Every argument clarity score on this site is built from rows on this page. Each
question and answer was assessed with names hidden, the host's own answers included, on
four things from 1 to 5:
directness (does it answer the question asked), coherence (do the ideas follow),
precision (concrete details and clear references), compression (says a lot per word). The weighted
mix (30/30/25/15) is the exchange score. A person's published score averages their exchange
scores on raw tape only, at least 8 of them, shrunk toward the cohort mean.
Full method →
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q And so you go to Seoul, you're what, 17 years old at this time? Do you have a plan?
A The plan was, I communicate, I never left Utah, I, I communicate with someone, and like, we were supposed to show up, and like, we had jobs, they had a house for us, they had all these things, and you know, we had talked to them, so I remember getting there, and like, we had limited cash, but we were there, we were there to sign a contract, and work for a school, and move in, and we get there, and we, we go right to the hotel, and we're waiting, and we call where we're supposed to meet up, and No answer, no answer, no answer, no answer. Next day, no answer, no answer, no answer. And we're like, what in the world? And then finally someone answers and it's a Korean woman who didn't speak any English. And it was like, okay, well, but this person, like, I thought we were showing up and they were just gonna, I'll be there waiting. Hey, we're so excited to have you. And it was the exact opposite. And like, basically after a week in this hotel, it was like, you have no job, you have no house. You don't have enough money to be staying in this hotel. And so I remember sitting in a, in a coffee shop and, you know, we kind of all called our parents to come home. These guys, all the parents went to the airport, bought them a ticket and they all jumped on the plane. But like, I sat there and my dad's like, you're not coming home. And I was like, what in the world? He's like, I know what you…
AI assessment note: “The plan was, ... we were supposed to show up, and like, we had jobs”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q your brother, with your dad. And you're building it from your family's basement all the way, you know, to the, you know, to the end zone, basically sell for eight billion dollars. You end up going public. You have a pretty crazy story over like a 20 something year period. Where, you know, what's the origin? What was the idea? And, uh, you know, what were the early days like?
A Yeah, so I think, I think that the origin, and if you talk to all of us, it's, it's, it's, it's a little different, like, so it was really my dad and I who started, I was doing an internship at Hewlett Packard in L.A., And I get a call that my father had cancer, and it was terminal, like, or pretty close. I mean, it was like three years throat cancer, or three years to live, Max, and probably a couple months. And he ended up going through and recovering, you know, and is alive today, which is an amazing story. But I kind of had a moment where I just left California. I was working in LA and came back, deferred school, and said, I'm spending this whole semester with my dad. My dad was always working on technology. He'd come up with this idea of, like, collecting research online, and it seems normal now, but at the time, it wasn't trusted.
AI assessment note: “it was really my dad and I who started, I was doing an internship”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.30
Q You guys kicking each other under the table?
A Literally, it was just crickets. Because I knew where this conversation was going. And that, I, I still remember the silence. Because we're all just looking at each other, and finally he just stands up and slaps the table and is like, it's him, and he points at me, and he goes, I won't do media, and then sat down, and like, if you find a Jared interview, it's rare. If you find a Jared Smith interview, it is super rare, and you know, that was a moment where I was like, all right, Like, we'll still operate two in the box, we'll divide the world, but like, it's a cool moment, and then it was like, you're a first time CEO, they're giving you, we're now in the big leagues, like, 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, which, I mean, Sequoia at the time wasn't even investing there, so we came out of nowhere, the Forbes article was like, The biggest company no one's ever heard of.
AI assessment note: “Literally, it was just crickets. Because I knew where this conversation was going.”
Answered raw tape
D 5 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.30
Q And you were plotting your thinking, like, I wanted to get into this?
A No, it just happened. I was like, I am so intrigued by this. I love the NBA. I love hoops. Like, I love the business side of it, and you know, when we did sell, like, my brother was like, what are you gonna do? And I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go be part of the NBA. You know, with SAP, I, I'd gotten to know Adam. I was working on a tech council for the NBA and through SAP and Bill McDermott had connected us and, you know, he was like, hey, and I, I let him know. I was like, I'm, I'm going to be part of this one way or another. Like, and he was like, oh, we'd love it. Like, too bad Utah's not for sale. And, you know, he called me and was like, hey, you know, And someone else, like, I hear Minnesota's for sale, and so I went down that entire road, and that story's pretty famous, where Ash was like, we're jazz fans. Well, do we have to give up our season tickets at the jazz? I was like, yeah, that's probably part of it.
AI assessment note: “No, it just happened. I was like, I am so intrigued by this.”
Partly raw tape
D 3 · C 4 · P 5 · Cm 4 3.95
Q ideas. And the thing I read in the research was, um, your brother was basically like, you know, if you were talking to him about some other type of customer, he would, you know, he's hanging up the phone. He's like, unless you're talking about these 250 universities, I don't want to hear it. So could you tell me about, like, how that went down and what that was like?
A We had found people like my dad. My first customer was Angela Lee at the Kellogg Business School. She made all of her students use Qualtrics, and then it just kind of went from there, and I can go through every professor and kind of how the whole thing worked, but my brother at the time was a Google. He was an early, early Googler, and At this time, like, I didn't have very many people to call. And, you know, I didn't know how good he was, but I knew he was, like, running a big piece of the internet. Okay. Right? And, and Google was kind of having a moment. And he had been assigned to go run China for Google. So he was living in Beijing. He was working with Kai-Fu Lee and like running Google China.
AI assessment note: “my brother at the time was a Google. He was an early, early Googler”
Not addressed raw tape
D 2 · C 4 · P 3 · Cm 3 3.00
Q What does it take to be great at sales? You were great at sales.
A I mean, so, so I think, I think sales gets a really bad name, um, because people like use it as, okay, the salesperson we don't want to deal with, but. I remember a moment, a lot of authors would use our software to write books. And I remember once Daniel Pink called me. He said, I'm writing a book and I want your help. I said, great. And he's like, I was like, what's the title of the book? And he said, to sell as human. And he basically, um, it's a great book about how every single person is a salesperson. They're actually trying to get a group of people to go in one direction or another at some point in the day.
AI assessment note: “every single person is a salesperson. They're actually trying to get a group of people”
