[00:00:02] Sebastian: Vivek, how are you doing, man?

[00:00:04] Vivek: I'm good, Sebastian.

[00:00:05] Sebastian: How's life? I'm hanging in there, hanging in there. So I had you on the show today because I think you've got something you want to talk about. Is that right?

[00:00:13] Vivek: Well, I've stirred the pot a little bit. So yeah, I do have something to talk about.

[00:00:19] Sebastian: All right. Let's get into it. But first off, before we get too far down that rabbit hole, I want to just get a bit about who you are, Vivek.

[00:00:27] Vivek: Sure. So I started a company called QuestionPro. We started it back in 20 years ago, actually, in 2005 in my garage in Seattle. We competed with Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, Decipher, Confirmit, and everybody else in between. And fundamentally, I ran the company for about five years, from 2005 to 2010, then I took a break, did a couple other startups, then in 2015, I came back to run QuestionPro, and I've been running it since then. So that's kind of about me and QuestionPro. From a product perspective, QuestionPro, we sell into three different kind of user groups or profiles, if you will. Number one is consumer insights and market research. So we sell into the market research community as a quant and a qual platform. Number two is customer experience. So we sell into the CX space as a voice of the customer tool. A third component of our business is employee experience, so we sell into the HR teams of companies as a listening tool for employees. So that's kind of at least our charter.

[00:01:30] Sebastian: So Vivek, before we get too far into actually what we came to discuss today, I want to unpack a little bit about your journey in market research, and how you ended up where you are, and how that accounts for where you are today. So obviously, back in 2005, you made a decision that it was time to bet on market research as a space, right? What led to that decision? And what kind of brought you to that moment that you felt like the market needed a QuestionPro?

[00:02:04] Vivek: Yeah. So I wish I had an amazing story for you, but I was right after the .com shit show, which is I was without a job, and I was doing consulting work. I was doing tech consulting, and when the shit hits the fan, consultants are the first to get fired. So I was effectively without a job, and I was like, look, I need to build some product. And I had done consulting work, and consulting is great. If you think about it, consulting, you go up and down quite a bit. So one day, you close a big deal, and it's phased, and then three months, you're famine. And everybody who's in professional services knows this. It's a much high variance. And I'd done consulting for about three or four years, and I was getting bored of the variance, and I wanted to build a product, and this kind of landed on my lap. The survey product effectively landed on my lap for serendipitously, quite frankly. And then we decided that shit, man, you know, and at the time, everything was moving online. It was back in 2000, 2005, realistically, everything was moving from kind of like software to online software and online. And in the research space, things are moving from telephone surveys to online surveys. So that was a shift that was happening. And so we saw that, okay, let's just ride that wave in terms of online research and online surveys. So that kind of was the impetus. So two or three things collided. Me not having a job obviously helped, which means I had to do something interesting, and so all right, cool. And me getting tired of like the ups and downs of consulting also helped, because I wanted to build a product, which is a little bit more stable. It's harder, but in a different way. And so that's when I decided like, okay, cool. And also, frankly, I hated my boss, my personal person I reported to, you know, it was kind of a more of a personal issues. So all these things collided and I said, you know what, this is the time to just quit my day job and start QuestionPro and that's how we bought a couple of servers, put in my garage and started the thing.

[00:04:06] Sebastian: Hey, I can't hear you, once again, okay, hey, I think I got you back, sorry, just context here, you know, and I'm also going to include this for the listeners, the piece of equipment that I'm recording on is a piece of shit, it's a, we, Coal Recruit bought a laptop for like $200 three years ago, and I'm still doing podcasts with, you know, guests as esteemed as yourself Vivek on it, so that's why we have these kinds of issues. This may not be the last time this happens during this recording, but hopefully we'll take them in stride. So I wanted to just say, you know, as a fellow entrepreneur, you know, Christian, if you're listening, you were a great boss, loved you man, but generally speaking, I hate having a boss, right, and the idea of bosses in general is something that I struggle with. So I definitely relate to, you know, maybe not the specific individual, Christian, you know, again, not you, but yeah, I relate to that struggle. So Vivek, I'm curious, because you were posting a while ago on LinkedIn, some pictures from like way back in the day, right? I think you had a tax filing from question, you're in business, some shit in your garage, like tell me about that.

[00:05:41] Vivek: Yeah, I mean, I think we all have these stories about when the first check came through and the first tax filing I had to do. And then, you know, for us, it was more like, you know, it's nostalgic to some extent, and a lot has changed. And I'm trying to kind of explain kind of a lot has changed between where we started and where we are today. So that's kind of the journey that I've been through in the last 20 years. And, you know, things like, I remember the first check that you get, and you start a company and I should have framed that check, I should have taken a photo of it, but I don't actually obviously I needed to cash the check and so needed the three grand, you know, three grand paid for everything else. So the point I'm trying to make over there is, you know, some of these things are nostalgic. They have fond memories, frankly, and they're fond memories and, you know, and in the cacophony of everything that's happening today, I don't want these memories to get lost or the, you know, the, you know, I'm trying to get grounded on things where we started and there are certain principles that we follow even today, hopefully we follow the principles and push that through. So that's at least the context behind that.

[00:06:50] Sebastian: Okay. You just gave me a thread I have to pull on. So you mentioned seven principles. Run me through that.

[00:06:55] Vivek: Several. I don't have seven principles.

[00:06:57] Sebastian: Oh, I heard seven. Several? Sorry.

[00:06:59] Vivek: No, no, no. It was like a few principles. Okay. What are your principles? Yeah. One of the things internally is full transparency. I think within our company, for example, we have a hundred percent transparency on revenue. We publish our revenue numbers to everybody. We publish our cost numbers also on a quarterly basis. So we know where we are as a company. We know how well we are doing. And I believe this. I believe, you know, companies are stronger and better if they are transparent and transparent. You know, it's easy to say that. And then, but operationally you have to give, you know, hard feedback and say, okay, this is not working. And even I know you worked really hard on it, but it's not working. Simple. Right. And that kind of feedback and that kind of like acceptance, you know, we don't call it feedback and call it acceptance is, is important because it strengthens the company layer. That's the way I look at it. Right. So and we focus on what matters, right? So we are, you know, we are focused on revenue because we, you know, we are a bootstrap company. We need to make money to survive simply put. Right. So, so we have a very strong focus on revenue in terms of we do, we do things that, that matter. And the third component is, you know, customers realistically. So we are, we are not owned by investors, so we are, you know, privately owned. We care about our customers and customers and employees are the lifeblood of this organization and customers, obviously the revenue, revenue comes from customers. And I tell all my employees, like, look, you know, you can, you know, we all have difficult customers, easy customers, but they are the ones who pay us the bills. They are the reasons why we can pay the mortgage and pay the, you know, buy cars and pay the rent and everything else. So, so it is what it is, whether we like it or not. We have to, we have to figure out a way to make it work. So those are the kind of, I'd say two or three principles that we have. I think the biggest one that has helped me, to be honest, is the transparency component. That's what is, you know, along with transparency, a little bit of autonomy also comes into play that we, we kind of, you know, you know, address we have, you know, when, when we run projects, we have DRIs, DRIs are directly responsible individuals. They are like, okay, you're running this project, you have this budget and do whatever you want to do, really. We don't, we don't go around telling people, you know, going around like, hey, yeah, you got to do this, you got to do that. But once we have a DRI for a particular project, they kind of do whatever, you know, it's, you know, and that's what, you know, creativity comes at that point. Creativity comes if you have transparency and autonomy, then quite a lot of creativity comes out of folks in the company. So that's, that's the way I think about it.

[00:09:34] Sebastian: I love that autonomy piece. There is an anecdote I often share. So I'm obviously in Canada, right? One of the most influential figures in Canadian history, though not huge in our history books, has a character named C.D. Howe, who's actually an engineer from the US. I don't remember what state. But in the years prior to and following the Second World War, he was the minister of interdepartmental coordination or something like that. Basically, though, people called him the minister of everything, right? And much of the apparatus of the modern Canadian state can be attributed to C.D. Howe. Why do I bring this up? There is a anecdote of a subordinate asking him one time for his instructions. And C.D. Howe responded, I never give instructions. I only give responsibilities.

[00:10:26] Vivek: Good one. Good one. Yeah. Because you don't know, you know, because if you start giving instructions, then everybody becomes a pencil pusher. And you really don't get creativity out of it, realistically. And what we're all interested in is coming up with creative ways of solving problems. So that's a good one. Give us the target and we'll figure out how to get there. So that's kind of the way I was putting the same thing.

[00:10:48] Sebastian: I love it. I love that value. I love that you guys are living at a question pro. So just quickly, we talked a little bit about your origin, 2005, getting fired, starting a startup in your garage, right? Not liking your boss. Some values that you guys live by, good values, definitely relate to all of them. Now, where has that left you guys? Where are you today? How would you frame question pro success in 2025? Yeah.

[00:11:12] Vivek: I mean, I think I'd say like, I wish I could say like we are, we are eroding success, but we've had our ups and downs. And, you know, there are years where we've grown at, you know, 30, 40% year over year. And then years we have grown at 3% year over year. So the variance between 35% and 3% is obviously 10X, right? And so, you know, like everything else, we've had great years and we've had bad years. Simple, right? I wouldn't say that it's only, you know, balls out success. No, you know, it's not that, that's not the case. So from a revenue and functional perspective, we are about $35 million globally. We have, you know, teams global and we are doing reasonably well, I would argue. I know we are, we're obviously trying to get to a hundred million dollars, you know, wherever you are, you have a target, you know, you know, at least an economic target, frankly. And that's kind of at least my, my goal and my personal charter is to see if we can get, you know, question pro to that scale and size. We are about 300 employees, probably we'll get to about 600 or 800 employees, you know, if we need to get there. So that's kind of the range, range we are, I am looking at. So that's kind of at least from a contextually, from a question pro perspective and the market is there. So we don't believe that the market is there to kind of get us there. I don't think we're in a position where like, oh my God, is this, will the market bear it? We compete with, you know, we compete with folks who make obviously more money than we do. And therefore, you know, we have to build a better product. We have to hustle harder and we have to come up with a better solution. So that's the way I think about it.

[00:12:47] Sebastian: So Vivek, part of the reason that I wanted to have you on the show is because there's a story in the industry, obviously that's been making waves. I think it's probably about two weeks ago now at this point, maybe a little, maybe a little more, right? Qualtrics has announced the acquisition of research and experience measurement software, Press Ganey Forsta for 6.75 billion in a combination of cash and equity. Just quickly, Vivek, how does this acquisition change the landscape for survey platforms?

[00:13:20] Vivek: It does. It absolutely does. Here's what I've kind of deduced. Most of the folks who, most of the research agencies and companies who chose Forsta are Decipher and Forsta, just so that everybody understands. Forsta is really a combination of Decipher and Confida. Which, you know, Decipher merged with Focus Vision, then Focus Vision kind of merged with Confida, and then InMoment also came into the picture and Press Ganey bought all of these things. So eventually there are like five different platforms. You can argue Press Ganey has its own core platform in healthcare, then they have Confida, then they have Decipher, then they have Focus Vision, and then they also have InMoment. And InMoment has done a bunch of acquisitions. And InMoment has done a bunch of acquisitions. InMoment itself was reasonably large. So there's like a, I would say, like a plethora of different tools and services. And it's not that these tools and services are uniform and integrated. Although from the outside, it seems like it's integrated, but, you know, operationally, they're not. So the real question for most market research agencies is that, you know, now that you have this consolidation between Qualtrics, Decipher, and Confida realistically. There are three different platforms. And Qualtrics owns, at this point, Silver Lake really is the private equity company that owns Qualtrics. Effectively, they have control over all these. My thesis is when you have control over this large of a market, your prices are going to go up. Simple. No, nobody buys, you know, something for $6.7 billion and then reduces the price. That's just simply not, it has never happened in the history of capitalism. It's not going to happen in the future. And my opinion is that, like, the prices are going to go up because the market is consolidating and because they have leverage. Simply put, you have leverage. And we are going to compete against them. Simple. Right? And we're going to, you know, from our perspective, so you asked me a question, so what does that mean? It means at least, you know, expect the prices to go up because there's consolidation. And then, you know, whoever's competing, you know, we will compete. But clearly, you know, competition is what keeps the prices at bay. If there was Boeing and Airbus, that's why. Otherwise, Boeing was the only guy who sold planes. I mean, you know, planes would cost three times of what it costs today. Simple. That's the reality of capitalism. Now, you don't believe it. You may not want to believe it. That's fine. But that is the reality of what happens when you own the market. And look at Uber. But what did Uber do? Till Lyft was actually, you know, Uber was really dominant at one point in different markets. And the price for Uber is not, was not, was not, is more expensive than taxis, frankly. Two X, three X more expensive. Well, it's only when Lyft, when it started coming up, did the Uber price tag goes down. So I strongly believe in the core construct of capitalism. And that's what's happening, at least in the quantitative research space. There is a lot of consolidation between, and then, and, you know, and it's not like we are the only guys. There's us. There's a couple other guys also, like Alkomar and this and that. They're all who are outside this. So, but we are definitely a smaller percentage of the market. And the market will rebalance. In my mind, the market will automatically rebalance. As long as there is, you know, free and fair competition, the market will rebalance.

[00:16:49] Sebastian: What does that mean in terms of the market rebalancing?

[00:16:53] Vivek: It's just the market share goes back and forth, really. Right. I mean, I think, you know, if, you know, if you think about it between the, between the research agencies, between Qualtrics, Confirmit and Decipher, they own probably like 60, 70, 80% of the market realistically. And so that'll, that'll, you know, that'll go down. And assuming, you know, folks like us can, can, you know, make a case. I think I still believe in, you know, free and fair competition. So we will have to make the case. It's not that we are just going to get handed over a free cake. But I do believe that there's an opportunity when, when these kinds of acquisitions happen, people are not paying attention to all our, all the customers. There's a lot of confusion. There's a lot of kind of like change in, change in guard, change in strategy, change in direction. And that, you know, that's good for, you know, companies like us. We can, we can get into the market and we can expand our, we can expand our presence.

[00:17:49] Sebastian: Just a quote from Qualtrics CEO, Zig Serafin, bringing Qualtrics and, and Press Ganey-Forza together will accelerate the adoption of AI and create the most comprehensive platform for improving the human experience. There's no more important proving ground for experience management than healthcare, where better experiences for patients and employees directly impact better outcomes and better quality of care. So it's a little bit of a less cynical, you know, rationalization for, you know, rationalization for the, the acquisition. Do you accept that?

[00:18:21] Vivek: Well, that's, that's seemed like the only answer that we can give in this kind of a, in this kind of a position. Yes. I mean, you know, you know, Press Ganey has been doing healthcare for, I don't know, 25 years now, I would argue, you know, and they're very deep in healthcare. I mean, that's, that's a fact. You know, Press Ganey in healthcare is very entrenched. And, but, you know, if you think about the Press Ganey's core healthcare business versus Decipher Confirm it in moment, which has nothing to do with healthcare, by the way. Okay. Decipher Confirm it in moment have no context with healthcare. Press Ganey at its core proposition has healthcare business, right? If you break it down, it's not, the numbers don't add up, at least from my perspective, the numbers don't add up, right? So if the core Press Ganey business in moment itself was $200 million. Confirm it was about 90, 100 million bucks. Decipher is at 30 million bucks, really. So you add these things up and Focus Vision, I'm not sure exactly. So you add these, the total, the total revenue for the Press Ganey business, that acquisition was about 400, 450, 500 million dollars realistically, of which, you know, you subtract all these things out, you only have like 150 million, $200 million worth of business and paying $6.7 billion for just that does not, at least from my perspective, it's like, okay, so something's, you know, it's not going to work, which means you need to get revenue from the other 400, $300 million that's left behind, that has nothing to do with healthcare. So how are you going to make that $300 million, $600 million by doubling the price? Simple. And, you know, and it makes sense, honestly, if you were to just wear your brass tacks, kind of like, you know, kind of game hat on and say like, look, we own 80% of the market, we can double the price. That's probably true, actually, if you own 60-70% of the market, you can double the price pretty easily.

[00:20:14] Sebastian: So Vivek, I wanted to ask you, how is QuestionPro responding to this shift in the market? I know that you've put some kind of offer out there, I've seen it on social media, but I want to better understand what it is you're offering to the industry.

[00:20:30] Vivek: Yeah, we are offering effectively like price stability, fundamentally, right? We are saying that, look, you know, we are, and in fact, we are, we are obviously putting our money where our mouth is, not only price stability, we are reducing the price by half, right? If you're paying, we've already done that with, you know, between the time I made the offer, we've had three customers who already moved over.

[00:20:49] Sebastian: You're reducing the price by half?

[00:20:50] Vivek: Yep. We are just giving you a 50% discount on whatever your current spend is. So if you're paying 60 grand to Qualtrics, then we'll do the same for 30. And then we'll go up by 10% every year for the next three years. But we will also need a three-year contract. So it's not like without catches, let me just, you know, it's not like, hey, we can do a one-year contract because that's simply not, because we are taking on a huge amount of risk on our side, from our perspective, we are taking on a huge amount of risk and, you know, and so on. So I'm trying to balance the amount of risk that we can take to the amount of market share we can capture because of through this process really, right? It's a subjective argument. I wouldn't say that I have everything nailed, but at least, at least from what I've heard from almost every single CEO of every single market research company is they want price stability. They don't want, and Qualtrics in the past have always, always increased price by at least 20 to 30% every year consistently for the last few years. Okay. We've heard that from every single Qualtrics customers of ours saying that, yeah, I mean, the big portion of why we chose you is simply, you know, we just wanted price stability. We just can't keep paying 30% in a year over year, it going up at 20, 30% year over year. So that's kind of the real reason why most, most customers want to, want to switch from Qualtrics. And now with the added exposure of ConfirmIt and Decipher, the same logic applies. And what we're going to do in our offer is, you know, you know, if you, if you're currently paying for simplicity sake, or if you're currently paying ConfirmIt a hundred grand, we will, we will offer a question proof of 50 with a 10% increase over the next three years. So it'll come back to 74 or 80K really. So it'll still be lower than what you're paying. But we'll start off and we'll start off at 50 and then go up by 10% every year for the next three years. That's our current offer. And, you know, most people seem to like it, frankly. It's, I mean, it's, it's a reasonable, it's a reasonable change. Yes, it does cut into our profit margins the first year, but we've kind of make it up for the next year, two and year three.

[00:22:53] Sebastian: So Vivek, how does an agency call in this offer with you? Do they come to you basically with their contract from Decipher, Qualtrics, whatever they got? Pretty much. And say, Hey Vivek, cut this in half.

[00:23:06] Vivek: Exactly. That's what we did over the weekend. You know, you know, you know, so yeah. Not Santa Claus. I mean, like, look, I mean, this is a market capture opportunity and also, let's all be honest about this, right? I mean, software pricing is very, very flexible. At the end of the day, a large portion, I mean, if you really want to, you know, pass through this conversation, a large portion of software, most people don't understand it. A large portion of software pricing is actually sales costs. If you think about it, right. Not necessarily production costs really. Right. And our, you know, the production costs are amortized over everybody and sales costs are actually pretty high. Sales and marketing on most software companies is, you know, it's almost as big as the R&D spend item, really. Right. So if you think about it, I am actually cutting my sales and marketing costs significantly.

[00:24:02] Sebastian: Right.

[00:24:02] Vivek: If a customer comes to me and says like, hey, look, man, I saw this on LinkedIn and, you know, and it would have cost me, you know, some more money to just to get to them to begin with. Let's assume that. Right. And then there is a significant cost reduction over there. And I'm effectively sharing that cost back, you know, and say, hey, look, it doesn't cost us a shit ton of money now to go through this process. So that is, I won't say it's 100% there, but it's some percentage of that. I can't tell you exactly what is our cost reduction because of this exercise. But I can tell you nearly everybody has noticed it. And that's because of the price increases that Qualtrics has done over the years. It's not just, you know, people understand there's a one time, you know, massive cost increase here and there. But that has not been the case in the past with Qualtrics. So therefore, that's the reason why people are coming out of the woodwork and saying that, no, we are not going to be able to sustain a 30% annual cost increase over the next five years. And so therefore, let's look for alternatives. And we are one of the alternatives, obviously, that's available right now.

[00:25:14] Sebastian: Vivek, if folks want to get in touch with you about this offer that you're putting out there, what's the best way?

[00:25:20] Vivek: Probably just email me or just LinkedIn. I'm always on LinkedIn, as you know. So in fact, today, somebody, you know, CEO of a research firm reached out to me, and we just kind of chatted up a little bit, and then I passed them on to the right team. We have different sales teams that operate for different regions globally. But if anybody contacts me on LinkedIn, pretty easy to contact me. You know, my first name, my last name, Vivek Bhaskar, you can search it up. And I do respond to every single message on LinkedIn, except for people who are trying to sell me some shit. But those ones, some SDRs, I'm like, no, I'm not going to respond to the SDRs. But if anybody wants to get in touch with me on LinkedIn, obviously, I'll reach out back to them, and then I'll pass them on to the right team.

[00:26:04] Sebastian: Awesome. Vivek, thanks for being on the show today.

[00:26:07] Vivek: All right. Thanks, Sebastian.

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