Mobile Optics is one company at the E Station. Troy Sheen, executive vice president, said Hall, President and CEO T. Craig Bott and others have provided "strategic direction from a high level as to how the organization should be moving in the next five years and what it should be doing on a day-to-day basis to achieve those goals, and they've put some things in place to sustain the growth efforts with good financial plans with short- and long-term investments."

Hall's expertise with big-box retailers helped recently when Mobile Optics was in discussions with one prominent chain.

"If we didn't have the Grow Utah Ventures expertise with us, meaning Alan and Craig, we would have made some concessions when we were negotiating terms with these big-box retailers that would have killed our sustainability over the long term but would have looked very enticing for the short term," Sheen said.

A passion

Hall got Grow Utah growing a couple of year ago. A few years back, MarketStar became part of Omnicom Group Inc., and Hall was looking for something else to do as he realized his time at MarketStar was "coming to an exit." His entrepreneurial venture had become a huge company — more than 4,000 employees providing sales and marketing support to many huge companies — "and if I don't even come to work, it still goes on," Hall said.

Though he remains MarketStar's chairman, he no longer is CEO. He relinquished that title last month after 17 years leading the company.

"My true interest lies in start-ups. This is kind of my next stage of life. I can't run them. I can't do that because it would kill me off, but I can give them counseling."

A bout with heart disease a year ago reinforced his commitment. "I thought to myself, I can go home now and sit back, but I thought, if I'm going to go out, I'm going to go out in a blaze of glory, and I love entrepreneurism. I have a passion for it. I love to be involved in this. It's so fascinating and fun.

"And there are so many good people I get to work with. I don't do everything. I do some vision and a little strategy and people find they like it and they jump on board."

Grow Utah, though young, already has exceeded his expectations, and word has spread about what it has to offer. Last year, about 700 entrepreneurs — including one from Montana — sought funding.

"If I had a future goal, it would be how do I help the 670 who didn't (get funding)," he said. "Maybe there will come a time where we can find a way to give them some fundamentals and help them answer some questions and put some mentors around them and teach them the things they need to have.