Growth venture to go national

It's worked in Utah. It will work nationally.

That's the thinking of Alan Hall, who dreams of replicating the success of Grow Utah Ventures on a countrywide scale as a way of helping entrepreneurs individually and the nation as a whole.

"We're going to take this program national," Hall told a crowd of about 130 on Tuesday at a Rotary Club of Salt Lake luncheon. "It's working so well in the state of Utah, we're saying, 'What's holding us back? Why can't we take this to every state in the entire United States?' Entrepreneurs across the country need help, and we know what to do."

Hall is the founder and chairman of Ogden-based Grow Utah Ventures, a privately funded not-for-profit organization aimed at boosting entrepreneurial talent and early-stage business opportunities throughout the state. Founded in July 2004, Grow Utah identifies and supports entrepreneurs, works to support them and rallies communities and finances to support their development.

Started late last year, Grow America is the national version, currently in its infancy.

Entrepreneurs everywhere need funding, marketing help, Web services and expert advice, "and we are in a position to deliver that to every entrepreneur in this country," Hall said.

An unabashed evangelist for entrepreneurism, Hall exhibits enthusiasm spawned from experience. A failure with his first four ventures, Hall hit it big as founder and chairman of MarketStar. He's now managing partner at Mercato Partners, a venture capital company that invests and provides sales and marketing expertise to emerging tech companies, and he's chairman of the Utah Technology Council board of directors.

Hall said that through Mercato and Island Park Investments, his investments in 60 companies have had an economic impact of $1 billion in Utah.

"We don't take credit for that. We just recognize we're in a position to influence and do good," Hall said. "These companies will be the ones that succeed and grow and add employees, but we're here to facilitate and foment and help things grow."

Grow America's next steps will including the start of an awareness campaign, the appointment of state directors, the forging of partnerships, and the addition of services and funding.

"At the end of the day, I look back and say to myself we did well because we actually helped thousands of companies across this company start and grow. We also will have created tens of thousands of jobs with marketable wages," Hall said.

"And at the end, we will increase the economic impact of the United States in the billions of dollars — all done privately, without a nickel from the government. For me, this is kind of where we ought to be, right?"

The timing couldn't be better because of the recession. Hall said Americans have become "a little bit old and stodgy." But Microsoft and Apple emerged during an earlier recession, and other great companies can do it now, he said.

"America becomes great again in difficult times because we turn our attention to and support entrepreneurs in the United States," Hall said. "This country was built by them. It will succeed by their energy, their risk and their successes."

E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com