{"id":116828,"date":"2024-10-21T21:52:50","date_gmt":"2024-10-21T14:52:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=116828"},"modified":"2024-10-21T21:52:50","modified_gmt":"2024-10-21T14:52:50","slug":"intuit-asked-us-to-delete-part-of-this-decoder-episode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=116828","title":{"rendered":"Intuit asked us to delete part of this Decoder episode"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"fluid\"\r\n     data-ad-layout-key=\"-fb+5w+4e-db+86\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"7910942971\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"content\">\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup mb-20 font-fkroman text-22 leading-150 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white first-letter:float-left first-letter:mr-18 first-letter:font-polysans-mono first-letter:text-[117px] first-letter:font-medium first-letter:leading-[.72] dark:first-letter:text-franklin\">Today\u2019s episode of <em>Decoder<\/em>, well \u2014 it\u2019s a ride. I\u2019m talking to Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi, who\u2019s built Intuit into a juggernaut business software company through a series of major acquisitions. Quicken and QuickBooks are incredibly well known as personal finance and small business accounting software, but nearly everything else \u2014 TurboTax, Mailchimp, Credit Karma, and loads more \u2014 were acquisitions of some kind along the way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">That leads to a lot of challenging structure questions that Sasan and I really got into \u2014 integrating all those companies and their different approaches to software requires big decisions, and Intuit made a big decision handling it all by betting on interoperability that I found fascinating.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">So far, that sounds like normal <em>Decoder<\/em> stuff, right? Here\u2019s where it got weird. I couldn\u2019t have the CEO of Intuit on without asking about tax reform in the United States. Individual income taxes are more complicated in the US than in almost any other developed economy, and Intuit has been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free\">lobbying hard since the late 1990s<\/a> to keep it that way to protect TurboTax, spending nearly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.opensecrets.org\/news\/2024\/02\/turbotax-maker-intuit-spent-millions-in-record-lobbying-blitz-amid-threats-to-tax-prep-industry\/\">$3.8 million in lobbying in 2023 alone<\/a>. There\u2019s been extensive reporting about it. This lobbying has had mixed results: truly free online direct filing with the IRS began as a pilot program this year and is expanding to be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irs.gov\/newsroom\/irs-direct-file-set-to-expand-availability-in-a-dozen-new-states-and-cover-wider-range-of-tax-situations-for-the-2025-tax-filing-season\">available for more than half the US population in 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component clear-both block md:float-left md:mr-30 md:w-[320px] lg:-ml-100\">\n<div class=\"duet--article--sidebar bg-gray-200 mb-20 w-full rounded-sm bg-[#F8F5FF] p-20 [&amp;&gt;*:last-child&gt;*:last-child]:mb-0\">\n<div class=\"[&amp;_p]:font-polysans [&amp;_p]:text-16 [&amp;_p]:font-light [&amp;_p]:leading-130\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Listen to <em>Decoder<\/em>, a show hosted by <em>The Verge<\/em>\u2019s Nilay Patel about big ideas \u2014 and other problems.\u00a0Subscribe\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/welcome-to-decoder\/id1011668648?i=1000496212371&amp;itsct=podcast_box&amp;itscg=30200&amp;ls=1&amp;at=1001l7uV&amp;ct=verge091322\">here<\/a>!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">It\u2019s also not just lobbying: in 2022, a coalition of attorneys general from all 50 states got Intuit to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2022\/5\/4\/23057463\/intuit-141-million-agreement-new-york-attorney-general-turbotax-free\">agree to a $141 million settlement<\/a> that required Intuit to refund low-income Americans who were eligible for free filing but were redirected to paid products. In 2023, the FTC found that TurboTax\u2019s \u201cfree\u201d marketing was willfully deceptive, and after the agency won an appeal early this year, Intuit was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2024\/1\/23\/24047807\/turbotax-misleading-advertising-free-tax-file-ftc-final-order\">ordered to stop doing it<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">I asked about that, and Sasan disagreed with me, and we went back and forth for a few minutes on it. It\u2019s <em>Decoder<\/em>; we have exchanges like this all the time, and I didn\u2019t think anything of it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">But then I got a note from Rick Heineman, the chief communications officer at Intuit, who called the line of questioning and my tone \u201cinappropriate,\u201d \u201cegregious,\u201d and \u201cdisappointing\u201d and demanded that we delete that entire section of the recording. I mean, literally \u2014 he wrote a long email that ended with \u201cat the very least the end portion of your interview should be deleted.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">We don\u2019t do that here at <em>The Verge<\/em>. As many of our listeners and readers know, we have a very explicit and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/ethics-statement\">very strict ethics policy<\/a>. The most important thing to note is that we never allow anyone to preview or approve interview questions, and we certainly do not allow anyone to review or alter the work that we publish. I told this to Rick, and he came back and asked that we \u201cdelete that which takes away from the conversation,\u201d which he defined as \u201craised voices\u201d or us \u201cspeaking over each other,\u201d so that \u201clisteners understand your question and the answer Sasan gave.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">I have to be honest with you \u2014 that\u2019s one of the weirdest requests I\u2019ve ever gotten. So here\u2019s what we\u2019re going to do: we\u2019re going to run that whole part of the interview first, unedited, so you can tell me. It\u2019s about five minutes long, and you can decide for yourself. Then we\u2019ll come out of it, and we\u2019ll run the rest of the interview, which, like I said, is an otherwise fascinating episode of <em>Decoder<\/em>. Okay, here\u2019s that bit:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<blockquote class=\"duet--article--blockquote jzbdts2\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup jzbdtsa jzbdts0\"><strong>All right, let\u2019s talk about taxes. You brought it up. Intuit is legendary for running TurboTax and also legendary for lobbying against free direct federal e-filing. How much of your budget is allocated to lobbyists?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup jzbdtsa jzbdts0\">Fundamentally, that\u2019s a wrong premise, and it\u2019s not accurate. In our lobbying, we spend a couple of million dollars fighting for simplified taxes. We don\u2019t lobby against free. And by the way, free is available to all Americans now, which is, if you choose to do your taxes for free, if every American chooses to do their taxes for free, it\u2019s available today through private industry. We have heavily been focused on making taxes simpler. Just tens of millions of lines of tax code makes it very difficult for a customer to understand taxes, much less companies like us that are trying to create \u2014<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup jzbdtsa jzbdts0\"><strong>Wait. The simplest version of taxes is the government just sends you a return and it\u2019s done, and Intuit has lobbied against that. Would you support the government just doing the taxes for people and sending the refunds?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup jzbdtsa jzbdts0\">At the end of the day, you have \u2014<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup jzbdtsa jzbdts0\"><strong>Many countries in the world do that.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup jzbdtsa jzbdts0\">Yeah, but you have to change the tax system. It\u2019s not about software. So if we change the tax system, where \u2014<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup jzbdtsa jzbdts0\"><strong>Are you going to lobby to change the tax system to let the government do a filing for you and send people checks?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup jzbdtsa jzbdts0\">If government wants to change the tax system \u2014<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup jzbdtsa jzbdts0\"><strong>But I\u2019m asking you, you\u2019re spending the dollars, would you lobby for it?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup jzbdtsa jzbdts0\">Lobby for the government changing the tax system?<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup jzbdtsa jzbdts0\"><strong>The simplest version of the tax system would be to just have the government do it and send people their refunds or ask people for money.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup jzbdtsa jzbdts0\">I have more important things to do than to lobby the government to send a tax bill.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup jzbdtsa jzbdts0\"><strong>But you have lobbied against that. That\u2019s what I\u2019m saying. That reporting is clear. You\u2019ve lobbied against&#8230; Intuit, it is not you. Intuit has lobbied against that very specifically.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup jzbdtsa jzbdts0\">Well, I am Intuit, right? And so it\u2019s okay to put me and Intuit in the same verse. We have very much focused on simplifying taxes. That\u2019s what we lobbied for: simplify the tax code. That\u2019s simply what we\u2019ve lobbied for.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup jzbdtsa jzbdts0\"><strong>When you see free direct federal e-filing arrive, I think today, literally today, just before we started speaking, the government announced it will be available in half the states, which is about 60 percent of the population. Does that have a revenue impact on you? Do you get an email saying, \u201cWe project TurboTax revenue will go down by X?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup jzbdtsa jzbdts0\">We do not. Free is available to all consumers today. And so it really is not relevant to our business. And in fact, proof points are always important. In the last five years, two pretty formidable companies got into providing free tax software. One was Credit Karma, before we acquired them, 100 million members. They provided free tax software \u2014 no impact in the tax industry. And then we sold that to another formidable company, and there\u2019s really been no formidable impact to the structure of the tax industry because free is already available.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup jzbdtsa jzbdts0\">Our view, by the way, very strongly, and we\u2019ve been on the record, is that this is a solution looking for a problem. Free already exists. And by the way, what the government is providing is not free. You\u2019re paying. Your tax dollars are going toward building software that already exists for Americans. That\u2019s something that we\u2019ve been on the record and private industry has been on the record, that from our perspective, it doesn\u2019t make sense. Free already exists, so why build another one?<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup jzbdtsa jzbdts0\"><strong>I\u2019m going to ask you this question. I can already tell that you\u2019re going to tell me you disagree with my premise. I am going to ask it anyway. Broadly speaking, I would say the criticism of Intuit\u2019s free products, when it comes to taxes, is that it says it\u2019s free and then, somewhere along the line, they slide you into paying. The government has complained about this. That is a reputation damager for the company.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup jzbdtsa jzbdts0\"><strong>Again, I get emails from <em>Decoder<\/em> listeners asking me what questions to ask you. And it\u2019s that, it\u2019s that dark pattern feeling inside of, in particular, the free tax product. Is that something you want to fix? Do you worry about that damage to the reputation?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup jzbdtsa jzbdts0\">Yeah, I love your question. Let me answer it in two ways. One is there are over 100 million customers that we\u2019ve served for completely free. It\u2019s more than the entire industry combined. So we\u2019re very intentional about making sure that we are a big player when it comes to free tax software. On the other hand, anytime we see something that needs to be improved, we take it very seriously. We take our reputation very seriously. So I can tell you, in the last several years, we\u2019ve been very intentional about going through our advertising, all the way through the product, top to bottom, to really improve where we need to improve, to ensure that customers really understand what they\u2019re eligible for and what they\u2019re not eligible for.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup jzbdtsa jzbdts0\">In fact, last year, one of our advertisements that we ran on TV said, \u201cHey, 37 percent of the population is eligible for free, and these are the qualifications,\u201d just so we could be very clear and transparent. And that\u2019s from what we\u2019ve learned where we can improve. So although I\u2019m proud of the number of customers that we\u2019ve served for free, to me, there\u2019s always something you can learn and always something you can get better at. And this has been an area where we\u2019ve improved our end-to-end experience, from advertising all the way to checkout, to make sure customers are very clear what they\u2019re eligible for. That\u2019s very important to me and very important to the company because our reputation matters.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">All right, what do you think? Was that contentious? Should we have deleted it? You let me know \u2014 I\u2019m open to the feedback. Right now, I\u2019m mostly just amused and a little befuddled.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Here\u2019s the rest of the episode, with some very interesting ideas about how to integrate big acquisitions into a single tech platform inside of it. Also, I asked why Intuit shut down Mint, which honestly, is the thing I should have been the most outraged about.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Okay, Sasan Goodarzi, CEO of Intuit, the rest of <em>Decoder<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><em>This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>Sasan Goodarzi, you are the CEO of Intuit. Welcome to <em>Decoder<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>I am very excited to talk to you. You just announced a bunch of AI products that are interesting. You\u2019ve been changing the company around. Let\u2019s start at the very beginning: Intuit is 40 years old. A lot of people are familiar with your various products like TurboTax or MailChimp. What is Intuit now?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">First of all, with our 40 years young, I\u2019ve been with the company for half that time, and when I stepped into this role, the decision we made was to play a far more meaningful role in the lives of consumers and businesses. So we really started on a path to shift the company from a tax and accounting platform to a platform company. Businesses, in essence, can rely on us to be able to grow and run their business, and consumers can power their financial prosperity. So that\u2019s the path that we started down about five-plus years ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">But most importantly, we said, \u201cHey, we have to create experiences that, in essence, are done for customers, rather than creating workflows where people have to do the work to run their business, and manage their cash flow, or manage their personal financial life.\u201d We need to create done-for-you experiences where we deliver benefits and insights. Like marketing is done for you, we manage your cash flow, quote-to-cash for you; books, accounting, taxes are done for you.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">In order to do that, we bet very early \u2014 almost six years ago \u2014 on data and AI. Frankly, we did it for very practical reasons because in order to do what I just articulated, which is focus on your bottom line, your revenue and profitability as a business, or your financial household savings as a consumer, we have to actually leverage data, your data, and leverage AI to deliver these insights and experiences.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Today, to answer your question, we have become a platform company. What that means from the lens of a consumer and a business is that consumers can use our platform all in one place to be able to build their credit, manage their money, get financial products that they need, like credit cards, loans, insurance, a mortgage for their homes, and also be able to get their taxes done. Then, we help them with, \u201cWhat should you do with your refund?\u201d We now do all of the gamut because we wanted to play a meaningful role in the life of consumers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">For businesses, you can manage your customers, market to your customers, be able to really manage your quote-to-cash, your cash flow, and make sure your books are right for tax time. So now we have all those capabilities. The future for us is how do we create everything in a way that it\u2019s done for you versus you having to do the work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>It\u2019s really interesting that you mentioned starting with AI six years ago. Obviously transformers only really burst on the scene a couple years ago and now that\u2019s really accelerating. So I want to spend some time talking about the differences between the AI technologies you were betting on before and what\u2019s happening now.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>\u00a0But before we get to that, I want to talk about how the company is structured and built. This is a company that is kind of built through acquisitions, maybe entirely built through acquisitions, starting with buying TurboTax in 1993. You spent a combined $19 billion on MailChimp and Credit Karma just in the last four years. How do you think about integrating all those disparate parts? The example of TurboTax for me is particularly interesting, because that became the company. You acquired a company that became the company. Are you thinking that way with MailChimp and Credit Karma as well?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">I love where you started because most people don\u2019t know what you just articulated. In essence, this company started with Scott Cook, our founder, creating Quicken and realizing the way people are using it, they\u2019re small businesses trying to manage their money. That\u2019s what gave birth to what today is our QuickBooks platform. But TurboTax, our payroll offering, MailChimp, Credit Karma, they\u2019re all acquisitions. Particularly, in the last five years, a lot of our platform play and where we are today has been based on a lot of organic innovation and investment. But also, we bought these two big brands, two number ones in their space \u2014 Credit Karma and MailChimp \u2014 because they come with a lot of data and a lot of AI capabilities. In particular, Credit Karma has a lot of machine learning and AI capabilities that we\u2019ve coined Lightbox.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">The intent of all of this is to create one platform. It\u2019s to really integrate the products so that customers in one place can grow their business, run their business, and be able to manage their personal life. I think five years from now, we\u2019re going to look back and go, \u201cWow, the addition of all the things you had, plus what you did with Credit Karma and MailChimp, were the key to ignite the next chapter of the company.\u201d But the answer to your question is: yes, we\u2019re stitching it all together to create one seamless platform.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>Everyone says they can do that. Most companies succeed and fail, right? That\u2019s an inconsistent process. MailChimp, in particular, was a big company with its own culture, and that integration was a little messy. We had the new CEO of MailChimp, Rania Succar, <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/24115515\/intuit-mailchimp-ceo-rania-succar-acquisition-email-marketing-ai-small-business-decoder-interview\"><strong>on the show<\/strong><\/a><strong> a while back, and we talked about that integration. How is Rania changing the culture because she\u2019s Intuit\u2019s CEO, she\u2019s not the founder CEO that they had before. You\u2019re the CEO of the umbrella corporation. How do you think about having all these companies and all of their CEOs under you?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">The way we run the company, we\u2019re very intentional about goal setting. There are four things that are key artifacts that create who we are today. There\u2019s our true north goal, which is how we set goals for the company. Two, it\u2019s our mission. Third, it\u2019s our values. Then, last but not least is our strategy in the five bets of the company. Those four things are the way we run the company. The reason I started there is we have very specific leaders that lead parts of the company, but the expectation, the goals, are about how we are creating a platform.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">For instance, in the case of MailChimp, the charter of MailChimp is not to be run standalone. It has two charters, just like Payments, Payroll, our accounting team. It\u2019s about how we integrate across the platform because we win as a platform. That\u2019s a lot of what\u2019s ignited our growth over the years. But then two, whether it\u2019s MailChimp, Payments, Payroll, or TurboTax, they have to be good products, and they have to perform on a standalone basis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">So the expectations are that we win as a platform and how we integrate our products to be able to win. That\u2019s how I measure every leader. So if you were to spend a week in the company, what you\u2019d really get a sense for is what we\u2019re trying to do to win with our business platform, what we\u2019re trying to do to win with our consumer platform, versus there\u2019s a bunch of pieces and parts and everybody is working towards their own true north. There\u2019s really one true north that we really work towards, and that\u2019s how we run the company. It\u2019s our leadership expectations, it\u2019s the mechanisms of the company and how we measure success.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>One of the things that\u2019s really interesting here is these component platforms are still divisions, right? MailChimp has a CEO. Credit Karma was a big company that you acquired. Usually when companies like Intuit acquire something like Credit Karma, you promise the people who work there a measure of independence, but you\u2019re talking about stitching it together into a platform.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>There\u2019s some technical stuff there that I definitely want to talk about, but there is just the operational side of saying, \u201cNow you\u2019re part of a bigger thing,\u201d while still keeping the walls up and still saying, \u201cWe have different CEOs.\u201d That\u2019s very different from most other tech companies. How did you make that choice, and is that durable over the long term?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Yeah, first of all, I love the nature of your question. Let me be clear, Rania is no longer the CEO of MailChimp. She is the segment leader and senior vice president that runs our growth segment, and MailChimp is a part of it. We did that very intentionally at the beginning, just from a cultural integration. But we don\u2019t have CEOs within the company. Even Joe Kauffman, who runs our Credit Karma business, is now reporting to Mark Notarainni, who owns our consumer business, and he is the head of Credit Karma, as a senior vice president who runs Credit Karma.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">That CEO element was just a cultural transition. We have leaders who, when they look at their paycheck, it\u2019s Intuit, and their expectation is to serve our customers. It goes back to the way I answered the question earlier. If you were within the company, what you\u2019d get a sense for is really two things. One, we have mission-based teams because in order for teams to have a cause to fight for, they have to know they\u2019re fighting to create the best payment capabilities, bill pay capability, accounting capability. And that\u2019s what we term \u201cmission-based teams.\u201d They have a mission and their focus is that mission: Payments, MailChimp, TurboTax, whatever it may be.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">The other element is the leader\u2019s job: the mission, the platform, and to win as a platform. So, our discipline, our rigor, and how we run the company is actually our strength. From the outside looking in, it may seem like they are parts and pieces, but within, we\u2019re all solving for the same thing, which is how do you win as a platform?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>Rania hinted that that change was coming when she was on the show, so I wanted to ask you about it.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">That change came and went.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>One of the things I always ask everybody is how they make decisions. Tell me about that decision. Obviously she knew it was coming when she was on the show. You\u2019ve since made that call. What does that look like to walk up to someone and say, \u201cHey, you were the CEO, we\u2019re changing it. We\u2019re not doing this anymore\u201d? How did that unfold for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Well, when we make an acquisition, whether it\u2019s Credit Karma or MailChimp, before we make the acquisition, we jointly create \u2014 with the founder of the company and our broad leadership team that\u2019s informed of the potential acquisition \u2014 a six-pager. And this six-pager lays out: What are we going to do together? Why are we buying? What\u2019s the vision of what we\u2019re trying to create? And the vision is to integrate to create one platform.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">What are the key priorities? Particularly, we focus on acceleration, not integration \u2014 although everything we do in the product is integration. In a company of our scale and size, clarity matters a lot. Even basic things like what we will do in the first 90 days, what we\u2019ll do in the first six months, and, clearly as important, what we\u2019re <em>not<\/em> going to do, is all part of not only the six-pager, but the playbook.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Part of the playbook all along was that we\u2019re going to create one platform. When I spoke to Rania years ago to take on this role, it was very clear that at the end of the day, she would take on the CEO role, and that would be the title for an interim period for a cultural transformation. But her charter is the same. It\u2019s more about the SVP of the category. And so it\u2019s important to have those conversations upfront.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">We\u2019re not interested in leaders who are pursuing titles. Even when we recruit from the outside, we\u2019re interested in folks who want to really fight for the same cause. They\u2019re in love with our mission. Of course, everybody has to be thoughtful about what\u2019s right for them as individuals. So we take all those things into consideration. But we have these conversations upfront, and it was just part of the transition.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>Tell me how Intuit is structured now, then. How is the company broadly organized?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">We\u2019re really structured as a platform. What that means is we have a leader who runs our consumer platform, and a leader that runs our business platform. We actually have a leader who looks at the network effect and ecosystem effect between consumer and businesses. Then, we have a CTO who is responsible for all of our technology in the company, all of the spend in technology.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">The segment leaders \u2014 the consumer segment leader, the business segment leader \u2014 decide what\u2019s most important to drive growth and deliver for customers. It\u2019s our CTO that owns all the technology that then decides: how do I need to ensure that I allocate the dollars and the people to achieve what we want to achieve across the platform? And then we have a customer success platform leader that owns all of customer success across the company. Of course, then we have very important roles around M&amp;A, people and places, legal and finance.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">But we run the company as a platform, and the leaders, in the case of the consumer and the business segment leader, they\u2019re responsible for the outcomes of the segment. I also hold them accountable for how the company performs because I want to make sure we\u2019re making trade-offs to win as a company for customers and not just have blinders on in our segment. We\u2019re, in essence, organized around being a platform.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>If you\u2019ve got the two platform leaders \u2014 I\u2019m assuming they report to you \u2014 and then you\u2019ve got a CTO who\u2019s making technology decisions, I\u2019m assuming you tie-break a lot there. If you\u2019re responsible for the success of the consumer platform, for example, and you really think you need some technology built or built in a different way than the company currently has, and the answer is no, I\u2019m guessing that comes to you.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">I don\u2019t tie-break enough, and sometimes I talk to the team about if enough stuff is getting to me. So I don\u2019t play a huge tie-breaker role. It\u2019s actually even better today than it was\u00a0 three or four years ago. And the reason is [Marianna Tessel] and [Mark Notarainni], Mariana runs our business segment; Mark runs our consumer segment. Mariana used to be our CTO; she was heading up all of technology for the company before this role. Mark was actually leading all of our customer success before stepping into running the consumer platform. And we promoted both of their proteges.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">My point is there is a very thoughtful collaboration between the team because we\u2019re very clear about our strategy. We\u2019re very clear about the deliverables for both the year and the next three years out. And a lot of the discussions and tie-breaking happens between the team.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">I get involved particularly, and very deeply in our one- and three-year mechanism. That\u2019s a mechanism where not only do we review priorities, but we actually review: What are the deliverables for this year? What are the deliverables for the next three years? What\u2019s resource, what\u2019s not, and why? Our CFO Sandeep Singh Aujla and I will get involved if we feel like there are certain areas where the team has made all of the resource allocation trade-offs but we have an opportunity to fund even more opportunities. We\u2019ll get involved in those types of decisions.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">I have a lot of gratitude for my team. Because of the mobility that we\u2019ve had, they\u2019ve seen all parts of the company. There\u2019s a lot of natural debate and trade-off decisions that are made within the team without an escalation to me. But once in a while, maybe once every couple of months, there\u2019s something I have to get involved with just to break a tie or make a resource decision.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>The other challenge of building a company through acquisitions that you then have to integrate is the technical foundations of all those companies are different. The data storage requirements of those companies are different. The databases, the customer databases, all that has to be integrated at technical level. How are you managing that? That seems like the biggest problem you have, to buy a company the size of MailChimp and say, \u201cOK, we\u2019re plugging you into QuickBooks.\u201d Those are very different products. How does that work?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">We do a lot of diligence before we make an acquisition. Let me be clear, no matter how good you are at due diligence, there are things you\u2019re going to get surprised with.\u00a0 But the three areas where we spend a lot of time on due diligence is, one, just culture fit. I have a very strong belief that no matter how great of a strategic fit something is, if you\u2019ve got two cultures that may clash, then it\u2019s just not going to work. So we do a deep culture assessment, and I personally get involved, depending on the size of the deal, to really assess the culture for myself as well. We, of course, do a very deep strategic assessment. Then we do a very deep capability assessment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">So this goes to your question. We will assess. What are their compensation schemes? What are the systems they have? But most importantly, we really thoroughly assess both their data and technology capabilities. We have come a long way and so has technology in terms of integration.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">To specifically answer your question, one of the wonderful things about Credit Karma and Mailchimp (but I\u2019ll just use Credit Karma in this case as an example), is the amount of consumer data that they have and the amount of consumer data that we have within TurboTax. The reason it was a very attractive acquisition is then what we can do, with customers\u2019 consent, to use their data to deliver benefits to them that otherwise nobody else can. Because we have a 360-degree view of their information. Rather than having to take their data lake, our data lake, and the cloud that they sit on, which is Google Cloud (the rest of the company is on AWS); rather than integrating, we actually innovated across the technologies, where we built a data pipe where the data is shared without all the data having to be all integrated.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">We\u2019ve actually built bridges in terms of how Google Cloud and AWS work together. So a lot of our technology innovation, because we\u2019re API-oriented and services-based, is actually about connection vs. integration. That\u2019s really what has propelled what\u2019s possible. Credit Karma has great platform \u2014 data platform, AI platform \u2014 we didn\u2019t have to replace it or create one integration of a platform. We built pipes where we can achieve the product innovation for our customers. So that\u2019s the approach that we\u2019ve been taking, and that\u2019s what we do in the due diligence just to make sure that we can in fact do that. With a platform of this scale, if you have to rewrite the entire code or integrate the stacks, it just becomes too much work and not worth it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>That is an acquisition strategy. We\u2019re going to depend on technical interoperability, and we can build data pipes between different cloud providers. It seems like that strategy has been working. There have to be downsides of that strategy. What are the downsides?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Well, the big downside is what I mentioned earlier, which is anytime you do due diligence, there are things you\u2019re going to be surprised at with the upside; there are going to be things that you are surprised on the downside. The devil is in the details. For instance, in one of the acquisitions, it wasn\u2019t on any cloud, and we\u2019ve been working on getting all of it on AWS. That\u2019s taken about six months longer than what we thought. That\u2019s an example of where you get surprised, where you assume it\u2019s going to take a six-month period to do something, but it takes a year.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">We sort of baked that into our thinking, that we\u2019re going to be wrong in certain instances. There are things that\u2019s OK to be wrong in, and there are things that\u2019s not OK to be wrong in. So the areas where it\u2019s not OK to be wrong is the assumption that you can actually build a data bridge and a data pipe between the platforms. If you\u2019re wrong about that, then that sort of blows up the whole premise of what you thought you could do in that timeframe.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Now, the great news is \u2014 knock on wood \u2014 we\u2019ve proved that out across our acquisitions. The things that are OK to get wrong, and most of the time you\u2019re not going to get perfectly right, is: how long is it going to take to do something? And the example I just articulated, in the case of transforming one of the acquisitions to be entirely cloud based, it\u2019s taking about six months longer than what we thought. That\u2019s OK. It\u2019s just an element of time versus an element of doability.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>Do you ever have broader questions about the strategy overall? I\u2019m guessing the person who goes and negotiates with AWS would <em>love<\/em> a little bit more demand from whatever\u2019s on Google Cloud to say, \u201cLook, we\u2019ve got more scale, lower the rate.\u201d Those are the kinds of trade-offs that are made. Do you ever have those conversations where actually increasing scale or concentrating further would be the benefit versus interoperability?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">We do have those conversations. First of all, I had the pleasure of being our CIO for a couple of years, and I was deeply involved in shifting the company from all of our own data centers to AWS. I worked very closely with the Amazon team and [CEO Andy Jassy] to really drive their roadmap, but get us prepared to go to the cloud. One of the reasons I started there is that one of the decisions we made very early on is to build our capabilities, our apps, and the way we built cloud-ready apps was so we would never get married to or stuck only with one platform. We wanted interoperability.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">We actually like the fact that we\u2019re on multiple clouds. With the age of AI, we\u2019ve built our own large language models, but we also experiment using about nine, 10 other large language models externally. I actually think it\u2019s very healthy to understand what works in what situation and what doesn\u2019t work. Multiple clouds, or in this case multiple LLMs, are actually quite healthy because you learn faster, you pivot faster.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">But we have these conversations all the time. Probably that most heated debate that we had five years ago, when I stepped into this role, was whether or not we would bet on AI. Because AI wasn\u2019t popular then; it wasn\u2019t the buzzword that it is today. We debate technology bets. We debate interoperability versus going all in with a partner all the time. Because it\u2019s actually critical; they\u2019re critical forks in the road and critical decisions for the future. So I\u2019m definitely involved in those key discussions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>Interoperability is really interesting, especially for a company built through acquisition. Regulators around the world right now? Not so hot on acquisitions. I\u2019m assuming you have some thoughts about that.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>But the other thing they\u2019re really into is interoperability. They are saying to various companies, \u201cYou have to make your products and services interoperable with each other, so you can lower switching costs, and consumers and businesses can have a vibrant market to pick and choose their vendors from.\u201d If you\u2019ve built the company through acquisition and interoperability, do you think some regulator\u2019s going to come to you and say, \u201cAll of the interoperability that you built for Credit Karma and QuickBooks, you got to open that up to another financial accounting vendor?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">All of our decisions are based on delivering for our customers, winning in the marketplace, and driving growth for the future. We don\u2019t make decisions that are in the context of: what will a regulator think about something? We have very solid governance in the company. We have data, privacy, and security principles, which we abide by, all focused on our customers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">To your question, we don\u2019t spend a lot of time worrying about how now that we\u2019ve built the company in this way to win and deliver for customers, what could a regulator do. At the end of the day, regulators generally want to do the right thing. Generally, it\u2019s not politically driven. Sometimes it is, but our view is that they always want to do the right thing, and we always want to do the right thing. We would always have a conversation if there\u2019s any areas they have questions on. But our focus, our compass, is very clear.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>Would you let your competitors use the interoperability hooks that you\u2019ve built for your own company to interface with theirs?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">We live in a world of competition. When we think about the businesses that we serve, what we really care about is the businesses that are transacting on our platform, but sometimes they will use Square payments; sometimes they will use PayPal; sometimes they will use other payroll providers. We provide the capability to integrate those capabilities on our platform because we want the customer to be able to serve their customer the way they want. When you look at our AI-driven expert platform strategy, a very important element of it is that it\u2019s open, and it\u2019s open because it helps us deliver for our customers and win.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>Let me ask you the key <em>Decoder<\/em> question, which we have been circling around this whole time. How do you make decisions? You\u2019ve been there a long time, you\u2019ve grown with the company, you\u2019ve made a bunch of big decisions. What\u2019s your framework?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Probably one of our largest advantages in the company is, what we term our \u201cIntuit operating system.\u201d It\u2019s the mechanisms in which we run the company \u2014 and this is important context to answer your question \u2013 if you look at our mechanisms, we have a set of mechanisms around how we set expectations and set strategy. We have a set of mechanisms in terms of execution, and then we have a set of mechanisms in terms of how we galvanize the leaders at all levels and all of our employees. Therefore, we have mechanisms like our six-year plan. And it\u2019s not a financial plan. It\u2019s actually just looking way into the future and looking back to consider what has to change. We have three- and one-year plan mechanisms. I won\u2019t bore you with all the mechanisms, but that\u2019s important context to answer your question.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Our six-year mechanism is structured such that we question everything that we do. One of the things that we believe in strongly \u2014 I believe in strongly \u2014 is to never fall in love with what you\u2019ve declared, and always fall in love with the customer, the trends, and how the world is moving. So our mechanisms are set up for certain outcomes and decisions. With our six-year mechanism, the question is: Does anything change in our strategy and bets? And if so, what is it? So the output of it is: what changed and why? Our three- and one-year plan mechanism is all structured around not only the key priorities, but the actual deliverables \u2014 what we call input goals \u2014 which is a best practice we borrowed from Amazon where every input goal has a leader assigned to it, has success measures, we ensure that it\u2019s resourced, and we also know what\u2019s below the line. Those are all decisions that our teams make, but the decisions that I make are capital allocation, because not everything is created equal, and where we put our dollars and capital.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">The last one is we spend a lot of time on culture and people, and those are decisions I\u2019m involved with. Just last week, we had an all-day session, which we have four times a year, focused on people and succession planning. Those are decisions: who\u2019s a potential successor for key roles? A principle that we have is teams can propose who the successors are, but if it\u2019s a direct report to the CEO one day, I decide if they\u2019re actual successors. So every mechanism is set up for an output and a set of decisions, and we\u2019re generally pretty clear: Are those decisions I get to make? Are there decisions the team gets to make? We try to push as many decisions as we can into the organization because most decisions are two-way doors. You can always reverse them. But that\u2019s the structure and framework that we use. It\u2019s our Intuit operating system.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>There\u2019s one key decision I have to ask you about, since we\u2019re here, and you mentioned things fitting into the Intuit operating system. I was a very loyal Mint user. You decided to shut that whole service down. What was your thinking there?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">There was a very small cohort of customers who were using Mint, and we decided that in order truly to have a platform that we can use to serve millions of customers, we would port most, if not all, of the capabilities into Credit Karma. I can\u2019t remember the exact percentage, but I think 30\u201340 percent of Mint\u2019s customers are now on Credit Karma \u2014\u00a0 by the way, happier than before \u2014\u00a0 and I think there\u2019s 20 percent of customers who we can\u2019t serve today with Credit Karma.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">But we\u2019re OK with that because there was a very small cohort of customers who we could serve on Mint, and we ultimately made the decision to be one platform. By the way, if there\u2019s anything we can do to help you, send me an email. My email address is available on our website. Anything I can do to help you, we will. But we can\u2019t replace Mint exactly the way it was.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>How many people are working at Intuit today?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">We\u2019re about 17,000 strong and growing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>So the interesting thing about growing is you just laid off about 10 percent of your folks this year; 1,800 people. You said you\u2019re going to hire another 1,800 people to focus on AI. Inside of that decision, and this is the one I really want to press on, I think the company announced 1,000-plus of those 1,800 people were low performers. How did you decide which of those people were low performers?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">When I look back at the last five years, there are big decisions that I\u2019ve made and then there are really, really tough decisions that we\u2019ve made \u2014 that I\u2019ve made. And this is one of them. At the end of the day, we believe everyone we have in the company is very talented. When you make a decision like this, you\u2019re impacting people\u2019s lives. So, for one, these decisions never come easy. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">The second is, we were very clear across five areas, particularly our five bets. We\u2019ve seen so much progress \u2014 this is part of our six-year and three-year mechanism \u2014 that as we thought about the next two, three, and five years, we felt that it was important to accelerate investments in five key areas; the majority of them are around our big bets. We also felt that in order to do that, there was an opportunity to reallocate dollars from within while we continue to add to our overall investment portfolio.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">So this was all driven by acceleration, momentum, and growth. In terms of how we picked those folks, it was all bottoms up. We have a performance management system where managers will go in and they will rate their employees. Generally, 10 percent of the company is what we call \u201ctrajectory changing,\u201d and about 20 percent \u201cexceeds expectations.\u201d So about 30 percent of the company is \u201cexceeds\u201d or \u201ctrajectory changing.\u201d And generally about 60 to 65 percent are \u201cachieved expectations.\u201d By the way, we have very bold goals, and to achieve expectations is actually really strong performance. And generally five to 10 percent are \u201cdoes not meet expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">That\u2019s a process that we go through once a year, where managers will put into the system their ratings. So this was done bottoms up at every layer of the organization. It was not a top-down decision. The decision that we made this year was that, in order to move with the velocity that we need to move to reallocate the resources and the dollars, we would, lay off the 10 percent\u2014 it was actually more like 8 percent \u2014 that fell into the bucket of \u201cdoes not meet expectations.\u201d So that\u2019s the very bottoms up, very disciplined and rigorous [process], although very tough in terms of how we made the decision.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>I feel like a lot of people spend some time every year using enterprise software to rate their employees. I certainly do it. My bosses do it to me. Do you feel like that data is good? Do you feel like that data was actually telling you something? Because at various companies that I\u2019ve worked with, I can tell you that data meant nothing, and at some companies it means a lot.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">For us, it\u2019s everything. What I mean by everything is that for us, it\u2019s about goal setting because goal setting is about: what does great look like? And performance management for us is performance management at all levels. We need to performance manage our trajectory changing so that they can become a better version of themselves, and we need the performance management that does not meet expectations. So performance management, for us, is like coaching a basketball team. You\u2019re focused on making every person on the team great. There\u2019s somebody that never comes off the bench; there\u2019s somebody that\u2019s the star of the team. That\u2019s what we try to become great at.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Goal setting for us, discussions on a monthly basis, and then the rating at the end of the year: it\u2019s about the system. I would say the system for us is very, very important. I would also tell you that it\u2019s a conversation I had with the whole company this year. We needed to up our game in this area. When I look at the last several years, we have not been as great as we need to be in terms of really being great at setting goals for every individual \u2014 that\u2019s meaningful goals with very clear success measures \u2014 and then having conversations because it\u2019s a two-way street in terms of how you become a better version of yourself. So we actually take the end-to-end approach to goal setting, to performance management, very seriously.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>Do you think that shows up in the products? I will tell you, a lot of <em>Decoder <\/em>listeners have asked to have you on the show basically for feature requests and bug reports. There\u2019s other stuff that a lot of people ask us to ask you about, but in particular, the software isn\u2019t as good as it should be. You\u2019re moving me from my desktop client to a web client because that\u2019s where the platform is, and the web client is not nearly feature complete for things like keyboard commands. Do you think that this process is going to make the products better?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Everything that we do around goal setting and performance management is about delivering for customers. That\u2019s the whole, sole purpose of why I exist, why our team exists: it\u2019s all about the product. So the short answer is yes. I would also separate what I just said from the premise of your question, which is desktop to the cloud. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">The reality is we were born 40 years ago. We were born in the era of DOS, and we were born as a desktop company. Frankly, our desktop customers, both on the consumer side and on the business side, built who we are today. At the same time, the workflows, the features, and the functionality of desktop are not intended to be translated to the cloud. If we did that, we would not be able to continue to grow with most of our customers or acquire new customers, particularly as we\u2019re trying to create done-for-you experiences versus features.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">A lot of our focus is: how do we make the transition for our desktop customers as easy as possible to the cloud? That said, if you look at any company that\u2019s had to go from server to cloud, or desktop to cloud, or on-premise to cloud, there\u2019s always a lot of growing pains because cloud platforms are not a replication of desktop platforms. We\u2019re really solving for, as much as possible, the ease of migration for our desktop customers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">But we\u2019re truly building a cloud platform that\u2019s built for new customers, and customers who have embraced the cloud platform from 10 years ago. I say all that just to say, we aim to make our desktop customers as happy as possible, but really it\u2019s impossible to replicate what they want in the cloud because then our cloud offering would be very old-aged and workflow-based, which is not what customers of today want.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>Do you anticipate supporting the desktop clients forever?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">We have for many, many years. Many of our desktop services are actually now on the cloud, and we\u2019ve built it in such a way where there will be a seamless transition to the cloud one day. At this point, we\u2019ve not declared \u2014<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>Your goal is to move everybody to the cloud.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">The goal is to eventually move everybody to the cloud. We\u2019re not going to force customers who&#8230; For instance, the workflow is not going to be the same in the cloud, but if you have a need for a particular module that we absolutely don\u2019t have in the cloud, we\u2019re not going to force you to move to the cloud. Eventually \u2014 that could be two years from now, five years from now \u2014 I think everybody\u2019s going to end up being in the cloud.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>Let\u2019s talk about AI and then I\u2019m not going to let you get out of here unless we talk about tax filing. You know it\u2019s coming. Are the AI features going to be in the cloud only or are they going to come to the desktop platforms as well?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">No, they\u2019re primarily only in the cloud. In fact, everything that we\u2019re building in the cloud and have been building in the cloud is just powered by our data and AI platform capabilities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>You just announced a bunch of AI features at your investor day. It\u2019s on the order of when people log into QuickBooks, they\u2019re going to see a feed with new insights on cash flow and other opportunities to use AI. Let me just ask you the threshold question that I\u2019m asking every CEO about their AI products: can the AI technology you have now do all the things you want it to do? Because I\u2019m not 100 percent sure that LLM technology can do all the things that everybody wants it to do.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">So let me say two things in context of your question. The first one is we\u2019re not launching AI features. Our entire platform is fueled by data and AI. In fact, our goal is not to ship a bunch of plug-in features that do stuff for you, but to create a platform where marketing is done for you, quote-to-cash is done for you, books and taxes are all done for you. Think about it from what we\u2019re trying to achieve, as the whole platform is fueled by data and AI. That\u2019s the first thing.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">The second thing is that when we declared AI core to our strategy, our investments were in machine learning and knowledge engineering. Knowledge engineering is very particular to us; we have patents around it. It takes rules and the relationship of rules and code, turns it into code, and the power of it is accuracy. A lot of what we do has to be accurate. That\u2019s really been the premise of all of our AI investments: machine learning, knowledge, engineering.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">About three to four years ago, we started investing in generative AI, specifically in our own Intuit financial large language models. Our models are the only models that are trained by the customer data. I set that context to say, we\u2019re in the very, very early days of what LLMs can do. We work a lot with the majority of the companies that are out there, and the progress that\u2019s being made month to month is incredible.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">So, will it do most of what we need at some time in the near future, medium future? Absolutely. I believe AI will one day be as smart as humans, if not smarter. I think humans are always going to be a critical part of the picture for us in our industry. But it\u2019s still very early days. I don\u2019t want to at all suggest that everything can be achieved with AI today. We\u2019re at the beginning of a very long journey. It\u2019s 1999 internet, the part of the journey we\u2019re in now.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>LLMs are somewhat notoriously bad at math. You run a financial platform for a lot of people. Do you trust it?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Not on its own. That\u2019s why I mentioned that when you look at our AI platform that sits on our data layer and data platform, it\u2019s the combination of machine learning, knowledge engineering, which is very good at math, and our LLMs that work in concert to deliver experiences to ensure your taxes are done right, to make sure your accounting is done right. So on its own, no, but in the combination with our other elements of our AI platform, absolutely.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>Are you getting economies of scale from other AI companies investing in this space? I\u2019m thinking particularly about Meta, which is doing a lot of open source models, and it\u2019s\u00a0 pushing far ahead on generative AI. On knowledge engineering, are you getting the same kind of economies of scale from the industry, or is everyone focused on LLMs?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">We\u2019re getting a lot of economies of scale because of our own investments, and because we were so early. We did this for very practical reasons. But we actually test and experiment across the board, with Entropik, AWS, Gemini, Llama, open source, and part of the experimentation is how it could potentially be a leverage to our LLMs. Because our LLMs have the agency and the authority. They\u2019re the brains of delivering the experiences that I articulated.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">So, we\u2019re not getting economies of scale from other LLMs. In fact, I would say it\u2019s the reverse right now. I think two years or three years from now, we\u2019re going to get economies of scale, but today the economies of scale \u2014 and it\u2019s why we\u2019ve been able to deliver platform leverage and margin leverage \u2014 are from all of our own investments. Over time, I think it\u2019ll help.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>You\u2019ve got a lot of small business owners using your products. They\u2019re looking for insight. They are probably not financial experts. The LLM \u2014 or whatever systems \u2014 you build tells them something: it\u2019s a hallucination, it\u2019s wrong. Have you worried about the liability of that, of giving bad financial advice to a small business owner?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">So I love, by the way, the premise of your question, which is this is why we\u2019re focused on done-for-you experiences, because a small business wants to know \u2014<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>That\u2019s a lot of responsibility to accept: \u201cWe\u2019re going to do this for you.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">That\u2019s right. And that\u2019s, by the way, why the essence of our investments, which started six-plus years ago, is, one, based on the customer\u2019s data, not ours. Everything that we provide is very specific and relevant to you. Two, it\u2019s the combination of our machine learning capabilities, our knowledge engineering, and our LLMs that really deliver the performance accuracy and costs that we would want. And we have governance: we have technology governance and human governance internally, just to make sure what we are doing is accurate.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">I\u2019ll just end by saying there\u2019s a range of accuracy. We can\u2019t generally be right when it comes to accounting and taxes. We have to be 100 percent accurate, but then there are elements of, \u201cHey, you can run this marketing campaign. We\u2019ve put it together for you. We think it could deliver a range of $50,000\u2013$100,000 in revenue.\u201d The range is what matters, not the exact number for customers. So I think accuracy has a limit based on what it is you\u2019re talking about. You got to get taxes exactly right; a range of revenue and what\u2019s possible from a marketing campaign. You can have a range, and customers are totally OK with that.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>Do you think over time as you integrate AI into more and more of the platform and that becomes something more customers are paying for, the free Intuit and TurboTax products will remain as big of a mix as you have today?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">You have to think about the cohort of customers. There will always be customers that have a simple tax situation where free may be the right thing for them. There\u2019s also a lot of customers that no matter what their tax situation is, they actually want somebody else to do their taxes for them because of confidence. They fear getting it wrong. They want to make sure they\u2019re getting the largest refund. If the IRS comes after them, they want to make sure somebody is there to protect them.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">So they\u2019ll always want to have an expert do their taxes for them. So we believe that over time we\u2019ll still have a mix of free, we\u2019ll have a mix of paying customers, but I think over time our largest growth will come from disrupting what today is the assisted category.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\"><strong>Well Sasan, I could keep talking to you forever, as you can tell. But we\u2019ve got to wrap this up. Thank you so much for being on <em>Decoder<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph mb-20 font-fkroman text-18 leading-160 -tracking-1 selection:bg-franklin-20 dark:text-white dark:selection:bg-blurple [&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-franklin dark:[&amp;_a:hover]:shadow-highlight-blurple [&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-black dark:[&amp;_a]:shadow-underline-white\">Yeah, absolutely. My pleasure. Great to see you. Talk to you soon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component clear-both block\">\n<div class=\"duet--article--action-box action-box mb-20 border-t border-blurple px-12 pt-16 font-polysans-mono text-14 leading-130 -tracking-2 text-blurple md:text-15 md:flex md:flex-row md:items-start md:justify-between\">\n<div class=\"mb-14 md:mb-0\">\n<h2 class=\"inline font-medium\">Decoder with Nilay Patel<!-- --> <!-- --> \/ <\/h2>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup text-sm md:text-base inline font-light\">A podcast from The Verge about big ideas and other problems.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup inline-block whitespace-nowrap rounded-sm border border-blurple px-18 py-12 text-12 font-medium uppercase tracking-12 no-underline hover:bg-blurple hover:text-white md:ml-28\" href=\"https:\/\/pod.link\/decoder\">SUBSCRIBE NOW!<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"fluid\"\r\n     data-ad-layout-key=\"-fb+5w+4e-db+86\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"7910942971\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><div data-type=\"_mgwidget\" data-widget-id=\"1660802\">\r\n<\/div>\r\n<script>(function(w,q){w[q]=w[q]||[];w[q].push([\"_mgc.load\"])})(window,\"_mgq\");\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2024\/10\/21\/24273820\/intuit-ceo-sasan-goodarzi-turbotax-irs-quickbooks-ai-software-decoder-interview\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today\u2019s episode of Decoder, well \u2014 it\u2019s a ride. I\u2019m talking to Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi, who\u2019s built Intuit into a juggernaut business software company through a series of major &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=116828\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=116828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=116828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=116828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=116828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}