How a cancer survivor and his two sons built an $8 billion software startup

Qualtrics had filed for an initial public offering in the US and was planning to raise about $500 million. SAP CEO Bill McDermott preempted the IPO with an all-cash offer

The tech industry’s newest billionaires are a pair of brothers who started a software company in their parents’ basement in Utah. Now Ryan and Jared Smith are selling Qualtrics International Inc. to European giant SAP SE for $8 billion -- and they’ll get to keep running the business.

Ryan, 40, is the chief executive and public face of a startup that -- unusually -- resisted taking venture money for over a decade before finally agreeing to deals with Accel and Sequoia Capital. Last valued at $2.5 billion, Qualtrics makes customer-survey software used by the likes of Microsoft Corp. to General Electric