How this economist reluctantly became one of the most successful tech execs you've never heard of
Teen tech star
A new product and a fistfight
Back home, his dad, BYU professor Dr. Scott Smith had been diagnosed with cancer. The prognosis wasn't good. His younger brother Ryan had moved home to be with his dad. They were working in the basement "twiddling around on a survey product" and they asked Smith to help them sell it.
He looked at the product, declared it "worthless" and built them a new version, which would ultimately become the product used by millions of people and lead the company to big profits and a big valuation.
The brothers and cofounders are opposites in every way; they disagree often, but they rarely come to blows.
They usually fight, dig in, then compromise, he said. "Normally, in every argument we're both right."
Meanwhile, his dad made a miraculous recovery thanks to the doctors at the Huntsman Cancer Center. (Qualtrics just donated a $1 million dollars to Huntsman and launched the Five for the Fight campaign).
With the product built, his dad on the mend, Smith hired the company's first engineer and told his brother he was leaving again.
He didn't want to work on Qualtrics. That was "always Ryan's dream," he said.
He wanted to travel. He bought a ticket to New Zealand intending to hitchhike through Asia.
Right before he left, Kim Scott called. She was working for Google and was offering him a job that would change his life, and Qualtrics, forever.
Dragged to Google
From Google, to quagmire, to Qualtrics
'Rude' to VCs
The truth was, the whole China thing had also worn him out. But when he got to the startup, he said, "I was bored. A 40-person operation, it took me about 20 minutes a day to manage."
But the company "was a sales machine" and growing. Soon, he was back to hiring and scaling.
VCs had also found Qualtrics and were calling. Ryan was "rude" to them, Smith said, and Ryan confirmed. He saw investors like predatory lenders. "Why would I want to take on a mortgage?" Ryan Smith remembers telling them. Ryan also turned down a $500 million acquisition offer.
But, eventually Ryan decided that he wanted a board of people who had grown huge tech companies. That meant VCs and they would want a stake in the company.
Smith hated the idea. "I thought it was silly to sell any part of the company because it was doing so well, profitably, growing 100% year on year," he recalled.
Ryan got the terms that Smith demanded.
And, looking back, Smith said, "Ryan was incredibly right." The cash and the board pushed Qualtrics to grow in new ways. Without it they would have gotten "fat and lazy," satisfied with the old products and the profits it generated, Smith admitted.
As for the investors, "They've all done phenomenally well. A dream investment," he says.
While Qualtrics, a private company, doesn't release revenue, and is officially valued at a billion as of its last raise - $150 million in 2014, $220 million total raised - at one point, Smith told attendees at its annual customer conference last month that it was a "multibillion" company. It claims over 8,000 customers. In any case, it's still highly profitable.