Ryan Smith co-founded Qualtrics in 2002, bootstrapped to $36M revenue, raised Series A from Sequoia/Accel in 2012, took company public in 2018, sold to SAP for $8B in 2019, spun out and re-IPOed in 2021, then took private again with Silver Lake. Now runs $1B Halo Fund investing at intersection of sports, entertainment, and AI applications. Owns Utah Jazz NBA team.
Public markets irrationally punished Atlassian on AI disruption fears despite $7B revenue and $2B cash flow; Mike Cannon-Brookes is an elite operator who will navigate the AI transition better than new entrants because he knows scale and has resources.
McDermott is one of the best CEOs ever; incumbents like ServiceNow are watching AI disruption closely and have the resources and hunger to reboot faster than first-time founders because they've seen cycles before.
SAP's strategy was to acquire Qualtrics to expand from CIO ownership to CMO ownership in the customer experience space; McDermott saw Ryan as younger founder version to drive this, and the deal happened mid-IPO roadshow when SAP board approved on a Sunday.