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SPEAKER_06: Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Startups. Yeah, I got a little bit of a thing going on in my throat, but I had to come in today because I've got the greatest guest we're going to do all year, I'm sure of it.

SPEAKER_07: In a day and an age of big money in Silicon Valley with people raising hundreds of millions of dollars and billions of dollars to get to unicorn status, my guest today, Ryan Smith, the co-founder and CEO of Qualtrics, pivoted his way, bootstrapped his way to an $8 billion exit. Qualtrics, of course, started in 2002, bootstrapped for a decade before raising their first round of funding, 10 years into the business, $70 million Series A. That's Series A I can get behind from Excel, Sequoia, and Insight in 2012. And they were going to go public last year, but at the last minute, boom, you got taken out.

SPEAKER_06: Welcome to the program, Ryan.

SPEAKER_08: Hey, thanks. It's good to be here. Thanks for having me, especially as you're playing hurt today.

SPEAKER_06: I'm playing hurt today, but you know what? You play through it, right? You play through. That's what the great ones do, and I'm attempting to be one of the good ones at least. Why did you decide to sell on that IPO? That must have been a really hard decision.

SPEAKER_15: Yeah, I think we're just getting right into this, aren't we? Yeah, let's do it. So look, I think that there's opportunities that come along.

SPEAKER_18: We've been doing this for 17 years, and I think the most important thing, aside from how you capitalize a business, is what you're going to try to do. And for us, we created a brand new category called experience management. It had been 17 years in the making. And as we were looking at going public, the only reason why we were going public, we didn't need the money, I didn't have any venture pressure. It was to go take this category to the world. I wanted global reach.

SPEAKER_25: I wanted the new platform. We're in Utah, so I think the pressure from the employee base was not the same as maybe some of the other locations in the world. A lot of people hadn't been through an IPO before.

SPEAKER_26: And as we started seeing what the opportunities could be,

SPEAKER_25: SAP came in and saw a vision for what we could do and offered something that was pretty hard to pass up. And a lot of people don't understand it.

SPEAKER_18: But if you actually, I mean, I just came in over the Bay Bridge, and the first thing I see is experience has feelings, experience management, Qualtrics, SAP.

SPEAKER_25: And it's the first billboard you see as you come into the city. But they have global scale and the ability to go reach every single company in the world. And then if you combine how their data works with our data, there's not another company like it.

SPEAKER_28: It's not marketing-focused. It's not just HR-focused.

SPEAKER_18: It's actually product. And they're powering mission-critical systems where, for an oil company, if their system were to go down, no one gets oil. Yeah.

SPEAKER_26: Right? Stakes are high. Stakes are high. And that's a very different thing that we saw. And so when SAP came in and said,

SPEAKER_25: hey, look, what if we could go help you take this to the world? And that literally was the value prop there that was pitched. And what's really cool is we're six months in. I've had a lot of friends in tech who have gone through these type of processes. Three of them had already been in lawsuits by this time. Oh, my God. And they've done everything they said they were going to do. Yeah. And so it's actually they've over-delivered in a way. And the price to go do this and all of that,

SPEAKER_26: that was just not really as much in the factor as what we could go do together.

SPEAKER_34: And so it's pretty cool. When I first started Qualtrics, I thought of it as a survey monkey kind of competitor.

SPEAKER_35: Yeah. It was sort of the combined set. You started as surveys.

SPEAKER_26: Yeah. We started in 2002 focusing on the academic market, right, which was-

SPEAKER_37: So you picked the market that had the most red tape, the slowest to adopt technology, and the least amount of money to spend?

SPEAKER_38: If you were to say, I'm going to start a business in a basement in Provo, Utah,

SPEAKER_25: not raise capital, do it with your dad and your brother, and focus on the academic market who have no money, can sit in your product all day, and they're all power users, that's a recipe for disaster, right?

SPEAKER_26: But if you actually look at it, we ended up building a very sophisticated intelligent system because it had to work.

SPEAKER_40: And it had to work for people who were super smart doing amazing things on your platform

SPEAKER_26: and weren't afraid to give you feedback, and we're in it all day long. And so if you look at that, that's how we've worked for 17 years is every single academic institution is on the platform. There's almost a million kids that are graduating. Students or faculty is teaching with it. They're doing their own research with it, which is tied directly to their comp to be published. And so they need to use it in a way that often they're pushing the boundaries every single day. And if you do that over 15, 17 years, you end up with a technology that has a competitive advantage over everything else.

SPEAKER_40: And that's why Qualtrics has been able to kind of exceed in the enterprise and be able to move from academic to corporate to enterprise,

SPEAKER_34: which very few companies are able to do.

SPEAKER_45: So what were those professors using it for? They were doing research, they were doing papers, and they needed to do their statistics and metrics.

SPEAKER_38: Yeah, they're in a world where it's publish or perish, right? And this was the problem we originally solving.

SPEAKER_26: My father was an academic researcher, and his entire world, his consulting business, everything was based on what could he go help an organization or what type of data could he collect that didn't exist? And what type of analytics could he run on it? The deeper he could go with stats, the more findings you would have. Right. And so the idea in 2002, even before that, was what if we could leverage the power of the internet? What if we could go and gather data that hadn't existed before in methods and ways that it didn't exist? What if we could apply PhD-level analytical capabilities and make it easy enough for a student or an intern is what we'd say? Right.

SPEAKER_25: And so it's very rare to have the world's brightest researchers in the world on the similar platform that all the interns are using.

SPEAKER_51: Yeah.

SPEAKER_25: And then lowering the barrier to entry and democratizing that,

SPEAKER_34: and then that's what actually fed into our corporate and then enterprise play.

SPEAKER_45: What was the original idea around? Was it replacing like, what was that wonky stats tool that when I was a psychology major? SPSS. SPSS. Yeah. Were you like making something that was less convoluted and insane than that, or did you just add the third-party data sets to it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_25: At the beginning, it was very much around being able to collect data, kind of being on the front end of that, that you were able to collect data, you were able to put it into an analytical system, and then you were able to report on it. And so because of that, we were kind of branded as this survey platform for a long time. But, you know, I'd say over the last eight to 10 years, all a survey is is a form. Right. And, you know, there's a form engine that allows you to do anything you could ever want to do with a form. And a form can be through text. A form can be through a chat bot. It can be through anything. And then there's an analytical platform, and then there's a reporting. And I think a lot of our investment has been into actioning.

SPEAKER_26: And so we view ourselves as a system of action. And how do you actually gather data that doesn't exist?

SPEAKER_25: And what experience management is, is most organizations are in a world where they've kind of resigned to the fact that they have all the data that they need. And from our standpoint and what we see, it's the opposite. You know, we've got operational systems that are telling us what's happened. But the why is able to be collected in ways that never could have been done in 2002 because we have such amazing access to people. And we think it's just starting, especially, you know, now we can go gather the why data through like 13 or 14 different methods. And it all comes together. And, you know, you kind of get a full picture. You get to see what happened, and now you get to see why.

SPEAKER_45: And that's pretty powerful. Sort of like putting SPSS or whatever it was against, like, Google Analytics because you have the data from what consumers are actually doing in the app or in the software. Yeah.

SPEAKER_26: So that would be more of the, like, if you're thinking about the Google Analytics side, it would be like, okay, these people visit our site. These people have been on their shopping carts. These people are doing this.

SPEAKER_40: Or, you know, I'm an L.A. hotel, and I see a bunch of people from L.A. visiting. I don't know why they're visiting. They're not staying with me. Right?

SPEAKER_25: They use Qualtrics, and the first 10 people say that they're there for the happy hour menu. Yeah. Right? Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_40: And the person, the one-person shop running IT just pops up the happy hour menu through Qualtrics without changing their whole website. Now they're at home, and they're delivering a great experience. And it only shows up for the people from L.A.

SPEAKER_06: Hey, when we get back from this quick break, I want to know when along this 17-year journey you started to realize, oh, this is a really huge business.

SPEAKER_45: As opposed to, this is an interesting business, oh, this is a promising business, but, oh, this has got legs. This is going to really scale when we get back on This Week in Startups.

Chamath Palihapitiya: Walker Corporate Law is a boutique law firm that specializes in representing entrepreneurs and their startups, and they charge a fixed fee. So whatever you want to get done, you're not going to have that terrorizing PDF coming from your law firm, and you open it up, and you wonder, is this the month that I get a huge legal bill? Nope, Scott Walker is going to tell you what you're going to pay, and he's got attorneys working with him in his partnership who have decades of experience. This is a boutique firm, and they specialize. What that means is flat rate pricing, no getchas, gotchas, no surprises, and world-class, decade, multi-decade attorneys who've done this and who are choosing to do it. And you can reach Scott Walker directly, the founder, just like me. You can reach him directly, 415-979-9998. 415-979-9998. Scott at walkercorporatelaw.com. Put Jason sent me in the subject line, Scott at Walker Corporate Law. Say, Uncle Jason sent me.

SPEAKER_83: He knows who Uncle Jason is. And you can visit walkercorporatelaw.com. But go ahead, email Scott. He's a mensch. He takes care of the people I send to him. He is a great attorney, and he does a great job for founders. He's chosen the path of supporting early-stage founders. And just like me, he operates right in that early stage, the first couple of years of a startup, to set them up for success. And he's great at what he does. Mergers and acquisitions, licensing arrangements, terms of service, privacy policies, all that stuff he can do for you. And he can do it at a great price with fixed fees. No surprises. So go ahead, 415-979-9998.

SPEAKER_06: Or Scott at walkercorporatelaw.com.

SPEAKER_85: Okay, let's get back to this amazing episode.

SPEAKER_06: Hey, welcome back to This Week in Startups. I'm your host, Jason Calacanis. And today, my guest, Ryan Smith. He is the co-founder and CEO of Qualtrics, which got bought for $8 billion by SAP last year, 2018, right before they were going to IPO.

SPEAKER_45: And you are part of what they call the zebra movement now. Oh, what's that? Zebra movement as opposed to unicorns. Okay. Don't raise money. Grow slow. Grow methodically and be responsible. As if venture funding is irresponsible, I guess, in their minds. You guys grew slow and steady. Did you... Was that because people didn't find the business attractive enough to invest in, like the venture community? Or because you were in Utah and they just didn't know what you were doing? Or you didn't try?

SPEAKER_34: Did you try to raise money and they just said no?

SPEAKER_89: Look, we started in 2002.

SPEAKER_34: Doing a startup then wasn't that cool.

SPEAKER_90: We were in the shadow of the dot-com of the dot-com bust. I was with my father who had gotten burned in 98, 99. And so there was a little bit...

SPEAKER_91: What, he bought dot-com stocks?

SPEAKER_90: Yeah, he was just kind of starting something, raised some venture capital.

SPEAKER_40: And so he had this sour taste in his mouth that, hey, look, you can go do whatever you want. We're going to go do something together. However, no venture capital. And we were in Utah. Yeah. And we were targeting the academic market. So no venture capitalist was ever going to take a nine-year flyer on that company.

SPEAKER_26: And then if you look at it, what happened was is we started...

SPEAKER_40: When we stayed in the basement for five years, we had to be cash flow positive all the time. If we didn't sell something, we couldn't make payroll. He wasn't a wealthy academic. Right. So we had no money. And we just started to gather momentum.

SPEAKER_38: And then right when we started to do something interesting, 2006, 7, 8 hit.

SPEAKER_99: Yeah. And we had to buckle down, which venture capital wasn't flowing in during that time. No, no, no. That was so big.

SPEAKER_40: So we ended up coming out of the recession about 2009, 2010 with a lot of momentum. And 2011, I recruited my brother to come back from Google. He was an early Google employee. And I had convinced him to come back. And we were on a track to $20, $30 million in sales. 2012, we were approaching a $50 million run rate. Wow. Kicking off about 50% cash. Wow. So at that point, you're sitting there going, okay, if I'm going to raise venture capital, $50 million run rate, $26 million in cash, growing at 100%. Yeah. It's not free. Right. Right. Because you can just distribute money every year. Yeah. And pay yourself more than you'd probably get from that. And you can invest your own money in.

SPEAKER_26: So everyone, you know, we ended up raising money with Sequoia and Excel in 2012. And it was the largest Series A since 2008. I think GitHub came out a month later at $100 million. Crazy. But it was $70 million. And everyone said, wow, this is amazing. Where did this come from? But no one actually thought, whoa, like you're going to have to actually put all of your money

SPEAKER_40: that you're taking out of the business back into the business, or you're going to have to keep investing. And so that wasn't a really good business decision in the eyes of my father or other founders. Because we said, hey, look, you're going to make $26 million this year. And it's growing at 100%. Here's $70 million, put everything back into the business.

SPEAKER_106: It wasn't a no-brainer. No. But the world thought it was.

SPEAKER_108: Well, I mean, taking money from the best venture capitals in the world is generally a pretty good signal. So there's that.

SPEAKER_106: Which was exactly why we did it. We knew that there was a multi-billion dollar opportunity. Someone came in at the time and offered us $500 million to sell the whole business. Wow. We turned that down. And part of the premise was, if we're going to turn this down, who are the smartest and the best and the brightest in the world that want to go help us? And my brother had a relationship with Ryan Triart Sequoia. I had gotten to know Ryan Sweeney at Excel. And we got together and said, you're not just our venture capitalists. You're our partners. Yeah. You're part of this founding team. Yep.

SPEAKER_34: And let's go do this. And that's how it happened.

SPEAKER_14: What were you charging for the software in the early days? Because this was software that people would buy on a floppy disk? No, it was all done. It was all done in the cloud. It was still done in the cloud. Yeah.

SPEAKER_40: As much as we could early on.

SPEAKER_18: We were charging our average deal price went from $4,000 to $7,000 to $8,000 to $12,000. I mean, it's just kind of gone up as we've gone.

SPEAKER_37: So you were charging $4,000 to the academics back then?

SPEAKER_40: Yeah. Academic seats were done. I mean, a $5,000 company-wide or I would say department licenses.

SPEAKER_38: Yeah. Business school licenses. I mean, we had to charge something, but it wasn't enough.

SPEAKER_45: So they might have a couple of hundred people using it. Yeah, absolutely. So it's $30 a seat a year or something. Yeah.

SPEAKER_118: We never charged by seats because we wanted everyone to use it back in the day.

SPEAKER_45: Ah, that's an interesting learning, isn't it?

SPEAKER_38: Well, I think that it played into the goal that people would use it and then graduate.

SPEAKER_121: Yeah.

SPEAKER_38: So it was definitely a long-term play.

SPEAKER_40: Had I had a bunch of outside inpatient investors, they would have never gone for that.

SPEAKER_38: But there's not one meeting I have today where everyone doesn't say, wow, that was a great move.

SPEAKER_37: Yeah. It does seem like, I mean, Google's doing it right now with Chromeboxes.

SPEAKER_45: They're giving all these schools Chromeboxes for free and they give them the Google App Suite for free. And these kids are all graduating. My daughter's in third grade. They're using the Google Suite to do presentations and stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_124: My kid's school has, they all have the Chromebooks.

SPEAKER_45: Right. Because you can destroy them, re-login. It doesn't matter. Take whichever computer, log in with your login.

SPEAKER_34: It's all in the cloud. Yeah, it's wonderful. And what happens to Microsoft? It's a great model. But you fast forward 10 years and we're all going to be talking about how genius that was. Oh, for sure. For sure.

SPEAKER_07: When did you pivot over to enterprise as opposed to academics?

SPEAKER_26: Yeah, about 2013, we started to see, well, you know, we had corporate clients, but we

SPEAKER_40: weren't an enterprise company. And we started to say, wow, let's make a massive investment in the enterprise.

SPEAKER_25: I think we, first of all, we shorted how much investment it was going to take to be a true enterprise company.

SPEAKER_129: Huh.

SPEAKER_25: Right. I think people are like, oh, I'm just going to stand up an enterprise sales team, but then you have to have an enterprise product. Then you have to have an enterprise service org.

SPEAKER_26: And, you know, as your deal size goes up, the expectation from the end user is what most people short. And I think that, you know, we invested hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into standing

SPEAKER_40: that up on top of what, you know, was clearly and is clearly the best enterprise technology in the space. So we already had this incredible technology. And what I see a lot in tech is people say, oh, I'm going to raise my hand. I want to go into the enterprise. And, okay, I'm going to hire a bunch of enterprise rainmakers that are going to come in and take us. But the technology is not there. Right. And, you know, I would argue that it was a five-year investment from where we were, which was already pretty far along, to go into the enterprise. And it completely changes the dynamic of the company. And I think that, you know, there's a lot of companies that, you know, the analysts out

SPEAKER_18: there or consumer companies wanting to go into the enterprise. And I can just look at the makeup of the company and say, that's not going to happen unless there's a massive culture change.

SPEAKER_90: And it takes a long time.

SPEAKER_07: Well, what is the, what are some examples of what companies are doing with Qualtrics that's interesting and transformative?

SPEAKER_40: Yeah. So if you look at the airline industry, one of the interesting things is, you know, we power probably all the feedback on 30 or 40 different airlines around the world. Right. And I think most people know Qualtrics for, you know, the customer feedback because they'll fly and they'll get that. But what, what we're seeing.

SPEAKER_136: They'll get like an email, a survey.

SPEAKER_38: Yeah, email or a text that says, hey, look, how was your thumbs up, thumbs down? How was your experience? But what we've seen is we launched the XM platform. And this is what SAP is so excited about. Experience management. Experience management. We created this category because of all the uses we were seeing on Qualtrics.

SPEAKER_40: And our employee experience was taking off in a way where we were like, whoa, 50% of the customer problems have to do with an employee. And then at the same time, you know, the average tenure here in the Bay Area is like 18 months. And I don't know one CEO that says, hey, look, we're going to go recruit and spend all this money, but we're going to bring people in for only 18 months. So there's a massive gap. There's a gap between what they think's happening and really what's going on.

SPEAKER_26: And so we said, hey, we're going to go hard into developing the coolest, easiest, most sophisticated employee experience product.

SPEAKER_38: And we're going to build that and we're going to tie it together with the customer experience.

SPEAKER_140: So now you can have employees are kind of getting rated or yeah, rated 360 reviews from the time

SPEAKER_38: they start in the company to the time they exit. How do we have a pulse? How do we know everything that's going on, even in the recruiting process? Right. Right. How do we make sure that as a company, what we think we're delivering is being received on the other side?

SPEAKER_106: And so I believe, you know, the inside manifests itself on the outside and we're seeing this across brands. So now we're seeing the customer and the employee. So if you look at an airline, they're using us on the customer, the employee, the product and the brand side.

SPEAKER_40: So if you look at when someone goes and shows up to a gate, a lot of times they're upset before they even get there. Yeah. Right. And then the employee deals with an upset and that impacts the entire experience.

SPEAKER_38: But when you rate or you think about how your flight was, you're only thinking about the brand.

SPEAKER_146: Yeah.

SPEAKER_38: And it's a bunch of experiences tied together.

SPEAKER_106: And so we're helping organizations manage all their experiences for the first time on one single platform. It doesn't make sense that you've got five different softwares doing this and we're doing

SPEAKER_34: this at an enterprise level. And so that's how that's how people are using it. And so the if there's an employee who does an exceptional job, you will see in the statistics

SPEAKER_148: in the data, hey, this person at this gate is maintaining our brand integrity.

SPEAKER_35: And then this person on the converse is surly and destroying the brand.

SPEAKER_90: You can see most of the time when you have a massive customer issue that there's a morale

SPEAKER_18: problem if it's customer-facing teams. Yeah. And some of it might even be because the product's broken.

SPEAKER_40: So if they keep overselling the flight, that's a horrible experience for the employee who comes up with someone who shows up to the gate without a ticket.

SPEAKER_37: Yeah.

SPEAKER_40: Or without a seat.

SPEAKER_37: Yeah. There's no way for them to solve that.

SPEAKER_10: So what Qualtrics does is it's also managing the product experience, which is saying, hey, look, you're burying your employees because you keep overselling it and it's going to be

SPEAKER_18: something you can't stop.

SPEAKER_30: Where historically those have not been connected.

SPEAKER_18: And or if you're a retailer and you've got low customer service or satisfaction or your NPS is low and it's because the product's never available and it impacts the rest of the organization. So it's really easy to do. You get in, you can start in one of those areas and just expand through the product. And that's what XM is.

SPEAKER_04: All right. When we get back from this quick break, Ryan, I want to tap your brain for what it takes

SPEAKER_06: to bootstrap a company to this level of success when we get back on This Week in Startups.

Chamath Palihapitiya: Hiring is so hard. It is probably the hardest thing you're going to do aside from raising money. And you know what? A lot of the people I know who raise money, they have a harder time finding team members. It's arduous. It's hard out there. We have incredibly low unemployment and there's a massive, massive competition for great talent. But luckily, there is LinkedIn jobs with more than 500 million active members. People come to LinkedIn every day to make connections, to grow their careers, and to discover new job opportunities. 90% of LinkedIn users are open to new opportunities, but they're not actively looking on job boards. You know these people, you're probably one of them. So LinkedIn jobs gives you access to an entirely different demographic that doesn't exist anywhere else. We call those passive job seekers. They might not be looking for a job, but they would consider a new gig if it was better. And we found director Sir Charles and our marketing manager, Maureen, on LinkedIn. You need LinkedIn jobs to find the right people for your business and you will get targeted job promotion, recommended matches, and candidate management through a dashboard that tracks everyone from application all the way to hire, all in one place. So you're not going to lose valuable candidates. LinkedIn jobs uses knowledge of both hard skills like cloud computing, social media marketing, video production, whatever it is, and soft skills like collaboration and time management. And they do that to match people who fit your role best in your company. So here is your call to action. Post a job today on LinkedIn.com slash twist and get $50. That's a FIDI from Jason on your first job post. That's LinkedIn.com slash twist to get that FIDI, that 5-0 from J-Cal.

SPEAKER_06: Terms and conditions, of course, apply. Let's get back to this amazing episode. All right. Welcome back to this week in startups.

SPEAKER_07: Wow. 2002, you start the company. 2002 to 2005, $6 million in revenue. 250 business schools start using it. So now you're what? Three, four, five years into the business. 2007 to 2010, you got 150,000 users, 480 universities using Qualtrics. And then in 2011, 180 employees, 500,000 users, 550 users, 550 universities using Qualtrics. And you get up to like $50 million a year in revenue with a 50% margin.

SPEAKER_164: How many employees now?

SPEAKER_163: Right now we're at 2,300 employees.

SPEAKER_108: 2,300? Yeah.

SPEAKER_124: We just inherited 95,000 with SAP.

SPEAKER_108: Oh, they have 95,000. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you have to train all them on how to sell it and what it is. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_148: For sure. When you look back on it, what were the key strategies that made this all work?

SPEAKER_45: Obviously, you charge for the product, which is distinctly different than what happens in the venture world where people give it away for free and hope in the future they make money in many cases.

SPEAKER_38: Yeah, I think there's a lot of, oh, wow, that was genius or, okay, well, that worked. And I think if I dissect Qualtrics and I dissect the journey, there's a couple key points. Number one is everything we've done in our 17-year history has taken longer than we thought.

SPEAKER_174: Yeah.

SPEAKER_38: Right. And so I always look at founders or startups and say, hey, how long have you been doing this? Oh, four years. How are you feeling? Good. Okay. Just plan on doing it for another 10.

SPEAKER_177: Yeah. And you see the look in their eye and they're like, whoa, that wasn't part of the plan.

SPEAKER_38: Because if you look at all the hot IPOs that are coming out, right, these are the outliers. These are the ones that won.

SPEAKER_178: Yeah.

SPEAKER_40: And very, very few of them have done it in less than 10 years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_26: Even the ones that you think are growing fast. You look at Dropbox. You look at some of these who scaled it away that most companies won't.

SPEAKER_38: Right. They're on that 10-year plus journey. Yeah.

SPEAKER_26: And I think people short how long it's going to take and it changes the way you look at things. So when we were starting in 2002, 2004, 2006, you start going through this, all of those little bets mattered in 2011, 2012, 2013.

SPEAKER_38: But more than that, the learnings of it mattered.

SPEAKER_26: And so one of the biggest takeaways is, number one, is there's something about keeping focused and plugging away at something. You know, there's no secret sauce in Qualtrics. It hasn't been a bunch of pull.

SPEAKER_38: Nothing tipped for us. It's all been push.

SPEAKER_40: And I think that we stayed focused where we had formidable competitors along the way in every segment we were going after. But as I look back, they got unfocused. They didn't keep a clean cap table. They raised a bunch of money.

SPEAKER_38: The founders couldn't run and do the things that they wanted to do at the moments when they needed to pivot because they lost autonomy.

SPEAKER_40: And I think that if I look at Qualtrics, it's a series of 20 different startups within it where we went in one direction and then we moved here and then we moved here and we moved here. And that ability to go unilaterally from side to side or market to market or take bets and be able to control that destiny and then lucky enough to have a founding group that can stay together and start to kind of build off the scar tissue that they've had along the way. It's what it's what it's really about. And that's what's going to continue for the next 10 years with Qualtrics is as long as we can keep making the pivots that we need to make. That's what makes it exciting.

SPEAKER_148: What about those like bets you were talking about making? You got something that's working with universities, but then you start making these bets and trying different things.

SPEAKER_45: How do you know when to make that bet maybe and then when to say, you know what, that's a failed experiment. We need to turn that off.

SPEAKER_38: Every bet, every bet that we made was wrong when we started. First website we launched was wrong.

SPEAKER_40: The first product we launched was wrong. When we went into academics, we were wrong. I thought we just go to the I mean, this is a great example. I thought we'd go to the university and just go to the CIO and say, hey, look, like let's sell a Qualtrics license to everyone. It made sense. It was logical. And they were like, no. And then I went to institutional research. And they were like, well, no. I was like, what do you mean you don't want to do research? This is the that's the title of your organization. Yeah. And they're like, no. And they wouldn't buy it.

SPEAKER_38: And then we went to one particular school in the university and they wouldn't buy. But faculty members down below them would buy. So we got them, which you're looking at where you need to go. You're looking at the target of faculty members. And you're like, whoa, this is going to be a long haul. Then they got the school to buy. Then the school got another school to buy. And then the other school got someone to buy. And then I was back at the institutional research office. And then I was back at the CTO's office. And then the whole university. And the CTO is like, you're back. Yeah, it's back. And I'm like, we can do this the hard way or the easy way. Yeah. Right. Bottom up, though. Bottom up. But it was five years. Right. And so if you start looking at how that happens, we were right on the general thought. We were wrong on the way. And then, you know, I'll get calls from Silicon Valley companies or startups. They're like, hey, we've raised $35 million. We're going to the academic market. This is what we're going to do. I'm like, you're wrong. Yeah. And they're like, well, what do you mean? No, we're not wrong. And it's like, no, your strategy will be wrong.

SPEAKER_199: Yeah.

SPEAKER_38: Right. You don't know how to go and how this is going to work until you get in there. But it makes total sense. I was like, yeah, of course it does. Yeah. But that might not be how you're going to get there. So plan for a little bit longer. Stay focused there. And if they do that, normally they're right. Yeah. But what often makes logical sense when you get out doesn't.

SPEAKER_148: Yeah. You're building a product in a laboratory and then releasing it into a system. And those systems, whether it's academia or Fortune 100 companies or mom and pop shops

SPEAKER_119: are radically different in how they buy and use products.

SPEAKER_26: Yeah. And there's things you find out along the way.

SPEAKER_40: And I always use this example of Cabo San Lucas. If you go to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, there's a harbor there and, you know, all the fishing

SPEAKER_38: boats, they're all going out to fish because it's a great fishing spot. And they're all, you know, everything's so pretty. They're shining their boats, everything. And if you come at the end of the day, these boats roll in like no one's got clothes on. It's like a wreck that happened. And the boats are dirty. And like, I feel like that's a little bit like a startup. Yeah. Like you see a lot of companies that are, they've got their swag, they got their brand, they got the perfect team together and they're sitting in the harbor and you're just kind of laughing because you know, it's all going to go out the window once they get out on the sea and they don't know exactly where they're going to go. And it's much more about navigating that sea. And that's where I feel like that's where the real insight. And if you get good at that and you have the ability to stay focused, then you're going to do really well. And if I look at how that plays out, it's not just the market you're going after. It's when you make your bets. We went into the international market. We opened up in Dublin and it was not good for the first, you know, some years. Right. And it started off well and then we had to grow and we had to kind of bob and weave and figure out where we were going to play. There were people around, not only on the management team, but at the board level who said, hey, this isn't working, when we went into the enterprise, our first two enterprise reps were ready to quit. When we signed up our first seven enterprise clients, they left. Right.

SPEAKER_106: And so it would be really easy to take a snapshot in time and say, this is how the future is going to play out. When actually it's the opposite.

SPEAKER_38: We hung in there and said, no, we're in the details. We know that there's goodness here.

SPEAKER_26: We need to just change a couple of things and keep rolling. And every single one of those bets took off and it was a make the company decision. Right.

SPEAKER_38: But when you started or you looked at that first snapshot, like the academic market, right? Yeah. You would look at it and say, this isn't going to go anywhere. So I have a hard time determining what's a good idea when I see a startup or not.

SPEAKER_40: Um, it's much more around what are they going to do when they're out in those waters? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they've got to, you know, go an extra hundred miles to go fish over here. Right. Then say, no, this is all we signed up for. Yeah. And are they going to have the high pain threshold to go when they're hungry a little further

SPEAKER_14: out? It does seem like taking action and doing things is the one consistent, um, strategy

SPEAKER_148: that works. Because if you do something, at least, you know, it, that doesn't work and process of elimination there, something's going to work at some point, whether it's Dublin or enterprise. So at least if you're of action, you're going to be getting data back.

SPEAKER_37: And since you help people study the data and make sense of it, so then you can make better actions. Were you studying your users as well?

SPEAKER_38: We are, we are customer number one on Qualtrics. You know, if people want to understand what the value of our software is, we ran, we have

SPEAKER_40: run one of the most efficient cash businesses, I would say of all time when it came to going into the enterprise and scaling. Um, we have been pretty accurate when it comes to bets and markets. I think we have done it in regions where no one thought it was possible and we Qualtrics

SPEAKER_25: is everything, everything. And what we see from our customers is the ones that do that the most win.

SPEAKER_40: And that doesn't mean it's a guaranteed recipe to win, but you have a much better chance and you can fail fast and you can win in ways and see things or breakthroughs that maybe other people didn't. Now that doesn't take the creative process. If it doesn't take the gut out of it, ultimately it's going to be on you, but you know, we feel like we operate with 10 or 20, you know, more data points than everyone else on every decision. If we can get it.

SPEAKER_227: Let me take a moment to tell you about HubSpot, which we use and love here at launch.

SPEAKER_83: You're probably guessing there's a theme here. We only invite people to be partners on this program if we love their product or one of our portfolio companies loves it because we don't want to ever tell you to consider using these products if we don't stand behind them. And HubSpot is when we stand behind because I had the founder on the podcast in year one and HubSpot has had an amazing run as a startup and they have a new project. Actually, it's been around for a couple of years now that I think about it. HubSpot for startups and this program will help startups grow faster and scale. It's super cool and includes a ridiculously steep discount on the HubSpot growth platform and all of y'all want to grow up to 90% off startup education and programming and access to HubSpot integrations at a startup friendly cost. Thousands of startups are already using HubSpot sales, marketing and services software and learning from mentors associated with HubSpot for startups. I want you to go to HubSpot.com slash startups slash twist at URL again, HubSpot.com slash startups slash twist. And if you use that link, you will be entered into a free ticket to HubSpot's 24,000 person live event inbound, which is September 3rd to 6th this year, 2019 in Boston. Go to Boston. It's a lovely time to be in Boston. September 3rd to 6th, 2019 in Boston. I may be there and HubSpot's 24,000 person live event inbound. You're going to get that entered into that free drawing and they do a great job. We use it here for CRM. It's fast. It's intuitive. It's robust.

SPEAKER_45: It's HubSpot and go get that HubSpot for startups at HubSpot.com slash startup slash twist. So you mentioned in there, it's interesting that gut still matters. You have to have a gut. It's not all about making product decisions and service decisions based on the data. There's some gut to that.

SPEAKER_40: You've got to have a core belief and you've got to be bought in. We have this principle of Qualtrics that's all in. Yeah. And you've got to be all in. And you can't be all in when you look at just a little bit of data or there's got to be some passion there on some of these big decisions. And if you're not, then no one else will be. And that ability to go all in on something basically says when those rough waters come, I'm going to power through.

SPEAKER_235: Yeah.

SPEAKER_40: And what happens is a lot of times people make bets, like some of these startups were going into the academic market. And I'm like, are you really, really going into the academic market? Like, are you really ready for what's coming when you get out there?

SPEAKER_236: Yeah.

SPEAKER_38: Right? Because it's not going to be fun. But if you've really decided that we're going in and we're not coming back until we've got it, then you have a chance and then the data will help you along the way. But ultimately, you've got to have that decision making.

SPEAKER_37: It's really interesting how quickly people give up.

SPEAKER_148: Being an angel investor in startups, it's like they get six months or 16 months into a product or a market and like, yeah, it's not working.

SPEAKER_45: And I'm like, what version are you on? Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure.

SPEAKER_204: 1.x.

SPEAKER_45: And I'm like, you're at 1.4.

SPEAKER_204: You're ready to give up.

SPEAKER_242: Okay.

SPEAKER_25: Well, it's a great fall. I think it's one of the things that scares me about a lot of the newer, and I'm not that old. So it's not like, hey, there's a younger generation, older generation. Um, there's something to being all in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_244: And, um, if I look at, like I said, all those bets, every one of them, there was multiple give up moments.

SPEAKER_26: Right. And I think that if you, if you look at what it takes, it's probably iteration 13 or 14 before goodness can happen.

SPEAKER_246: Wow.

SPEAKER_26: And far and real breakthroughs, real breakthroughs. And that takes a lot of pain.

SPEAKER_40: I look at, I look at a lot of my, um, a lot of the folks I've hired, the ones I love the most are the ones that I can go that far with.

SPEAKER_106: Most of the time it gets really uncomfortable at iteration two or three. Yeah.

SPEAKER_40: Someone just gives in and says, Hey, look, you know, I'll just agree to disagree, or this is what we're going to do. And it's like, no, we have to go through this.

SPEAKER_248: Yeah.

SPEAKER_40: And, you know, co-founding with my brother and Stuart and my father, the one thing that we have been able to do is like for my brother example, I can go to iteration 15 or 16 on something. Yeah. Like venture capital was one of those. He did not want to come back from Google and, um, not have unilateral decision-making. And so venture capital was off the table. Right. So we literally had a standoff for three years with everyone throwing money at us. Right. We didn't agree. Well, guess what happened? We got to iterations that were so deep that when we did it, we did it the right way. And I'm someone that can say, Hey, look, I look back over 17 years. I don't have one regret on my cap table. Raised $400 million. We kept way more of the company than we probably should have between the employee and the founders. And I look at companies like Atlassian. I was just with Mike down in Australia. And, you know, in 2012, they were the only company that looked like us that didn't need to raise money. They had raised money a year before they had a bunch of cash. Yeah. And then you look at how that's played out. Now they're a $30 billion company, Scott and Mike, um, and the, and the team own the majority of the company still over 50%.

SPEAKER_38: Over 50%. And you look at it and you go, wow, that's a company I would bet on because they have the ability to hang in there through every cycle. And the founders have enough on the table that they're going to still will that thing up.

SPEAKER_148: Ah, that's interesting. Yeah. Cause if you, it's really nice to own the majority of a at scale business because it's worth a

SPEAKER_45: lot of money, um, and you have control, but it also means you are all in and you, you have to will it to survive.

SPEAKER_26: I see C I see companies that are below 50 million and they've already raised more rounds than

SPEAKER_40: us.

SPEAKER_239: Yeah. Below 50 million in revenue.

SPEAKER_40: 50 million in revenue. And they've raised 400 million. They've, well, they haven't raised 400 million. They're on their C round and they've given up more equity. Yeah.

SPEAKER_255: They own 30%.

SPEAKER_40: I just want to go tap them on the shoulder and say, you know, you've got two to three

SPEAKER_257: rounds ahead of you.

SPEAKER_40: Yeah. Plus the magical IPO round that no one talks about where the dilution can be as high as

SPEAKER_38: 30%. Right. Right. And you're not, you're not in it. I would never, no matter how great the company is, I would never let my child go sign up for

SPEAKER_40: that when I know that the founder doesn't have enough on the table personally to be able to do this. One of the greatest benefits of Qualtrics is I look back.

SPEAKER_38: It's every employee I talked to in year one and told them, Hey, come join us on this journey. I can still look them in the eye today because I've got staying power.

SPEAKER_261: Yeah.

SPEAKER_38: And that's where goodness happened. And don't, don't take my word for it. Look around right or wrong. Look at, look at Larry and Sergey. Yeah. Right. Look at Gates. Yeah. Right. Look at Michael Dell. Yeah. Look at Zuck, look at the companies. And then you look at the next generation, Stuart at Slack, look at Mike at Scott at Lassie. There's one thing that's consistent. They've all got that staying power to go build something long-term and great. I use the example that, you know, as a founder, your responsibility is to think long-term and very few people in your organization are aligned with that. If you rent a home, you will not take care of the yard the way you do if you own the home. Sure.

SPEAKER_266: Yeah.

SPEAKER_38: Right. And a lot of times in an organization, you've got people who are renters.

SPEAKER_266: Yeah.

SPEAKER_38: And that's okay. Yeah. But as a founder, your job's to make sure that yard looks good and you're making decisions where you're fertilizing and everyone's going, well, just mow it. You don't need to fertilize. No. Yeah. I'm going to have to make sure that that's good long-term and I want that healthy yard. And so I think that there is something about that. And I, I love companies that have that in their DNA, but it also takes founders with a higher

SPEAKER_244: pain threshold than for sure, than those that, those that don't.

SPEAKER_271: And then the, the, the upside of that is you're probably going to end up with 40% more of your company than you thought.

SPEAKER_239: Yeah.

SPEAKER_148: In order to do that, you have to be charging for your product. A lot of companies decide, I will not put a price tag on this. I'll have customers who I'll have users who I call customers, even though they're not paying. What are your thoughts on that? The sort of deferring the, the hard decision of taking out your credit card.

SPEAKER_273: I mean, it would be irresponsible for me to say that there are some markets, especially

SPEAKER_40: on the consumer tech side where it is an arms race and you've got to go.

SPEAKER_25: Yeah. So it would be tough to say like in the, if the Lyft and Uber segment right now, or what

SPEAKER_26: you're seeing with, you know, maybe Airbnb and some of these worlds that the strategy of

SPEAKER_25: freemium or like even before that, where it's just free to download the app and go that way. That's part of their model.

SPEAKER_106: However, I think most of them, most of them get too focused on that.

SPEAKER_40: There's nothing wrong with having a revenue stream early on. You're going to have to figure it out at some time. And just because you have a lot of customers, isn't going to make it easier. I think internally your organization needs to get good at that piece.

SPEAKER_281: Pricing.

SPEAKER_40: Pricing. Yeah. And how to charge and how to respond to customers that actually matter, where you care.

SPEAKER_39: As opposed to this fantasy startup where nobody's got skin in the game.

SPEAKER_106: Well, you just have to get good at servicing them and making them know, like, I think there is a balance, an economic balance where you've got to have this ability to win your customer base.

SPEAKER_37: Yes. This is a big problem I have with a lot of startups. They're like enterprise software companies are like, we have 18 pilots. And I'm like, great.

SPEAKER_148: How much are they paying? Nothing.

SPEAKER_37: Yeah.

SPEAKER_148: I'm like, oh, well, how often are they using the product? Not very often. Isn't charging part of the process of getting people to actually commit to the product?

SPEAKER_26: Oh, well, I believe that, you know, having seen this a ton, that if everyone says, hey,

SPEAKER_25: I want to be customer focused into the product. And I think that's great. Customers will tell you everything that you want or that they want in the product, but that's not a commitment from them. Right.

SPEAKER_26: When you, if I look at all of our product, major product initiatives, because most people, they get a single product before they go public.

SPEAKER_40: At Qualtrics, one of the benefits we've had is not only going from academic to corporate to enterprise. We've gone from a single product company to multiple unicorn products that we've launched. Right. We've launched ourselves. So that's in the DNA.

SPEAKER_38: And we built out the platform. Right. As we look at every one of those product launches, it wasn't what the customer wanted.

SPEAKER_106: It was what the customer wanted that made sense for us. And they were willing, the pain was so high that they were willing to pay out of their budget a significant amount for that pain to be solved.

SPEAKER_197: Right.

SPEAKER_106: Very different scenario. And it wasn't that we cared as much about the money we could get out of it. We cared that it wasn't them saying, hey, this would be nice. We cared that it was, this would be nice. And this is what I'm willing to put in the game for it. Right.

SPEAKER_38: But that's real breakthrough.

SPEAKER_259: Right.

SPEAKER_38: And the concern I've got is, well, if you're not getting into some sort of relationship that way, you're going to have to at some point. And, you know, it's different if you're a consumer or an app only or, you know, a mobile first

SPEAKER_40: company where everything is just done through a device and it's transactional, which I think

SPEAKER_38: works still. Right. I mean, I still think it works in, in, when the economy goes South, I mean, we're on a nine year bull run market, right? When the economy goes, um, you don't know where you stand. I mean, I operated with a hundred percent growth in 2006, seven, eight, and everyone thought that our business would be one that would just be gone.

SPEAKER_106: Well, the opposite happened. Even people around me, my father, I mean, he was out of the country. He was emailing me saying, Hey, look, the sky's falling. But what happened was people stopped outsourcing and our world of insight and experience became

SPEAKER_38: something that you did as a competitive advantage and you could do more for less on our product.

SPEAKER_293: Right.

SPEAKER_38: So that was something that no one thought. However, is you kind of go through, if you don't have that relationship somehow where you've delivered that value really, then when things start to go down, you will, you will guaranteed be at the bottom of the list where you're being prioritized. You're not essential and you're not core.

SPEAKER_37: And so we see that in the advertising market too.

SPEAKER_14: And when the, um, when the, when the bottom fell out during that 2008 or 2001, what went first billboards outdoor and then what consumer spending.

SPEAKER_45: And yeah. And you saw all of that go to online. It was like, Oh, Google's more advanced. I better learn how to do that. And it wasn't Google search works better.

SPEAKER_106: And it wasn't that much of a breakthrough. It was just the first time they could measure. Right. If I spend this, this is what happens.

SPEAKER_38: Right. Yeah. Right. And so it wasn't throwing just to build awareness.

SPEAKER_40: It was like, no, I can quantify.

SPEAKER_301: Right.

SPEAKER_40: And that was the beauty of AdWords and AdSense and what was created. Yeah.

SPEAKER_302: Was the quantification of it. No longer guessing.

SPEAKER_29: Yeah. And that was, but, but look, I, I'm not right at all this, but these principles are right. Right. Sure.

SPEAKER_40: Right. I mean, I, and, and it's the, the beauty of business and entrepreneurship is that you can write your own story and you can prove everyone wrong in the way it is, but there are core principles that apply to every piece of this. And I think what we're talking about around commitment and being all in and, and, you know,

SPEAKER_25: building things out with a customer first model and payments model that where, where you're actually charging, um, those are things that the quicker you figure it out, the easier it's going to be for everyone.

SPEAKER_45: Like if the customer is not willing to pay for it, a decent amount of money, why are you building it? Right. I mean, it's said another way, like why would you spend all this effort building something

SPEAKER_34: that nobody's willing to pay for? Yeah. And everyone's like, well, it's changing the world.

SPEAKER_25: Well, you can change the world and monetize at the same time.

SPEAKER_148: Yeah. I don't think you're going to change the world if nobody's willing to take their credit card out and pay for it. I mean, one of the really interesting startups we invested in was calm.com, the meditation app and the fact that they were charging 10 bucks and people were paying it, but then they went to subscription and 10 bucks a month and more people paid for it was like a mind blowing moment. Like, wait a second, people will pay more for a subscription than for an unlimited $10 license

SPEAKER_37: for all time. Like one time purchase of an app.

SPEAKER_26: Yeah. And what we're seeing it scale through our user base is great experience.

SPEAKER_25: You know, there must've been an amazing experience with, with that app. And, and the great experience is something that we call the experience premium and experience never used to be like a revenue driver, but the, the companies with the greatest experiences consumers, we will pay more for that experience premium where you might think naturally, naturally that we're all bargain shoppers, but the whole world shifted to, we are now

SPEAKER_106: trained to find the best experience and companies like Uber and Airbnb and like the easy button

SPEAKER_25: and saying, Whoa, um, what we see is like reality is we don't tolerate bad experiences.

SPEAKER_106: And so that is the experience premium. And people will pay more for it. People will pay more. They will be, you know, your, your expansion will be more, your upsell, your retention will be higher. And reality is the word of mouth marketing for that great experience will become at a

SPEAKER_38: level that you never anticipated. And it's totally, um, what, what we call, we call the other, the other way is just a

SPEAKER_40: race to the bottom. You know, you're always racing to the bottom, only the experience brands and products are winning in every category. Go look at every single category and who's on the rise. It's someone who reinvented the experience. And this is why we're so focused on the experience economy and making sure that you understand the experience of every single touch point from product to the end user customer experience and the employee who's sitting in the middle and also the brand. And that's why you're seeing such a high growth from Qualtrics is because we're bringing all

SPEAKER_14: that together and, and XM all start and end with that NPS score that people do. Look, that's just one of the metrics. Yeah. I mean, is there anything better than that? Cause that came out 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_38: Every company. Yeah. Yeah. NPS is just a great way to measure and it's simple and people can adopt it. And reality is what it is, it's a benchmark to be able to track over time and take action. And, you know, we, we have 160,000 NPS studies running on Qualtrics. I mean, this is, but, um, you know, we just had a bank who called us and said, Hey, no one will work with us to do this. And we want to, we want to ask people how likely they are to recommend, but we also want to know how much more they're going to spend with us this year, the next year. Right. Cause we want to segment our customer base and the beauty of what we're doing. How do you do, how do you find that out? And how do you find out if there's more, they can do it all through Qualtrics. Yeah. Just ask a question. Yeah. They're, they're able to ask a question. So they inserted two other questions on it. We had our, our PhD data scientists go after and they're like, there's no, you know, bias here. Like this is absolutely valid to do that. And for that bank, they're not trying to get a score.

SPEAKER_204: They're trying to become customer centric. So they can bucket the customers into these people plan on spending more next year. These ones don't.

SPEAKER_38: And then the beauty of this bank, what they were also able to do was give us 10 more data points on the customer. And now they can profile even more about who they are and how to better serve them.

SPEAKER_106: And once again, people get lost on the score, which is great. It's a great benchmark. I think everyone needs it. However, what's important is that your culture and your company are delivering products that please, that are, that are creating brand ambassadors, that customers are becoming fanatical

SPEAKER_204: about your business. And that is a culture.

SPEAKER_148: What does it take to make a fanatical customer in your estimation in today's market? Because 2019, I mean, the benchmark is high.

SPEAKER_106: Well, so, so I have this slide that I always use. It's called the experience gap. Where 80% of CEOs believe that they're delivering an amazing experience, but only 8% of their customer base is seeing that. So that gap, which is massive.

SPEAKER_307: You had, it's pretty massive.

SPEAKER_106: Right. Is, is, is the companies that are able to close that gap and get good at knowing what I believe is happening is really happening. That's what it takes. And historically, you just kind of had to live with that gap.

SPEAKER_40: Yeah. And what we've been able to do is help companies instrument their business where they can actually have a pulse on how the experience is being received.

SPEAKER_106: Who cares if you're right as a company, if the person on the other end does not believe that that's the experience they're getting. And so the quicker you can close that gap around product, employee, and brand, the better it's going to work. And if you look at retail, there is nothing, there is nothing that is more obvious than

SPEAKER_40: this proving the point. Look at every brand that's a brick and mortar store that is still surviving in retail.

SPEAKER_332: Yeah.

SPEAKER_40: Nordstrom. I mean, it's, it's literally, you look at them and they have that gap. Perfect. Everyone that comes out and says, everyone that comes out and says, Hey, look, we're going, it's obvious. You're like, well, yeah, you were the last one to know. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_37: Well, I mean, if you survive, it makes sense because if you survive in retail up against

SPEAKER_148: Amazon, which is the greatest experience ever. Right. Like, I mean, they're, they, they might have the gap flip. The gap might be customers love it so much that they'll pay more knowing. I will pay more to click on an Amazon link and buy it there, then fill out a form at another website and buy it direct.

SPEAKER_302: But what people don't understand. Which is incredibly weird. That's not by accident though.

SPEAKER_18: Right.

SPEAKER_334: Yeah.

SPEAKER_18: They are closing their gaps all the time.

SPEAKER_29: They're a great customer and, and they're, they're, they're a math house. I mean, they're great and they're going to continue to do that. Yeah. Right. And they just want to be right.

SPEAKER_40: I mean, you know, one of our, you know, employees was on the echo team and the amount of work that they put in to close and make sure that experience was right. Yeah. That's how we found out about Qualtrics. And so, but you look at that and you're like, okay, wow. Um, we think of it as consumers that it's like, oh no, everything someone launches just is luckily there.

SPEAKER_106: No, there's a lot of smart people that are behind and saying, Hey, look, now we live in a world where we can be right. Um, and, but then when you're right, you have to continue to be right because you can deliver a great experience and then have a horrible month.

SPEAKER_339: Right.

SPEAKER_106: And then it's like, well, how was your Monday? Well, we had an experience disaster.

SPEAKER_339: Yeah.

SPEAKER_106: Right. And you've seen, you've seen companies where a bad experience on the employee side has taken

SPEAKER_40: the brand down $20 billion. A bad experience has caused someone to get ripped off an airplane.

SPEAKER_38: A bad experience is like you start looking at where it is in the problem in today's world is we're all going to have bad experiences. Yes.

SPEAKER_40: The question is, are you building a culture and do you know about it before everyone else? And can you get ahead of them?

SPEAKER_07: Right. Yeah. Need the early warning system. All right.

SPEAKER_37: Listen, continued success. Congratulations on another 17 year overnight success. Another 10 years to go, 20 years to go. We're excited. Yeah. Um, tremendous success. And, uh, how do you work with startups? At what size company is the right time for them to engage something like Qualtrics?

SPEAKER_344: When there's two or three of them. I mean, one of the coolest things that my perception was you needed to be a little bit more at scale.

SPEAKER_25: No, I mean, I remember, um, gin at rent the runway.

SPEAKER_18: I talked to her once and she said, you know, we use Qualtrics at Harvard to, to kind of help name or, you know, the folks at Warby Parker were like, you know, the pricing study was first run on.

SPEAKER_40: And so if you look at like academics and people coming out and students, like people have used Qualtrics for, for everything.

SPEAKER_154: I mean, my wife's dance studio, like they use Qualtrics for their form system, you know, I mean,

SPEAKER_40: it's, it's unbelievable, like registration. And, um, you know, I think one of the greatest parts of, of our success story is being able to use

SPEAKER_18: our product and, and use it in multiple different ways. And so that's, um, I, I don't think it just because we're an enterprise company, um, similar to other companies, like we've been able to grow, to grow with it. And so.

SPEAKER_348: Awesome. All right. Um, if you want to follow Ryan on the Twitter, he's Ryan Qualtrics. You active on there?

SPEAKER_14: I'm semi active. I'm pretty active. You're addicted. No. You look at it first thing in the morning or email, Slack or Twitter, which do you go to? Text, text first.

SPEAKER_34: Okay. Text first. Yeah. Email second. Okay. Slack. Not yet. Not yet. Too early after coffee.

SPEAKER_270: No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Too early. Um, Twitter's probably five times a day.

SPEAKER_26: Yeah. Okay. Maybe a little bit. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I've got a habit. Yeah. I've got a habit. I enjoy it. I get my news from Twitter. I'm a big fan of Twitter.

SPEAKER_40: Like I can't do everything like just because, you know, part of it's these, these, I mean, first of all, technology is so amazing. Social media is so amazing. Um, it's also, it also is how are you when you get put into it? Yeah. Right. It's like a casino. Like everyone's going into the same casino, but we all behave very differently. Sure. And so you have to know yourself. Right. And, um, what I, I mean, I'll, I'll follow and unfollow people all the time because I just, you know, it's not whether I like them or not. It just, it doesn't put me in a great mood.

SPEAKER_361: Yeah. Right. And so mood changer.

SPEAKER_38: It's a mood changer. And so how do you, how do you actually make your social media and it's not personal, it just happens to do with you make it so that it, it, it puts you in a good mood. If I, if I'm constantly getting bad news from something, why are you following those people? Like, why don't you make your, why do you make your social happy?

SPEAKER_148: It'd be like inviting all the annoying people to a dinner party or being like a defense,

SPEAKER_38: a defense attorney. It's like never good news. Right. Not that they're bad, but I'm just saying, it's like, you know, there's a reason why I'm not a defense attorney because that would, it wouldn't be like, it takes a specific person.

SPEAKER_364: Like who are those people? Yeah. No, I, I think they're great. They're great.

SPEAKER_38: It's just, it's always, you're dealing with, you know, massive problems. And I just, I prefer that if I'm going to go to something five times a day, like I want the right folks. And so it's got to be things I'm passionate about and things that you would never, you

SPEAKER_302: know, do like, okay, if you're a gardener or you're a builder, like, why are you following like, oh, wow, that's a cool project or design.

SPEAKER_367: Right. And these are, these are things that I try to do or sports, sports people, like, or whatever, whatever it is. And so authors, and, um, there, there is a way to leverage social where it makes you better. Um, but you know, I try to be active.

SPEAKER_348: Yeah. All right. There it is. We'll see you all next time on this. We starts. Bye-bye.