Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How one family built Qualtrics to an $8B exit

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 148 posts

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

#71

Post by CalRobert »

lazyjones wrote: post #52
CalRobert wrote: post #45

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.

Yeah, but those people can also do other things that are more important, and pay a company like qualtrics to handle this boring stuff for them.

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

#72

Post by bigbadgoose »

sjg007 wrote: 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.

Lots of people think this way. These are not tech companies; they are enterprise sales organizations.

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

#73

Post by [deleted] »

sjg007 wrote: 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.

[deleted]

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

#74

Post by abakker »

bigbadgoose wrote: post #72
sjg007 wrote: 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.

Lots of people think this way. These are not tech companies; they are enterprise sales organizations.

I think that is a pretty grim outlook on Qualtrics. They are definitively a tech company, as they provide a technology which is not only useful, but differentiated. If you believe that survey==web form, then yeah, it doesn't seem like a lot, but, if you think survey==research tool, with randomization, experiments, SPSS file export, recoding, loops, panel provider integration etc. and you don't want to write code because your job is to produce data not databases, then qualtrics seems like a very nice piece of software.

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

#75

Post by throw2016 »

mdorazio wrote: post #56
artemonster wrote: post #7

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…

For academic research the value proposition seems more credible. But even there given the reproducibility crisis the methodology and tools need to be revisited, and perhaps these kind of lazy surveys and data analysis are part of the problem.

As for customers few companies if any in the world has customer service approaching 'entailing differences in customer perception', most are quite happy to have people wait on phones endlessly or fail to address glaring deficiencies in products or services.

With so much low hanging fruit waiting to be addressed in customer service this obsession with surveys and 'customer experience' seems to be driven by other forces ie continuing obsession with data and metrics by sections of the workforce as panacea and distraction from real changes. But great exit for the brothers, nice targeting, if there is a demand why shouldn't they benefit.

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

#76

Post by gbersac »

usaphp wrote: post #63
mdorazio wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 never understood , why would anyone waste their time answering 20+ questions for free?

Not always for free. I did it for a bike sharing company. I received a two free rides in exchange.

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

#77

Post by k__ »

roel_v wrote: post #53
k__ wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Sad.

What would it take to create a bootstrapper community that doesn't attract hustlers.

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

#78

Post by csbellina »

This might be the biggest Utah exit so far. Whenever all those "where are the other silicon valleys?" articles come up, they never seem to bring up the Wasatch Front, even though it probably has one of the most vibrant tech entrepreneurship scenes in the country. I moved here from Boston a few years ago and it has turned into one of the best decisions of my life.

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

#79

Post by rhizome »

CalRobert wrote: post #24
artemonster wrote: post #7

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…

There's a few things involved, and they're not all BS! You want to build a couple new features. You have 60 person-hours at your disposal. Which one do your users want? Build two quick prototypes and see which one people actually use more. You need to convince people to give you money (aka "get customers"). You're not sure what the best way to convince them is. Try 3 different approaches (Landing page with tech detai…

>0.1% of them will buy a $100 package once. 0.01% of them will buy a $9.99 package three thousand times.

The first group is worth $1MM, the second $3MM. I think it's likely you'd be able to afford to create both packages, regardless of what time any of your players take the bus.

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

#80

Post by lechiffre10 »

I'm currently reading a book called "Financial Shenanigans" and I'd highly recommend it. It's about account shenanigans companies do to make their business seem more profitable than it really is. Not sure if this applies here but interestingly there's a section that discusses IPO's and how investors should be very careful when companies decide to do an IPO through a M&A (Merger and Acquisition) instead of the usual IPO because it circumvents a lot of the SEC scrutiny that they'd normally be subject to in a normal IPO. Found it interesting that SAP acquired Qualtrics a few days before their IPO. Anyways just food for thought.
Post reply on HN