Global technology platform Intuit, Inc. (NASDAQ: INTU) elevated Sasan Goodarzi to the role of CEO in 2019. He has driven record results for the company as he transforms Intuit into an AI-driven expert platform through the recent additions of MailChimp and Credit Karma to the product line-up that includes Mint, TurboTax and QuickBooks.
Karen Walker: You have such an exciting and inspiring backstory. You came to the United States very early in your life. Would you share some of the highlights of how that shaped you?
Sasan Goodarzi: I immigrated here when I was nine years old. I was born in Tehran, Iran, and everybody wanted to come to the U.S. I was lucky. I was able to come here before the revolution in Iran.
My immigration impacted my life here greatly. At the age of nine, I was bullied every day. I was told to go back to my country because of the situation with the American hostages and that lived with me for years.
I had horrible grades and I was kicked out of school. My grades were so bad - I had a 1.9 GPA – that I couldn't even get into a four-year college. So, I started out in a community college. These things make you stronger. It makes you a better person. Frankly, to this day, I don't take for granted being in the U. S. With all the opportunities, it's a blessing to be here.
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Walker: This speaks to your resilience, and your ability to cope with tremendous change and disruption. You’ve been at Intuit for a while now, and Intuit has succeeded greatly under your helm. Fortune just named Intuit one of the 100 best companies to work for, at number 11. This is the company’s 21st year on that list. How does this ethos of being “the best company to work for” play into the company's mission and culture?
Goodarzi: I'll start with giving credit to our co-founder Scott Cook who created the company nearly 40 years ago. It was a company focused on two things: our employees and customers, and that's carried on for almost 40 years.
With our team, we can improve upon it and make it better. But first and foremost, it's in the DNA of the company. There are three big things that, over the years, have evolved to guide what we do every day. One is our mission, which is to power prosperity around the world. Whether it's the products and services that we create, or what we need to do to help the communities around us to make them better than when we found them, we need to do our part to power prosperity around the world.
Second, our values are key to our success. These values have evolved several times over our nearly 40-year history, most recently about 18 months ago. They are something we live by, and the actual proof of our values is that when we’ve opened offices in places like Paris or Sydney, where we didn’t even have a product to market, we succeeded. We became known there as one of the best places to work because our culture carries with us, wherever we go.
Lastly, the way we set expectations is essential. We have this thing called “true north goals.” We have goals for employees, customers, communities and shareholders. It's how we run the company, and how we talk about our performance within the company and externally. And those three things guide who we are today, which is a company committed to doing what's right.
Walker: A purpose-driven company is one that has high employee engagement. You've got a vital mission. You've got strong values. How do you keep the culture aligned with so many employees in different locations?
Goodarzi: We are intentional about that in every setting. We always focus on the three things that I mentioned earlier. We always talk about our mission, and examples of how we’re bringing our mission to life. As one example, we have what we call “state of the company” four times a year, where we get all our 15,000 employees together to talk about how the company is doing. At every single state of the company, I go through our values. It's a refresher for those who have been with us, but it's also essential for those that are new to the company, to share how important they are.
We talk about the problems they will solve for our customers and the vision for each of our five big bets. But beyond that, we talk about our big bets that we declared across the company. We announced these bets about three years ago.
I talk about the progress that we've made and where we are constructively dissatisfied. It may sound straightforward. But it's the one we are committed to doing because, as you can imagine, our most significant power – and the most enormous challenge – is to leverage and align 15,000 folks.
It's something we work at very hard.
Walker: Another area where we sometimes see misalignment is in the execution of a company’s M&A activity. Since you’ve become CEO, you’ve acquired MailChimp, you’ve acquired Credit Karma, and maybe a few others that aren’t such big names. How do you go about ensuring integration or partnership, making sure that you're able to get the value from those deals?
Goodarzi: Three plus years ago, we were a company focused on tax and accounting, a platform company, but focused on solving those two fundamental problems. And we wanted to be a company that helped firms make ends meet, helped you save money, helped you get out of debt, and succeed as a small business. That shift led to our five big bets. For us, speed of impact is everything. We live in a world where impact matters, but the speed at which you work matters a lot.
Beyond accelerating our internal organic innovation, we felt like there were two areas where we needed to move much faster. One, how do we help small businesses grow their business? And the other is how do we move beyond tax to serve consumers more broadly? Because typically, what we’ve done is to help you run your business.
The other important element was establishing relationships and truly understanding that our missions were aligned and getting excited about what we can do together that we can’t do apart.
Walker: The tagline for my consulting business is “up and to the right” because that’s the place on a two-by-two matrix where we always want to be. Was there a seminal moment when you knew that your career was moving in that direction?
Goodarzi: I would say it's the accumulation of things that happened over time. I never really saw myself as someone that had a moment when I believed that I would go up and to the right. I've always believed in keeping my head down - focused on hard work, resilience and creating an environment where our teams could win.
I think of one time when I gained more confidence in myself. I used to work in sales for Honeywell. One of the executives at Honeywell flew down to spend an entire day with me. At the end of that day, he said, “I think you’re a gem, and I think you have a bright future.”
That stuck in the back of my mind. It was one of those moments when I remembered that famous quote, “Anything is possible, and don't let anyone ever tell you what you can’t do.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
