5 ms·

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 SurveyM

by sjg007 8y ago

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.

brianbreslin 8y ago
Qualtrics is HUGE in academia and enterprise. I hadn't heard of it either until I went to grad school and all the professors used it.
jack6e 8y ago
Qualtrics is pretty popular among their initial target audience mentioned in the article: academics. Among academic survey shops this product is the definite go-to. I imagine, based on my own experience, the average tech worker thinks of surveys as small sets of questions used to easily and quickly collect a few data points. SurveyMonkey is fine for that. But for the types of real surveys that provide the data for serious research, Qualtrics is what you need. I've used it for government surveys, sociological, health/medical, etc., web and in-person, with lots of flow control, randomization, and all the other features needed to produce robust and accurate data.
- 1234567try 8y ago
  I agree
bigbadgoose 8y ago
Lots of people think this way. These are not tech companies; they are enterprise sales organizations.
- abakker 8y ago
  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.
- godzillabrennus 8y ago
  Sales cures all. No business has ever succeeded without sales. - Mark Cuban
  - thwy12321 8y ago
    That guy hit the lottery at the height of the tech boom and has done nothing since...
    - cenal 8y ago
      He manufactured much of his success: http://investmentxyz.blogspot.com/2006/05/cubans-collar-anatomy-of-famous-trade.html?m=1 http://investmentxyz.blogspot.com/2006/05/cubans-collar-anat...
      - jjeaff 8y ago
        What do you mean by manufactured? The options he bought to protect his locked up Yahoo stock was probably one of the smarter decisions he has made
    - jjeaff 8y ago
      He did a little more than that. He had a pretty successful exit before broadcast.com.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
kcorbitt 8y ago
Qualtrics looms large as a tech employer in Utah Valley, where they're based out of. I went to school in the area and almost ended up doing my first internship there.
closeparen 8y ago
Every scientific survey I’ve seen was on Qualitrics. SurveyMonkey seems to be used in informally polls like K12 student projects and group activities.
LrnByTeach 8y ago
I am very happy to see this kind of success stories for multiple reasons. 1. It gives a great morale boost so many other not so sexy US places outside of silicon valley. YES big success possible outside of Silicon Valley. 2. Now with this big SAP investment, UTAH will get considerable 'tech employment' boost longer term instead of same old crowded Silicon valley & New York (sky rocking housing prices) 3. The way the company grew organically for long time instead of hitting VC money from day one (another big company that did was Atlassian) 4. a very rare father-son founder company and a family company (brother and many of family members in big roles) > both his parents held doctorates and his father lectured about market research at the University of Oregon. The Smiths moved to Utah around the time Ryan’s father opted to work at Brigham Young University, and in 2002, the pair started Qualtrics, originally targeting academics that needed to conduct field research.
- JPKab 8y ago
  Good for Utah. I've heard some good things about the tech scene there, apart from Domo.
  - fjp 8y ago
    I used to work for Qualtrics. I think Qualtrics and maybe LucidChart was a rare exception to the rest of the tech scene in Utah, which is pretty much "build a slightly different version of something at already exists and sell the shit out of a subpar product". Qualtrics has come a LONG way in terms of underlying product quality, but they themselves got by for a long time selling the shit out of a product that could barely deliver. The company is 50% salespeople. Less than a year ago their APIs were going down every day because of the crappy pile of legacy PHP monolith they were built on. They have brought in some very smart engineering leaders to transition to a more modular and scalable core product, but there's a ways to go. Another thing that really sucked about the organization was that half the engineers are professional services engineers building custom, overpromised, one-off solutions for large customers. The vast majority are almost completely unmaintainable and they do a very poor job of leveraging previous work or having cookiecutters/shared libraries to accelerate custom development. With all that said, I think their market opportunity is fucking gigantic and they are serious about curing the underlying inefficiencies of the organization. They are the leader of the field in a time when pretty much every C-suite is realizing they need customer & employee experience data to stay competitive.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

by sjg007 8y ago

brianbreslin 8y ago

Qualtrics is HUGE in academia and enterprise. I hadn't heard of it either until I went to grad school and all the professors used it.

jack6e 8y ago

Qualtrics is pretty popular among their initial target audience mentioned in the article: academics. Among academic survey shops this product is the definite go-to. I imagine, based on my own experience, the average tech worker thinks of surveys as small sets of questions used to easily and quickly collect a few data points. SurveyMonkey is fine for that. But for the types of real surveys that provide the data for serious research, Qualtrics is what you need. I've used it for government surveys, sociological, health/medical, etc., web and in-person, with lots of flow control, randomization, and all the other features needed to produce robust and accurate data.

1234567try 8y ago
I agree

bigbadgoose 8y ago

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

abakker 8y ago
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.
godzillabrennus 8y ago
Sales cures all. No business has ever succeeded without sales. - Mark Cuban
- thwy12321 8y ago
  That guy hit the lottery at the height of the tech boom and has done nothing since...
  - cenal 8y ago
    He manufactured much of his success: http://investmentxyz.blogspot.com/2006/05/cubans-collar-anatomy-of-famous-trade.html?m=1 http://investmentxyz.blogspot.com/2006/05/cubans-collar-anat...
    - jjeaff 8y ago
      What do you mean by manufactured? The options he bought to protect his locked up Yahoo stock was probably one of the smarter decisions he has made
  - jjeaff 8y ago
    He did a little more than that. He had a pretty successful exit before broadcast.com.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

kcorbitt 8y ago

Qualtrics looms large as a tech employer in Utah Valley, where they're based out of. I went to school in the area and almost ended up doing my first internship there.

closeparen 8y ago

Every scientific survey I’ve seen was on Qualitrics. SurveyMonkey seems to be used in informally polls like K12 student projects and group activities.

LrnByTeach 8y ago

I am very happy to see this kind of success stories for multiple reasons. 1. It gives a great morale boost so many other not so sexy US places outside of silicon valley. YES big success possible outside of Silicon Valley. 2. Now with this big SAP investment, UTAH will get considerable 'tech employment' boost longer term instead of same old crowded Silicon valley & New York (sky rocking housing prices) 3. The way the company grew organically for long time instead of hitting VC money from day one (another big company that did was Atlassian) 4. a very rare father-son founder company and a family company (brother and many of family members in big roles) > both his parents held doctorates and his father lectured about market research at the University of Oregon. The Smiths moved to Utah around the time Ryan’s father opted to work at Brigham Young University, and in 2002, the pair started Qualtrics, originally targeting academics that needed to conduct field research.

JPKab 8y ago
Good for Utah. I've heard some good things about the tech scene there, apart from Domo.
- fjp 8y ago
  I used to work for Qualtrics. I think Qualtrics and maybe LucidChart was a rare exception to the rest of the tech scene in Utah, which is pretty much "build a slightly different version of something at already exists and sell the shit out of a subpar product". Qualtrics has come a LONG way in terms of underlying product quality, but they themselves got by for a long time selling the shit out of a product that could barely deliver. The company is 50% salespeople. Less than a year ago their APIs were going down every day because of the crappy pile of legacy PHP monolith they were built on. They have brought in some very smart engineering leaders to transition to a more modular and scalable core product, but there's a ways to go. Another thing that really sucked about the organization was that half the engineers are professional services engineers building custom, overpromised, one-off solutions for large customers. The vast majority are almost completely unmaintainable and they do a very poor job of leveraging previous work or having cookiecutters/shared libraries to accelerate custom development. With all that said, I think their market opportunity is fucking gigantic and they are serious about curing the underlying inefficiencies of the organization. They are the leader of the field in a time when pretty much every C-suite is realizing they need customer & employee experience data to stay competitive.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]