Intuit's Goodarzi: AI Turns Accountants Into Customers — SkimNews
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- Sasan Goodarzi was born in Tehran and sent to the U.S. at age nine, leaving about eight to nine months before the Iranian revolution; he landed in Orlando, Florida, where his brothers were already studying at the University of Central Florida.
- Lazer Cables — the fiber-optics startup Goodarzi co-founded before his corporate career, with the friend he credits with the idea of fiber optics for the music industry, followed by four years in Siemens technical marketing on power generation.
- Honeywell — Goodarzi spent roughly eight years in business development running a startup-style industrial home automation division that sold software and hardware to oil and gas operators, and he moved to a new state every couple of years.
- Intuit hired Goodarzi in 2004 under CEO Steve Bennett, who arrived from GE Capital and wanted leaders who could run businesses rather than "typical Silicon Valley grown-up leaders"; Goodarzi left briefly to run Nexant, returned, and has led Intuit as CEO since 2019.
- Intuit — accountants are the company's most important customer acquisition channel, and its stated aim is to use AI to change the profession from partners into customers, the strategy Goodarzi offers for growing the market of a 44-year-old software maker.
- Stratechery put the case to Goodarzi that Intuit appears to be getting disrupted; he countered that the company is well positioned to actually grow its market, citing Intuit's shift from Quicken to QuickBooks, its TurboTax business, and its Credit Karma and Mailchimp acquisitions as the business-model history behind that case.
- Amazon — Goodarzi names its Day 1 mentality as the model for the curiosity he credits his generalist path with, arguing structural advantage and relentless reinvention now matter more than decades of industry experience as AI changes what is possible.
Why it matters: Accountants are Intuit's most important customer acquisition channel, and Goodarzi's stated aim is to use AI to move that profession from partners into customers — an explicit play to widen the 44-year-old company's funnel. Goodarzi, CEO since 2019 after 20-plus years at Intuit, argues structural advantage, not legacy familiarity, decides who wins an AI transition.
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