Ryan Smith
Executive Chairman & Co-Founder, Qualtrics. On 5 shows, 6 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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.
5shows
6appearances
89statements
21resolved
14supported
3contradicted
67%fully supported
73said about them ↓ Everything Ryan Smith said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Smith: Qualtrics is and has always been cash-flow positive
“Makeup that we have at Qualtrics where we're cashflow positive.
We've always been, it was really nice to be able to say, Hey here's an opportunity to have some liquidity and, you know, kind of get acclimated a little bit to what life is going to be like for a…”
Smith: Qualtrics left $100M valuation on table during Series A
“I mean, in our series A, we raised, you know, seventy million dollars.
We took, we left a hundred million extra valuation on the table from a credible party because we care about, you know, who we're going to battle with, and I think that's what we've always …”
Smith: Seeding universities as early customers drove massive enterprise sales
“We started with the worst economically driven customer base that you could in academics, but we have every single major university in the world on Qualtrics, and the value came when their students graduated and went to Expedia or went to You know, Heineken and…”
Smith: Major tech incumbents are currently out-executing agile startups
“What's happening in tech is you're watching for the first time ever the biggest companies execute better than the smaller companies in a lot of different ways with Amazon and everything else where we haven't seen this kind of juice since probably the Microsoft…”
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.”
Ryan Smith: Qualtrics hit $50M revenue and $30M cash flow before raising capital
“I mean, we had fifty million dollars in revenue kicking off thirty million dollars in cash, which is very counterintuitive to what we see today. Very profitable before we took any outside funding.”
Ryan Smith: Qualtrics business quadrupled during the 2007–2009 recession
“In about 2007, 2008, 2009, when the economy went this way, our business quadrupled.”
Ryan Smith: Enterprise software startups must win academics to drive adoption
“First of all, if you don't own the academic market or you're not indoctrinating academics with the product, it's going to be very difficult because they're leading.”
Ryan Smith calls immediate pop-up website surveys the worst user experience
“I can't stand when you go visit a website and something pops up. Hey, how was your experience? It's like, leave me alone. I just got here. This is the worst user experience of all time. Right? And everyone's like, well, no, this is statistically significant. I…”
Sequoia demanded Qualtrics formally name a single CEO to secure its investment
“When we took money in 2011, Sequoia, I remember, was like, We're only doing this if there's a CEO. Which one of you is the CEO?”
Qualtrics raised the largest tech Series A since 2008 in 2012
“We've taken this money from Excel, this is the largest Series A raised in 2000, in 12, since 2008, in all of tech, it's outside of the Bay Area”
Ryan Smith requires sales reps to be able to demo products blind
“This is where I've always told our reps, like, do you know your product? I could do the demo on the phone in a car with a link walking them through. Without me looking at the screen. And explain to them every single thing that's going on.”
Dave Goldberg's SurveyMonkey attempted to acquire Qualtrics before its Series A
“You know, the gentleman who was doing it ran a company, I'll just be honest, it was called Survey Monkey at the time.”
Ryan Smith calls selling Qualtrics one of his most underwhelming days
“And when Qualtrics sold, it was probably one of the most underwhelming days of my life.”
Ryan Smith based his Utah Jazz offer on a Forbes mobile valuation
“It was literally a meeting where it was like, well, are you serious? Make us an offer. And we pulled up the Forbes valuation on the phone and I said, well, how's this?”
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 …”
The other half of the tape: Ryan Smith's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 67 times in 32 episodes across the shows. 6 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Nathan Latka 12Frank Quattrone 10Harry Stebbings 8Jason Lemkin 6Alfonso de la Nuez 5Rob Nelson 4Stewart Butterfield 3Matt Turck 3
Statements about Ryan Smith, by other people (6)
Cummings: Qualtrics scaled to $500M ARR without primary balance sheet capital
“Ryan Smith from Qualtrics, and he told the amazing story of going from zero to five hundred million of revenue
And not requiring any primary capital. Five hundred million in recurring revenue, and they never raised any money that went to the balance sheet.”
Latka: The most successful SaaS companies originated out of agencies
“And the most successful SAS companies I've ever seen all came out of agencies. Qualtrics with Ryan Smith Ryan Holmes at Hootsuite. I mean, the most successful SaaS company started as agencies.”
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 …”
Latka: Early-stage interviews get 3x more downloads than pre-IPO founders
“The interviews I do with people that are at your level get almost three times the downloads as when I have Ryan on from Qualtrics and they're about to IPO.”
Lemkin: SaaS founders led Front's $600M valuation round
“The last round in front, which I think was at six or seven hundred million, was all founders. Okay, it was Ryan Smith from Qualtrics, I forget who else, the other billion, our friends, the billionaires of SaaS, but they all, I think, led that round instead of …”
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…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 34
Top Founders 26
the Official SaaStr Podcast 4
the MAD Podcast 3
2026 8 mentions in 3 episodes 3 per episode
- Why You Need a $1B Fund To Do Series A | SpaceX at $2TRN & Data Centers in Space | Groq's $20BN Deal · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Anthropic Raises $45B but Falls Short on Compute & Thoma Bravo Hand Back Medallia Keys to Creditors · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Cursor Acquired for $60BN | Anthropic Hits $1TRN in Secondary Markets & Figma, Adobe, Canva Dead? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2026, scene by scene →
2024 11 mentions in 2 episodes 6 per episode
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2022 7 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
- Look Back: UserZoom Eye's 2022 IPO, $100m Run Rate in User Experience Management Space
- He Acquired Companies through Whatsapp. Bootstrapped with $30m in revenue today.
- Ben Chestnut: Why I Sold MailChimp; How My Kids Found Out I Was a Billionaire | E959 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 9 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
- SoloSuit Makes $80k/mo Helping Consumers Fight Bank Debt Collectors
- 20VC: a16z's David George on Leading a16z's Growth Fund Today, The Biggest Misconceptions of Growth Investing, How a16z Think Through Portfolio Construction, Investment Decision-Making and Scenario Planning & How The Entrance of New Players Has Changed Th
- The Highs and Lows of Fundraising from Founders That Have Raised $1B w/ Calendly, Coda, LaunchDarkly
- UserZoom Eye's 2022 IPO, $100m Run Rate in User Experience Management Space
- 20VC: The Crowdstrike Memo: Accel's Sameer Gandhi on Leading Multiple Internal Rounds for Crowdstrike, Telling George Kurtz to Go Shop His Term Sheet, How To Think Through Market Sizing & The Importance of Speed of Execution and Knowing When To Go Slow To
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2020 7 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Slack Founder Stewart Butterfield on Leadership Styles, Decision-Making, The 3 Levels of Wealth, IPOs vs Direct Listings & Why Effective Entrepreneurship is Like Parkour
- 20VC: Why The Unbundling of Fintech Will Continue, How VCs Are Propping Up The Neo-Banking Industry & Why We Need A New Framework To Value Businesses Today with Clay Wilkes, Founder & CEO @ Galileo
- 20VC: Craft Ventures' David Sacks on How To Assess Founder Psychology, How To Accurately Evaluate CAC, Burn and Churn & What Makes The Very Best Startup Boards
- 1684 With $60M in ARR, How Braze Drives Serious Expansion Revenue on Old Cohorts
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 7 mentions in 4 episodes 2 per episode
- 1292 How Cvent Hit $500m Bookings with Eyes on $1B in Meeting and Event Space
- 20VC: Sequoia's Pat Grady on What Sequoia Is Focused On Today, How Sequoia Think About Investment Decision-Making Processes & Why It Is Important To Trade A Few Points of Efficiency for Culture When It Comes To Attribution
- 7 Lessons Helping Start Pardot, SalesLoft, and Calendly
- How to build a $18B+ success story far far away from Silicon Valley with Adyen
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →
2018 12 mentions in 7 episodes 2 per episode
- 1055 Utah CEO: We've Doubled YoY to $10m in ARR
- 1228 SwiftPage ACT CEO "We're 1-2 Years Away from $100M in ARR"
- 1202 He Raised $20m+ in First Company, Now Bootstrapping in B2B Sales Tech Space, $1m in ARR
- 1103 When should he quit his agency and go all in on software?
- 1061 We serve 2b impressions a day including MSN homepage
- 965 Why This $14m ARR Company "Went Public" To Win Marketing Automation Space
- 933 Why Wordpress CEO Raised $300m, Replaced Himself, and New Gutenberg
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
2017 1 mention in 1 episode
2016 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Ryan's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Executive Chairman & Co-Founder, Qualtrics | 2 | 31 | 38% 3/8 | full record on 20VC → |
| SAASTRLEDGER | Executive Chairman & Co-Founder, Qualtrics | 1 | 24 | 80% 4/5 | full record on the Official SaaStr Podcast → |
| MADLEDGER | Executive Chairman & Co-Founder, Qualtrics | 1 | 12 | — | full record on the MAD Podcast → |
 MY FIRST MILLIONLEDGER | Executive Chairman & Co-Founder, Qualtrics | 1 | 12 | 75% 3/4 | full record on My First Million → |
| TOP FOUNDERSLEDGER | Executive Chairman & Co-Founder, Qualtrics | 1 | 10 | 100% 4/4 | full record on Top Founders → |