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How one family built Qualtrics to an $8B exit

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Re: How one family built Qualtrics to an $8B exit

#51

Can someone please genuinely explain the need of such software products to me? I work in VLSI engineering and such things sound like a total superflous bullshit-bingo to me (stats, dashboards, metrics, "value proposition", "targeting", "customer segmentation") I suppose I think so because I am a total layman in these fields. I'd greatly appreciate if someone could explain - is this a thing that acutally helps with so…

"data driven decision making"

Re: How one family built Qualtrics to an $8B exit

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So which parts of your example does Qualtrics provide/solve? Probably not the prototypes. Once I have these, logging/counting usage is simple. The decision is made with a one-page Excel sheet with the raw numbers. Where does Qualtrics come in? Perhaps it has similar data from competitors, so my decision making process does not require as much field-testing but then I'd have to worry about my findings being used to im…

Oh, I was addressing the more general question about the field of stats, dashboards, etc.. "Once I have these, logging/counting usage is simple. The decision is made with a one-page Excel sheet with the raw numbers." I think a lot of people would get the data in to excel and not know what to do next. Also, implementing tracking of views, clicks, etc. is non-trivial for a lot of people. Or just a hassle.

> I think a lot of people would get the data in to excel and not know what to do next. Also, implementing tracking of views, clicks, etc. is non-trivial for a lot of people. Or just a hassle.

Really? In "enterprise" class companies? Managers who can't use Excel like this should be (and probably are) fired quickly and for tracking there are plenty of solutions any junior web developer can implement and report on.

Re: How one family built Qualtrics to an $8B exit

#53
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of successful bootstrappers on HN, myself included. Dozens of us!

Cool! Where do you talk? I only tried IndieHackers and there were too much "hustlers" for my taste.

Ever since Business of Software forums died off, I've been looking for a replacement. As you say, when you go looking for them, all you will find are these 'hustler' filled places. In the early days, HN had a fair share of BoS refugees, but those have been overtaken by other crowds. Of course these are different times compared to 15 years ago, but I would think there would still be bootstrappers around?

Re: How one family built Qualtrics to an $8B exit

#54
Top bullet points that stood out to me:

• An insistent awareness that there are alternatives to the conventional solutions.

• Going directly toward the biggest challenges, early on.

• An understanding that engineering strength is more valuable than money.

• Willingness to weasel into industries with hard-to-open doors.

Re: How one family built Qualtrics to an $8B exit

#55
post #22

Can someone please genuinely explain the need of such software products to me? I work in VLSI engineering and such things sound like a total superflous bullshit-bingo to me (stats, dashboards, metrics, "value proposition", "targeting", "customer segmentation") I suppose I think so because I am a total layman in these fields. I'd greatly appreciate if someone could explain - is this a thing that acutally helps with so…

I'm not so keen on the marketing fluff either, but there are definitely needs being met. The cases I'm most familiar with are in psychological research, which consists of having people fill in a lot of questionnaires (asking about mood, stress-levels, or testing cognitive skills). Qualtrics provides a service to easily build these questionnaires, send them out to respondents, and collect their response (and export th…

I think it's also the case that for a lot of people, sadly, having certain tools legitimizes their jobs.

Re: How one family built Qualtrics to an $8B exit

#56

Can someone please genuinely explain the need of such software products to me? I work in VLSI engineering and such things sound like a total superflous bullshit-bingo to me (stats, dashboards, metrics, "value proposition", "targeting", "customer segmentation") I suppose I think so because I am a total layman in these fields. I'd greatly appreciate if someone could explain - is this a thing that acutally helps with so…

Here's a real-world example from a client who uses Qualtrics heavily. At regular intervals following vehicle purchase, an automotive manufacturer sends surveys to vehicle owners asking about their perception of the quality of the vehicle, issues that may have come up, features that were not explained properly or don't work as expected, etc. We're talking hundreds of thousands of surveys a year, each with 20+ branching questions. The surveys themselves are built in Qualtrics (something that it is quite good at), managed by Qualtrics (yes, survey management is a big deal), and the top-level data analysis of the survey results is done in Qualtrics as well to determine if there are problematic trends that need to be addressed, more issues than in previous years, segments of customers who are for some reason perceiving quality differently than others, opportunities to redesign or better market things in the future, etc. This data is directly used to update products, training, marketing, etc. at the company.

This is, in my opinion, the biggest use case for Qualtrics - customer experience research based on surveys or data gathering methods managed from within the platform. You can think of it as Survey Monkey on steroids with some SPSS-lite data analysis functionality built in.

Re: How one family built Qualtrics to an $8B exit

#57
Easy to setup programmable web forms and surveys for non-experts. Apparently it is big business. One thing I think is interesting is that I'd heard of SurveyMonkey before but never about qualtrics.. even here on hackernews. Maybe because qualtrics was outside of the valley? Yet clearly a unicorn and a very successful exit.

Re: How one family built Qualtrics to an $8B exit

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I was addressing the more general question about the field of stats, dashboards, etc.. "Once I have these, logging/counting usage is simple. The decision is made with a one-page Excel sheet with the raw numbers." I think a lot of people would get the data in to excel and not know what to do next. Also, implementing tracking of views, clicks, etc. is non-trivial for a lot of people. Or just a hassle.

> I think a lot of people would get the data in to excel and not know what to do next. Also, implementing tracking of views, clicks, etc. is non-trivial for a lot of people. Or just a hassle. Really? In "enterprise" class companies? Managers who can't use Excel like this should be (and probably are) fired quickly and for tracking there are plenty of solutions any junior web developer can implement and report on.

I interpreted what was said as saying Qualtrics provides a solution that has more flexibility and functionality than Excel. Excel's limitations are much more apparent in "enterprise" class companies.

Re: How one family built Qualtrics to an $8B exit

#59

Can someone please genuinely explain the need of such software products to me? I work in VLSI engineering and such things sound like a total superflous bullshit-bingo to me (stats, dashboards, metrics, "value proposition", "targeting", "customer segmentation") I suppose I think so because I am a total layman in these fields. I'd greatly appreciate if someone could explain - is this a thing that acutally helps with so…

Here's a real-world example from a client who uses Qualtrics heavily. At regular intervals following vehicle purchase, an automotive manufacturer sends surveys to vehicle owners asking about their perception of the quality of the vehicle, issues that may have come up, features that were not explained properly or don't work as expected, etc. We're talking hundreds of thousands of surveys a year, each with 20+ branchin…

>each with 20+ branching questions

I just recoiled in horror at the thought of my car company asking me to fill out a survey like this and mentally closed the window on it.

Re: How one family built Qualtrics to an $8B exit

#60
post #57

Easy to setup programmable web forms and surveys for non-experts. Apparently it is big business. One thing I think is interesting is that I'd heard of SurveyMonkey before but never about qualtrics.. even here on hackernews. Maybe because qualtrics was outside of the valley? Yet clearly a unicorn and a very successful exit.

Qualtrics is HUGE in academia and enterprise. I hadn't heard of it either until I went to grad school and all the professors used it.
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