The High School Dropout Who Made $2B & Bought an NBA Team

Get the guide to build your own unicorn billion dollar biz: https://clickhubspot.com/fgk Episode 761: Shaan Puri ( ⁠https://x.com/ShaanVP⁠ ) sits down with Ryan Smith ( https://x.com/ryanqualtrics ) – the high school dropout who built an $8B company and bought an NBA team. — Show Notes: (0:00) 1.9 GPA to $2B (9:47) Starting Qualtrics (14:02) Focus (24:00)  How to be top 1% at sales (26:17) Turning down $500M (31:37) Working backwards (3814) Buying an NBA team (43:51)  The 9 most important minutes of the day — Links: • Qualtrics - https://www.qualtrics.com/ • Utah Jazz - https://www.nba.com/jazz/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Shaan's weekly email - https://www.shaanpuri.com • Visit https://www.somewhere.com/mfm to hire worldwide talent like Shaan and get $500 off for being an MFM listener. Hire developers, assistants, marketing pros, sales teams and more for 80% less than US equivalents. • Mercury - Need a bank for your company? Go check out Mercury (mercury.com). Shaan uses it for all of his companies! Mercury is a financial technology company, not an FDIC-insured bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group, Column, N. A., and Evolve Bank & Trust, Members FDIC — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by HubSpot Media // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  This is Ryan Smith, a guy who went from a 1.9 GPA high school dropout to a $2 billion net worth. But this isn't your normal dropout story. At some point, you have a conversation with yourself like, okay, I gotta make this happen.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I gotta find a gear that I've never used before.

• 0:15Shaan Puri?

  When he dropped out, he had no plan, no money, and nowhere to live. There's a great story about the early days of Qualtrics and Focus.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  We were religious about it, and it was actually an incredible forcing function for me.

• 0:26Shaan Puri?

  At some point, you get offered $500 million to sell the company, and you turned it down.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  Every other person I would talk to about this offer was like, take it and run.

• 0:34Shaan Puri?

  You're building it from your family's basement all the way to the end zone. Basically, sell for $8 billion, you end up on public.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  I didn't do anything else when I was doing Qualtrics. I didn't invest. I didn't sit on boards.

• 0:45Shaan Puri?

  No side hustles.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  No side hustles. Nothing, except for hoops.

• 0:50Shaan Puri?

  What's it like to now own an NBA team? That's insane.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  My philosophy was don't blink, just go.

• 1:09Shaan Puri?

  I want to start with this. Like, you know, you've done what kids like me dream up. It's like, I build a successful company with my family, no less, become the super successful guy, billionaire, NBA team owner, you live this really interesting life. What's cool is that if we rewind the clock, you were a guy who dropped out of high school and had a 1.9 GPA in high school. So going from a 1.9 GPA to like, I don't know, a $2 billion net worth, that's a pretty big jump. We hear these stories where it's like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, they were at Harvard, and then they dropped out with this big, grand idea, and it came to fruition. That's not your story at all. So let's do the origin.

• 1:50Shaan Puri?

  Can you take us back, you know, your 14, 15, 16, 17 years old? What was going on in your life at that time?

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's no secret. Like, my parents split up when I was like 14, and the world was rocked. And, you know, I was, I was very much like, okay, screw everything.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  No one can tell me what to do and you know, I think my parents were trying their hardest to keep us. I mean, we had five kids that were keeping us all kind of afloat. And I think to be honest with you, you know, I never really developed the skills for, for school. And, and I didn't think I was really good. I knew I was a good athlete. I knew I was good at golf and could play poker. And like, I, I knew there was something there, but I didn't work hard. I didn't finish anything and it was really hard, like this concept of finishing. And it just never happened. And so I think the trajectory I was on at 14, 15, 16, 17 was not a very hopeful one.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  And there was no indication that there was a spark. There was no indication that there was good ideas in there.

• 2:59Shaan Puri?

  Right. So what was your move? So you're not, you're not loving school, not doing that well, no spark there. What was the decision to, to quit, drop out, to, to leave?

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, it was just kind of forced. It was like, hey, school was like, this isn't working out for you. Like you don't go to class.

• 3:15Shaan Puri?

  They're like, it's not us, it's you.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  You know, there's probably another path for you. And I had an uncle who reached out and said, hey, Ryan, you're 16. We're doing a tech company. It was called iMall. You're not going to just screw off all day. You might as well come work. I'm running a sales team. Come work. And I worked in the mailroom and I worked with three older gentlemen. I mean, one was in his 40s, one was there and the founder had just gotten back or someone had just gotten back from Seoul, Korea. And I would always say like, I'm going to go make money one day. I'm going to go work on the fishing boats in Alaska because they're paying 20 bucks an hour. I'm going to go do this. And my parents were like, go do whatever you want. Just graduate high school. Like we don't care. The bar was really low. And like, these guys were like, no, you should go to Korea.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  And I was like, that sounds good. And my dad was like, if you can pay for it and graduate high school, we'll do it. So I graduated high school. I got a GED when I was 17. I went to like, a university and just like cranked it out. Like a few months? Like, three months through like packets. And like, I was with like mothers and like everyone else who would not. And it was like, I was like, okay, I'm gonna crank this thing out. And I did it. And there was a little bit of a moment like, whoa, all right, when I kind of set my mind to something, I can do it. And then I went out and that's, that's when I went to Seoul. And so you go to Seoul, you're what, 17 years old at this time? Do you have a plan? The plan was I communicate, I never left Utah. I, I'd communicate with someone and

• 4:45Speaker 01

  like, we were supposed to show up and like, we had jobs, they had a house for us, they had all these things. And, you know, we had talked to them. So I remember getting there and like, we had limited cash. But we were there, we were there to sign a contract and work for a school and move in. And we get there and we, we go right to the hotel. And we're waiting and we call where we're supposed to meet up and no answer, no answer, no answer, no answer. Next day, no answer, no answer, no answer. And we're like, what in the world? And then finally someone answers and it's a Korean woman who didn't speak any English. And it was like, okay. Well, but this person, like, I thought we were showing up and they were just gonna, I'll be there waiting. Hey, we're so excited to have you. And it was

• 5:29Speaker 01

  the exact opposite. And like, basically after a week in this hotel, it was like, you have no job, you have no house, you don't have enough money to be staying in this hotel. And so I remember sitting in a, in a coffee shop and, you know, we kind of all called our parents to come home. These guys, all the parents went to the airport, bought them a ticket and they all jumped on the plane. But like, I sat there, my dad's like, you're not coming home. And I was like, what in the world? He's like, I know what you're gonna do here. Like you got a chance to go do something and I look back as a parent now and I was like, what in the world? Like I would never leave my kid over there.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  But he was like, the upside is like way better and.

• 6:17Shaan Puri?

  So was your dad, was that tough love? Or was he just sort of like, look, you just need to look at it this way? Hang in there? Like what was he? What was going through the mind, you think?

• 6:27Speaker 01

  I have no idea. I like honestly, I've thought about it so much. It's like, and that's just my dad. Like he, he's like, fine with this kid's failing.

• 6:35Shaan Puri?

  Did you feel like rock bottom at that point?

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Oh my word. So homesick in a country, no Americans, no English, no money. And you just kind of had to go figure it out.

• 6:50Shaan Puri?

  All right. So you meet this guy, crash on his couch. At some point you have a conversation with yourself like, okay, I gotta make this happen.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I gotta find a gear that I've never used before.

• 7:00Shaan Puri?

  And so what'd you do?

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Ended up running into someone who needed an English teacher. The school was a ways away. I didn't have a place to stay. So he said he paid me $10 an hour, which isn't a lot there. Um, so I teach the kids from, you know, three hours a day in the mornings. And I had found out about a place where Koreans go to study called the Goshi Wan, which is like that locker room we just looked at. It's about that big, but a little bigger. No one ever sleeps there. And I convinced the guy that if I could teach him English one hour a day, he'd let me sleep there. Cause they had a shower. I found a little stove. I would cook ramen noodles on it. Cause that's all I could afford.

• 7:44Shaan Puri?

  Obviously it's tough. Obviously you're sort of, it's like character building moment. Cause you're on your own for such an extended period of time. Uh, but was there like a part of you that was in sort of enjoying MacGyvering it a little bit?

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Not at all. This was not.

• 8:00Shaan Puri?

  No momentum.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  No, like at the time, there was no like, there was no of like myself now looking back going, okay, I'm gonna get crafty, this is an experience, I'm backpacking through Europe.

• 8:10Shaan Puri?

  Didn't have that attitude then.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  This was not that. I mean, this was like, I gotta get home.

• 8:15Shaan Puri?

  Right. And so you, you're teaching one guy. Did you eventually get more students and how'd you do that?

• 8:21Speaker 01

  In Korea, there was, you know, 20 big 15 to 20 story high rises where everyone lived. And I was like, okay, I'm teaching English. I've got 12 hours in the day. The better, rather than teaching a school, it's way better to do these private lessons. And if I could get into one of the high rises and get like, starting at four o'clock in the afternoon, teach every 55 minutes.

• 8:48Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Like, it's going to be great. Well, how do you do that? And I got someone to write, I had a pager at the time, I got someone to write a message in Korean, and I made like 5,000 flyers. And I would go in and they'd have these huge mailbox rows, but there was a security guard there. So I would go in and talk to the security guard and I was like, hey, man, like.

• 9:10Shaan Puri?

  In English or broken Korean?

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Whatever it took. I would just try to be their friend.

• 9:14Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  And I was like, let me put these, here, this is it, let me put these in all of these. And they're like, well, and I was like, come on. And I would normally be pretty successful at it.

• 9:24Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  And then my beeper just started hammering and blowing up. And I was like, whoa, like, this was the first time in my life, I was like, actually, there's something in there. Like, you have a good idea, and you can execute on it. And then I started getting a schedule. And like, literally, like, a month later, I was making like $8,000 a month, as a 17 year old, teaching English. And I was like, how in the world did I go from there to here?

• 9:51Shaan Puri?

  That's amazing. Let's talk about the startup Qualtrics. So you build this company, you build it with Stuart, you build it with your brother, with your dad, and you're building it from your family's basement all the way, you know, to the, you know, to the end zone. Basically, sell for $8 billion. You end up going public. You have a pretty crazy story over like a 20 something year period. Where, you know, what's the origin? What was the idea? And, uh, you know, what were the early days like?

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I think, I think that the origin, and if you talk to all of us, it's, it's, it's a little different. Like, so it was really my dad and I who started. I was doing an internship at Hewlett Packard in LA. And I get a call that my father had cancer, and it was terminal, like, or pretty close. I mean, it was like three years, throat cancer, there were three years to live, max, and probably a couple of months. And he ended up going through and recovering, you know, and is alive today, which is amazing story. But I kinda had a moment where I just left California. I was working in LA and came back, deferred school, and said, I'm spending this whole semester with my dad. My dad was always

• 11:02Speaker 01

  working on technology. He'd come up with this idea of like collecting research online, and it seems normal now, but at the time, it wasn't trusted.

• 11:13Shaan Puri?

  Right. What were companies doing before Qualtrics?

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were, they were either doing customer satisfaction, paper pencil,

• 11:21Speaker 01

  or not doing it at all.

• 11:22Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Like, the thought of asking your employees' feedback, or your, your customer feedback, that seems normal now.

• 11:28Shaan Puri?

  Table stakes today.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  They wouldn't do it. And so they'd have blind spots everywhere. And he would get paid a lot of money to go in there and help companies do this. And it was like a novel thing. We were gonna go put the customer at the table. We were gonna have them part of the decision-making process, and this is what we were gonna come up with. And so

• 11:48Speaker 01

  he had this idea, but he was always messing around, and he never really went commercial with anything. Well, I was in Hewlett Packard, and I had gotten pretty, I'd learned some tricks around how to like go to market over the phone with technology. And so I saw what he was working on, and I was like, actually, I had just been doing that with like some software and support stuff. What if?

• 12:12Speaker 01

  We apply to hear. And so he would come home from his like radiation and chemo and you're just kind of sitting there and I'd be like, let's do a business. Let's, let me take this to the world. He's like, well, I don't have any money. I can't pay you. I said, well, let's just, let's just go 50 50. And, you know, by the time he recovered and he couldn't speak, we had 10 customers and like we, we kept finding people that would believe in what we were doing. And it was a little Jerry Maguire moment where I had to find like one person.

• 12:45Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Who was like, then take it to the world. And like, that's kind of how the business started in the basement and.

• 12:51Shaan Puri?

  So he couldn't talk at the time. So even he's what? He's writing down?

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Writing on a board.

• 12:55Shaan Puri?

  And you're the guy on the phone?

• 12:56Speaker 01

  And I'm on the phone and these people are asking like about deep statistical stuff. I don't know. And I'm like going back and forth and, you know, it was a pretty gnarly time. I wish I had more pictures in that moment, but no one thought it was going to be anything.

• 13:11Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  And everyone's like, oh, you started with your, with your dad and it was just great. Like no one, like my roommates didn't think it was going to be something like I didn't even think it was, he didn't think it was going to be something.

• 13:23Shaan Puri?

  Hey, let's take a quick break for a message from our sponsor HubSpot who's making this episode possible. Listen, if you're trying to build something big, and I'm talking about a hundred million dollar or a billion dollar company, one of the most important things is to focus on the market. Where is the opportunity? You are like a surfer on a surfboard and you're trying to find the biggest, best wave possible for you to go on. Well, HubSpot has put together a cheat sheet that is studying and sort of reverse engineering what's working today. So they're looking at the top performing industries that you could be looking at, the funding routes that work the best, and the growth strategies that the fastest growing companies are using. So if you want a one pager, that is a cheat sheet on the, the big company playbook, you can get it right now. Just either scan this QR code that you see on the screen or click the link in the description below. All right, back to the show.

• 14:06Shaan Puri?

  There's a great story about the early days of Qualtrics and Focus. And I love this when I was researching it. I guess it was you and your brother who were talking about like, well, we have this market. We can sell to these people, these people. And you guys at some point decided, no, no, we want to narrow down. Sell only to universities. And the part I love, because focus is a word anybody can throw around, right? But like, if you take focus as an action word, what does it mean? It means saying no to a bunch of otherwise believable ideas. And the thing I read in the research was, your brother was basically like, you know, if you were talking to him about some other type of customer, he would, you know, he's hanging up the phone. He's like, unless you're talking about these 250 universities, I don't want to hear it. So could you tell me about like, how that went down?

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this is probably 2006, 2007. And we had found some traction in universities. We'd found people like my dad. My first customer was Angela Lee at the Kellogg Business School. She made all of her students use Qualtrics. And then it just kind of went from there. And I can go through every professor and kind of how the whole thing worked. But my brother at the time was a Google. He was an early Googler. And at this time, like, I didn't have very many people to call. And, you know, I didn't know how good he was, but I knew he was like, running a big piece of the internet.

• 15:25Shaan Puri?

  Okay.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Right? And Google was kind of having a moment. And he had been assigned to go run China for Google. So he was living in Beijing. He was working with Kai-Fu Li and like, running Google China.

• 15:38Shaan Puri?

  Wow.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  So for me, I think, when I would call him and ask for advice, and we started developing this dialogue, he was four years older than me, so we were close, but not that close. I think for him, it was like, dude, you're all over the place. I don't have time for this. If you're gonna call me, stay on script, stay focused, and like, actually finish something. And it was a little bit more like, get out of here.

• 16:04Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  But he was religious about it. And it was actually an incredible forcing function for me and the team to be like, "Okay, we're gonna go get the top 100 universities and nothing else matters."

• 16:18Shaan Puri?

  Right. These forcing functions are so powerful.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:21Shaan Puri?

  You know, it's like, uh, we play basketball. Like if, if there's a shot blocker, it's like, "You can't bring that weak stuff in here. You can't show up on the call and be scatterbrained because you know how the other person's gonna respond."

• 16:30Speaker 01

  I know what he's coming at me with.

• 16:32Shaan Puri?

  Even when they're not in the room, you start editing.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. What am I gonna tell him? What's the story on our next call that we have? What progress am I gonna show him?

• 16:39Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Am I, am I, am I actually telling him the same story I told him last week? So what did we actually get done this week?

• 16:45Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  I've gotta actually come up with a new story. And, you know, ultimately, I was able to recruit him out of Google to move back to Utah. And that, that happened in 2009. So we were seven years in and, and then when we got together, um, magic started happening.

• 17:06Shaan Puri?

  Why is that? Well, what, what changed? Just because he's that good or what, what do you mean?

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I didn't, I knew he was good. I didn't know he was a top five or six, whatever at the time, product person in the world. And there was a dynamic between us and I'll just be super honest, we were brothers. We had to love each other and we were just able to push on each other harder than any executive or person I've ever, I've ever met.

• 17:29Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  You know, with executives, I could probably go or teams, I could probably go three or four rounds on something really hard before someone said, "Uncle." With my brother, I could go 15 because we had to wake up and there was no drama. There was no nothing. Like we spoke each other's language, but we were so different. You know, he was full engineer. I was full like business and we met on the product side. And we almost had to grow together to like, almost like a relationship like where like my weaknesses, he had to go fill in those gaps. My blind spot and me too.

• 18:09Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. I've read something where you were saying that, that, you know, he came to you at some point and he's like, "Hey, here's my weaknesses. What are yours?" And you're like, "Yeah, I had never really thought about it to that level of detail. I'm great, right?"

• 18:22Speaker 01

  No, he's like, "Hey, I suck at these five things. What do you suck at?" I was like, "I don't suck at anything, bro." And he was like, "Oh, boy." And I've heard him say this, like, my job is to develop my younger brother. Who does that?

• 18:37Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, that's great.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  And when we took money in 2011, Sequoia, I remember was like, we're only doing this if there's a CEO. Which one of you is the CEO?

• 18:48Shaan Puri?

  So it wasn't really even stated?

• 18:49Speaker 01

  No.

• 18:50Shaan Puri?

  We worked together.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Clearly, we are co-founders. I'm not working for my little brother.

• 18:55Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  And like, I remember sitting in the room, I'm looking across from Mike Moritz, who gave Steve Jobs his first dollar and back Larry and Sergey and like, they're like, we need a CEO or we're not investing. And like,

• 19:08Shaan Puri?

  Because kicking each other under the table?

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Literally, it was just crickets. Because I knew where this conversation was going. And I still remember the silence. Because we're all just looking at each other. And finally, he just stands up and slaps the table and is like, it's him. And he points at me. And he goes, I won't do media. And then sat down and like, if you find a Jared interview,

• 19:33Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  It's rare. If you find a Jared Smith interview, it is super rare. And you know, that was a moment where I was like, all right. Like, we'll still operate two in the box, we'll divide the world, but like, it's a cool moment. And then it was like, your first time CEO, they're giving you, we're now in the big leagues. Like, we've taken this money from Excel. This is the largest Series A raised in 2012 since 2008 in all of tech. It's outside of the Bay Area, which, I mean, Sequoia at the time wasn't even investing there. So we came out of nowhere, the Forbes article was like, the biggest company no one's ever heard of.

• 20:11Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  And, you know, you look at that prior time, but now the pressure was on us.

• 20:17Shaan Puri?

  Today's episode is brought to you by HubSpot because using only 20% of your business data is like dating somebody who only texts you in emojis. First of all, that's annoying. And second, you're missing a lot of the content. But that's how most businesses are operating today. They're only using 20% of their data. Unless you use HubSpot. That's when all your emails, your call logs, your chat messages, they turn into insights to help you grow your business. Because all that data makes all the difference. Learn more at hubspot.com.

• 20:41Shaan Puri?

  So what year did you start the company?

• 20:43Speaker 01

  2002.

• 20:44Shaan Puri?

  2002. Now we're talking about 2012. 10 years.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  10 years.

• 20:47Shaan Puri?

  You have a sign out there in your office that we walked by. It says, tune out the noise, play the long game. And there's a picture of a guy just sitting there with his ears plugged. And I've had a lot of people on this podcast. I remember when we had Jimmy, Mr. Beast. He's now the biggest YouTuber in the world, but back then, and I played him a clip of him like, you know, 10 years prior. And he just said, matter of factly, he goes, I started this when I was 12 years old. When I was 12, nobody watched. 13, nobody watched. 14 years old, nobody watched. 15, nobody watched. 16, is anybody ever gonna watch? 17, nobody watched. He's like, finally, when I was 19, some people started to watch. And even then, it was nothing, you know, just relative to how it grew. And so he was talking about, you know, there's this cliche around the, you know, this sort of 10-year overnight success.

• 21:31Shaan Puri?

  But it's real different when you hear somebody just year after year of just obscurity. What was that like for you, that period?

• 21:38Speaker 01

  But you against the world and, and, you know, I'll never forget once in, I think it was like 2004. We were in a basement. My father was operating. He was in one room on his computer, like, deep into like stat stuff. And I was out there and I was having these issues with our website. I was like, super frustrated because our competition had just raised a bunch of money. The product was cheaper than ours. They raised $40 million. And their product was better than ours.

• 22:13Shaan Puri?

  Better, cheaper, more resources, more funding.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  And I'm like, that's, that's hard. Like, so I was, I was frustrated. I was like pissed. And I was like, are we gonna do this? What's going on? And like, I was almost like, argumentative with my father. My father's just sitting there. And finally, like, it's the only time I ever saw him get mad. And he like slams the table, turns around and he's like, who's stopping you? Like, who's stopping you from going to do everything you want to go do? And like in that moment, it was like a ton of bricks. Like, if we're gonna go do this, you're gonna have to do it. Like, you can't blame, there's only two of you.

• 22:49Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Like, you're actually gonna have to go do it. There's not gonna be a shortcut. There's not gonna be an easy button. Like, you're gonna have to go. And from that moment on, I stopped asking him. And, you know, that was kind of that moment. Don't ask for permission.

• 23:04Shaan Puri?

  So I have this photo here. This is, um, describe the scene.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  So this is uh, this is me and Stuart. Everything in this photo is bought at a salvage cell from campus. So like the printers were $5. On the board, I'm making a list of customers and like setting goals like the 25K club.

• 23:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  And seeing how many we can put.

• 23:31Shaan Puri?

  How many sales calls do you think you did those first couple of years?

• 23:33Speaker 01

  I was just dialing.

• 23:34Shaan Puri?

  All day?

• 23:35Speaker 01

  All day, like emailing, dialing, going.

• 23:37Shaan Puri?

  You still remember your uh, your script? Ring, ring, what happens?

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I mean, I would ask people what they're using. Have they ever heard of us or have they ever done anything like this? And uh, telling them the top researchers in the world were using it. If I was calling into Dallas, I would say I was part of the Dallas American Marketing Association.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  And we went to the conference. I would say, hey, can I just walk you through a demo? And at the time, there was no Zoom.

• 24:03Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  So like, I would actually get on the phone, send them a link and then they would follow along with me.

• 24:09Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  And I could do the demo. This is where I've always told our reps, like, do you know your product? I could do the demo on the phone, in a car, with a link, walking them through.

• 24:24Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Without me looking at the screen. And explain to them every single thing that's going on.

• 24:30Shaan Puri?

  What does it take to be great at sales? You were great at sales.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  I mean, so, so I think, I think sales gets a really bad name. Because people like use it as, okay, the salesperson we don't want to deal with. But I remember a moment, a lot of authors would use our software to write books. And I remember once Daniel Pink called me. He said, I'm writing a book and I want your help. I said, great. And he's like, what's the title of the book? And he said, To Sell Is Human.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  And he basically, it's a great book about how every single person is a salesperson. They're actually trying to get a group of people to go in one direction or another at some point in the day.

• 25:20Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  And I think that when it comes to like software, the first of all is you've got to believe in it. You've got to actually believe that your product has value. And you know, the person on the other end's life's going to be better if they use it. And so in our case, we wanted them to run their businesses from the outside in, instead of from the inside out. We, we believed that their employees are their, were, were their biggest assets and like getting a pulse on them more than once a year was probably a good idea. And then we said, hey, actually, if your business operated with a cadence of this data, you're going to win more. And so part of it was educating these people that there was a new way.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  And by the way, it was cheaper, faster and better. And if you as a user would embrace this, your personal career inside your organization would skyrocket.

• 26:18Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Because everyone else is guessing and you'll have this massive propensity of being correct all the time.

• 26:26Shaan Puri?

  Wouldn't it be great to know?

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Wouldn't it be great to know? You don't have to guess. And so that was the thought. And I was like, oh my word, like, how do we get this to everyone?

• 26:35Shaan Puri?

  Somebody had a great reframe. They were like, sales is the generous act of letting the right person know that you might have a solution to their problem. If you think about it that way, like it's an act of service and you can approach it many, maybe differently. It's a, it's does start to work and you get it to work. You eventually hit a point where you do something pretty crazy. You start this business in your basement and you're dialing for dollars. And at some point you get offered $500 million to sell the company. An absurd amount of money that sets up you, your team, everybody for life. And you turned it down.

• 27:08Shaan Puri?

  What was that like?

• 27:10Speaker 01

  So it was hard because no one had ever, no one had ever offered to, to buy our company. And it was, it's always a reality check where it's like, okay, it's kind of a recommitting point. You know, the gentleman who was doing it, um, ran a company, I'll just be honest, it was called Survey Monkey at the time.

• 27:28Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  And, you know, he was married to Sheryl Sandberg and she was running Facebook and like, they were the power couple, loved Dave. Dave was awesome. And I was like, whoa, do I want to, do we want to go? My brother had known him because he worked for Sheryl at Google. Like, there was just this synergy coming together. And he's like, I'll take the business. Like, let's go, we can partner, you can leave and be done. Like, it was like the cleanest moment of all time. And I remember sitting around, just like next door from here, and, and one of our mentors, Duff Thompson's office, and, you know, this is someone who, you know, as you talk about mentors, who had, who had been there at WordPerfect. And, um, you know, every other person I would talk to about this offer was like, take it and run.

• 28:13Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  And Duff's like, like, we sold WordPerfect too early. You know, we had the market, Microsoft was coming, like, we sold too early. And he was like, I, he was the only person that said, don't take the money. He said, in my mind, you guys are cash flow positive, you're cranking, you're growing at a hundred percent. If you and Jared can get along and do this, it should be interesting. And Jared kind of turned to me and my dad turned to me and said, well, what do you want to do? And I just said, I, I'll come back to you. And I, I literally, I remember getting in the car with my wife and I was like, hey,

• 28:59Speaker 01

  we gotta leave. Like, we just gotta drive south. And we get in the car and we're like 40 minutes into a three and a half hour drive. She was from Vegas, so we were going down there. And she's like,

• 29:13Speaker 01

  Like if it's going good, just keep it rolling. And I was like, you don't worry about like passing that up? She's like, no, like, what are you gonna do at home? Like, I don't need you around the house. And like, this is the time, like, if we're gonna go for it, this is the time. And it was like, it was just one of those moments where we knew we were gonna, we were gonna go for it.

• 29:35Shaan Puri?

  Had you pulled out a lot of cash already secondary? Were you like, were you basically already stable and made?

• 29:40Speaker 01

  We were profitable, so we were paying ourselves.

• 29:43Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  And that was a unique thing, like profitability in tech as a young company. So we would distribute the money, but this was a whole new world.

• 29:52Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  And so we came back and I remember sitting down, you know, it was funny. Dave, you know, rest in peace, like he, he, he was an amazing human. And he's like, I just want to do what's best for you. But I remember he flew into town and I was like, I knew that I think I was gonna tell him that we were gonna turn it down. And I knew how crazy that was. But I also needed to hear him out a little. So we met at the office. And I wanted to walk him through our culture and our company. Because I wanted him to see, you know, maybe things change, maybe comes back for more. I don't know.

• 30:32Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  So I was like, all right, we can be recognized. I was like, put on that hat, like, let's go in. And so like, we did this whole tour, we come back, we go to a different office, we sit down. And I was like,

• 30:46Speaker 01

  I just, I think we're gonna go for it. And he's like,

• 30:53Speaker 01

  what, what makes you think you can do it?

• 30:56Speaker 01

  And like, I didn't know what to say. And I was like, well, I just got you to put on a Qualtrics hat and walk through our building.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  I didn't know what else to say and it was like, we're just gonna do it. And he really respected that and we'd have lunch every week. I was out there and like, you know, we ultimately ended up talking about joining forces later on. Um, actually the week before he passed away and then that was kinda it. It was cool, like things happen for a reason and you know, we went for it. And then we decided like, if we're gonna turn that down, that means we gotta get serious. We can't be running this thing on our own personal credit cards and in the credit union bank and all this stuff.

• 31:33Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  We've got to actually put all the money back into the business. And then, you know, we decided to go raise money from Sequoia and Excel. And at the time, it was like taking money from the Red Sox and the Yankees. Excel had just done Facebook, you know, obviously Sequoia had done, um, Google and you know, Apple. And they were the forefront of everything and the goal was, hey, you guys like watch our back in the tech industry. We're gonna sit in Utah and we're gonna make money and put our heads down and go.

• 32:01Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  And like, we got the world covered. That's what we need you for. It was, it was a pretty cool partnership.

• 32:07Shaan Puri?

  I want to learn from you more on the business side, how you think, how you operate. One of the things I liked is you talked about like working backwards. This is one way is just to work forwards. You're, I don't know, we'll just figure it out as we go. And of course there's, there's that, but a very useful exercise is to like, you know, start with the end in mind and then just reverse engineer. Well, if that's true, then what needs to be true underneath that and you sort of go back. Can you explain maybe how you do that or an example?

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's different from where we are today to where we were then. But I, I learned something by accident once. Um, you know, when we did announce the fundraising, I remember getting on the phone with a journalist from Business Insider, Julie Bort.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  And I'll never forget this. I had never really done an interview. I'd done one interview with Forbes and she comes up, I mean, we're 10 years in and no one even knows who we are. And she goes, I heard you just turned down $500 million. I was just flustered. So she writes this headline, the kid who turned down $500 million with my picture is excited about it. And I'm like, oh my gosh, because it looked like I went to the media.

• 33:17Shaan Puri?

  With this story.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  And slammed the story back into Dave's face. And I was so, I was so embarrassed.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  But I knew at that moment that Dave wasn't coming back.

• 33:31Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  It was a burn the boat moment. She burned the boat for us on a possible acquisition. The first one in 10 years.

• 33:39Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  And I, I was so mad and

• 33:46Speaker 01

  I never forgot about that. And so we operated for two more years and we went to raise money. And everyone's like, well, when are you going to raise money again? Cause kind of when you start, you're on that path.

• 33:56Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  And what's the dollar amount and everything? And, you know, my entire thing was, well, we're going to raise it a billion dollars. Cause that'll show that we've doubled. That's a new mark. We're giving away stock to employees. This is where it's going to be at. So when we got down to it, Excel and Sequoia, and we brought insight in, they, they agreed to that. And they said, all right, we're going to, how do you want to announce this? I was like, there's only one person I want to talk to. So I called Julie Bort and I was like, hey, you might not remember me, but you wrote that article that said, I turned down 50, $500 million. I was happy about it and raised 70 million, dah, dah, dah. And just so you know, like, we're raising at a billion. Do you want the story?

• 34:42Speaker 01

  And she's like, yes. And so she basically took the exact same article, the exact same picture and put the folks that turned down 500 million, just raised at a billion.

• 34:56Shaan Puri?

  New headline.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  New headline.

• 34:57Shaan Puri?

  You have, by the way.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  They look the exact same.

• 34:59Shaan Puri?

  You have both of those framed in the office.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Both of those framed. And then I remember sitting there one day after we had done that. And there was a lot of our employees that were like, okay, wow, we're, we made it. We're here. And I was like, no, no, no, no. What's her next article?

• 35:13Shaan Puri?

  Work backwards.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  What's, what's her next article? Like, what is she putting up next? And two years later, it's like the group that turned down 500 million just raised a 2.5 billion. And, you know, we knew that that wasn't the goal. We knew we had our own mission and the Qualtrics story and everything, but it was very clear from a directional standpoint. We raised it two and a half. What's the next article? A year later, it says the group, you know, or two years later, it says the group that raised two and a half or turned down 500 just sold for, and she, she literally put four of those together with the same headline, the same page. So I'm grateful for it because

• 35:55Speaker 01

  it fired us up to go and say, well, that next one isn't interesting. Like, we actually need to go bigger. We need to push harder. Like, we need to go more global. Like, every decision came to like, okay, what's the story we're going to be able to tell when we're done with all this?

• 36:14Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  And, you know, it's kind of a weird thing because at the end, like, if you meet sports stars, at the end of the world, like, where they're done playing, you know what they do? They sit around and tell stories. They tell stories about what the world was like. And you get them together and all they do is just sit and tell stories. And you hear Bird tell stories. You hear Ainge tell stories. You hear Dwyane Wade tell stories. Like, it's awesome. And it's kind of like, all we have are going to be these stories that we're going to be able to tell. And when Qualtrics sold, it was probably one of the most underwhelming days of my life.

• 36:53Shaan Puri?

  So when the money hits the bank?

• 36:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. We were at a kind of a President's Club type deal with about 100 of our people. And the deal had closed but hadn't funded. And I remember sitting there by the pool with like, our whole company, who had leadership, who had, like, made President's Club. And I could tell when the money, I knew when the money was going to hit. And it like lands and then just hits to everybody. And I, I could see over the next two hours, like, this reaction. And I remember turning to my wife, like, handing my phone. And she's like, sitting there reading a book. And, you know, there's a lot more zeros there.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  And she's like, ah, scary.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  And I was like, okay, we've been grinding for 20 years and your response is like scary. Scary like, uh, and then, and then I started watching our people like, it's like, we just paid off our home. We just did it like, and then there was a little bit more joy, but it became clear to me that it is about the journey because even after all that, it wasn't a eureka moment.

• 38:16Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  And so knowing that I'm going to work till I'm 80, I'm never going to stop working. I already know that about myself and every young person should ask themselves that question right now. I don't know that anyone knows exactly what they're going to do. No one has figured it out. Like I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Right? But what I do know is I'm going to work till I'm 80 because I'm not going to check out. If I was going to do that, I would have done it already.

• 38:46Shaan Puri?

  All right. Let's take a quick break because I got to tell you a story. Let me tell you about the first time I tried to run payroll for my team. I was using a traditional bank and you know, the type. It's got a janky interface. It's built like a 2002 tax form and it was open only during business hours and I hit send and it froze. They flagged the transaction. They locked my account. They put me on hold for 45 minutes and then they told me I got to visit my local branch. And that was the day I started looking for a new banking solution. After asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury. And so now my payroll is two clicks. I can wire money. I can pay invoices. I can reimburse the team, all from one clean dashboard. That's why I use it for all of my companies and so do 200,000 other startup founders. And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to mercury.com and apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology

• 39:29Shaan Puri?

  company, not a bank. Banked and services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Call MNA and Evolve Bank and Trust, members FDIC. So we play basketball this morning and it's clear you've been playing basketball since you were a kid. And so what's it like to now own an NBA team? That's insane.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  So it's weird. When we were on the road show to go public, like you normally go like one day in San Francisco, two days in New York, one day in Boston, one day in Maryland, then back to New York. And I had organized our roadshow to go three days in New York, one, and then to Boston. And like, no one had really done that the way they were doing it. And they're like, why are you doing that? I was like, because I'm going to the Celtics game. I'm gonna go sit with Ainge.

• 40:08Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  And like, I'll never forget, like, sitting in the locker room with Ainge, like, it's, it's the only thing outside of Qual. I didn't do anything else when I was doing Qualtrics. I didn't invest. I didn't sit on boards. I didn't buy real estate. I was literally like Qualtrics for 20 years, heads down. When I, when we say, like, intense focus, it was like, everything else was.

• 40:29Shaan Puri?

  No side hustles.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  No side hustles.

• 40:31Shaan Puri?

  No angel investing.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  No.

• 40:33Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, nothing.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  And like, it probably.

• 40:34Shaan Puri?

  22 years.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, it was like, nothing, except for hoops. I would go down to Summer League and sit there with Ainge and he like, he was cool enough to let me like, I mean, he's running the Celtics and it was like, I could see.

• 40:48Shaan Puri?

  And you were plodding, you were thinking, like, I wanted to get into this?

• 40:50Speaker 01

  No, it just happened. I was like, I am so intrigued by this. I love the NBA. I love hoops. Like, I love the business side of it. And, you know, when we did sell, like, my brother was like, what are you gonna do? And I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go be part of the NBA. And, you know, with SAP, I, I'd gotten to know Adam. I was working on a tech council for the NBA. And through SAP and Bill McDermott had connected us and, you know, he was like, hey, and I, I let him know. I was like, I'm, I'm gonna be part of this. One way or another, like, and he was like, oh, we'd love it. Like, too bad Utah's not for sale, da, da, da, da. And, you know, he called me and was like, hey, you know, and someone else, like, I hear Minnesota's for sale.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  And so I went down that entire road and that story's pretty famous where Ash was like, we're Jazz fans.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Well, do we have to give up our season tickets at the Jazz? I said, yeah, that's probably part of it.

• 41:44Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  And, you know, it was like, no, we grew up Jazz fans. And I was like, oh, yeah, like.

• 41:50Shaan Puri?

  And you just thought the Jazz would not come up for sale?

• 41:53Speaker 01

  They weren't.

• 41:53Shaan Puri?

  The Miller family was like.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, they weren't. And like, I had approached.

• 41:55Shaan Puri?

  Did you try?

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had approached, uh, Gail Miller, who, you know, Larry and, and Gail had purchased it for years and they owned it for 30, 35 years. It was in a legacy trust for the family that could never be sold and.

• 42:08Shaan Puri?

  Oh, like, it literally could never be sold?

• 42:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was a pretty locked door. At least that's what we thought, right? And.

• 42:17Shaan Puri?

  You have a jazz hat on, so something changed. What happened?

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I think, you know, I had approached her and the answer was no. And then

• 42:23Shaan Puri?

  So you got a call back?

• 42:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:24Shaan Puri?

  Is that years later?

• 42:25Speaker 01

  No, about six months later saying, hey, after we turned down Minnesota saying, are you still interested? I was like, are you serious? Um, yes, we're in.

• 42:34Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  And

• 42:36Shaan Puri?

  How'd you negotiate the value or how'd you, how'd you figure it out?

• 42:39Speaker 01

  It was literally a meeting where it was like, well, are you serious? Make us an offer. And we pulled up the Forbes valuation on the phone and I said, well, how's this? Cause I didn't, I didn't know this was

• 42:52Shaan Puri?

  Team of scientists, economists.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  This was like a year before all this madness. And I was like, is that work? It's like, it seems fair.

• 43:00Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 43:01Speaker 01

  And, and like to her credit, like

• 43:03Shaan Puri?

  And it wasn't a big auction or anything in that case.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  No, there was no one else.

• 43:06Shaan Puri?

  Yeah.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  I think she had sat across the court from Ashley and I, she knew what we were about. She, she cared about it being in Utah. And that was important. They had had 35 years. I think they bought it for $22 million.

• 43:21Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  And

• 43:23Shaan Puri?

  Would you buy for 1.6?

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, 1.6. And it was like, okay, I've got a, this looks like about as clean as it could get.

• 43:31Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  I mean, it's not all gold when you're running an auction either.

• 43:34Shaan Puri?

  How does it work? You buy a franchise, you're not buying the whole thing. So that's the franchise value. You're buying a part, like a majority stake.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:41Shaan Puri?

  You just gotta send a wire one day? Like, how does this actually go down?

• 43:44Speaker 01

  I mean, pretty much. I mean, we did, yeah, like, yeah, that's pretty much how it works.

• 43:48Shaan Puri?

  Let's double check the numbers.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  It's like a car. You got, you gotta go figure it out because you can't put a lot of debt on these. And, you know, my philosophy was don't blink these chance. There's 30 of these things in the world. Just go.

• 44:00Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  And, you know, Ash and I had a lot of conversation about like, why? Life's pretty good at this point. Why are we literally knowing, hey, we're on this 20 year journey of sacrifice and travel and all of this? And literally grinding at a level that most people could never comprehend. You interview founders all the time. Like when I, when we're all in, it's, it's like a different level. And then And then going and signing up for a level where there's a lot of pressure, there's a lot of responsibility. Everything's public and you're taking the hopes and dreams of a whole nation here and putting them on your shoulders to go do something.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  And, and you're also impacting the children like, you know, kids, our kids, like Qualtrics was relatively normal life.

• 44:52Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Even though it was worth on paper, like a lot more than an NBA team. The NBA team is very different.

• 44:57Shaan Puri?

  Yes.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Right. And so.

• 44:59Shaan Puri?

  You didn't take it lightly.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  No. And, you know, there was a lot of personal discussions about what's this for? Is this for ego? Is this for us? Is this for helping Utah? And it really came down to like Utah.

• 45:11Shaan Puri?

  I want to finish with a couple of rapid fire, almost like life isms. This idea of the nine most important minutes of the day. What are the nine most important minutes of the day?

• 45:20Speaker 01

  When your kids wake up, when they get home from school and when they go to bed.

• 45:24Shaan Puri?

  Three, three, three. And you show up for those.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  Or you just try to hit one, right? I mean, a lot of times like you're planning a trip, you're doing this and like you have an option to like be at one of those.

• 45:37Shaan Puri?

  Right.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  And so I think that as you schedule, as you plan, as you optimize, those are important moments, not all three maybe, but like if I can schedule a call, I'm not doing it in one of those moments.

• 45:50Shaan Puri?

  Right. Another one is, you know, if you don't know what to do, if you don't know what you want to do, go figure out what you don't want to do. Use, use the inversion, use the contrast.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 45:58Shaan Puri?

  Uh, what, what's that? I'll pack that a little bit.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  I just, you know, we teach a class at, at BYU, we teach a business school class and, you know, it's every fall. And it's, it's around leadership and decision-making and watching all these kids. It's like, this is what I want to go do. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I think that's why Qualtrics worked because if I had a picture in my head of what it's supposed to look like, I don't think I would have done Qualtrics. I would have been so focused on that, the opportunity or Zuckerberg could have been sitting next to you, starting a business and you're like, you didn't even see it. And you're like kicking yourself, right? But what I did know is there was some attributes that I believed in. I knew I wanted to be able to have a job where the sky was the limit. My age wasn't going to limit me to what my potential could be.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  I didn't want to be like, well, when you're 22, you can make up to $80,000 a year and you're 24, you get to 120. I didn't want to be capped. I want to be like, if I work harder than everyone else, I'm more creative, my ideas hit, like, they can go somewhere, right? I knew I wanted to be like in leadership and I could lead, right? I knew I wanted to see a lot of businesses very quickly, a lot of industries. I wanted to know the world and know every industry. Okay, I wanted something that was kind of not old school. And so, like, when I started looking at opportunities, like, I never thought Interbright Software, but I was like, okay, I look at it and I kind of put the opportunity right here and I'm like,

• 47:29Speaker 01

  wait, sky's the limit. I can be a founder. I can create. I'm not really capped. It's a new school. It's a new part of technology. It can go for a long time. Like, I'm not going to get the legs pulled out from under me if I start doing well. And like, I think those attributes is where I would advise kids and younger people or entrepreneurs to say, okay, don't be so caught up on what this looks like. See if it fits and you'll be blown away that it's like, oh, the auto industry actually works really well for me. Never would have thought about that. And that's all that really matters. And so, I think that's kind of how we look, you know,

• 48:12Speaker 01

  and now I've got a lot more roles and things that I care about. But it has to fit into that. You ask like, what do we do? Does it fit?

• 48:21Speaker 01

  And, you know, you kind of go through that rubric.

• 48:23Shaan Puri?

  That's great. Well, listen, man, thank you for doing this. I appreciate that.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks for coming out to Utah.

• 48:28Shaan Puri?

  I mean, it's great out here. I love it out here. All right, man. Thank you so much.

• 48:42Shaan Puri?

  Hey, let's take a quick break. I want to tell you about a podcast that you could check out. It is called The Science of Scaling by Mark Roberge. He was the founding CRO of HubSpot and he's a guest lecturer at Harvard Business School. The guy's smart. And he sits down every week with different sales leaders from cool companies like Klavio and Vanta and OpenAI. And he's asking about their strategies, their tactics, and how they're growing their companies as, you know, head of sales or chief revenue officer. If you're looking to scale a company up, if you're a CRO or a head of sales that's looking to level up in your career, I think a podcast like this could be great for you. Listen to The Science of Scaling wherever you get your podcasts.