The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 28 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Lemkin: Bootstrapped SaaS startups risk falling behind venture-backed rivals
“Maybe it's not even until after five or ten million where if you don't have capital, you can't all be Atlassian or Qualtrics. Or, and they fall behind competitively. And I think that's the trap of the fallacy of the lifestyle-esque business, right? Where media…”
Ryan Smith had two hours to decide on SAP's $8B offer
“I had two hours to decide whether we're selling to SAP for eight billion dollars cash.”
Ryan Smith: Receiving SAP's $8B cash payout was underwhelming
“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, lik…”
Qualtrics raised venture capital to de-risk after rejecting a buyout
“We actually raised venture capital because we turned down an offer, and we wanted to be able to live with ourselves.”
Qualtrics rejected Series A term sheets $100M-$150M higher in valuation
“We never optimized funding for economics. We had term sheets at a hundred and a hundred and fifty million dollars more than what we went with.”
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.”
Fougere: Qualtrics caught Medallia because its product innovated faster
“Qualtrics caught up to us because they were out developing us. They're out, their product was innovating much faster than ours.”
Qualtrics turned down a $500M cash acquisition offer in 2011
“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.”
Qualtrics was Sequoia's most expensive software deal at the time
“That was a scary investment for us because at the time it was the most expensive price we had ever paid for a software company.”
Smith: Workplace conflicts must be discussed with all parties in the room
“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.”
Qualtrics adds one million trained academic users each year
“We have a million academic users that are popping out annually, and throughout the course of time, everyone's getting trained on our product and our platform.”
Park: Simulation extends far beyond traditional survey and interview tools
“Simulation is fundamentally about something different, which is how can you create the most generalizable model of people so that we can represent people's viewpoints at scale? And that goes beyond simply running surveys or interviews.”
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 …”
Qualtrics Hit $50 Million in Revenue Before Raising Venture Capital
“You have Qualtrics that the first time they raised, they already had fifty million dollars in revenues.”
George: Passing on Qualtrics over price was my most painful miss
“The most painful one is probably Qualtrics. Which, I mean, look, it's killer founders, and yeah, I remain friends with the guys. We turned it down based on price when I was at GA.”
Smith: Early basement days of Qualtrics were his worst business experience
“Because the basement sucked. It was like the worst time I've ever had, like, running a business”
Smith: Qualtrics never had a singular 'aha moment' or tipping point
“With Qualtrics, I don't think there's ever really been an aha moment. There hasn't been this tipping point where it like all worked. It's been what I would call probably more push than pull the whole way.”
Smith: 20% of Qualtrics staff voiced objections after SAP acquisition
“We had 20% of our employees come in and be like, hey, I didn't sign up for this.”
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.”
Smith: Qualtrics is being built to last 40 to 50 years
“We're trying to build something that's going to be around for the next 40 years, 50 years, and if you're building that way, it's actually a totally different playbook than if you're building something that it's got to work for you.”
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.”
Qualtrics reached nearly $50M revenue with 50% profit margins while bootstrapped
“We were close to coming up on fifty million dollars in, in sales and, you know, 50% profit margins, a hundred percent bootstrap.”
Qualtrics raised no venture capital for its first 12 years
“Qualtrics, which SAP just acquired for eight billion dollars. They didn't raise their first venture capital until 12 years into the company. I believe it was 18 years old when it was acquired”
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…”
Accel invested in Qualtrics, Rovio, and Atlassian via its growth fund
“The Qualtrics, the Rovios, the Alassians are all bets out of the growth fund, as it turns out.”
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”