Ryan Smith

Executive Chairman & Co-Founder, Qualtrics · 1 appearance on the record.

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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.

10statements → 8claims → 4claims resolved → 100%fully supported → 4/5average certainty → 1.5/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated → 28said about them ↓

4 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 4 not checkable as stated how the 8 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

8 assertions · 1 insight · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 8 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, and 4 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Ryan argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported

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…”

Ryan Smith Feb 10, 2018 ▶ 10:46 931 Qualtrics "Well Past" $250m in ARR, When Will The Go Public?

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Ryan Smith on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

What they said10 What others said28 Episodes1

Everything Ryan Smith said on Top Founders that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Supported

Smith: Qualtrics is and has always been cash-flow positive

Ryan Smith Feb 10, 2018 ▶ 10:46 931 Qualtrics "Well Past" $250m in ARR, When Will The Go Public?

Disclosure

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 …”

Ryan Smith Feb 10, 2018 ▶ 12:26 931 Qualtrics "Well Past" $250m in ARR, When Will The Go Public?

Assertion Not checkable as stated

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…”

Ryan Smith Feb 10, 2018 ▶ 24:42 931 Qualtrics "Well Past" $250m in ARR, When Will The Go Public?

Insight

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…”

Ryan Smith Feb 10, 2018 ▶ 26:03 931 Qualtrics "Well Past" $250m in ARR, When Will The Go Public?

Assertion Supported

Smith: Qualtrics has 9,000 brand customers paying up to $6M annually

“Yeah, paying customers, and these are brands. These are, I mean, we have a lot more customers in the brands, but they, you know, if you look at 9000, then you look at, you know, they're paying anywhere from 12,000 all the way up to, You know, five, six millio…”

Ryan Smith Feb 10, 2018 ▶ 6:39 931 Qualtrics "Well Past" $250m in ARR, When Will The Go Public?

Assertion Supported

Smith: Qualtrics has already surpassed $250M in ARR

“I think we already have. Good. I asked that question very specifically. What I found is if I underestimate a little, a founder feels much more comfortable going, we just broke that versus. We're good. That's in the rear of your view mirror.”

Ryan Smith Feb 10, 2018 ▶ 7:11 931 Qualtrics "Well Past" $250m in ARR, When Will The Go Public?

Assertion Not checkable as stated

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.”

Ryan Smith Feb 10, 2018 ▶ 5:05 931 Qualtrics "Well Past" $250m in ARR, When Will The Go Public?

Assertion Not checkable as stated

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.”

Ryan Smith Feb 10, 2018 ▶ 15:34 931 Qualtrics "Well Past" $250m in ARR, When Will The Go Public?

Assertion Not checkable as stated

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.”

Ryan Smith Feb 10, 2018 ▶ 16:39 931 Qualtrics "Well Past" $250m in ARR, When Will The Go Public?

Assertion Supported

Smith: Qualtrics powers all feedback for healthcare.gov

“We power all the feedback for healthcare.gov and, you know, thousands of brands.”

Ryan Smith Feb 10, 2018 ▶ 19:36 931 Qualtrics "Well Past" $250m in ARR, When Will The Go Public?

The other half of the tape: Ryan Smith's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 26 times in 13 episodes on Top Founders. 2 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Nathan Latka 12 Alfonso de la Nuez 5 Rob Nelson 4 George Simons 3 Vivek Bhaskaran 2

Statements about Ryan Smith, by other people (2)

Assertion Not checkable as stated

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.”

Nathan Latka Aug 1, 2018 ▶ 19:46 1103 When should he quit his agency and go all in on software?

Assertion Not checkable as stated

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.”

Nathan Latka Nov 8, 2018 ▶ 8:27 1202 He Raised $20m+ in First Company, Now Bootstrapping in B2B Sales Tech Space, $1m in ARR