After a journalist wrote about Qualtrics turning down $500M, founder Ryan Smith began a practice of "working backwards from the headline." He would ask his team, "What's her next article?" This forced them to set audacious goals that would create a compelling public narrative of growth.
Related Insights
When faced with a life-changing $500M acquisition offer, Ryan Smith's wife provided the clarifying perspective: "if it's going good, just keep it rolling." This, combined with a mentor's advice against selling, empowered him to turn it down and aim for a much larger outcome.
When Ryan Smith complained about a better-funded competitor, his father slammed the table and asked, "Who's stopping you?" This single question instantly shifted Smith's mindset from blaming external factors to taking radical ownership of the company's destiny.
The public instinctively places every company on a story arc with a rise, peak, and fall. Founders must actively shape the perception that their company is still on the upward slope. Being seen as pre-peak inspires confidence, while being seen as post-apex invites negative assumptions.
Stranded in Korea, Ryan Smith printed 5,000 flyers to market his English tutoring. When his pager "started hammering," it was the first time he connected a good idea with successful execution, building the foundational confidence that would later fuel Qualtrics.
The moment proceeds from Qualtrics' multi-billion dollar sale hit, the feeling wasn't euphoria but a sense of it being "underwhelming." This highlights the common entrepreneurial experience where the journey and stories created are far more fulfilling than the financial destination.
Ryan Smith's brother, a Google exec, would hang up on him if he discussed customers outside their target of 250 universities. This strict external accountability served as a powerful "forcing function," embedding a culture of extreme focus in the early team.
Chess.com's goal of 1,000 experiments isn't about the number. It’s a forcing function to expose systemic blockers and drive conversations about what's truly needed to increase velocity, like no-code tools and empowering non-product teams to test ideas.
To instill extreme speed, Sequoia's Doug Leone challenges founders by asking why their growth plan isn't 3x more ambitious. This forces an honest discussion about the true bottlenecks—the "rocks in the river" like funding or hiring. The board's job then becomes helping the CEO remove those specific obstacles.
For 22 years, Ryan Smith's focus was monastically singular on Qualtrics. He didn't angel invest, sit on other boards, or have any side hustles. This intense, long-term dedication, avoiding all distractions, was a critical factor in the company's multi-billion dollar outcome.
Robinhood is shifting its planning process to focus on what will be announced at its next public product keynote. Instead of setting abstract internal goals, this aligns the entire company around concrete, customer-facing deliverables and creates a powerful, immovable deadline for shipping.
