Celebrating modern-day pioneers in Utah

This time of year in Utah, we celebrate the pioneers who founded the communities we enjoy today.

But the Beehive State is also full of modern-day pioneers who have brought us some of the most innovative and useful technology in the world.

Whether these companies offer tools you use every day, or are simply a name on a billboard you’ve always wondered about, here are some innovations from Utah’s tech world that you can brag about to friends and associates near and far.

Podium

Have you ever received a text from a company with language so personable that you weren’t quite sure whether it came from a real human or a bot? A Utah company may have been behind the message.

Eric Rae’s dad was frustrated that while his tire shop had many satisfied customers, it seemed only a few unhappy customers ever left online reviews. That was Rae’s impetus for creating Podium , a system that made leaving a review as easy as sending a text.

It doesn’t stop there, though. Podium counts on the belief that customers often go with the first business that responds. So by generating message replies in just seconds using artificial intelligence, Podium believes companies will be able turn leads into sales.

Today, more than 100,000 businesses use Podium, a Lehi, Utah-based company that started in a spare bedroom 10 years ago, according to the company’s website.

1-800 Contacts

You’ve likely heard of 1-800 Contacts , since millions of customers use them to order their lenses online. Founded in 1995 in a Brigham Young University dorm room, the company offered the first opportunity to buy contacts online. With its headquarters in Orem, Utah, the company hasn’t strayed far from its roots.

1-800 Contacts had to fight to allow consumers to purchase lenses from anyone other than eye care practitioners. The 2004 Fairness to Contact Lens Consumer Act gave everyone the right to their own prescriptions and the ability to buy contacts anywhere.

Ancestry

You may remember trying to research your family’s history by using CD-ROM’s back in the 1990s. Those floppy disks marked the beginnings of Ancestry.com .

The Lehi, Utah-based company quickly became the largest genealogy company in the world, and currently operates in dozens of countries with millions of subscribers. Users are able to build family trees, find relatives, learn about family history and use DNA tests to glean even more information.

Since Ancestry has had many collaborations with the FamilySearch offering from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, many people may falsely believe the Church owns Ancestry.com . In fact, private equity funds managed by investment firm Blackstone acquired Ancestry in 2020. According to Blackstone’s news release at the time, the company has an annual revenue of over $1 billion.

Owlet

A BYU student, about to become a father, was worried how to monitor the baby in case his wife passed on a heart condition. As a possible solution for himself that he thought others might also appreciate, Kurt Workman and a team of parents founded the Owlet company in 2012, according to the company’s website.

New parents could place this first-of-its kind sock on an infant to see vital signs in real time. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cleared the Dream Sock as a smart baby monitor for use with healthy infants between 1-18 months and 6-30 lbs. Moms and dads can use an app to track vitals and get notified if anything seems off.

Reviews on the company website consist of many parents writing how the product eased their anxiety regarding their newborns, at least a little bit. The company reports more than two million parents worldwide have used Owlet’s platform.