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.
Ryan Smith avoided investing, boards, and real estate for 20 years
“I didn't do anything else when I was doing Qualtrics. I didn't invest. I didn't sit on boards. I didn't buy real estate. I was literally like Qualtrics for 20 years heads down.”
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: Qualtrics raised from Sequoia and Accel at $350M–$400M valuation
“We raised at four hundred million dollars, three hundred fifty million dollars with Sequoia and Excel.”
Ryan Smith: Qualtrics' academic business fell from 100% to 10% of revenue
“Yeah, it went from a hundred percent of the business to 10% of one.”
Smith: Sears and Kmart used Qualtrics through bankruptcy until final days
“Sears was in bankruptcy and in Kmart, they were all using Qualtrics even up to the last couple days, and I was like, wow, this is phenomenal.”
Smith: Qualtrics had 160,000 NPS studies running by 2012
“And, you know, we wake up in 2011 after a bunch of hard work with
[309] Ryan Smith: You know, 2012 with 160,000 net promoter studies or NPS studies running on Qualtrics and people being able to metric and kind of power their business of experienced data.”
Smith: Qualtrics maintained 100% growth and profitability from 2006 to 2009
“We operated it with a hundred percent growth and being profitable through 2006, seven, eight, nine.”
Smith: Qualtrics had seven term sheets and an acquisition offer in 2011
“When someone rolls into the valley in 2011 with a pretty high run rate kicking off that kind of cash, you don't need leverage, right? I mean, we didn't even really meet when we had seven term sheets and an offer to sell the company.”
Smith: Qualtrics powers all feedback for healthcare.gov
“We power all the feedback for healthcare.gov and, you know, thousands of brands.”
Smith: Qualtrics was cash flow positive from inception
“We, we've been cashflow positive from the beginning”
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.”
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: Qualtrics grew to one million academic users
“Now where we have a million academic users out there coming out, you know, with a portion coming out every single year and taking Qualtrics with them”
Qualtrics has 138,000 active projects tracking Net Promoter Scores
“So we have a 138,000 different projects going on right now on Qualtrics around net promoter score and how likely someone is to recommend.”
Deep Nishar called Qualtrics co-founder Jared Smith his best hire ever
“Deep just flat out says he's the best hire he's ever made”
Ryan Smith avoids work calls during his children's daily transition routines
“Not all three, maybe, but like, if I can schedule a call, I'm not doing it in one of those moments.”
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 → |