gail Miller is, in Clint's words, the greatest living Utahn. After spending time with her, it is hard to argue otherwise.

Start School is Silicon Slopes' free entrepreneurship program built for founders at every stage. New episodes every week.

Brandon Fugal grew up in Pleasant Grove, Utah, reading the Wall Street Journal and Business Week as a teenager. He started in commercial real estate one week out of high school at 18, making $500 his first year, working janitorial jobs at night to put gas in his car, and getting escorted out of office buildings for soliciting. He had his scholarship to BYU revoked because of a D- in algebra in ninth grade.

Today, he is the chairman of Colliers International, the largest commercial real estate enterprise in Utah. He owns the Dole Plantation on Oahu. He has started and sold software companies, launched an aerospace company, and invested in more than 20 startups. He owns Skinwalker Ranch, the most scientifically studied paranormal hotspot on the planet, which became a hit History Channel series watched by millions.

He built all of it by programming himself every single morning to feel perpetually unemployed.

In this Start School conversation, Brandon sits down with Clint Betts for one of the most wide-ranging and honest conversations we have ever had about entrepreneurship. Brandon does not hold back on any of it.

They cover:

- How an 18-year-old with no money and no connections built a proprietary database in DOS that became the foundation of a real estate empire
- Why follow-up is the single difference between top performers and everyone else
- The Cabela's cufflinks story and what it taught him about reading a room
- Why he programs himself to feel unemployed every single day, regardless of how much money he has
- How to raise capital by capturing investors' hearts before their pocketbooks
- Why skilled trades are going to dominate the next decade
- What a long-term mindset actually means in a world obsessed with quick exits
- Why relationships are his greatest achievement, not projects or deals or money
- What he would tell his younger self if he had a time machine and why he would not get in
- The day at Skinwalker Ranch that turned a hardened skeptic into an experiencer

And yes. He tells the full story of Skinwalker Ranch. The doctor from Area 51. The phones losing all battery at once. The six-foot-four security guard rendered catatonic for ten minutes. The 40- to 50-foot silver disc suspended above the mesa, which changed position in a blink and then vanished.

He was a skeptic. He is not anymore.

Start School is Silicon Slopes' free entrepreneurship program built for founders at every stage.

Brian Beutler was a history major at BYU with a business minor, just in case teaching did not work out.

In 1998, while serving a mission in Chile, he noticed that calling home cost him $3 a minute. His parents were paying less than three cents a minute to call him. Same call. Same two people. One hundred times more expensive going one direction than the other. That gap became the idea for Alianza.

He won $64,000 in a business plan competition, printed his phone number in the BYU campus newspaper, cobbled together two million dollars from Utah angels and founders, and started building. Twenty-two years later, Alianza powers phone calls and text messages for network operators in 81 countries. Nineteen of the top 20 global service providers are customers. AT&T. British Telecom. The national network of the Maldives. He has never taken a traditional venture round. He has never needed to.

In this Start School conversation, Brian sits down with Clint Betts to talk about what it actually takes to build something over a very long time, and why the founders who win are almost never the ones who started with the best idea.

They cover:

- Why great ideas compounded by small daily progress over long periods of time deliver great results
- The difference between wartime leadership and peacetime leadership and how to survive both
- Why we do not rise to our ambitions but fall to the level of our habits
- How to get customers, employees, and investors to emotionally buy into a vision
- The heart, mind, hands model for driving change inside resistant industries
- Why storytelling is the single most important skill a founder can develop
- How AI is changing human conversation and why Brian thinks it is the most exciting thing he has ever worked on
- What the Warren Buffett top five email taught him about focus and avoiding distraction

Brian also volunteers with Utah County Search and Rescue. He journals. He has five of his first eight employees still with the company. He is still building like a startup.

This is one of the most grounded and practical conversations we have had at Start School. No hype. No shortcuts. Just 22 years of showing up.

Start School is Silicon Slopes' free entrepreneurship program built for founders at every stage.

0:00 — Clint Welcomes Brian to Start School
1:15 — Brian's Background: History Major, Business Minor, and the Entrepreneurial Lecture Series at BYU
4:30 — The Cow Pie Clock Story and How It Changed His Thinking About Business
7:45 — Winning the BYU Business Plan Competition and the Birth of Alianza
11:00 — Brian's Favorite History Class and the Greatest Snow on Earth
13:30 — Utah County Search and Rescue: Why a Tech CEO Volunteers to Save Lives on Mountains
17:45 — How Big Is Alianza? 81 Countries, 700 Employees, and 19 of the Top 20 Global Carriers
21:30 — Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and Meeting Customers From Tahiti to the Maldives
24:00 — How Alianza Was Funded: From a $64,000 Check to Two Million Dollars in Seed Capital
28:15 — The Daily Universe Article, the Phone Number, and the Wells Fargo Teller With Wide Eyes
31:30 — Patient Investors and Building a Company Without a Traditional Venture Round
34:00 — Q&A Begins
34:15 — How Do You Migrate a Business From One Product to Another Over 22 Years?
38:30 — The Heart Mind Hands Model for Driving Change Inside Resistant Industries
42:00 — If You Could Leave One Thing With This Room, What Would It Be?
44:15 — What Got Brian Into VoIP and Who Was Alianza's First Customer
48:30 — The $3 Per Minute Phone Call in Chile That Sparked the Whole Idea
52:00 — Edge Computing, AI, and Where Brian Sees the Biggest Opportunity in Connectivity
54:30 — Key Hires and the Five Original Employees Still With the Company 22 Years Later
56:45 — How to Get Customers' Hearts Into a Technical Product Nobody Understands
1:00:15 — Near Death Experiences and What Wartime Leadership Actually Looks Like
1:04:30 — How AI Is Changing Everything Internally at Alianza
1:08:00 — The Dematerialization of Human Conversation and What AI Does to It Next
1:13:15 — Introspection, Marc Andreessen, and Looking Out the Windshield Instead of the Rearview Mirror
1:17:45 — The Harder I Work, the Luckier I Get
1:20:00 — How to Keep Pushing Forward When the World Says No
1:24:30 — We Do Not Rise to Our Ambitions. We Fall to the Level of Our Habits.
1:27:45 — The Warren Buffett Top Five Email and How Brian Structures Every Week
1:31:00 — How Do You Get People to Follow You? The Art of Storytelling
1:36:30 — Scott Petty and David Frazier on What Makes Brian a Leader Worth Following
1:40:00 — Find Something Hard to Solve and Take Comfort That It Sucks
1:42:30 — How Brian Leads Himself: Journaling, Grace, and Can't Never Did Anything
1:47:00 — Stay in the Game: Closing Thoughts and Wrap Up

Sandi Hendry did not set out to build a company. She set out to comfort her daughter.

In 2009, her middle daughter was sick in the hospital. Sandi asked what she could do. Her daughter said she wanted a soft, cozy blanket. But make it cute. That was the beginning of Minky Couture.

Sixteen and a half years later, Sandi operates six retail stores across Utah, employs hundreds of people, ships blankets around the world, donates 100,000 mini blankets to NICUs across the country every year, and has just signed on as the official blanket of the Dallas Cowboys. She did it without investors, without a business background, and without knowing how to sew.

Two business school professors told her to quit. She opened more stores.

In this Start School conversation, Sandi sits down with Clint Betts to talk about what it actually takes to build something from nothing, and why the things that matter most have very little to do with business plans.

They cover:

- How a single hospital visit became a worldwide brand
- Why giving back is the real secret to customer loyalty
-The jump from 1,200 square feet to 17,000 and what that decision taught her
- How she built a company almost entirely led by women
- Why she refused to update her logo and what that decision says about brand identity
- The 3-6-9 rule for scaling slowly without losing your footing
- What the Heart of Minky program is and why it exists
- Why brick and mortar is not dead if you make it an experience

Sandi is one of the most generous and grounded entrepreneurs in Utah. Her story is not about disruption, venture capital, or hockey-stick growth. It is about seeing a need, executing on an idea, and taking care of every person along the way.

Start School is Silicon Slopes' free entrepreneurship program built for founders at every stage.

0:00 — Clint Welcomes Sandi to Start School
1:15 — Sandi's Background: 30 Years of Teaching and the Entrepreneur Spirit
4:30 — Her Father's Newspaper and Where the Business Bug Came From
7:15 — The Origin Story: A Daughter in the Hospital and a Request for a Cozy Blanket
12:30 — From 50 Handmade Blankets to a Real Business
16:15 — Build-A-Bear Was the Model: How Sandi Thought About the Product
19:45 — Home Parties, Office Stores, and the Parking Lot Moment That Changed Everything
23:15 — How Minky Couture Got Its Name and Why the Logo Has Never Changed
27:30 — Walking Into Minky Headquarters: A Culture Built by Women
31:00 — Hiring Stay-at-Home Seamstresses and Building a Flexible Workforce
36:30 — Scaling From One Employee to 450 at Christmas
41:00 — The $13,500 Fabric Order That Almost Stopped Everything
44:15 — Q&A Begins
44:30 — The Secret Sauce Behind Minky's Customer Loyalty
48:00 — Billboard Strategy and Marketing to Families From Infant to Elderly
51:15 — The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and How That Came About
54:00 — How Sandi Opened the First Big Doors for Minky
57:30 — Scaling From a Handful of Trusted Women to Hundreds of Employees
1:02:00 — The Jump From 1,200 Square Feet to 17,000 and What That Taught Her
1:07:15 — Two Business Schools Told Her to Quit. She Opened More Stores.
1:10:30 — Direct to Consumer vs. Wholesale: Why Sandi Cut Out the Middleman
1:14:00 — The Heart of Minky: 100,000 NICU Blankets and Giving Back
1:19:15 — Clint's Personal NICU Story and Why This Program Matters
1:22:00 — Generosity as a Business Strategy: Is Giving Back the Secret to Success?
1:27:30 — The Dallas Cowboys Partnership Announcement
1:31:00 — Closing Thoughts: Execute the Thought Everyone Else Just Had

Derek White has seen the future four times. He helped build the first internet bank. He ran FinTech at Barclays across the UK, Dubai, and Spain. He led Galileo as CEO. Now he's in stealth mode, building what he believes is his most important company yet — one built entirely on AI.

In this Start School conversation, Derek sits down with Clint Betts to discuss what he's learned over four decades of translating new technologies into real businesses and what founders need to know right now.

They cover:

- Why businesses will soon have more AI agents than human employees

-The 3-6-9 rule for shipping fast inside any size company

- How to move a 140,000-person organization from interest to action

-The difference between falling in love with your idea and finding product-market fit

- Why the biggest FinTech opportunities in the next decade are in stable coins, human interaction monetization, and infrastructure

-How to think about AI governance, gateways, and guardrails
What it means to lead yourself before you can lead others

Derek is a seventh-generation Utahn who spent 17 years living and building overseas before coming home to Utah. His perspective on what makes this state special — and why it matters for the next generation of founders — is worth the watch alone.

Start School is Silicon Slopes' free entrepreneurship program built for founders at every stage.

0:00 — Welcome and Introduction to Derek White
1:45 — Derek's Background: From College Roommate Business to East Coast Finance
4:20 — Building the First Internet Bank and the Birth of Online Financial Services
7:10 — Selling to Barclays and 17 Years Overseas: UK, Dubai, Spain
11:30 — What Is the Future of Dubai?
14:00 — Building a Stealth AI Company: The Fourth Cycle
17:15 — How Derek Is Using AI Right Now: Agentic vs. Generative
21:00 — Q&A Begins
21:15 — How Do You Control AI Agent Governance? The Three G's
26:40 — Can Money Be Used for Good? Multiple Capitals and the ABCs of Leadership
33:10 — What Actually Moves a 140,000-Person Company From Interest to Action
39:00 — The 3-6-9 Rule for Shipping Fast
43:20 — The Number One Startup Pitfall to Avoid
45:30 — How to Think About Going Public and SEC Requirements
48:00 — Why Derek Loves Stealth Mode and the Sacrifices It Requires
52:15 — How Do We Keep AI From Feeling Soulless?
55:30 — What Makes Utah Special: A Global Perspective
1:01:00 — The Future of FinTech: Stable Coins, Human Interaction, and Infrastructure
1:08:20 — OpenClaw, Security Risks, and the Agentic Cost Problem
1:13:45 — Anthropic vs. OpenAI: How Should Leaders Think About AI Ethics?
1:18:30 — Personal Leadership: Know Yourself Before You Lead Others
1:24:00 — Closing and Wrap-Up

Will West is a Silicon Slopes legend. He's built multiple successful companies, most notably Control 4, a pioneer in home automation. In this session, Will got honest about what it actually takes to build something worth building.

00:00:00 - Introduction and Background
00:00:54 - Starting a Company in the Age of AI
00:01:25 - Why Be an Entrepreneur?
00:02:08 - Retirement and Starting Again
00:02:31 - Becoming an Expert
00:03:13 - AI in Home Automation
00:05:06 - Raising Money in Today's Environment
00:07:31 - Measuring Expertise
00:08:07 - Formal Education vs. Self-Education
00:10:43 - Early Stage Decision Making
00:11:02 - Commitment and Momentum
00:14:09 - Biggest Mistake
00:19:32 - Platform Building Priorities
00:22:16 - Partnership Dynamics
00:24:15 - Exit Strategy
00:33:23 - Outcomes-Based Contracting in Education
00:36:27 - Importance of Partnerships
00:38:14 - Ideal Board Member Profile
00:42:25 - Building from Vision to Scale
00:46:17 - Handling Competition
00:48:55 - Winning Against Big Competitors
00:52:29 - Personal Leadership
00:56:05 - Closing Remarks

John Pestana, co-founder of Omniture and co-founder and CEO of ObservePoint, joins Start School for a candid, wide-ranging conversation about building billion-dollar companies, surviving the AI shift, structuring founders correctly, and why most people fail simply because they never start.

From buying 40 million dollars of servers per year in the early days of SaaS to today’s AI-powered one-person startups, John breaks down what has changed and what has not.

This is not a biography. It is a tactical masterclass in entrepreneurship, integrity, grit, and long-term thinking.

Topics include:

• Why SaaS is not dead
• The real opportunity in AI
• How to structure founder equity
• When to start a company
• Product market fit explained simply
• Government regulation and entrepreneurship
• Raising money for business vs nonprofit
• Investor integrity
• How to lead yourself
• Why “just start” matters more than almost anything

If you are building, thinking about building, or stuck waiting for the right time, this episode is for you.

00:00:00 - Introduction and Welcome
00:00:26 - Guest Introduction: John Pistana
00:01:08 - Founding Omniture and Silicon Slopes
00:02:08 - Starting a Software Company in the 90s vs. Today
00:03:28 - Impact of AWS on Startups
00:04:22 - Raising Venture Capital in the SaaS World
00:04:49 - Embracing AI in Business
00:05:11 - Opportunities for Entrepreneurs with AI
00:07:56 - Audience Q&A Introduction
00:08:24 - Acknowledging Key People
00:08:42 - Building Scalable Products with Limited Experience
00:10:08 - Importance of Partnerships in Business
00:13:05 - The Future of SaaS Companies
00:15:32 - Transitioning from a Full-Time Job to Entrepreneurship
00:18:44 - Sales and Marketing for New Entrepreneurs
00:23:16 - The Future and Impact of AI
00:25:52 - Corporate Structure and Equity Distribution
00:28:34 - Challenges for Returning Citizens
00:34:16 - Helping People Through Business
00:38:06 - Timing and Market Fit for New Ventures
00:44:26 - Finding the Right Business Partner
00:46:38 - Importance of Starting and Taking Action
00:47:32 - Recruitment Process for Partners and Investors