YouSaid · the spoken record

Ryan Smith

lines on the record: 36
first: 2021-05-11
most recent: 2021-05-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Was and my friends and my family, you know, at the end of the day, whether we launch another product or something like that, that's probably not going to be what determines.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Principles, and you've got to figure out like it's not about the money. It's not about always being popular. Like, what do you stand for? What do you truly stand for? And not being predictable about what you stand for because everyone else stands for that. Like, what do you stand for as an individual that's different? Like, why? And what's amazing about our community and our world is people accept you for who you are. And I hope truly that more and more entrepreneurs and founders will show who they are. I don't shy away from anything. I've always just been Ryan, you know, whether it's through Sunday thoughts or growing up. Like I only have one story. It's me. It's too hard to keep of another story. And I think we can all work on who we are because I think we all bring something. And so that's a tough question. It's a real tough question on what I want to become. But I think most of it's off the tech realm where it really comes down to what I want my kids to be able to say their dad.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I know the attributes of what I want to become, and I think it's very aspirational because I think you have to do it on a daily basis. But I think it probably goes back to the identity question. You know, I was at someone's funeral and they said they were talking about an individual who I totally admire. And the person speaking said this person was reliable. This person was reliable to everyone around them. They were reliable to their family. They were reliable as a friend. They were reliable to their God. They were reliable to everything. I thought that was one of the greatest compliments I've ever heard that this person could be count on and they were there and everything. And, you know, I'm still trying to figure that out. I think too many people try to figure out what their legacy is. And you really don't determine your legacy like other people do. And I think you just need to do your best in the moment and try to be guided by principles. And I think one of the biggest fears I have a little bit with tech right now is we're not guided by great.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We bring board members in who life's only gone good for. And it's one of our problems in tech is like we need to bring people in that, you know, have some battle wounds. And like maybe there was some successes that happen, but also some things that didn't work out and like what they would have you learn about. And Duff's been as influential as anyone on the board. And I think also with my board members, like if you look at Ryan Sweeney or Brian Schreier or Jeff Lee, we kind of grew up together, right?”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Best board member? Wow, you're asking me to like choose my kids. To be honest with you, I'll tell you one of the most influential board members we've had, there's probably two. One gentleman's named Duff Thompson, who was at WordPerfect back in the day, and WordPerfect had the market share and the lead, and they were fighting against Microsoft. And WordPerfect lost the processor, the business to Microsoft Word, and they bundled, and then they sold the Nobel. And it didn't work out the way that it probably could have. And they missed a window from being the biggest player in Duff, having Duff on our board as our chairman, and be able to go through what went wrong and why and what part of the journey I need to enjoy and just a deep care about me personally versus like when to step on the gas and how you never know and being 30 years later having regrets on what they did or excitement about what they did right I think oftentimes”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think number one is just like honesty and integrity. Jared always says, and we have this thing at Qualtrics, that there's no minor laps of integrity. So I think that's it. Obviously hard work. And then I'd want my kids to be wise. People who are wise beyond their years are typically the ones and in learning mode. They're the ones that you want to be around.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Onto her driveway, the kids ate. My daughter rode her bike in front of grandmother, and that was a triple. I got three things done in one hour, right? And so you'll always see me doubling up everything I do. Like if I have a meeting that I need to go do, I'll just bring him with me to the next meeting. If I've got to go to a game, I've always got people with me that I was supposed to meet with. And we just do it as we go. And it actually works really, really well.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes you have to change the way you work. And Kim Scott, who's one of Jared's friends and my friend and board member and advisor and CEO coach, she always talked about doubles and triples where there's not enough time in the day. So I'll never forget a couple years ago. I was talking to Kim about how I couldn't do it all. Being a good dad, being a husband, being all the responsibilities of my life. And she's like, why don't you double or triple him up? And so I remember that Monday, my wife said, hey, I've got to teach dance because she's a dance teacher. I got to teach dance. You've got the kids. And I looked at everything I had to do and it was like, okay, my grandmother's turning 80 and I need to do that. I got to go to dinner. I have to teach my four-year-old how to write a bike. And I don't have time. Like I'm failing at everything. I was like, I'm going to try this. So I grabbed the kids. I threw them in the car. I grabbed my daughter's bike. I threw it in the car. We went and got Wendy's. We went over to my grandmother's house. Pulled her out.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I like the alchemist because it's this really cool story about how the journey comes full speed and what you're looking for is for normally right in front of you.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're never going to be able to get up. And so you're going to be stuck with the decisions you make. And so ultimately you can either fight it and say, hey, look, I'm not going to learn and I'm going to take shortcuts, which was my whole modus operanda growing up because that's”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, like at the time, you're just surviving, right? You're just doing what you do. And I was telling someone yesterday that like I was 14 years old and my friend was 15 and neither one of us had driver's licenses and we drove three hours away for this sports tournament and hung out there all weekend. And it's like, where were our parents? Like, that just doesn't happen in today's world, right? It was just the way it was, like at the time, I remember it being hard. And I remember my father saying, hey, you're going to appreciate this later. You're going to appreciate this later. You're going to appreciate this later. And I think there's a strong lesson that people need to understand is that tomorrow always comes, right? It always comes. And the better you can help understand. This is one of the things that Jarrett's taught me is we're dealing with whether it's infrastructure, internal systems, employee decisions, equality within our company is like tomorrow will always be there.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's like that's what you've got to instill. And if you can do that while they're growing up, obviously, in a different world than I did, that's hard and how they get there, whether it's academics or sports or whatever else, or just that they're born with it. I don't know. Good question.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not because I think it's the only way, but because it does insteal hard work. Right or wrong, if someone's excelling in education, like there is a work ethic, I think that's the one thing that I would say accidentally all the Smith kids had to figure out was how to work. And that's what I want from my job. I want them to be nice kids. I want to be nice and learn how to treat people. I want them to learn how to care. I want to be mission driven. But I also want them to really, really learn how to work. Jared is one of the hardest workers I know. And whether you're smart or not, like one of the problems I see in part of our younger generation, they don't grind. They don't grind the way that we have. And if I look at Qualtrics, it's been a 20-year grind. I want my kids to be able to stick with it. Like, I probably quit Qualtrics 50 times. And I want my kids to be able to figure out how to hang in there and whether you call it grit, whether you call it something else.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's really hard. I mean, Jared and I talk about this a lot. I mean, there's four boys. We have one girl who's the oldest, Tanya, and then four boys. And I was with my brother last night down in LA at the basketball game. And we always talk about, you know, my parents split up when I was 13 years old. And we kind of had to figure it all out. You know, Jared moved out of the house as a 17-year-old. 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 and trying to replicate that given my new world is going to be impossible, right? Like the world's different, our upbringing is different. I mean, obviously, both my parents were academics, so they didn't have a ton of money. And our worlds are different. And so I think that, I mean, education's a massive priority.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wow. I mean, to be honest with you, there's probably too many to count. Like, if you ask Jared and I together, I think that our response would be Jared's weaknesses or my strengths and vice versa, right? Because we've worked together so long. We've grown and we're like opposites. Like we both kind of majored in where each other was weak. And so together it would be the perfect team. And what I've tried to do is say, okay, where do I major and where do I minor? So if I were to say, hey, strength obviously go to market positioning branding. I think I'm pretty good at product where I've been horrible over the years is just long-term impact of either internal operational decisions. But I mean, it's hard to run a bit. I've run every part of Qualtrics and it's gone pretty well. But, you know, sometimes I'm way too emotional. That's a bad thing. I've tried to work on that over the years. I think I've gotten better. I think one of the weaknesses I'm probably never satisfied.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When the 500 offer came, we got in the car and we drove south in Utah, right? And we started driving south and we were going to drive down to where Arches is and the national park down by Zion. We got about 45 minutes away and she's like, look, man, I don't want you home more. Like, nothing's going to be good with you with that kind of money and nothing to do. Like, is it all going to go away? And I'm like, no, like, actually the business is really solid. We're growing. Everything's good. And she's like, just go for it.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tell we saw a bunch of other young kids and families and people actually feel the success that it actually meant anything. And so I think that the lesson is if you are doing this and you think, oh, I'm going to build a company and I'm going to raise a bunch of funding and I'm going to exit and I'm going to get some money. It's going to be the most underwhelming moment that you've had in your career. You have to find another reason to do this.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, Harry, I'd just be super straight because, and this is probably weird to say, but if there's entrepreneurs out there listening, this is probably the single piece of advice that I could give. You know, it was a cast deal. The day that the wires hit, I remember sitting, we were at a president's club, so we were at a sales retreat with all of our people. And you can kind of look around and you could see everyone's phones, right? Like people were like with their spouses, like it was pretty clear that like things have funded, right? And I remember turning to my wife just like showing her the phone. You see a bunch of zeros, right? And she was like, oh, scary. And I think it was probably the most underwhelming day of my entire career. We owned a lot of the company, right? And it was pretty interesting that in the eyes of the world, everyone saw that as success. But like it wasn't this Eureka moment at all. And it wasn't.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More years, our financial business, it was unbelievable. But everyone says, why did you raise money? Well, we raise money because we had an offer to sell the company. And to be able to live with ourselves, we had to raise some capital, and it was secondary to be able to say, hey, look, this is what works so we didn't regret. And that's a little bit of a decision process that no one would think that's why we raised venture capital. We actually raised venture capital because we turned down an offer and we wanted to be able to live with ourselves.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Offered us $500 million cash to sell our business and we were at this point where we turned it down. I'll never forget. I'm sitting there with Michael Moritz from Sequoia and he's looking across from me and he's like, Ryan, this is like the perfect litness test for me as an investor. And this is a dude that gave Steve Jobs his first dollar, right? Like this is the dude that funded Larry and Sergei. And I'm this kid from Provo, Utah that flew out. I never knew what Sandhill Road was, right? And he's looking at me going, if I invest in you and you turn the money down, you're exactly what I'm looking for. And do you want to actually do something interesting? Or do you want to be another company in Utah that sells out too soon? And I was like, well, I want to be interesting, man. I want to be interesting. And for me to turn down the 500 million and to be able to not have regret, we had to raise capital at that point because we were bootstrapped. And we could have kept bootstrapping for”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it turned out not to be a one way door. And for most people, it probably would have been. And I would say even for us, it probably would have been. But both us and credit to SAP, we've been super optimistic. And what I would call an opportunist kind of mentality here, where we came out and said, hey, look, there's a chance here. And part of that's because the business did so well within SAP. Like it doesn't do well. I lose all the employee base and everyone jams. Like there's nothing left. Or if I leave and the management team leaves, there's nothing left. But because we stayed intact, because we kept our culture, because we did this, you have a chance to spin it out for much higher later. But I think back to the real crux of it is you just got to be real and try to be honest with yourself and kind of just go through a little bit of simulation in your mind going, hey, can I live with this? Am I going to regret it? Can I live with this? And you know what you can live with. You truly do. I mean, like, for example, in 2011, someone.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you're looking at risk and you're looking at different situations, I'll often ask myself and make the decision simply based on back to that rubric, do I believe I'm going to regret this? And you normally know in the moment, can I live with myself? I had two hours to decide whether we're selling two SAP for $8 billion cash. I had to be able to ask myself in two hours, am I going to regret this? Am I going to regret not going public? Am I going to regret turning the money down? There wasn't a lot of time.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The older I get, I lead with my heart, I just do. Right or wrong, it's just, that's pretty consistent. And I don't know if it's my heart, my soul, my gut, whatever you want to call it, but the head's got to come up with really an idea or whatever else it is. But at the end of the day, I have enough repetitions to know that some of my biggest regrets are actually the ones when I didn't trust my gut or my heart.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Anywhere in life. However, I do believe that whatever our rubric is personally for making decisions, calculating risk is really interesting. And if you can get good at calculating those risks and however you go through your decision process is really good. Like we have this thing called one way and two-way doors.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've always viewed myself as like I know a lot of entrepreneurs who are not great entrepreneurs. They just start stuff and never finish. I would much rather be opportunistic than being an entrepreneur. And I think sometimes with entrepreneurship, the risk boogie person or that hurdle gets so high. A lot of times with opportunities, a risk isn't that high because you're starting from where you are and you're just moving along. I recently interviewed for a thing we did called Work Different. I interviewed Tom Brady, the quarterback. And I asked him the same question. I said, hey, look, man, you got six Super Bowl rings. You're in the winningest franchise. You're the winningest player over the last 20 years. And you're going to the losingest franchise over that same time period. And you go in and you pick up another Super Bowl ring. Like you didn't have to do this, man. Like, why'd you do it? And his response was just fear and risk, basically, have no place. They don't do anything. And I tend to agree with that. Like, there's no benefit from.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In January, we kind of got it really in August on the rails, and so if you go back to June, I'm sitting here in June running a company in hypergrowth within SAP. And if you would have told me a month later, we would have had a company on track to go public and I would have the team I grew up cheering for, Utah Jazz under contract, I would have said you're crazy. Like, I would have said there's no way. And both of those happen from one month to another during a pandemic. And so I think that you've just got to be opportunistic with what's coming. And you're going to end up in a place of what you want to be is probably not the best way, but you'll be in a place of probably fits what you should be doing.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Year and then the pandemic hits, and it's funny once we sold to SAP, every single person in tech told me what was going to happen. They all said, this is what's going to happen. I've seen the playbook. You're going to go into a big company. They're going to squeeze you. This is all the and then like it was unanimous. Like I've seen this before my friend was acquired or when I was at this company. I mean, we had 20% of our employees come in and be like, hey, I didn't sign up for this. We were going to go public and we were going to do that. And this is everything that's going to happen. And I'm about 16 months in and I sit down with our new CEO and said, hey, like, look, here are our options. Qualtrics is growing. It's on fire. Why don't we look at another formula? And by July, we had spun it out. We were on the path to go public. And so every single person was wrong. And so we're 18 months in. We spin it out. We have an IPO.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Like, I don't know. And reality is if you read Clayton Christensen's book, How will you measure your life? He talks about how he wanted to be the editor for the Wall Street Journal or The New York Times, whichever one it was. And here he was like a famous Harvard professor. And he's like, I'll get there someday. And he's like in his 60s, right? And so I think it's natural. And one of the things we saw with the pandemic is everyone woke up and said, oh, wow. And they started having that conversation of what do I want to be when I grow up? And it was like dangerous. Like you saw all these people doing all these irrational things where it's like, I quit my job. And it's like, I mean, personally, I just, you just put your head down and work. And you try to be opportunistic. I think if you're opportunistic, opportunities will come up. I mean, we sold our company, obviously, to SAP in 2018, right? So the end of 2018. So we're in 2019. We go through a”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we started off the year four and four. So we'd won four and lost four. We have a really amazing team. And I remember like the general manager calling me going, Ryan, hey, this is going to get worse before it gets better. You need to pace yourself. And I remember talking to him and I talking to coach and saying, hey, guys, I'm chill. I'm not going to panic. I'm doing this for 35 years. The last person who ran the team had it for 35 years. I'm doing this for thirty-five years. And really, that's my thought. Like, we're doing it for that long. And so that changed the way I looked at starting four and four. And, you know, we've got the best record in the league now. And so I think it's an interesting kind of snapshot there where if you know how long you're going to do it, it helps you through situations where it's probably not going the way you want.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I don't think what I did changed. I think how I thought about, first of all, it was something that was truth. Like, I know, I know, without a doubt, I will work in my 80s if I'm around that long. I will work in my 80s. I just know that's how I'm built. In everyone, they have enough data to look at themselves and say, yeah, if I had enough money to go sell off into the sunset, I'm not selling off into the sunset. I'm not flying to Vegas to go live it up and like check out. You know that about yourselves. That's something you do know. And so if you know have an idea that, hey, I'm always going to be doing something, then it should change how you look at the journey a little bit. And maybe at the end of the day, the end of the day when you're dealing with problems, when you don't think you can go any further, when you go and do this, you've got to look at yourself going, hey, I've got to pace myself. I mean, I'll tell you, this season, I took over the Utah Jacks.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the reality is most of us aren't built like that. That would be the most miserable thing we ever did. And so once you understand”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's the big challenge. I mean, look, I'm in my 20th year, it's 20 years, right? And first, I think people need to understand how long they're going to work. If you know how long you're going to work, I learned this lesson from an individual back in 2000 and seven, eight, nine, where I was this young kid and I go back to the Hamilton play where like you're trying so hard and you want it so fast and you it's like slow down. There's so many things like he was always writing like it was going out of style, right? That's how we all are, right? We're all like trying so fast and I had an individual come up to me and said, hey, Ryan, he was 68 and he was still working. He was actually helping me as a board member. He's like, how long are you going to wear? I was like, I don't see myself ever stop working. And he's like, okay, you probably need to change your perspective that you're going to be doing this for 60 years. And too many people are sitting here going, like, I'm going to come in. I'm going to get a hit and then I'm going to pop out and then I'm going to write off into the sunset.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think first of all, if your happiness is tied up in your business, you're never going to be happy because it's nothing but problems, whether it's customer problems, whether it's employee problems, whether it's just frustration. Like you've got to fight happiness outside. And it's one of the biggest problems I see in tech is we're all so good at what we do and what makes us great will also kill us. And so whatever that center of gravity, whatever that peace, whether it's family, whether it's spiritual, whether it's who you are, like that's got to carry the day. And you've got to bring that with you to what you do in tech and your job. If you don't have that, you are going to be a miserable human being because tech will eat you up because it's a constant state of innovation.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're never going to wish we were back because that's like hell. Because the basement sucked. It was like the worst time I've ever had like running a business. And we always wished to be where we are today. And then you get to where you dreamed of and then you want to go back to where it wasn't good. And that's the cycle I watch in tech all the time. I watch this cycle where people want to do that. And so I always just said when we get here, we're going to rally it. We're going to go take it to the next level.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Get to a plateau, we've already set our sights on the next plateau and the next plateau. And I think the awakening for me is like, we're about the journey. Like we're all about the journey. And Texan interesting place because if you think about it, you're sitting in a basement of a house and you're sitting there going, man, I wish our product would be good so that people could use it. I wish we could actually have money to hire employees. I wish we could have marketing. I wish that we could go somewhere. And people would actually know who we were. And we're just dreaming with like all of our souls that we could get to that point. And then what happens is you get to a point where people do know who you are and your products do work. And then the natural inclination of the tech world is, oh, we're too big now. I want to go back to the basement. I want to go do a startup. And it's like this crazy hamster will. And it's like, we always said, well, if we ever get to that point, we're going to rally.”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is such a joy to have you on the show today. We were chatting beforehand. I can't believe it's been four or five years since the last one. But thank you so much for joining me again today. My pleasure, Harry, man. It's good to be here. It's been a minute. Now, I do want to start because it has been an incredible journey since the last show. So I want to start on that. And for those that maybe missed the first episode, take us back to the beginning. What was that founding aha moment for you with Qualtrics? And then we're going to dive right in. People ask me that, like, where has the aha moment been? And with Qualtrics, I don't think there's ever really been an aha moment. There hasn't been this tipping point where it like all worked. It's been what I would call probably more push than pull the whole way. Part of that's probably the mindset of the people running it where we're never satisfied. So we never like wake up and like smell the roses and say, oh, we've arrived. It's actually been the opposite. It's been like nothing but paranoia and like how we go win in the market. And every time we get...”
2021-05-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 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 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source