Exclusive Ryan Smith interview: the billion dollar techie obsessed with fighting cancer

This week, Adrian sits down for an exclusive chat with Ryan Smith, the charismatic Utah founder of the €2bn software firm Qualtrics.As well as being one of the fastest growing tech companies in the world, Smith is on a mission to battle cancer. He started his company when he quit college to look after his father, who was diagnosed with cancer. While his dad survived, Qualtrics’ Irish boss Dermot Costello passed away earlier this year from cancer. (Costello, a huge presence in the Irish tech industry, spoke about this at length in a written interview with Adrian in January when he new he had only days to live. You can read it in full here: https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/news/tech-boss-choosing-to-define-his-life-by-optimism-not-illness-36456505.html)Smith talks about Costello’s importance to him personally and to Qualtrics and explains why the company has named its new Dublin headquarters after Costello.He also talks about his zeal for ‘5 For The Fight’, the $50m campaign he set up to battle cancer via research and how the Irish chapter has already raised close to €200,000 in less than a year.Smith also talks about the “underbelly” of the tech boom, which comes as in the form of soaring rents and property prices.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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