Assertion certainty 5/5 debate potential 2/5

Ryan Smith had two hours to decide on SAP's $8B offer

Ryan Smith · 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 · May 11, 2021 · at 17:56

Ryan Smith, co-founder of Qualtrics, recalls the extreme time constraints surrounding the decision to sell Qualtrics to SAP for $8 billion in cash.

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“I had two hours to decide whether we're selling to SAP for eight billion dollars cash.”

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Opinion
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Ryan Smith May 11, 2021 ▶ 21:07 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
Insight
Ryan Smith: Startups should recruit board members with past failures
“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…”
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