Ryan Smith, co-founder of Qualtrics and owner of Smith Entertainment Group (Utah Jazz, Utah Hockey Club), is a trailblazer in the Experience Management (XM) category and a defining voice of the "Silicon Slopes" tech community. His career is characterized by a "scrappy" approach to bootstrapping a multi-billion dollar business in his father's basement and later applying those exact same tech-first, iterative philosophies to the world of professional sports ownership. These seventy-five lessons capture his core beliefs on customer obsession, radical transparency, embracing failure, and playing the ultimate long game.

Part 1: The Qualtrics Journey & Bootstrapping

  1. On The Early Days: "We bootstrapped for 10 years. We didn't take a dime of venture capital. We were in my dad's basement in Utah, and we were just focused on survival and building something that actually worked." — Source: [How I Built This with Guy Raz]
  2. On Turning Down $500M: "I remember sitting in the car with my wife and saying, 'I think we're going to turn down $500 million.' And she just looked at me and said, 'Okay, let's do it.' We knew we were just getting started." — Source: [How I Built This with Guy Raz]
  3. On Scrappiness: "At the core of scrappiness, there is an obligation to be creative, to do something no one else believes is possible." — Source: [SaaStock]
  4. On Hiring Underdogs: "We didn't hire the people with the best resumes from the Ivy League. We hired the people who were scrappy, who had something to prove, and who were willing to work harder than anyone else." — Source: [How I Built This with Guy Raz]
  5. On Patience: "Nothing happens for 10 years... there's a little bit of a moat around being able to scale technology... it's actually the opposite of a lottery ticket." — Source: [Startup Grind]
  6. On Execution: "If you stay the course then it's amazing what execution can actually do... You can either write your own story or have someone write it for you." — Source: [YouTube Fireside Chat]
  7. On Building to Keep: "When you build a company to keep or you build a company with the long-term vision... and you're profitable and you bootstrap, you're going to get a lot of offers." — Source: [YouTube Fireside Chat]
  8. On Getting Started: "Just get going. It's like a boat before it leaves the harbor—many folks spend an enormous amount of time cleaning the boat and less time sailing... The open water is where all of the action is." — Source: [Sequoia Capital]
  9. On Surviving the Basement: "You’re not equipped at the time to go do something, and you’ve got to figure it out. I was like, 'You’ve got to power through. You’ve got to grind this out.'" — Source: [Sports Business Journal]
  10. On Finding a Path: "I had a 1.9 GPA in high school... I was the kid that everyone thought was going to be a loser. I just didn't fit the mold of what a 'successful' student looked like." — Source: [How I Built This with Guy Raz]

Part 2: Experience Management (XM) & Category Creation

  1. On The Experience Economy: "People are choosing experience over price or experience over brand all the time. So we’ve truly become an 'experience economy.'" — Source: [Forbes]
  2. On Closing the Loop: "Qualtrics provides a platform that allows people to predict and follow-up and close the loop on the experiences they provide as a brand or an organization." — Source: [Forbes]
  3. On The XM Mission: "Our mission is to help organizations leverage experience management to turn their customers into fanatics, employees into ambassadors, brands into religions, and products into obsessions." — Source: [Qualtrics YouTube]
  4. On The Experience Gap: "Experience is the only thing that matters. There is a massive gap between what a company thinks they are delivering and what the customer is actually experiencing. Our goal was to close that gap." — Source: [Invest Like the Best]
  5. On Defining the Category: "We didn't want to be another survey tool. We wanted to create a new category called Experience Management. If you don't define your category, someone else will define it for you, and they’ll usually define you as a commodity." — Source: [Invest Like the Best]
  6. On O-Data vs X-Data: "Operational data (O-data) tells you what happened, but Experience data (X-data) tells you why it happened. You can have all the numbers in the world, but if you don't understand the human emotion behind them, you're flying blind." — Source: [Invest Like the Best]
  7. On the Qualtrics Mantra: "If the data exists, you Google it. If it doesn't exist, you Qualtrics it." — Source: [Forbes]
  8. On Being Right: "When resources became tight... being right is a premium and a competitive advantage. What happened was people started testing everybody because they said, 'Hey I’m... going to lose my job if I’m wrong.'" — Source: [Forbes]
  9. On The Four Pillars: "Customer experience, employee experience, brand experience, product experience—how do each one of those areas drive either the success or the failure of a company?" — Source: [Qualtrics XM Keynote]
  10. On Data and the Boardroom: "Everyone's trying to understand in the boardroom the 'why'—why this is happening—and ultimately if you can be right nine out of ten times, you're going to be better off." — Source: [Qualtrics XM Keynote]

Part 3: Customer Experience (CX) & Customer Obsession

  1. On Survival of the Fittest: "If you're not delivering a superior experience, you won't be around very long." — Source: [Qualtrics XM Keynote]
  2. On Brand Value: "Having a brand that exudes amazing experience is priceless." — Source: [Forbes]
  3. On Customer Obsession: He describes his ventures as "customer companies" rather than product or marketing companies, enshrined in the core corporate value of Customer Obsession. — Source: [SaaStock]
  4. On Speed and Quality: "My answer to customer satisfaction is speed and quality of response when things do go bad and this comes down to the staff on the ground." — Source: [YouTube Interview]
  5. On Shifting Power: "The world shifted where the best organizations who were having the most breakthroughs are really in tune... as consumers, we're trained to say 'Hey that was a bad experience, I'm never going to use that product or that company again.'" — Source: [Qualtrics XM Keynote]
  6. On Scaling Feedback: Reacting to an executive who claimed angry customers would simply call, Smith noted: "Whoa, that's not going to scale very well." — Source: [Qualtrics XM Keynote]
  7. On The Modern Standard: "In the old world, you could have a bad product and a good sales team and it worked... In today's world, you have to be good at both." — Source: [Qualtrics XM Keynote]
  8. On Creating Real Value: "You can't fake multi-million dollar deals. You have to have value for the customer... what are you replacing? What's the old way of doing it?" — Source: [Qualtrics XM Keynote]
  9. On Bad Experiences: "It’s amazing how a bad experience will change the way that we absolutely behave." — Source: [Qualtrics XM Keynote]

Part 4: Employee Experience (EX) & Company Culture

  1. On The Core of CX: "Employees are the fabric that binds your customers to your brand. Your employees know how to make your customers happy better than you do. It's those on the front lines that make the real difference." — Source: [Wall Street Journal]
  2. On Putting Your House in Order: "Before a company can even begin to provide its customers with the best possible experience, it must first make sure that its own house is in order. In other words, make sure that your employees are fully engaged." — Source: [Wall Street Journal]
  3. On Cultural Alignment: "We rarely say, 'How should we talk? What's our culture around communication? What's the proper way to give feedback? How should we behave in a meeting?' To decide you're going to have a radically candid culture and then get everyone aligned with how that will work is genius." — Source: [Sequoia Capital]
  4. On Winning Together: "We want to find individuals who... will add value to the company in whatever role they're in. Part of that is the disposition to be willing to do whatever it's going to take because we feel that if we win as a team, we're going to win together." — Source: [YouTube Interview]
  5. On Idea Meritocracy: "I don't have to be right myself—I just want the ideas to be right. We bet on ideas and execution. It doesn't matter who comes up with them." — Source: [Sequoia Capital]
  6. On Safe Environments: "It's important to me that Qualtrics is a place where it's safe to be wrong and not have it all figured out. But we must also learn quickly and not keep making the same mistake." — Source: [Sequoia Capital]
  7. On Hiring Strategies: "Because there is no recipe, it's part of everyone's objectives to figure out how to improve hiring, diversity, growth and turn them on their head." — Source: [SaaStock]
  8. On Employee Engagement: Smith has observed that employees whose first job is at his company are often 20% less engaged simply because they lack an external benchmark to realize how unique their workplace culture truly is. — Source: [SaaStock]
  9. On Transparency: "We want to be transparent because we want to encourage our people to have all the information to keep them focused on what really matters." — Source: [YouTube Fireside Chat]

Part 5: Leadership, Failure & Self-Awareness

  1. On Admitting Mistakes: "Most of the time, everything we do is wrong when we start—almost every bet we've ever made has been wrong... I'm not afraid of being wrong. I'm afraid of not realizing I'm wrong." — Source: [Justin K Brady]
  2. On Knowing Your Weaknesses: "Realizing I'm not good at everything and being okay with it... That awareness of where you need to improve is so helpful." — Source: [Sequoia Capital]
  3. On the Duality of Leadership: "As a CEO, you often need to master polar opposite traits. You have to be humble but confident... You have to love your people but must also make tough decisions." — Source: [Sequoia Capital]
  4. On Embracing Discomfort: "If it doesn't hurt you, then it's not a sacrifice... There's always a level of uncomfortableness that we continue to put ourselves in that makes us grow." — Source: [The School of Greatness]
  5. On Recharging: "It's very hard to help charge the batteries of others if yours are always running low. I am learning to listen more to my body and mind for what I need to do daily to bring my best self." — Source: [Sequoia Capital]
  6. On Adapting to Change: "In SaaS, you have to be willing to throw it all away and start over again because innovation has a very short life." — Source: [SaaStock]
  7. On Dealing with Change: "People can deal with change better than uncertainty." — Source: [YouTube Fireside Chat]
  8. On Pain and Success: "Your success is directly correlated with your pain threshold." — Source: [Benzinga]
  9. On The "All-In" Mentality: "You can't build a category or a world-class company by being halfway in. You have to be all-in, every single day. It’s about the obsession with the problem you’re solving." — Source: [Invest Like the Best]
  10. On Deep Commitment: "Being all in is the lost art of really committing to something... Nothing I've ever done has ever been great if I haven't gone all in." — Source: [YouTube Speech]

Part 6: Building in "Silicon Slopes" & The Utah Advantage

  1. On The "New Utah": "Why don't we start talking about the new Utah? Three of the top 10 cities for fastest-growing economy are here. That's 30% of the fastest-growing economies in America, within 30 miles." — Source: [Sports Business Journal]
  2. On Utah's Economic Power: "Every week there's a billion-dollar company standing up and being sold here. It's crazy." — Source: [Sports Business Journal]
  3. On Utah's Soul: "What I love about Utah is it's young in soul. And that's unbelievable, I'll bet on that all day long." — Source: [KPCW]
  4. On Becoming a Tech Hub: "We need to make it easier for people to be here, because we have all the makings to make this a major tech hub." — Source: [Medium]
  5. On Embracing Growth: "Utah has just become something that I’ve always wanted to fight for and help build. You can’t choose that, it’s got to be in you. It’s super fulfilling." — Source: [The Hockey Writers]
  6. On Building Outside Silicon Valley: He frequently highlights that operating outside of Silicon Valley allowed his company to cultivate a uniquely disciplined culture focused on steady profitability rather than aggressive burn rates. — Source: [How I Built This with Guy Raz]
  7. On The Resilience of Utahns: "Remembered THIS IS UTAH. So…… Getting back on the horse. With the best fans in the league. Because it’s what we do here. Goal doesn’t change." — Source: [Reddit NBA Quotes]
  8. On Collaboration Over Competition: "I said, hey, if this was a tech company, how would I do this? And with the history I've had, you surround yourself with the best, people who are additive, but not too many. There are no extra points for going it alone." — Source: [YouTube Speech]
  9. On The Jazz as an Ambassador: "The Jazz are the front door to Utah. Period, end of story." — Source: [Forbes]

Part 7: Sports Ownership, The Utah Jazz & NHL

  1. On Sports as a Community Asset: "This is truly a Community Asset... it’s not something where access needs to be limited to a small group of people." — Source: [YouTube Interview]
  2. On The Generational Vision: "I hope when people look back 20 or 30 years from now, they’ll say, 'Wow, that was really cool, the things they were doing.'" — Source: [Sports Business Journal]
  3. On Bringing Tech Culture to Sports: "This is what we do in tech. Whether it's the board, or surrounding yourself with the smartest people... in tech, there's no hierarchy, we got rid of that 20 years ago." — Source: [KPCW]
  4. On Attention to Detail: "I care about weird stuff. I care about the clothing we wear. I care about the entry that the players go through at the stadium." — Source: [Benzinga]
  5. On Taking Risks (Trading Stars): Reflecting on trading franchise centerpieces, he noted it was "probably the book of what not to do" conventionally, but added: "If you're losing games, there's no amount of good food that can make up for that." — Source: [Forbes]
  6. On Iterating a New Team Brand: "In tech, you learn real quick that you’re not going to get everything right... whatever we launch is probably going to be wrong, and we’re going to iterate on it." — Source: [Front Office Sports]
  7. On Betting on Utah for the NHL: "We’re the youngest state in the country... In my career, you always bet on youth. We’re also the fastest growing. If you look at those two metrics... the NHL is going to be able to look at and say, 'Wow, we made the right move.'" — Source: [The Hockey Writers]
  8. On The "Vegas Blueprint" for Hockey: "No one would have thought that Vegas would have been the sports town that [it's become]. Everywhere you go, it’s Knights stuff. We have an opportunity to do that." — Source: [Front Office Sports]
  9. On Sports as a Force for Good: "One of the things I love about sports is there’s not an organization or a platform in the world that I have seen to be able to do good like the sports franchises." — Source: [YouTube Interview]

Part 8: Work Ethic, Productivity & The Long Game

  1. On The Morning Routine: "For me, it's all about the mornings. Five to 8 a.m. is where it all starts and happens." — Source: [Sequoia Capital]
  2. On Being a Master: "You don’t have to be a jack of all trades, but it’s better to be a master of two than it is to be a master of one. How you do anything is how you do everything." — Source: [Benzinga]
  3. On Becoming an Expert: "You have to become an expert in every business that you’re a part of." — Source: [Benzinga]
  4. On Setting an Example: "My kids need to see me grind." — Source: [Sports Business Journal]
  5. On Hard Work as a Differentiator: "Hard work is a competitive advantage. Hard work pays off if your customer base knows your style and the way you communicate." — Source: [YouTube Presentation]
  6. On Valuing the Journey: "The journey is way more important than the destination... all we have is those relationships and the journey and the experience we've done and what we've been through together." — Source: [Weebly Collection]
  7. On Work-Life Integration: Smith likens work-life balance to flying a plane that constantly requires stabilization: "One wing represents his family's needs, the other the needs of his work. When he's on a business trip... one side of the plane tilts down. When he returns... it's tilted back up." — Source: [Business Insider]
  8. On Playing the Long Game: "You’ve got to be confident in what you’re doing, and you have to play the long game." — Source: [Benzinga]
  9. On True Success: "Success isn't defined by quick wins but by long-term consistency, preparation, and discipline." — Source: [RyanSmithSays.com]