XM Knowledge Base
Ryan Smith - Founder & Executive Chairman
Author Bio
Ryan Smith is founder and executive chairman of Qualtrics, the leader in customer experience and creator of the experience management (XM) category. He has grown the company from a basement startup to one of the fastest-growing technology companies in the world, with 25 offices globally and more than 13,000 customers, including over 85 percent of the Fortune 100, and 99 of the top 100 business schools.
In the private market, Qualtrics raised $400M in funding from Accel, Sequoia, and Insight Venture Partners. Three days before the company was initially scheduled to go public, SAP announced its intent to acquire Qualtrics for $8B, which was the largest private enterprise software acquisition ever. In 2020, Qualtrics and SAP announced plans to take Qualtrics public as an independently operated company.
Ryan co-founded 5 For The Fight, the crowdfunding campaign to eradicate cancer by inviting everyone to give $5 for the fight against cancer by supporting groundbreaking cancer research. Ryan and his wife Ashley purchased the NBA’s Utah Jazz in 2020.
Articles attributed to Ryan Smith - Founder & Executive Chairman
Taking Experience Management to the World
This is a special moment for Qualtrics, our employees, customers, and partners. Today, Qualtrics becomes a publicly traded company under the ticker symbol ‘XM.’ We are grateful for everyone who ...
By Ryan Smith - Founder & Executive Chairman, Zig Serafin - CEO
The Most Common Reasons Customer Experience Programs Fail
Most customer experience (CX programs) are positioned as strategic, but quickly veer away from business objectives and become simply about tracking CX metrics. Time passes slowly, data continues to mo...
By Ryan Smith - Founder & Executive Chairman, Webb Stevens