UFC COO Lawrence Epstein and Las Vegas entrepreneur Teddy Liaw, CEO of Nexrep, have a discussion during a tech-business conference at The Summit, which is aimed at bringing various tech companies and investors to the Vegas valley, Thursday Sept. 15, 2022.
Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2022 | 2 a.m.
The backdrop for the Vegas Tech Summit breakfast session last week certainly appeared to be welcoming.
With the temperature hovering close to 90 degrees, bright Southern Nevada sunshine beaming, and a hawk gliding periodically over the nearby golf course, Marc Schorr’s mansion at the Summit Club seemed to be the perfect place to woo business owners to move their operations to Las Vegas.
That was the idea behind the two-day summit, which was organized by Las Vegas entrepreneur Teddy Liaw, owner of a remote call center company dubbed NexRep and a California transplant.
Liaw, who was once appointed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to an entrepreneurial task force, moved to Las Vegas in 2021. He liked the area — for business and personal reasons — so much, he decided to try to convince others in the tech space to follow him.
The idea behind Liaw’s campaign is that Nevada is a business-friendly state and that Las Vegas has a standard of living that is far cheaper than what can be found in many of the tech hotspots in the Bay Area, Southern California, and places like Seattle and Austin, Texas.
The summit — which attracted several dozen businesspeople, mostly from California — included a tour of Allegiant Stadium, lunch at the Harlo steakhousein Downtown Summerlin, a bus tour of Red Rock Canyon and a dinner party at a $25 million Las Vegas Valley mansion.
Schorr’s home isn’t worth quite that much, but the former Wynn Resorts executive’s residence at the Summit Club — singer Celine Dion has a home there and actor Mark Wahlberg is building one — proved to be more than enough to show off the Las Vegas Valley, most of which it seemed could be seen from the home’s patio deck.
Liaw says it’s not that he expects Las Vegas to become the Silicon Valley 2.0 with regard to having a budding tech scene, but he says he sees no reason why Las Vegas can’t compete with places like Nashville, Tenn., or Park City, Utah, for tech businesses.
“When I get a lot of businesspeople in a room, I like to ask who has been to Nashville or to Austin, Texas, in the past three years,” Liaw said. “Usually, not a single person has, but everybody comes to Vegas once or twice per year for events or birthdays or conventions. So, the idea that people need to come here, they’re already coming. The next part is that we get them to stay.”
That’s the tricky part, but Liaw has long believed that a showcase of some of the valley’s different attractions outside of the Strip and downtown Las Vegas would be beneficial in his efforts.
David Yeom, the co-founder and CEO of Evite, a popular digital invitation platform based in Los Angeles, seemed to like what he took in.
“We do love Nevada,” Yeom said. “Part of that is because so many of our Evite users host parties and events in Las Vegas. We know that (Nevada) is very business friendly. What I’ll take away from this summit is that Las Vegas has a robust business and tech community. I was taken aback by how vibrant those communities are.”
Yeom wasn’t ready to commit to moving the company he helps run to Southern Nevada quite yet, but his comments trumpet what could be a change in the region’s economic structure.
Nan Wang, a presenter at the event, is one person who doesn’t need to be sold on Las Vegas.
Wang, founder and CEO of Sleeper, an online platform for fantasy sports and games players, moved to the Las Vegas Valley last year.
“Being in the sports space, one of the existing things that’s recently happened is the opening up of the sports betting space,” Wang said. “We’re in a space where we can now capitalize on that, and Nevada is a mecca (for sports betting). I moved out here to pay respects to the casinos, get familiar and understand how traditional operators operate and bring a Silicon Valley view to that.”
After initially being “very skeptical” about his move here, Wang said he now viewed Las Vegas as a “beautiful city with lots of good food and tons of good golf.”
Tourism, hospitality and gaming are still far and away the main drivers of Southern Nevada’s economy, but a more diverse economy, experts have long said, can help guard against the effects of a recession.
It wasn’t just out-of-state businessmen and businesswomen who took an interest in Liaw’s summit. Government officials also took notice.
Among the attendees at the two-day event were Nevada Treasurer Zach Conine, Clark County Commissioner Justin Jones and Ryan Smith, director of economic and urban development for the city of Las Vegas.
Conine, during a brief speech, focused on the opportunity for Nevada to sell itself as a business destination.
“When we talk to people from California and other states, they talk about how Nevada is an interesting place because you can build something here that is yours,” Conine said. “As we look to make Nevada the state that we all deserve to live in, we look to you, the entrepreneurs. That’s because we know it’s not going to be the government. We try to stay away where we can and make things better in the margins.”
Liaw said a big selling point for Las Vegas revolved around what it could offer families.
After all, if a business owner moves here, that person’s family is likely to follow. Employers want to also be able to sell a community to relocated or recruited employees.
“I wanted to bring people to the Summit Club so they could see the types of places where they could live and play golf,” Liaw said. “During our tour of Allegiant Stadium, they saw behind the scenes at the stadium and saw a place where they could potentially host corporate events.”
Before the last guests checked out of the Conrad hotel at Resorts World last week, Liaw said the summit came together “exactly” how he had hoped it would.
“What’s cool is that people told me it was better than they thought it would be,” Liaw said. “Eyes were opened. People told me it was worth their time, and that’s big because we’re talking about people that are CEOs, founders and venture capitalists, so their time is valuable. For them to say that, that said it all for me.”
