Qualtrics was days from its first IPO in November 2018 when SAP bought it for $8 billion. Two years later SAP took it public anyway. The Utah company sold survey software, then rebranded the idea as experience management: measuring how customers, workers, and patients felt about a product or a job. When it listed in January 2021, the pandemic had sent offices home, and employers were desperate to know how their people were doing.

A Father's Survey Idea

Scott Smith, a marketing professor, wanted better online survey tools for his research. His son Ryan left school to help build them, and with Jared Smith and Stuart Orgill they founded Qualtrics in 2002, working from a basement in Utah. Universities were the first customers. The bet was that every business would want to run its own research, fast and online, without hiring a market research firm.

SAP's Spin, Silver Lake's Buy

Qualtrics priced at $30 a share and began trading on the Nasdaq as XM on January 28, 2021. It closed its first day at $45.50, up about 52 percent. SAP kept a majority stake. In 2023 SAP sold Qualtrics to Silver Lake and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board for about $12.5 billion, or $18.15 a share, and the stock left the Nasdaq.

Cover: Geographical Explorations and Surveys West of the 100th Meridian, Timothy O'Sullivan. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a land survey of the American West (the survey).