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The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: Qualtrics Founder, Ryan Smith on The 2 Hour Decision Whether To Sell Qualtrics for $8Bn in Cash, Why Tying Your Identity To Your Company Will Never Make You Happy and His Relationship To Risk, Wealth and Responsibility as a Result

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4637 Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2021

⏱️ 41 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ryan Smith is the Founder and Executive Chairman @ Qualtrics, the leader in customer experience and creator of the experience management (XM) category. Ryan has grown the company from a basement startup to one of the fastest-growing technology companies in the world, with 25 offices globally and more than 13,000 customers. Qualtrics raised $400M in funding from Accel, Sequoia, and Insight Venture Partners. Three days before the company was initially scheduled to go public, SAP announced its intent to acquire Qualtrics for $8B, which was the largest private enterprise software acquisition ever. In 2020, Qualtrics and SAP announced plans to take Qualtrics public as an independently operated company.

In Today’s Episode with Ryan Smith You Will Learn:

1.) How Ryan made his way into the world of startups having travelled the world and came to found Qualtrics in his basement over 21 years ago?

2.) How does Ryan think about his relationship to happiness and what it means to "be happy"? How does Ryan think about identity and founders aligning their identities to their company? How does Ryan think, if not careful, tech can eat you up? What does Ryan mean when he says he would rather be "opportunistic than an entrepreneur"?

3.) How does Ryan approach decision-making today? In what situations does Ryan think with his head vs his heart? How does Ryan approach risk today? How has his relationship to risk changed over time? What did the sale process to SAP look like? What was that decision-making process to sell to SAP for $8BN in cash vs IPO? What advice did his wife give him?

4.) How does Ryan evaluate his relationship to money today? How did it feel when Ryan sold Qualtrics to SAP for $8BN in cash? How does Ryan think about giving his children the right mentality and upbringing while being brought up in extreme wealth? What are the challenges of doing so?

5.) How does Ryan think about the weight of responsibility? Ryan and his brother Jared, did a lot very young, did Ryan feel the pressure of having to grow up faster than one usually would? How did that impact his mentality? How did Ryan's travels to Mexico and Japan change the person he is today?

Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with Ryan Smith

Ryan’s Favourite Book: Alchemist: A Fable about Following Your Dream

As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Welcome back. This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and today's a show I'm very passionate about,

0:04.5

an incredible business leader who's changed their industry. But today we touch on a lot of very

0:08.6

personal things that I don't think many have heard before, but I think are really meaningful,

0:12.9

and so it makes it such a special show for me to do. And so with that, I'm thrilled to welcome

0:16.6

Ryan Smith, founder and executive chairman at Qualtricks. The leader in customer experience and

0:21.5

creator of the experience management category, Ryan has scaled Qualtrics from basement startup to one of

0:26.4

the fastest growing technology companies in the world, with 25 offices globally and more than 13,000

0:31.9

customers. In the private markets, Qualtrics raised 400 million in funding from Excel, Sequoia and

0:37.2

Insight Venture Partners.

0:38.7

And three days before the company initially was scheduled to go public, SAP announced its

0:42.8

intent to acquire Qualtrix for $8 billion, which was the largest private enterprise

0:47.2

software acquisition ever. And then in 2020, Qualtrix and SAP announced plans to take

0:52.0

Qualtrix public as an independently operated company.

0:55.0

I do want to say huge thank you to Ryan's brother Jared and Jeff Lieberman at Insight for some amazing questions suggestions today.

1:01.0

Really did make the schedule so much more special.

1:03.0

But before we dive into the show today, I have to say I just love using Angel List fund admin platform to manage my investments.

1:09.0

The team at Angel List takes care of all my

1:11.6

back office needs so that I can focus on working with great founders. Leading fund managers have made

1:16.3

over 10,000 investments into 6,000 startups via AngelList, all online and all in one place. And with the

1:22.6

recently announced rolling funds, you can easily find and invest in these top fund managers on

1:27.4

angellist.com

1:28.6

forward slash rolling. And speaking of the incredible platform that is AngelList on the business

...

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