Ryan Smith Biography & Net Worth

Ryan Smith Biography & Net Worth

The NBA ownership ranks added yet another tech billionaire in Ryan Smith, when the Co-Founder of 5 for the Fight and Chief Executive Officer of online survey software company Qualtrics, acquired a majority stake in the NBA’s Utah Jazz for the sum of $1.66 billion. In doing so, the 44-year-old American businessman and entrepreneur has followed in the routes of fellow tech billionaires Steve Ballmer (Los Angeles Clippers) and Mark Cuban (Dallas Mavericks) as the latest tech billionaire to purchase a team in the NBA.

Smith is the executive chairman of Qualtrics, an experienced management firm headquartered in Provo, Utah, United States. He purchased Utah Jazz from the Miller family in October 2020, four years after Fortune listed him in its “40 Under 40” list. Full details follow below.

Early Life: Childhood, Education

The billionaire Techpreneur was born to American parents in Eugene, Oregon, in the United States. His mother, Nancy Smith Hill, is an entrepreneur and holds a Ph.D. in information systems. On the other hand, his father, Scott M. Smith, who is also a co-founder of Qualtrics, worked as a university professor.

The idea to start his own company came to Smith while he was schooling at Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Business. He dropped out of school during his junior year in order to focus more time on his company, Qualtrics, which he founded with his father, Scott Smith, and his brother, Jared Smith.

He eventually returned to the school of business and finished his degree in 2016.

Professional Life: Entrepreneurial Career

He started Qualtrics in his early 20s after abandoning his studies at Brigham Young University so he could focus on his real goals. He combined with his college roommate, Stuart Orgill, and his dad and brother to establish the online survey bootstrapped company which grew out of the family’s apartment in Provo, Utah, and now employs more than 3,000 people with nearly 30 offices across 9 countries.

Good fortune came to Smith when German software developer SAP paid $8 billion to acquire Qualtrics in 2018, and the entrepreneur and his partners became instant billionaires.

Smith, who remained with the company to serve as CEO after the sale, was interning with Hewlett-Packard in California in 2001 when he learned that his father had been diagnosed with throat cancer He took a semester off school and returned home to be with his family, and that was when he conceived the idea of creating an internet-based survey tool that would be of huge benefits to its users. As a marketing professor at Brigham Young University, Smith’s father, Scott, knew the value of his son’s intentions of an online tool to ease the search of market research data, both to academics like himself and also to marketing professionals. In between chemotherapy treatments, the father and son worked together to develop an early version of the survey tool, which allows users to create web surveys for customers and clients and then analyze

the data gotten from those surveys. Within one year, Scott was recovering from his treatments and their business already had 20 customers signed up for subscriptions to their web survey product. Smith’s brother, Jared, then employed as a product manager at Google, quit his job and helped build out the technical side of Qualtrics, and later became the company’s president.

The team officially launched Qualtrics in 2002 and continued running the company’s office out of their family’s home for the first five years. By 2004, Qualtrics had employed 20 people, all working in the Smiths’ basement. Within a few years, they had sold subscriptions to around 250 colleges and universities and the company was recording a profit of about $100,000 per month. By 2009, the company had gotten bigger and was seeing $1 million in monthly revenue, allowing Qualtrics to move to a proper office for the first time.

Over the next five years, Qualtrics garnered another $330 million in funding from Sequoia, Accel, and Insight Partners, resulting in the company to be valued at $2.5 billion in 2017.

After seeing revenue of $289.9 million in 2017, with a list of more than 9,000 customers that includes world-renowned brands such as Under Armour, Microsoft, and Mastercard, Qualtrics prepared to go public in 2018. The company planned to raise $200 million or thereabout through the IPO, but instead, Germany-based software giants SAP made a move and bought Qualtrics for the sum of $8 billion in November 2018. The Smith’s share of that deal was purportedly around $3.3 billion.

On October 28, 2020, Gail Miller disclosed that Smith had agreed to buy a majority stake in the Utah Jazz of the NBA. The purchase agreement was worth $1.66 billion, and also included Vivint Arena, the management of the Salt Lake Bees, and the Salt Lake City Stars of the NBA G League.

This move added one more tech entrepreneur to the ownership rank in the NBA. Other tech billionaires that own NBA franchises include former Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer (Clippers), Shark Tank star Mark Cuban (Dallas Mavericks), and Alibaba founder Joseph Tsai (Brooklyn Nets).

Personal Life: Family, Residence

Smith’s wife is named Ashley Smith. They have five children together and reside in Provo, Utah as one big family.

The businessman who is also well recognized for being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had in the past, spent over two years in Mexico as a missionary.

Ryan Smith Net Worth: Salary, Income Sources, Assets

Being the son of intellectuals probably helped Smith follow in the footsteps of his parents, and was able to come up with quality plans earlier on in his life, which eventually forged his future for him while also blessing his family and those around him. He is best known as the American businessman and entrepreneur who founded the online survey company Qualtrics and boosted it from his family’s basement. Though he later sold the company for a whopping $8 billion, he soon made another profitable investment move by purchasing an NBA franchise, which will not only send profits to his pockets but will also make sure that his name continues to reign for years to come.

As of the time of filing this report, Ryan Smith’s net worth is pegged at $2 billion. His primary source of income remains his (now sold) company Qualtrics, which he still works with as the company’s chief executive officer. Another income-generating venture is his investment as the majority owner of the NBA‘s Utah Jazz. He is a lifetime Utah Jazz fan and reportedly plays basketball in the mornings on the basketball courts he installed in his basement and also at the Qualtrics headquarters in Provo, Utah.