Welcome to Las Vegas Startups

Great news coming out today that a Las Vegas company, HealthDataInsights, sold for $400 million to HMS Holdings. Founded by Victor Chaltiel (yep, they guy who recently ran for Mayor of Las Vegas) with Andrea Benko as Co-Founder, President and CEO.

This is a great example of how a tech company can do very well in Las Vegas. How many people outside of Las Vegas would have bet that a Las Vegas tech company could sell for $400 million? I think using the baseball analogy, we’ll call that a triple (Zappos was a homerun if you’re keeping score). Not a bad next step for the burgeoning tech startup community in Las Vegas.

Mark Suster has a great post up where he talks about GRP Partner’s investment and 30% ownership in HealthDataInsights. It makes a lot of sense for a VC firm like GRP Partners to invest in Las Vegas. LA is a short 5 hour drive up the I-15 to get to Las Vegas. Plus, between vacation and conferences, they’re going to be in Las Vegas anyway. I look forward to seeing Mark Suster and GRP Partners doing a lot more investing in Las Vegas Tech Startup companies.

Also, as Mark Suster mentions in his post, HDI was a woman run company since the Founder and CEO is Andrea Benko. I’m sure many in #VegasTech would love to have more women like Andrea Benko more involved. A good place to start would be at next week’s Startup Weekend Las Vegas or another Vegas Tech Event.