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 31 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 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
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.”
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.”
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…”
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…”
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.”
Smith: Capital constraints are a necessary forcing function for startup creativity
“And so I believe that creativity comes from resource construction. You know, you're never clipping coupons if you'got fifty million dollars in your bank account, and I think that that's the necessary forcing function to be able to actually do something great.”
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.”
Ryan Smith commits to running the Utah Jazz for 35 years
“I'm doing this for 35 years. The last person who ran the team had it for 35 years. I'm doing this for 35 years, and really, that's my thought. Like, we're doing it for that long.”
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.”
Ryan Smith: Younger generations do not work or grind as hard
“One of the problems I see in part of our younger generation, they don't grind. They don't grind the way that we have.”
Ryan Smith: The tech industry is currently not guided by strong principles
“I think one of the biggest fears I have a little bit with tech right now is we're not guided by great principles.”
Smith: Building a great enterprise software company takes 10 to 13 years
“I think that You know, most people think to do something great, it's going to take a couple years. And I think those are such outliers. I think for the rest of the world, especially in the enterprise, you know, 10, 1213 years are really what it takes. And I'm …”
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.”
Smith: Companies fail from internal politics or scattered external focus
“Companies fail for two reasons. They either get internally focused on each other, Or they get externally focused in a million different directions and can't execute.”
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.”
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: 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”
Ryan Smith: Tying happiness to company performance makes founders miserable
“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…”
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.”
Ryan Smith: Giving away equity is irreversible, whereas hiring is reversible
“So if you're giving out equity of your company, it's a one way door. You can't get it back. You know, oftentimes if you're hiring someone, it can be a two way door. If it doesn't work out, you part ways.”
Ryan Smith: Stack family and work commitments into single time blocks
“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 meeting. If I've got to go to a game, I've always got people with me that I was supposed to meet with, and we just do it …”
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: Accel's Ryan Sweeney has set an unprecedented standard in late-stage investing
“Ryan Sweeney's in Excel, they put on a clinic in late stage investing that I don't think anyone in tech has ever seen before.”
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' 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: 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: 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: 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”
Smith: Qualtrics was cash flow positive from inception
“We, we've been cashflow positive from the beginning”