Morning Report: Qualtrics Raises $180M More On Path To IPO

Morning Report: Qualtrics proves that you can build unicorns in more places than just the Bay Area.

This morning TechCrunch reported that Qualtrics, a firm based in Provo, Utah, has raised a $180 million Series C at a $2.5 billion valuation.

This is Qualtrics’ third round of funding, following its $70 million Series A and its $150 million Series B. Normally at this juncture I would complain about the size of the rounds, and how they do not fit into traditional Series size buckets. But we can relax our standards for the day.

And we relax for two reasons:

• Qualtrics is a good example of a company in tech creating quite a lot of value outside of the Silicon Valley milieu. This matters for smaller ecosystems as a proof point that you don’t have to move here to matter.
• The company is being upfront about eventually going public.

I’ve interviewed Qualtrics before (I’ve lost weight since the above picture, I promise), and found them to quite forthright. That makes the following quote from the previously-linked TechCrunch story all the more fun:

And Smith has said he plans on going public. It looks like he’s feverishly working towards that goal. Five months ago the startup hired Microsoft veteran Zig Serafin as its COO and just added Atlassian’s CFO Murray Demo, who helped guide that company through its initial $4.4 billion public offering, to the board. Companies often pull in key leadership just before going public and Qualtrics founder Ryan Smith told TechCrunch in a recent interview he was “getting his house in order” in preparation for an IPO event.