How Mormons built a startup ecosystem in Utah
Utah and Mormonism are pretty interesting in both good and bad ways socially and culturally. I grew up as a Mormon in Utah and still live and work here. I don&#x27;t really practice the faith anymore (finishing off my coffee as I write this!) but most of my family including my wife does.<p>Culturally, Mormons are a bit like the conservative south, except remove alcohol, add a higher respect for formal education, and crank up that &#x27;protestant work ethic&#x27; to 11. Not that southern conservatives are lazy, but I think there is more of a culture of enjoying some downtime with iced tea in the shade in the South than there is among Mormons. There&#x27;s also a bit of a culture of natural distrust of authority figures in the south - especially highly educated &#x27;Ivy Leaguers.&#x27; There&#x27;s less of that in Mormonism. Mormons pride themselves on being highly successful outside the church, whether in politics, business or academia. This can create huge problems for people who don&#x27;t feel like they measure up, especially for women who are expected to be perfect housewives and homemakers while also supporting their husbands careers and doing valuable, secular community work. Often while their husbands work full time and then spend their off days (and all of their disposable cash) doing an MLM side hustle. Although, as the article notes, Mormon women are highly involved (dare I say preyed on) by MLMs as well - There are MLMs for everything from cleaning products to beauty products to sex toys, all aimed directly at women.[2]<p>The Mormon church does a pretty good job of teaching it&#x27;s younger members (mostly just the boys, unfortunately) some basics of leadership and organizing group work efforts. These leadership rolls are mostly &#x27;on the rails&#x27; - the church provides careful instruction of how to organize and lead to make these responsibilities approachable for the novice. Members are expected to speak in front of large and small groups from an early age, for example, and to preside over small groups of others near their own age in youth programs. For that reason lots of business efforts in Utah can just kind of coast on those same learned principles. There&#x27;s already a shared cultural subconscious understanding of how groups of people &#x27;should&#x27; work together, which overall makes things easier to get off the ground than trying to build these organizational structures from scratch.<p>The obvious downside (at least for me, I think some people experience this as a positive) is that every day at work feels a bit like a day at church. The people look like same, are often dressed the same, the meetings run in basically the same format, it&#x27;s all very homogeneous.<p>I recently spent three years working for a company based in San Francisco. For me this was a breath of fresh air - the company was quite diverse among races, genders, sexual orientation and identity, etc. I didn&#x27;t feel like I was sitting in Elder&#x27;s Quorum meeting during daily standup[1]. I&#x27;m back at a Utah company now and while I don&#x27;t have any problems with the company overall the feeling like I&#x27;m looking in the mirror at everyone I work with is stifling.<p>Since stepping away from full activity in the church I&#x27;ve started to realize that these social structures are the main reason why a lot of people stay in the church. Somehow that had never really occurred to me, although it seems obvious now. For whatever reason in my personal life my social circle, educational and professional prospects, even romantic prospects were never really rooted in the church. But for many (most?) people who grow up in the church this is not the case - if they left the church they&#x27;d be losing not only a huge part of their own identity, but severing social ties and souring important life opportunities. For many people this is the glue that holds their lives together. I suspect this is true for most religious communities. (Or even non-religious ones, like the tech community in general, which has many of it&#x27;s own problems - and yet we stay!)<p>The other even more surprising thing I&#x27;ve learned since leaving is that a lot of people - both those currently in the church and some who have left - say that one of the main things they enjoy(ed) &#x2F; value(d) about church attendance is the music. This is honestly weird to me because the music is about the most boring, generic, church organ+out of tune singing you can imagine. Even as a very young child the hymns were among my least favorite parts of church service. To each their own.<p>[1] An in-joke for the other Mormons reading this. Elder&#x27;s Quorum is the men&#x27;s group in the Mormon church. This group meets every Sunday during church service (except during the pandemic, service is still mostly suspended world-wide). This group is specifically for men aged 18 through ~retirement age, which in the most populated parts of Utah overlaps with the group of men who are mostly employed at tech companies. This group is also specifically tasked with helping others in the community as needed, like helping people move or helping elderly folks with yardwork, etc. Overall these meetings end up feeling a lot like corporate meetings and vice-versa IME. The corresponding women&#x27;s group is called the Relief Society.<p>[2] See also the other currently trending article here about Mormons and MLMs. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23882026" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23882026</a>