From the Desk of... 

MARIO NOWOGRODZKI, CPA/CITP

Founder and Principal

From the Kitchen Table...

We are among a select few Intuit Reseller Partners to be invited to Intuit's Reseller Round Up in San Francisco last week (conference theme was Country Western, hence the name).  I was fortunate to represent our firm and participate in this international gathering of top QuickBooks partners, attending product showcases and meeting with colleague industry leaders.

My trip to the Bay Area was completed with a stop by Mountain View (Silicon Valley) and Intuit Headquarters for meetings with several key Intuit personnel.  In one of the buildings resides Intuit founder Scott Cook's actual kitchen table where in 1983 he gave birth to Quicken.

The idea for Quicken was born at Cook's kitchen table (photo on left), where he often watched his wife pay bills.  She loathed this tedious and repetitive monthly chore, and he realized there might be an easier and faster way to do it.  He imagined a computerized software system that would automate the entire bill-paying process.  At the time, the personal home computer industry was in its infancy as developers struggled to find uses that related to people's lives away from the office.  And thus, Quicken was born...

Based on his research, Scott Cook determined that a new product was needed to address basic financial tasks that software could easily and accurately perform, such as writing checks, maintaining the register, and reconciling monthly.  It was also decided that the software should look and work like the forms people use in the real world.  When Quicken launched, there ware forty-six other personal finance products on the market -- all of them exceedingly complicated to use.

"What made Intuit successful was that both the engineering and business sides infused the same principles into product development," says Cook. "When we design and build products, we start with and focus on the customer."

This same focus still shows from the makers of QuickBooks financial software.  Intuit consistently relies on customer driven invention along with keeping a keen eye on economic conditions facing customers and the latest technologies to create software versions that best meet the needs of people and business.

...MARIO