The Exchanges

Q Jared told me I had to ask about doubles. What does he mean?

A Sometimes you have to change the way you work, and Kim Scott, who's one of Jared's friends, and my friend is, uh, and board member and advisor and CEO coach, She always talked about doubles and triples, where there's not enough time in the day, so, you know, I'll never forget a couple years ago, I was talking to Kim about how I couldn't do it all. Being a good dad, being a husband, being all the responsibilities in my life, and she's like, why don't you double or triple them up? And so, I remember that Monday, my wife said, hey, I've got to teach dance, because she's a dance teacher. I've got to teach dance. You've got the kids. And I looked at everything I had to do, and it was like, okay, my grandmother's turning at 80, and I need to do that. I gotta go to dinner. I have to teach my four-year-old how to ride a bike, and I don't have time. Like, I'm failing at everything, and I was like, I'm gonna try this. So I grabbed the kids. I threw them in the car. I grabbed my daughter's bike. I threw it in the car. We went and got Wendy's. We went over to my grandmother's house, pulled her out onto her driveway. The kids ate. My daughter rode her bike in front of grandmother, and that was a triple. I got three things done in one hour. Right? And so, you'll always see me doubling up everything I do. Like, if I have a meeting that I need to go do, I'll just bring them with me to the next…

AI assessment note: “why don't you double or triple them up?”

Q Can I ask, is that building without a liquidity event in mind? And how do you pitch that then to VCs who often have liquidity events in mind and timescales and horizons in mind?

A So, so fortunately enough, I've never had to pitch a VC, and so I don't know what that really looks like. We, we, we've been cashflow positive from the beginning, and I think more companies should work on that and, and try to get to that state, and it's a foreign state, and I understand the reasons why we could go out early or why people would want that early on, but I believe that there's kind of an incubation period of every idea or every company, and a You really don't know what's, what's right. And I'll give you an example of this is like when we first went into academia, we thought we'd just go to the CIO and we'd sign a license with the university. Well, that was wrong. Then we went to the research group because they're doing a bunch of research and we thought that's where we go. Well, they didn't buy it and we're six months in. And then we went to, you know, the business school and they didn't buy it. And I'm now nine months in on this journey of like how to get customers. And when we went We ended up, you know, a year and a half into this finding that if we had professors who was passionate about us, then they would tell their department who would buy it, and then the university would get one of the schools on board, and then a school would get another school and another school, and the next thing you know, we're back at the CIO working on a university-wide deal, and so…

AI assessment note: “fortunately enough, I've never had to pitch a VC, and so I don't know”

Q intrigued then in terms of kind of, you said about kind of stay near in case we do have an event that requires capital. What was it then in When you were, as you said, cash flow positive and the business was thriving, what was that kind of catalyst for you guys realizing that now was the time for venture funding and you wanted to take Excel and Sequoia's money?

A Yeah, so it was an incredibly tough decision. Here I am with my father, my brother, and another co-founder, Stuart, and we were ripping off some pretty good distributions, having to be honest, from a cash standpoint. And there was this idea that, hey, maybe we're being short-sighted here. We, you know, we were close to coming up on fifty million dollars in, in sales and, you know, 50% profit margins, a hundred percent bootstrap. And we thought, wait a minute. And we started to see this vision that we had in 2002. Here we are eight, nine, 10 years later starting to play out. And all of these students were graduating and people were going into the enterprise and saying, oh my gosh, Qualtrics isn't just surveys. Qualtrics is We're going to run all of our customer feedback on Qualtrics. So, you know, currently we power nine different airlines. We power all the feedback for healthcare.gov. And, you know, we have 160,000 net promoter score studied NPS studies running on Qualtrics. So people are like, this is the de facto NPS product. And then people were like also using us on the employee side and doing, you know, the second use case on Qualtrics has become doing all of their employee feedback and three 60 reviews. And it was this idea that I don't need to go pay Some expensive group anymore. I can actually do it on Qualtrics. And so we saw this multi-billion dollar opportunity and w…

AI assessment note: “And so we saw this multi-billion dollar opportunity and we had to really have an honest discussion”

Q they often tell me, Harry, if you're always looking to the next thing, You're never going to appreciate and be happy in the moment, but scaling a business, you're always looking at scaling next quarter. You're always looking at the next big customer. How do you think about being happy in the moment, but also being ambitious to want to ramp next quarter and want to do more and more?

A Well, I think first of all, if your happiness is tied up in your business, you're never going to be happy because it's nothing but problems, whether it's customer problems, whether it's Employee problems, whether it's just frustration, like, you've got to find happiness outside, and it's one of the biggest problems I see in tech is we're all so good at what we do, and what makes us great will also kill us, and so whatever that center of gravity, whatever that piece, whether it's family, whether it's spiritual, whether it's who you are, like, that's got to carry the day, and you've got to bring that with you to what you do in tech and your job. If you don't have that, You are going to be a miserable human being, because tech will eat you up, because it's a constant state of innovation.

AI assessment note: “if your happiness is tied up in your business, you're never going to be happy”

Q they often tell me, Harry, if you're always looking to the next thing, You're never going to appreciate and be happy in the moment, but scaling a business, you're always looking at scaling next quarter. You're always looking at the next big customer. How do you think about being happy in the moment, but also being ambitious to want to ramp next quarter and want to do more and more?

A Well, I think first of all, if your happiness is tied up in your business, you're never going to be happy because it's nothing but problems, whether it's customer problems, whether it's Employee problems, whether it's just frustration, like, you've got to find happiness outside, and it's one of the biggest problems I see in tech is we're all so good at what we do, and what makes us great will also kill us, and so whatever that center of gravity, whatever that piece, whether it's family, whether it's spiritual, whether it's who you are, like, that's got to carry the day, and you've got to bring that with you to what you do in tech and your job. If you don't have that, You are going to be a miserable human being, because tech will eat you up, because it's a constant state of innovation.

AI assessment note: “if your happiness is tied up in your business, you're never going to be happy”

Q Having turned down that, and then obviously having accepted SAPs, how did it feel when you accepted? I think a lot of entrepreneurs dream of that day, that big exit, that article, the multi-billion dollar sale. How did it feel when you actually sold?

A Yeah, Harry, I'll just be super straight because I, and this is probably weird to say, but if there's entrepreneurs out there listening, this is probably the single piece of advice that I could give. You know, it was a cash deal. The day that the wires hit, I remember sitting, we were at a president's club, so we were at a sales retreat with all of our people, and you could kind of look around, and you could see everyone's phones, right? Like, people were, like, with their spouses, like, it was pretty clear that, like, things have funded, right? And I remember turning to my wife, just, like, showing her the phone. You'd see a bunch of zeros, right? And she was like, oh, scary. And I think it was probably the most underwhelming day of my entire career. You know, we owned a lot of the company, right? And it was pretty interesting that in the eyes of the world, everyone saw that as success, but like, it wasn't this Eureka moment at all. And it wasn't until we saw a bunch of other young kids and families and people actually feel the success that it actually meant anything. And so I think that the lesson is, if you are doing this, and you think, oh, I'm gonna build a company, and I'm gonna raise a bunch of funding, and I'm gonna exit, and I'm gonna get some money, it's going to be the most underwhelming moment that you've had in your career. You have to find another reason to do thi…

AI assessment note: “I think it was probably the most underwhelming day of my entire career.”

Q intrigued then in terms of kind of, you said about kind of stay near in case we do have an event that requires capital. What was it then in When you were, as you said, cash flow positive and the business was thriving, what was that kind of catalyst for you guys realizing that now was the time for venture funding and you wanted to take Excel and Sequoia's money?

A Yeah, so it was an incredibly tough decision. Here I am with my father, my brother, and another co-founder, Stuart, and we were ripping off some pretty good distributions, having to be honest, from a cash standpoint. And there was this idea that, hey, maybe we're being short-sighted here. We, you know, we were close to coming up on fifty million dollars in, in sales and, you know, 50% profit margins, a hundred percent bootstrap. And we thought, wait a minute. And we started to see this vision that we had in 2002. Here we are eight, nine, 10 years later starting to play out. And all of these students were graduating and people were going into the enterprise and saying, oh my gosh, Qualtrics isn't just surveys. Qualtrics is We're going to run all of our customer feedback on Qualtrics. So, you know, currently we power nine different airlines. We power all the feedback for healthcare.gov. And, you know, we have 160,000 net promoter score studied NPS studies running on Qualtrics. So people are like, this is the de facto NPS product. And then people were like also using us on the employee side and doing, you know, the second use case on Qualtrics has become doing all of their employee feedback and three 60 reviews. And it was this idea that I don't need to go pay Some expensive group anymore. I can actually do it on Qualtrics. And so we saw this multi-billion dollar opportunity and w…

AI assessment note: “we saw this multi-billion dollar opportunity and we had to really have an honest discussion”

Q And then you have a round table at home for the, for the dinner table conversation to encourage conversation. What tips do you have at work to encourage culture and engagement?

A Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of tips. I think understanding what everyone else is doing so that there's empathy for the rest of the organization is probably number one. So all we're trying to do is make sure that everyone knows what everyone else is doing and, and doing that in a variety of different ways. And the reason why is because Innovation might come from another group. We don't want them totally focused on that, but we, we have that entirely transparent. If there are issues where, you know, one person comes to me and maybe they're, they're not happy with someone else. I mean, one of the things that I believe in is, is, is complete escalation where if someone's talking to me about someone else, we're doing it in the room together. And so really being able to teach and have open conversations and remove me out of it as much as possible by, by allowing open and positive feedback Kim Scott calls us radical candor throughout the organization solves a lot of, a lot of problems.

AI assessment note: “understanding what everyone else is doing so that there's empathy for the rest”

Q And then you have a round table at home for the, for the dinner table conversation to encourage conversation. What tips do you have at work to encourage culture and engagement?

A Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of tips. I think understanding what everyone else is doing so that there's empathy for the rest of the organization is probably number one. So all we're trying to do is make sure that everyone knows what everyone else is doing and, and doing that in a variety of different ways. And the reason why is because Innovation might come from another group. We don't want them totally focused on that, but we, we have that entirely transparent. If there are issues where, you know, one person comes to me and maybe they're, they're not happy with someone else. I mean, one of the things that I believe in is, is, is complete escalation where if someone's talking to me about someone else, we're doing it in the room together. And so really being able to teach and have open conversations and remove me out of it as much as possible by, by allowing open and positive feedback Kim Scott calls us radical candor throughout the organization solves a lot of, a lot of problems.

AI assessment note: “understanding what everyone else is doing so that there's empathy for the rest”

Q I'm intrigued though, as kind of, you look at your incredible success now with Qualtrics and the incredible company that it's become. What do you know now though, that you wish you'd known when you started out with your brother and your father?

A I feel like we're just getting started with Qualtrics. I mean, this is my, this is my last job. This is all I'm doing. I'm still young and I don't really have another, another idea. What, uh, what, what I wish I would have known now is That I probably didn't know then is maybe early on. I wasn't as confident in this thought of you can do it your way and it's you against the world. And that's probably the first thing is it's kind of been us against the world the whole time. And I don't think that's going to change. And that's kind of where I thrive. And I love that. The second component is that Rome wasn't built in a day and it's going to take time. And if you can keep your optionality from a funding perspective, Or a partner standpoint to actually give you a long enough runway. Entrepreneurs will figure it out. The problem is, is when they put a, a bomb or a stopwatch on their back, every bet that we've ever made has taken a little longer than we anticipated, but it was there, you know, for the most part, they've always been the right bets. And if you looked at any of them across any part of the time, every single one had a point where you were like, ah, this isn't going to go. And so I think that Success and execution comes from a lot of little iterations. And if you look at Gmail, when Gmail came out, it was horrible, but it's, it's, it's been a bunch of little iterations. I …

AI assessment note: “What I wish I would have known now is... you can do it your way”

Q Penultimate one. Who's the best board member that you've worked with, and why?

A The best board member? Wow, you're asking me to, like, choose my kids. To be honest with you, I'll tell you, one of the most influential board members we've had, there's probably two. One gentleman's named Duff Thompson, who was at WordPerfect back in the day, and WordPerfect had the market share and the lead, and they were fighting against Microsoft, and WordPerfect Lost the processor, the business to Microsoft Word, and they bundled, and then they sold to Novell, and it didn't work out the way that it probably could have, and they missed a window from being the biggest player, and Duff, having Duff on our board as our chairman, and be able to go through what went wrong, and why, and what part of the journey I need to enjoy, and just the deep care about me personally versus Like, when to step on the gas, and how you never know, and being 30 years later, having regrets on what they did, or excitement about what they did right, I think oftentimes, we bring board members in who life's only gone good for, and it's one of our problems in tech, is like, we need to bring people in that, you know, have some battle wounds, and like, maybe there was some successes that happened, but also some things that didn't work out, and like, what they would Have you learn about, and Duff's been as influential as anyone on the board, and I think, I think also with my board members, like, if you loo…

AI assessment note: “One gentleman's named Duff Thompson... having Duff on our board as our chairman”

Q Can I ask you, Ryan, you know, you have an incredible relationship with your wife. In that process, when you had the two hours, I'm sure you called her, I'm sure she advised you on, you know, different offers you had beforehand. What did your wife say in terms of the advice when it came to selling?

A When the 500 offer came, we got in the car and we drove south in Utah, right? And we started driving south, and we were going to drive down to, like, where Arches is and the National Park down by Zion. We got about 45 minutes away, and she's like, look, man, I don't want you home more. Like, nothing's going to be good with you with that kind of money and nothing to do. Like, is it all going to go away? And I'm like, no. Like, actually, the business is really solid. We're growing. Everything's good. And she's like, Just go for it. Like, you're young. You're 32 years old. Like, let's go. And so, I think she's been pretty inspirational. I truly believe that you need someone by you that will tell you the truth. You need someone by you, like, you know, everyone thinks balance is like the wings of the plane flying perfectly parallel and everything going, and it's really not. Like, one wing of your plane is always in the water. It's always tipped. And you need someone who's gonna be like, hey, look, man, your wing's down, you're gonna get in a rut, like, you gotta course correct. And one wing's always down, and it's always gonna be that it's hell month at Qualtrics, or we're doing our big summit, or this is going on, or it's the end of the quarter, or on the family side, like, we've got something going on, or, and you just need people around you who are gonna tell you the truth, and h…

AI assessment note: “She's like, Just go for it. Like, you're young. You're 32 years old.”

Q What's interesting though there is like, you would think that's a one-way door, bluntly. You sell the company, that's a one-way door, but actually it's not, is it?

A Well, it turned out not to be a one-way door. And for most people, it probably would have been, and I would say even for us, it probably would have been, but both us and credit to SAP, we've been super optimistic. And what I would call an opportunist kind of mentality here where we came out and said, Hey, look, there's a chance here. And part of that's because the business did so well within SAP. Like it doesn't do well. I lose all the employee base and everyone jams. Like there's nothing left. Or if I leave and the management team leaves, there's nothing left. But because we stayed intact, because we kept our culture, because we did this, you have a chance to spin it out for much higher later. But I think back to the real crux of it is you just got to be real and try to be honest with yourself and kind of just go through a little bit of simulation in your mind going, Hey, can I live with this? Am I going to regret it? Can I live with this? And you know what you can live with. You truly do. I mean, like, for example, in 2011, someone offered us five hundred million dollars cash to sell our business. And we were at this point where we turned it down. I'll never forget. I'm sitting there with Michael Moritz from Sequoia, and he's looking across from me, and he's like, Ryan, this is like the perfect litmus test for me as an investor, and this is a dude that gave Steve Jobs his fir…

AI assessment note: “Well, it turned out not to be a one-way door.”

Q because I asked Jared, what are Ryan's biggest weaknesses? And he answered every question completely unflapping and brilliantly. That one he said, you know what, you should ask Ryan this one. Let him be self-reflective. If he I don't know if he's just like completely screwed you on that one, but if we do that, what do you think are your biggest weaknesses from Jared handing that over to you?

A Wow. I mean, to be honest with you, there's probably too many to count. Like if you ask Jared and I together, I think that our response would be Jared's weaknesses are my strengths and vice versa, right? Because we've worked together so long, we've grown and we're like opposites. Like we both kind of majored And where each other was weak, and so together it would be the perfect team. And what I've tried to do is say, okay, where do I major and where do I minor? So if I were to say, hey, strengths, obviously go to market, positioning, branding, I think I'm pretty good at product. Where I've been horrible over the years is just long-term impact of either internal operational decisions, but I mean, it's hard to run a bit. I've run every part of Qualtrics, and it's gone pretty well, but You know, sometimes I'm way too emotional. That's a bad thing. I tried to work on that over the years. I think I've gotten better. I think one of the weaknesses, I'm probably never satisfied, right? And that can get pretty annoying to work with me.

AI assessment note: “Where I've been horrible over the years is just long-term impact”

Q Can I ask, how do you think about your relationship to risk? Cause when you think about opportunistic and grasping opportunities when they come and taking them, that's the element of risk inherent within everything. How do you think about your relationship to risk and how you evaluate risk today?

A I've always viewed myself as like, I know a lot of entrepreneurs who are not great entrepreneurs. They just start stuff and never finish. I would much rather be opportunistic than being an entrepreneur, and I think sometimes with entrepreneurship, the risk boogie person or that hurdle gets so high. A lot of times with opportunities, the risk isn't that high because you're starting from where you are, and you're just moving along. I recently interviewed for a thing we did called Work Different. I interviewed Tom Brady, the quarterback, and I asked him the same question. I said, hey, look, man, you got Six Super Bowl rings. You're in the winningest franchise. You're the winningest player over the last 20 years, and you're going to the losingest franchise over that same time period, and you go in and you pick up another Super Bowl ring. Like, you didn't have to do this, man. Like, why'd you do it? And his response was just fear and risk, basically, have no place. They don't do anything, and I tend to agree with that. Like, there's no benefit from it anywhere in life. However, I do believe that whatever our rubric is personally for making decisions, calculating risk is really interesting. And if you can get good at calculating those risks and however you go through your decision process is really good. Like we have this thing called one way and two way doors. I think we got it from…

AI assessment note: “A lot of times with opportunities, the risk isn't that high”

Q Can I ask, how do you think about your relationship to risk? Cause when you think about opportunistic and grasping opportunities when they come and taking them, that's the element of risk inherent within everything. How do you think about your relationship to risk and how you evaluate risk today?

A I've always viewed myself as like, I know a lot of entrepreneurs who are not great entrepreneurs. They just start stuff and never finish. I would much rather be opportunistic than being an entrepreneur, and I think sometimes with entrepreneurship, the risk boogie person or that hurdle gets so high. A lot of times with opportunities, the risk isn't that high because you're starting from where you are, and you're just moving along. I recently interviewed for a thing we did called Work Different. I interviewed Tom Brady, the quarterback, and I asked him the same question. I said, hey, look, man, you got Six Super Bowl rings. You're in the winningest franchise. You're the winningest player over the last 20 years, and you're going to the losingest franchise over that same time period, and you go in and you pick up another Super Bowl ring. Like, you didn't have to do this, man. Like, why'd you do it? And his response was just fear and risk, basically, have no place. They don't do anything, and I tend to agree with that. Like, there's no benefit from it anywhere in life. However, I do believe that whatever our rubric is personally for making decisions, calculating risk is really interesting. And if you can get good at calculating those risks and however you go through your decision process is really good. Like we have this thing called one way and two way doors. I think we got it from…

AI assessment note: “whatever our rubric is personally for making decisions, calculating risk is really interesting.”

Q remember speaking to, you know, Glad at Robin Hood, and it's when you have big exits like you have done, your children are also brought up just by nature in different environments to those in which you work. How do you think about instilling the same values that you were brought up with in your children who just by nature, as I said, are brought up in very different circumstances?

A Yeah, it's really hard. I mean, Jared and I talk about this a lot. I mean, there's four boys. We have one girl who's the oldest, Tanya, and then four boys, and I was with my brother last night down in LA at the basketball game, and we always talk about, you know, my parents split up when I was 13 years old, and We kind of had to figure it all out. You know, Jared moved out of the house as a seventeen-year-old. He started working at WordPerfect as a product guy at 16, and he had to, you know, he had to figure it out. Like, he was a whiz kid. He was managing a team of eight executives at 18 years old, and trying to replicate that, given my new world, is gonna be impossible, right? Like, the world's different, Our upbringing's different. I mean, obviously, both my parents were academics, so they didn't have a ton of money, and our worlds are different, and so I think that, I mean, education's a massive priority for us, not because I think it's the only way, but because it doesn't steal hard work, right or wrong. If someone's excelling in education, like, there is a work ethic. I think that's the one thing that I would say accidentally all the Smith kids had to figure out was how to work. And that's what I want from my job. I want them to be nice kids. I want to be nice and learn how to treat people. I want them to learn how to care. I want to be mission driven, but I also want the…

AI assessment note: “education's a massive priority for us, not because I think it's the only way”

Q because I asked Jared, what are Ryan's biggest weaknesses? And he answered every question completely unflapping and brilliantly. That one he said, you know what, you should ask Ryan this one. Let him be self-reflective. If he I don't know if he's just like completely screwed you on that one, but if we do that, what do you think are your biggest weaknesses from Jared handing that over to you?

A Wow. I mean, to be honest with you, there's probably too many to count. Like if you ask Jared and I together, I think that our response would be Jared's weaknesses are my strengths and vice versa, right? Because we've worked together so long, we've grown and we're like opposites. Like we both kind of majored And where each other was weak, and so together it would be the perfect team. And what I've tried to do is say, okay, where do I major and where do I minor? So if I were to say, hey, strengths, obviously go to market, positioning, branding, I think I'm pretty good at product. Where I've been horrible over the years is just long-term impact of either internal operational decisions, but I mean, it's hard to run a bit. I've run every part of Qualtrics, and it's gone pretty well, but You know, sometimes I'm way too emotional. That's a bad thing. I tried to work on that over the years. I think I've gotten better. I think one of the weaknesses, I'm probably never satisfied, right? And that can get pretty annoying to work with me.

AI assessment note: “sometimes I'm way too emotional. That's a bad thing.”

Q probably the most expensive therapy session ever, to bill me in billable hours, but it's like, how do you think about detachment then? Because it's like, when Qualtrics is your life for so long, and it's so much of your day, and so much of your time, how does one detach themselves from that business, and not tie happiness to the progression of that business, which I most definitely do?

A Yeah, it's, that's the big challenge. I mean, I look, I'm in my 20th year. It's 20 years, right? And first, I think people need to understand how long they're gonna work. If you know how long you're gonna work, I learned this lesson from an individual back in 2007, eight, nine, where I was this young kid, and I go back to the, like, Hamilton play, where, like, you're trying so hard, and you want it so fast, and you, It's like, slow down. There's so many things, like, he was always writing like it was going out of style, right? That's how we all are, right? We're all, like, trying so fast, and I had an individual come up to me and said, hey, Ryan, he was 68, and he was still working. He was actually helping me as a board member. He's like, how long are you gonna work? I was like, I don't see myself ever stop working, and he's like, okay, you probably need to change your perspective that you're gonna be doing this for 60 years, and too many people are sitting here going, like, I'm gonna come in, I'm gonna get a hit, and then I'm gonna pop out, and I'm gonna ride off into the sunset. And reality is, is most of us aren't built like that. That would be the most miserable thing we ever did. And so once you understand a little bit about how you're actually going to react, then I think you can look at detachment and say, Hey, it's probably much more like integration. Like Elon, you alr…

AI assessment note: “then I think you can look at detachment and say, Hey, it's probably much more like integration.”

Q What's interesting though there is like, you would think that's a one-way door, bluntly. You sell the company, that's a one-way door, but actually it's not, is it?

A Well, it turned out not to be a one-way door. And for most people, it probably would have been, and I would say even for us, it probably would have been, but both us and credit to SAP, we've been super optimistic. And what I would call an opportunist kind of mentality here where we came out and said, Hey, look, there's a chance here. And part of that's because the business did so well within SAP. Like it doesn't do well. I lose all the employee base and everyone jams. Like there's nothing left. Or if I leave and the management team leaves, there's nothing left. But because we stayed intact, because we kept our culture, because we did this, you have a chance to spin it out for much higher later. But I think back to the real crux of it is you just got to be real and try to be honest with yourself and kind of just go through a little bit of simulation in your mind going, Hey, can I live with this? Am I going to regret it? Can I live with this? And you know what you can live with. You truly do. I mean, like, for example, in 2011, someone offered us five hundred million dollars cash to sell our business. And we were at this point where we turned it down. I'll never forget. I'm sitting there with Michael Moritz from Sequoia, and he's looking across from me, and he's like, Ryan, this is like the perfect litmus test for me as an investor, and this is a dude that gave Steve Jobs his fir…

AI assessment note: “Well, it turned out not to be a one-way door.”

Q And I'd love to dive into a quick firearm with you now. We call it six seconds after. So let's do, I know you're a data nerd like me. So what are your productivity tools?

A So my product, my look at my, my job as CEO changes every three months. And so does the way I go about the job. What used to work for me two or three years ago does not work for me now. And so the very first thing that I do to be productive is I tried to understand Ryan and how Ryan works. You know, my brother, Jared's probably the most productive person. And I, I know, and anyone who knows him kind of says the same thing. He gets more done in a, in a, in a week than most people do in a quarter. What works for him does not work for me. And so I know, for example, that I'm very, I wake up very early in the morning. I, no matter what time I go to bed, I am up at four or five, six. And I know that that's my go time. I'm on like supercharged speed at that time. And I'm two to three X more productive than I am at say four o'clock in the afternoon. So I take all of my creative tasks, everything that I haven't ever done before. And that's the time that I do it because I want to make sure that That I'm not using kind of the best part of my brain for email, for example. The second thing is it's not uncommon for me to, I work through lunch. I don't have lunch meetings because I'm still part of my productivity, my productive time. So I'll have breakfast meetings if they're important, but I either take time or go to breakfast every morning, either by myself or I'll sit in my car and I make…

AI assessment note: “the very first thing that I do to be productive is I tried to understand”

Q Can I ask, is that building without a liquidity event in mind? And how do you pitch that then to VCs who often have liquidity events in mind and timescales and horizons in mind?

A So, so fortunately enough, I've never had to pitch a VC, and so I don't know what that really looks like. We, we, we've been cashflow positive from the beginning, and I think more companies should work on that and, and try to get to that state, and it's a foreign state, and I understand the reasons why we could go out early or why people would want that early on, but I believe that there's kind of an incubation period of every idea or every company, and a You really don't know what's, what's right. And I'll give you an example of this is like when we first went into academia, we thought we'd just go to the CIO and we'd sign a license with the university. Well, that was wrong. Then we went to the research group because they're doing a bunch of research and we thought that's where we go. Well, they didn't buy it and we're six months in. And then we went to, you know, the business school and they didn't buy it. And I'm now nine months in on this journey of like how to get customers. And when we went We ended up, you know, a year and a half into this finding that if we had professors who was passionate about us, then they would tell their department who would buy it, and then the university would get one of the schools on board, and then a school would get another school and another school, and the next thing you know, we're back at the CIO working on a university-wide deal, and so…

AI assessment note: “I've never had to pitch a VC, and so I don't know what that really looks like.”

Q don't honestly, like, I think it'd be arrogant almost for me to say I have any idea who I am. I've been, like, wedded to a recording studio for the last seven years. I, I don't think I have the ability to say that is who I am or that's not who I am, because this is all I've ever known. I guess what advice would you give to me?

A I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Like, I don't know. And reality is, like, if you read Clayton Christensen's book, How Will You Measure Your Life? He talks about how he wanted to be the editor for the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, whichever one it was, and here he was, like, a famous Harvard professor, and he's like, I'll get there someday, and he's like, in his sixties, right? And so, I think it's natural, and one of the things we saw with the pandemic is everyone, like, woke up and said, oh, wow, and they started having that conversation of, what do I want to be when I grow up? And it was like dangerous. Like you, you saw all these people doing all these irrational things where it's like, I quit my job. And it's like, I mean, personally, I just, you just put your head down and work and you try to be opportunistic. I think if you're opportunistic, opportunities will come up. I mean, we sold our company obviously to SAP in 2018. Right? So the end of 2018. So we're in 2019. We go through a year. And then the pandemic hits, and it's funny, once we sold to SAP, every single person in tech told me what was going to happen. They all said, this is what's going to happen. I've seen the playbook. You're going to go into a big company. They're going to squeeze you. This is all the, and then like, it was unanimous. Like I've seen this before. My friend was acqu…

AI assessment note: “personally, I just, you just put your head down and work and you try to be opportunistic.”

Q probably the most expensive therapy session ever, to bill me in billable hours, but it's like, how do you think about detachment then? Because it's like, when Qualtrics is your life for so long, and it's so much of your day, and so much of your time, how does one detach themselves from that business, and not tie happiness to the progression of that business, which I most definitely do?

A Yeah, it's, that's the big challenge. I mean, I look, I'm in my 20th year. It's 20 years, right? And first, I think people need to understand how long they're gonna work. If you know how long you're gonna work, I learned this lesson from an individual back in 2007, eight, nine, where I was this young kid, and I go back to the, like, Hamilton play, where, like, you're trying so hard, and you want it so fast, and you, It's like, slow down. There's so many things, like, he was always writing like it was going out of style, right? That's how we all are, right? We're all, like, trying so fast, and I had an individual come up to me and said, hey, Ryan, he was 68, and he was still working. He was actually helping me as a board member. He's like, how long are you gonna work? I was like, I don't see myself ever stop working, and he's like, okay, you probably need to change your perspective that you're gonna be doing this for 60 years, and too many people are sitting here going, like, I'm gonna come in, I'm gonna get a hit, and then I'm gonna pop out, and I'm gonna ride off into the sunset. And reality is, is most of us aren't built like that. That would be the most miserable thing we ever did. And so once you understand a little bit about how you're actually going to react, then I think you can look at detachment and say, Hey, it's probably much more like integration. Like Elon, you alr…

AI assessment note: “look at detachment and say, Hey, it's probably much more like integration.”

Q don't honestly, like, I think it'd be arrogant almost for me to say I have any idea who I am. I've been, like, wedded to a recording studio for the last seven years. I, I don't think I have the ability to say that is who I am or that's not who I am, because this is all I've ever known. I guess what advice would you give to me?

A I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Like, I don't know. And reality is, like, if you read Clayton Christensen's book, How Will You Measure Your Life? He talks about how he wanted to be the editor for the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, whichever one it was, and here he was, like, a famous Harvard professor, and he's like, I'll get there someday, and he's like, in his sixties, right? And so, I think it's natural, and one of the things we saw with the pandemic is everyone, like, woke up and said, oh, wow, and they started having that conversation of, what do I want to be when I grow up? And it was like dangerous. Like you, you saw all these people doing all these irrational things where it's like, I quit my job. And it's like, I mean, personally, I just, you just put your head down and work and you try to be opportunistic. I think if you're opportunistic, opportunities will come up. I mean, we sold our company obviously to SAP in 2018. Right? So the end of 2018. So we're in 2019. We go through a year. And then the pandemic hits, and it's funny, once we sold to SAP, every single person in tech told me what was going to happen. They all said, this is what's going to happen. I've seen the playbook. You're going to go into a big company. They're going to squeeze you. This is all the, and then like, it was unanimous. Like I've seen this before. My friend was acqu…

AI assessment note: “personally, I just, you just put your head down and work and you try to be opportunistic.”

Q And then you stated before the nine important minutes of your interaction, particularly with, with the kids being waking up home from school and before bed. If you were to surmise that and align that to your work day, how would you align that nine minutes?

A So I don't, I don't try to really predict what's going to happen in the workday because my job as CEO is, is to be there and be ready and drive a lot and help remove roadblocks from people. But I would say that I would take all nine of those minutes and instead of spreading them out through the day, make sure that you're starting your day and make sure you're getting your day off onto the right foot. And I think that's really important to me. I just found that once it starts going south, it's It's pretty tough. It's pretty hard to like turn it around. And so how in the world can you make sure that first of all, we all, we don't want to feel like we're individual contributors because very few people I know get happiness out of being a high paid router, just routing things. So our, our natural value is you talk to CEOs. I was most happy when I was coding. I was most happy when I was selling. I was most happy when I was doing that. Well, every day you should get to feel like you're an individual contributor. And I think you will become most happy if you've got a plan to do that every single day. And then typically you can do that in an hour or two. I have a friend who studies organizations and he's like, most people only have three or four productive hours in the day where they're actually getting stuff done. So if I can come in, for example, from seven to eight or eight to nine i…

AI assessment note: “take all nine of those minutes and instead of spreading them out through the day”

Q Do you ever think transparency can be detrimental potentially in funding rounds, potentially in acquisition talks, potentially in exit talks in terms of maybe disaligning the team, causing the team to stop often with acquisitions. If there's acquisition talks and the team knows about it, it can cause kind of productivity lapses. Is there ever a sense of too much transparency is detrimental?

A Look, you have to be thoughtful, but I'm pretty straight up and I'm pretty straightforward. And that's just my style. I don't, I don't have time to mess around with politics. I don't have time to mess around with life. Life's too short. And, you know, we've got to be able to trust our team. And are there situations where people can't manage that? Yeah, obviously. I mean, we have a principle of Qualtrics. It's called no minor lapse of integrity. There's literally no minor lapse of integrity. And, you know, we have to educate people and that's part of it. But the opposite of transparency, which would be like opaqueness or, or having something that's closed. I never want to be a part of that. That's like the government. That's like, that's like a lot of different things that I never want to ever see. And, you know, part of the reason that you can become a founder and entrepreneur is that you can write your own story. And, you know, we get to create this the way we want. And there's no playbook. There's no rule book. I've done everything wrong since the second we started and it's worked out beautifully. And so that's the way that we want to live. And once people taste this type of environment, it's pretty tough for them to go somewhere where they experience the opposite. Yeah.

AI assessment note: “are there situations where people can't manage that? Yeah, obviously.”

Q Totally. It's been a long and incredible journey together, and I have to thank pretty much all of them for seeding me with questions today. I do want to finish on one final one, and it's, you've also put as a Sunday thought, it's not about where we're going, but it's about who we want to become. How do you think about that today? Who do you want to become?

A I mean, I know the attributes of what I want to become, and I think it's very aspirational, because I think you have to do it on a daily basis, but I think it probably goes back to the identity question. You know, I was at someone's funeral, and they said, they were talking about an individual who I totally admire, and the person speaking said, this person was reliable. This person was reliable to everyone around them. They were reliable to their family. They were reliable as a friend. They were reliable to their God. They were reliable to everything. I thought that was one of the greatest compliments I've ever heard that this person could be count on and they were there and everything. And, you know, I'm still trying to figure that out. I think too many people try to figure out what their legacy is and you really don't determine your legacy like other people do. And I think you just need to do your best in the moment and try to be guided by principles. And I think one of the biggest fears I have a little bit with tech right now is we're not guided by great principles. And you've got to figure out, like, it's not about the money. It's not about always being popular. Like, what do you stand for? What do you truly stand for? And not being predictable about what you stand for, because everyone else stands for that. Like, what do you stand for as an individual that's different? Lik…

AI assessment note: “this person was reliable... I'm still trying to figure that out”

Q Do you ever think transparency can be detrimental potentially in funding rounds, potentially in acquisition talks, potentially in exit talks in terms of maybe disaligning the team, causing the team to stop often with acquisitions. If there's acquisition talks and the team knows about it, it can cause kind of productivity lapses. Is there ever a sense of too much transparency is detrimental?

A Look, you have to be thoughtful, but I'm pretty straight up and I'm pretty straightforward. And that's just my style. I don't, I don't have time to mess around with politics. I don't have time to mess around with life. Life's too short. And, you know, we've got to be able to trust our team. And are there situations where people can't manage that? Yeah, obviously. I mean, we have a principle of Qualtrics. It's called no minor lapse of integrity. There's literally no minor lapse of integrity. And, you know, we have to educate people and that's part of it. But the opposite of transparency, which would be like opaqueness or, or having something that's closed. I never want to be a part of that. That's like the government. That's like, that's like a lot of different things that I never want to ever see. And, you know, part of the reason that you can become a founder and entrepreneur is that you can write your own story. And, you know, we get to create this the way we want. And there's no playbook. There's no rule book. I've done everything wrong since the second we started and it's worked out beautifully. And so that's the way that we want to live. And once people taste this type of environment, it's pretty tough for them to go somewhere where they experience the opposite. Yeah.

AI assessment note: “are there situations where people can't manage that? Yeah, obviously.”

Q weight of responsibility weighed on me a lot. I mean, I think I did okay in the end, but it did weigh on me. It still does. Did that weigh on you and Jared? As you said that, Jared being a product manager at 16, managing execs at 18, this is quite atypical for a teenager to go through. Did that weigh on you, and did you think about it?

A I mean, like, at the time, you're just surviving, right? You're just doing what you do, and I was telling someone yesterday that, like, I was 14 years old, and my friend was 15, and neither one of us had driver's licenses, and we drove three hours away for this sports tournament and hung out there all weekend, and it's like, where were our parents? Like, that just doesn't happen in today's world, right? It was just the way it was. Like, at the time, I remember it being hard, and I remember My father's saying, hey, you're going to appreciate this later. You're going to appreciate this later. You're going to appreciate this later. And I think there's a strong lesson that people need to understand is that tomorrow always comes, right? It always comes. And the better you can help understand, this is one of the things that Jared's taught me is we're dealing with whether it's infrastructure, internal systems, employee decisions, equality within our company is like tomorrow will always be there. You're never going to be able to get up, and so you're going to be stuck with the decisions you make, and so ultimately, you can either fight it and say, hey, look, I'm not going to learn, and I'm going to take shortcuts, which was my whole modus operandi growing up, because that's how I was, but ultimately, I had to actually get in the saddle and ride, and that's part of who shapes you, and w…

AI assessment note: “at the time, you're just surviving, right? ... I remember it being hard”