The Things Nobody Tells You About An $8B Acquisition with Ryan Smith fro...

 

From $0 to $2.5 billion with Qualtrics CEO, Ryan Smith

SaaStock

From $0 to $2.5 billion with Qualtrics CEO, Ryan Smith - SaaStock

As the story goes, Qualtrics is a product born in the head of Ryan’s father, a Ph.D. who consulted on the side. Instead of relying on laborious human market research capture, his father had written a program that sought feedback on their preferences about brands. It analyzed the data in real time. 

When his father was diagnosed with cancer, Ryan came back from university to be with his father. 

To spend time together, they worked on that tech project in the basement that later became Qualtrics. He instantly got hooked to the product and began developing and selling it.

Selling had been his forte from an early age. At a very young age, instead of using the five dollars his parents gave him to see a football match with his brothers, they used the money to trade tickets. They would come home with a couple of hundred dollars.

. . .To Qualtrics and Ryan experience management (XM) platforms, are as essential as CRM platforms are. Measuring, optimizing and acting upon the findings of experience data is the last true competitive advantage organizations have, and most are not maximizing their advantages.

. . .As he puts it himself, Ryan Smith has attention deficit disorder as much as anyone else, yet something has powered him through everything, including many lows. Somehow he finds a way to remain positive within the rollercoaster ride of emotions of being an entrepreneur.

. . .The other thing that helps to get through tough times is having a bigger mission than the company. And for Ryan that is what brought he and his father together in the Provo basement in the first place– his father’s fight against cancer

RELATED