A lot of people don't understand how strong the relationship between Utah and North Carolina has become. But the Utah Jazz do. They just drafted Grayson Allen from Duke University (located in Durham, NC), where he scored a bunch of buckets and tripped a bunch of people. Everyone presumes he will score more buckets and trip less people in Utah. I'm skeptical Allen can stop the tripping but if he's making threes and switching across multiple positions, he can commit all types of small misdemeanors and no one will really care.
Business ties between Utah and North Carolina are also strengthening. AvidXchange (located in Charlotte, NC) was founded in 2000 and has grown into a financial tech leader at automating invoice and payment processes. In 2014, AvidXchange acquired Utah-based Piracle and things have gone well enough to require additional investment. That comes in the form of a new Sandy office and a $35 million commitment to expanding operations within Silicon Slopes.
“Since the acquisition, we really have become excited about what Salt Lake City has to offer: technology workers, whether that’s software development or technical support staff, that we need to support our operations," said CEO/co-founder Michael Praeger. "There’s a lot of good infrastructure here from an engineering perspective.”
Company-wide, AvidXchange has roughly 1100 employees with 100 inside Utah. Praeger estimates adding 200+ employees in the next five years, right around the time Grayson Allen is probably serving his fourth suspension for tripping James Harden.
Interesting side note: every year Forbes releases a list of the top 100 cloud computing companies, aka The Cloud 100. Last year, Silicon Slopes was recognized as the cloud computing capital OF THE ENTIRE WORLD and that's before factoring in AvidXchange, also recognized as cloud computing extraordinaires by said list. The cloud capital is being fortified, you all have been warned.
“We’re headquartered in Charlotte and we think of Salt Lake City as the main operations center for the western region," said Praeger. "Between Charlotte and Salt Lake City, the culture and people are very similar — people are purposefully in the market because of work/life balance, they want to take advantage of what each region offers.”
