Intuit Inc. (nasdaq: INTU) is an American software company that develops financial and tax preparation software and related services for small businesses, accountants and individuals. It is incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Mountain View, California.12

Profile

Intuit makes the personal finance programs Quicken and TurboTax (and its Canadian counterpart, QuickTax), as well as the small business accounting program QuickBooks. In addition, they produce QuickBooks Point of Sale solution for small retailers, professional tax solutions ProSeries and Lacerte, and the Web-based corporate workgroup productivity solution QuickBase.

The company maintains a number of foreign sales offices. It has R&D activity in Intuit Canada headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta and Intuit India headquartered in Bangalore, India 4. International product versions are now predominantly produced by third-party localizers or licensees.

History

Intuit was conceived when Scott Cook whose prior work at Procter & Gamble helped him realize that personal computers would lend themselves as replacement for paper-and-pencil based personal accounting. On his quest to find a programmer he ended up running into Tom Proulx at Stanford. The two started Intuit, which initially operated out of a modest room on University Avenue in Palo Alto. The first version of Quicken was coded in Microsoft's Compiler BASIC for the IBM PC and UCSD Pascal for the Apple II by Tom Proulx and had to contend with a dozen serious competitors. Intuit struggled financially until they found their formula for success, which revolved around direct marketing campaigns, favorable reviews in industry and consumer magazines and word of mouth from satisfied customersFact: date=May 2008. Intuit's focus on usability and customer support in its early years was legendary.Fact: date=May 2008

Although by 1988 Quicken became a best-seller in its marketFact: date=May 2008, the company wasn't a major success until the advent of Windows 3.0 in early 1990s, when sales of Quicken grewFact: date=May 2008. Roughly around the same time the company engaged John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and diversified its product lineup. In 1993 Intuit went public and used the proceeds to make a key acquisition: the tax-preparation software company Chipsoft based in San Diego. The time after the IPO was marked by rapid growth and culminated with a buyout offer from Microsoft in 1995; at this time Intuit's market capitalization reached $2 billion.

When the buyout fell through because of DOJ scrutiny, the company came under intense pressure in late 1990s when Microsoft started to compete vigorously with its core Quicken business. In response, Intuit launched new web-based products and solutions and put more emphasis on QuickBooks and on TurboTax. The company made a number of investments around this time. Among others, it purchased a large stake in Excite and acquired Lacerte Software, a Dallas-based developer of tax preparation software used by tax professionals. It also divested itself of its online bill payment service unit and extended and strengthened its partnership with CheckFree.