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Ryan Smith

Executive Chairman & Co-Founder, Qualtrics · 2 appearances on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveinvestor@RyanQualtrics ↗LinkedIn ↗qualtrics.com ↗Wikipedia ↗

Ryan Smith is the co-founder and executive chairman of Qualtrics, which he bootstrapped and later sold to SAP for $8 billion. He also serves as chairman and CEO of Smith Entertainment Group, through which he owns the Utah Jazz.

31statements → 13claims → 8claims resolved → 38%fully supported → 4/5average certainty → 2.1/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated → 36said about them ↓

3 supported 4 partly supported 1 contradicted 2 not yet assessed 3 not checkable as stated how the 13 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 11 assertions · 4 opinions · 11 insights · 3 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 13 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 8 are resolved, 2 are not yet assessed, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Ryan argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Qualtrics' 2012 Series A was the largest first-time VC investment since 2008
“And it was the largest series a or first time investment since 2008.”
Ryan Smith Dec 16, 2016 ▶ 14:26 20VC: Qualtrics' Ryan Smith on Building A $Bn Company & Raising The Largest Series A Since 2008 From Sequoia & Accel

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Smith claims every higher education institution worldwide uses Qualtrics
“It's just not a good business model, but if you look at it now, every single academic higher ed institution in the world uses Qualtrics.”
Ryan Smith Dec 16, 2016 ▶ 8:04 20VC: Qualtrics' Ryan Smith on Building A $Bn Company & Raising The Largest Series A Since 2008 From Sequoia & Accel

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
67% certainty 4
50% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

246 words/min while actually speaking · 0.4 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Ryan Smith: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews. Their coarse estimate from 30 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.0/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 10,983 words across 2 episodes, but every recording we have of Ryan Smith is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 2 rated episodes:

host pushback ▾ 1.5/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 2/10
setup questions received 75%

Everything Ryan Smith said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Supported
Qualtrics' 2012 Series A was the largest first-time VC investment since 2008
“And it was the largest series a or first time investment since 2008.”
Ryan Smith Dec 16, 2016 ▶ 14:26 20VC: Qualtrics' Ryan Smith on Building A $Bn Company & Raising The Largest Series A Since 2008 From Sequoia & Accel
Insight
Smith: A startup CEO's job changes every three months
“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.”
Ryan Smith Dec 16, 2016 ▶ 20:03 20VC: Qualtrics' Ryan Smith on Building A $Bn Company & Raising The Largest Series A Since 2008 From Sequoia & Accel
Insight
Ryan Smith: Most people have only three or four productive hours daily
“Most people only have three or four productive hours in the day where they're actually getting stuff done.”
Ryan Smith Dec 16, 2016 ▶ 26:05 20VC: Qualtrics' Ryan Smith on Building A $Bn Company & Raising The Largest Series A Since 2008 From Sequoia & Accel
Assertion Partly supported
Ryan Smith: Jared Smith managed eight executives at WordPerfect aged 18
“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”
Ryan Smith May 11, 2021 ▶ 27:05 20VC: Qualtrics Founder, Ryan Smith on The 2 Hour Decision Whether To Sell Qualtrics for $8Bn in Cash, Why Tying Your Identity To Your Company Will Never Make You Happy and His Relationship To Risk, Wealth and Responsibility as a Result
Assertion Supported
Smith: Qualtrics was cash flow positive from inception
“We, we've been cashflow positive from the beginning”
Ryan Smith Dec 16, 2016 ▶ 8:50 20VC: Qualtrics' Ryan Smith on Building A $Bn Company & Raising The Largest Series A Since 2008 From Sequoia & Accel
Assertion Supported
Qualtrics powers feedback for nine airlines, healthcare.gov, and 160K NPS studies
“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.”
Ryan Smith Dec 16, 2016 ▶ 13:09 20VC: Qualtrics' Ryan Smith on Building A $Bn Company & Raising The Largest Series A Since 2008 From Sequoia & Accel
Assertion Partly supported
Qualtrics scaled from 600 to 1,200 employees in one year
“The idea of transparency is that everyone's basically an insider and we've gone from 600 employees to 1200 employees in one year. We've gone from one office to eight offices”
Ryan Smith Dec 16, 2016 ▶ 16:10 20VC: Qualtrics' Ryan Smith on Building A $Bn Company & Raising The Largest Series A Since 2008 From Sequoia & Accel

The other half of the tape: Ryan Smith's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 34 times in 14 episodes on 20VC. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Frank Quattrone 10Harry Stebbings 8Jason Lemkin 4Stewart Butterfield 3Pat Grady 2Sameer Gandhi 1Rich Wong 1Clay Wilkes 1

Statements about Ryan Smith, by other people (2)

Assertion Partly supported
Lemkin: Ryan Smith's Utah Jazz investment quadrupled, outpacing software returns
“When Ryan Smith sold Qualtrics, I think he made about a billion dollars. After 20 years or so and I believe that billion, most of it went back into the jazz, and it has quadrupled... He's up three billion on the jazz or something like that versus the 20 years …”
Jason Lemkin Apr 30, 2026 ▶ 1:15:38 Anthropic Raises $45B but Falls Short on Compute & Thoma Bravo Hand Back Medallia Keys to Creditors · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Accel sourced Qualtrics early by building relationships in Salt Lake City
“Qualtrics, is a good example of that. Hiding in Salt Lake, you didn't think that there was going to be a multi-billion dollar company in the area of market research surveys, but we were lucky enough to find that company relatively early on and spend the time b…”
Rich Wong Dec 4, 2017 ▶ 6:40 20VC: Accel GP, Rich Wong on When Is The Right Time To Scale A Startup, Optimising Initial vs Follow-On Investment Decision-Making & The Globalisation of VC In Recent Years

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
008215320162017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodesmentions
02320162017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodes it came up in
0031.56320162017201820192020202120222023202420252026episodesmentions per episode
2026 8 mentions in 3 episodes 3 per episode
2024 11 mentions in 2 episodes 6 per episode
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
2021 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2020 6 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
2019 2 mentions in 1 episode
2017 1 mention in 1 episode
2016 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (2)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Qualtrics Founder, Ryan Smith on The 2 Hour Decision Whether To Sell Qualtrics for $ May 11, 2021 28m
20VC: Qualtrics' Ryan Smith on Building A $Bn Company & Raising The Largest Series A Since Dec 16, 2016 20m
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