May 3, 2005 4:00 AM PDT
Newsmaker: For Intuit, 'unanswered prayers' spell success
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and certain things don't always turn out like you want. But I think that for CEOs looking for growth opportunities, the government is not standing in the way.
You came up through Bain and Procter & Gamble. Do you think that training prepared you for what turned out to be some pretty tough times in the business?
Cook: I think so. We did have a very tough time in the beginning. We got no attention from the press, and most people believed what we were doing was wrong.
I think the reason we succeeded is exactly what you described--that there was a certain culture that I and some of the other people in the company brought with us from a place like Procter & Gamble. That allowed us to understand consumers and high-volume technology products in a way that was different than most in the industry.
How so?
Cook: I came out of a consumer products background, in which things sell, on average, for two bucks. And so you have to understand customers in a fundamentally different way. You have to understand economics and pricing so you can make money at very low prices, and understand how to deal with millions of consumers. That's a different art than what is typically taught at an Oracle, for instance.
Speaking of Oracle, Larry Ellison talks about the inevitable consolidation of the enterprise software business. How do you see the pieces falling into place over the next three to five years? Will the big companies just continue to get bigger and swallow up or push aside the small fry that can't match that kind of scale?
Cook: No, I don't think that either history or the future will match that description exactly. It's more subtle because there are two trends happening at once. On one hand, you've had for 20 years a consolidation of some established software categories. How many operating systems are there today for PCs? How many word processor companies are in the game? How many big database companies? How many game software companies?
You can count them on one hand.
Cook: Yeah. There are a lot fewer than there used to be, and you see the same thing happening in Internet shopping. There used to be a ton of Internet malls. Now you've got Amazon and eBay.
There is a natural process in industries that have high fixed costs to reward the high-share players with substantial profitability. That makes it hard for low-share players because they have to amortize all those development costs over a small base of buyers. So this is not new. It has been going on for 20 years.
You've talked about that eureka moment, when you came up with the idea for Intuit. But that's not something you can really teach people. You can't say, "Go ahead now and be creative."
Cook: I think you can teach people, actually. We now put a great focus on that inside the company. People are inherently creative. They just don't know, inherently, how to go about thinking about inventing new businesses.
In other words, you're talking about teaching them to be more entrepreneurial?
Cook: Basically, that's right--to teach them not to be more entrepreneurial, but to be successfully entrepreneurial.
Are there lessons you've learned about how to compete and beat Microsoft at its own game?
Cook: Well, it's not its own game, first of all. There's no divine right to any part of this software infrastructure. They only win when you make mistakes. Lotus and WordPerfect didn't even put a team on the field. After years of trying to get Lotus and WordPerfect to write for Windows--and they refused--Microsoft launched Windows 3 with Office on Windows, and Lotus and WordPerfect didn't even have a product. They gave Microsoft a monopoly in their core business. D-u-m-b! That wasn't a Microsoft victory. That was Lotus and WordPerfect leaving the battle.
Excuse me for interjecting, but Microsoft does have a track record, in which it they usually gets things right by the third or fourth iteration.
Cook: And it shouldn't be easy for Microsoft to be coming to market with a merely acceptable product. So just stay focused on the customer. The best defense is a great offense. When Microsoft entered the tax software market, our business grew
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Intuit Inc., CEO, suit, merger, talent
While I USED to like thier software, they have joined the
bandwagon of products that expire. Quicken 2002 no longer
accepts data from my bank. Why? to force me into purchasing a
newer copy of Quicken. You'd never buy a car that only lasted
for a few years... you wouldn't buy ANYTHNG if you knew that it
had a very limited lifespan.
Quicken has become so much BLOAT, that MS just as soon own
it. Quickbooks for Mac is such a disaster, and has been for
years.
I think Intuit USED to be good, now they are at the top of my
"Greed Creed" list.
couldn't be happier. Sure, Quicken could use some optimizations,
but what program couldn't? As for the upgrading, one reason for it
is that standards change and banks change. What I mean is, banks
over the years adjust and change how they deliver your data online.
As a result, the products that receive that data must change and
adapt and upgrades are necessary. Overall, if I only have to spend
$30-60 every couple of years, I'm not going complain. They are
solid products and I couldn't be happier for their success.
several times over the years to get one or two
new features. With each upgrade, however, the
product became progressively less convenient and
cluttered. Soon there were mountains of useless
financial advice, the quality of explanations of
certain tax issues became less clearly written,
there were inexplicable dependencies on the
Internet for useless content, etc. All-in-all,
the product simply became more fluff than
function and they lost me as a customer.
For many people, it was the only reason to stick
with Windows. Certainly, it's why we still had a
Windows system image even up until about 18
months ago at the house. Despite it's
popularity, I think it's losing its way and
becoming too complacent. Remove the glitz, boost
the productivity, and port it to Linux / make it
cross-platform; improve the reconciliation
process, start providing decent accounting
services to complement the software, maybe even
work with cash register makers to add a
universal receipt barcode so that I can wave my
receipts past a computer and have them
automagically entered and categorized...
But alas, they are just Intuit...
I would expect to be able to drive my car for more than 2 years. If you bought a car, would you expect it to run forever with out up keep? Financial software is dependent upon changing criteria and up keep is required. Perhaps you should try out some share ware instead of professional software known for its accuracy.
I admire his sense of ethic, the courage he showed while taking the risk to build his business and the amount of work it took him and his team to build Intuit the way it is today. I believe that his constant focus on following his moral values and hope to make a difference in people's life is at the core of Intuit success.
I hope we will be able to follow the same path at SQLFusion, LLC. He is the best example to follow.
- intuit's scott cook
- by May 7, 2005 10:08 PM PDT
- Intuit is a dirty company in regards to it's Canadian Macintosh
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(8 Comments)customers. Intuit buys it's competitor MYOB in Canada, then
provides lousy support. Intuit produces Quickbooks for Mac and
then kills it, Quicken & quicktax a year later for the Mac. It will be a
great day when Simply Accounting comes back to Mac and Intuit
dies. One can only hope.