Fanminder Blog

Today we’re attending Intuit Day, an event designed by Intuit to identify promising partnerships with developers.

We’re grateful and honored to be only one of sixty three companies, out of an applicant field of hundreds, to participate in the day.

Reception

Intuit is hosting a killer spread. Tracy and I joked that Intuit knows the way to a start-up’s heart – through our bellies. We figure it’s a good way to spend a few hours if we’re given an opportunity to talk about ourselves, get fed, and see if we can get distributed by such a large company!

Alex Chris, Director of the Intuit Partner Partner (IPP) is on-stage pitching how IPP can be a platform and a channel for the developers in the room. Out of the forty developers there’s only currently four that are a part of IPP (yours truly included!)

The CEO of Expensify is shilling on behalf of IPP, talking about getting highly qualified leads from Intuit. He is sharing how it’s very hard to reach these customers and much less expensive to acquire through IPP than through other channels.

Three companies then took the stage to discuss their experiences: AuditMyBooks; Fanminder; and Profitably.

Next, Brad Smith took the stage. “We help change people’s lives. Company spends 10,000 hours per year visiting customers. We build solutions that are drop-dead easy.”

“We’re a part of the transformation from offline to online: Goodbye tax stores, login to healthcare providers… cutting across every category we’re in. Our chapter going forward is a connected services strategy. We get 60% of our revenues from these connected services.”

Jan Bosch - “We can’t do everything ourselves. We’re going to express what we’re interested in, and then ask you to tell us if you have something we would like. You as the entrepreneur will hear back from us within 48 hours.”

Scott Cook and Tayloe Stansbury interview

Characteristics of a good partner with Intuit:

Scott: Integrity, we run a squeaky clean operation. Humilty. Customer Focus. We’re hear to delight customers!

Taylo: Expand the mission of impacting customer’s lives so they never go back to the old way.

Advice:

Scott: Know your customer so well. Solving a big unsolved problem. Learn by iterating. Top talent.

Where is Intuit investing the most?

“We shifted from desktop to a connected services company. We’ll likely make the shift over the next 10 years from connected services to mobile. SnapTax – take a pic of W2 and file taxes! GoPayment – take payments from your phone.”

“What’s true is a lot of the value is created from user contribution systems, tapping into implicit contributions or volunteer of millions of users. People go to Facebook to see what other people have entered into Facebook.”

Are you involved with start-up companies? Scott: I do work with young companies through Intuit. I backed only one small company, Flip.”

What mistakes do start-ups make when they pitch to you? “Listening to customers, listening to folks at Intuit, listening for surprises. Also, we work by learning and testing.”

What trends in SMB has Intuit identified? “Tablet is interesting form factor. Make things a part of what they already do. It’s also a very lonely job, so helping people help them is important. Also creating a closed loop marketing system, according to Brad Smith. Our aspiration is help them save time, and help them make more money.”