THE HISTORY OF QUICKEN FROM KITCHEN TABLE TO BOARDROOM TABLE: CELEBRATING OVER TWO DECADES AS A LEADER IN PERSONAL FINANCE An accidental meeting in front of the Stanford University library in 1983 brought Scott Cook and Tom Proulx together. Proulx, a computer science major, was in search of a new software idea; Cook, a former marketing manager at Procter & Gamble, was posting flyers seeking a code developer to help him realize his vision—a software program that would help people automate their finances. That first simple conversation would lead to the development of the best-selling personal finance software product of all-time ; a product that has revolutionized the way people manage their personal finances. After the chance meeting, Cook and Proulx realized that the more they talked about the project; their goals, values and ethics echoed one another’s. The programming job was offered and accepted and the company began unceremoniously in the dormitory courtyard. Laying the Groundwork The idea for Quicken was born at Cook’s kitchen table, where he often watched his wife pay bills. He knew she loathed this tedious and repetitive monthly chore, and realized that there might be an easier and faster way to get it done. 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 peoples lives away from the office. Cook and Proulx decided to call their company “Intuit” in an effort to communicate that the company’s products would make the difficult process of financial management an easier proposition. Naming their first product, however, would prove more challenging. They wanted a compact name that would convey the product’s ease of use, as well as its ability to make financial management faster for consumers. As the product shipment date rapidly approached, Cook headed to a Palo Alto bookstore in search of a compelling name and inspiration. There, he picked up a thesaurus and flipped to the word “fast”—and there it was: Quicken. It Looks Just Like a Checkbook! With a business model employed by consumer products giant Procter & Gamble, Cook and Proulx set out to build a product based entirely on consumer needs (Cook’s idea to apply consumer marketing techniques to software is widely heralded as a pioneering act for the industry). Cook began conducting extensive interviews with people randomly selected from Palo Alto, CA, and Winnetka, IL, (the only two phone directories he had handy) and questioned them to learn more about their financial habits. He was able to pinpoint the challenges they faced and discussed solutions that would make the process easier. He confirmed a consistent customer problem: people disliked managing their finances, but could not escape the burden. Based on this research, they determined that their new product should accentuate the basic financial tasks that software could easily and accurately perform, such as writing checks, maintaining the check register and reconciling monthly balances. They also decided the software should look and work like the forms people used in the real world. When Quicken launched, there were forty-six other personal finance products on the market. All of them were exceedingly complicated to use. It was determined that the strongest selling point for Quicken software would be that it looked familiar—just like a check and checkbook register—and that it was incredibly easy to use. To drive this point home, Cook enlisted the Palo Alto Junior League as the company’s first beta testers!