In 2018, your business no longer sells products and services: it sells experiences. Whether your interacting with your customers, employees, or the industry at large, your company is constantly delivering experiences and the quality of them can make or break your long-term success.
Qualtrics is an experience management platform that allows businesses to listen to customers, employees, and the market in real time and collect experiential insights, all in one place. Founded in 2002, the company envisioned a world where experience management was taken as seriously as customer relationship management and has just taken a large step toward executing this vision.
Who acquired Qualtrics?
SAP, the German-based multinational software corporation, announced their acquisition of Qualtrics for $8B in cash. The deal comes just prior to their move to go public and will likely be executed in the first half of 2019. Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith will continue to serve as the company’s CEO going forward and will maintain its offices and employees in Utah and Seattle.
How much is Qualtrics doing in revenue?
Qualtrics reported 8.5% growth from Q2 2018 to Q3 2018 and posted in $105.4M in revenue last quarter, according to their IPO filling. The company expects 2018 revenue to be in excess of $400M and is forecasting growth north of 40%, prior to the acquisition.
With 9k total brands on their platform and deals ranging between $12k and $6M annually, Qualtrics’ explosion is likely due to their increased emphasis on enterprise deals. This mindset switch came in 2014, according to Smith, and has helped them go from just a handful of 6-figure deals in total to closing handfuls of new deals each month.
Listen to Nathan’s Interview with Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith
How much has Qualtrics raised?
Overall, Qualtrics has raised $400M in venture capital funding to date with the most recent $160M round coming in 2016. This round came at a $2.5B valuation and was set to help them accelerate growth to an IPO while also providing a secondary offering for leadership and early employees.
This acquisition marks the second-largest ever acquisition of a SaaS company, behind the $9.3B purchase of Netsuite by Oracle two years ago. For its IPO, Qualtrics planned on offering 20,5M shares, priced between $18 and $21 each. This move would have grossed roughly $495M and placed it’s valuation between $3.9B and $4.5B, according to CrunchBase.
