Transcript excerpt of Ryan Smith (Qualtrics) reflecting on company branding and media strategy: early years avoided media yet reached $50M revenue; later pursued media appearances (e.g., CNBC) to aid recruiting and fundraising; anecdote about SAP acquisition leading to surprise that public awareness remained low despite coverage. The piece emphasizes focusing on building a good business over chasing visibility.
Questions this video answers
2007
$50 million in sales
The first 10 years
13 times
$8 billion (he referenced Bill spending $8 billion)
Chapters
Everything we ever wanted to do or pivot the company or get away from surveys, which, you know, in 2007 were like, whoa, this is way bigger. We could do it under the Qualtrics umbrella. And so everyone would get after us and say, well, it's not descriptive. I don't know what it is. And, you know, reality is people don't know what anything anyone's creating is. For the first 10 years, we didn't do one media interview, and we got to 50 million in sales. Think about that. Then we. I feel like we put on a clinic the last six years, you know, I've been on CNBC 13 times, been in Forbes, Fortune, you name it. Yeah. And what was the goal of it? Just. You were supposed to do it, right? You were supposed to get out there. You could recruit, you could do fundraising rounds. You could do all this stuff, and then you would arrive. We close a deal with SAP. I get on the phone that night. It's myself and Bill and all the investors. First phone call. Hey, bill. You spent $8 billion on a company that no one's heard of. And I was like, what the hell? 300. 300 articles about our IPO out there. Yeah. And no one's heard of us. And so I think that as a founders and it might be helpful. You know, there's this whole rationale of fundraising and marketing, that you're going out there so people will know who you are. They're not going to know who you are. So just go build a good business.
