First of all, let me start with one of those lame apologies about how long it's been since I last posted. I've been heads down getting used to the Intuit world and my new job within it. I basically have two full time jobs now (my old one running Homestead and my new one at Intuit--more on that in a minute).
People who work in big companies have always told me how much I'm not a big company person, and for the most part I can now state from experience: they were right. However, being inside a big company has given me a totally new appreciation for a) how much easier it is to get stuff done in a small company and b) how hard it is to build and keep a massive organization functioning and growing. It's way easier to grow a few million dollars of revenue by 100% than it is to grow a few billion dollars of revenue by 5%. It's way easier to keep a few hundred employees fired up (even if they are underpaid and overworked) then it is to keep a few thousand employees from grinding to a halt.
Having said all of that, Intuit is really an awesome place. There are tons of passionate, smart, dedicated people who easily pass the old Homestead "no jerks, no idiots" rule. The customer loyalty and product excellence is even better than it appears from the outside. Basically, everything I predicted about the people/culture/values in my original post about the acquisition has come to pass. But it's way bigger than Homestead (which already felt big with a whopping 175 employees!), and with that comes new ways of getting things done. We are all still learning the best way to work with each other.
But enough about that... what I wanted to post about was a cool thing that has come out of Homestead joining Intuit's Small Business Division. We have recently created a new "SB Web Group" that includes not just Homestead's various assets, but most of Intuit's other small business web products including JumpUp, QuickBooks Online, StepUp and MyCorporation.
Intuit actually has a ton of great stuff happening on the web, but it's often overlooked by the press and the public because of the prominence of TurboTax, QuickBooks and Quicken. But did you know that Intuit is already one of the world's largest pure SaaS ("software as a service") players in the small busines space? Or that Intuit's online communities are extremely in-depth (check out JumpUp--it rocks) and visited regularly by millions of customers? Or that Quicken Online rocks compared to the Web 2.0 darlings Mint and Wasabi (okay, that is just my opinion)? Or that three of the most downloaded iPhone applications are Intuit products?
I can't say too much about our plans in SBWeb yet (stay tuned), but let's just say that we're planning on making a big splash that will continue the mission of leveling the playing field for small businesses. I can say that the 350+ employees coming to work every day on our team are going to give all of the "big guys" a run for their money... okay, I guess we are one of the big guys now. Still getting used to that. :o)
Finally, lest you all believe that I sold my soul when we sold Homestead to Intuit, I thought you would enjoy the following video. At the "all hands" meeting for the several thousand employees in the Small Business Group, I played one of my infamous songs about being a part of my first "big company" reorg. As my mom says, you can take the boy out of Kansas, but you can't take the Kansas out of the boy... sorry my singing sounds so bad--I hope it's because I had a cold and not because I always sound like that.
Click here to see/hear the song.
Thanks to all of you for your continued support. Believe me, we're still rockin' on.
--jsk
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