Intuit

Mountain View, CA (Bay Area)
$2.8 billion market leader in personal and small business accounting and investment data and software

Personal News, Inc., a start up, used SyncDev to develop a new to-the-world financial software and data product for consumers, which Intuit bought after a fight out with Dow Jones.

Jim and Steve, working in a garage, thought amateur investors wanted a daily, personalized stock newsletter. Jim had used SyncDev at his prior employer, The Learning Company, and decided to use it in his start up. In their first wave of meetings they saw that customers wanted stock research and portfolio tools like the pros, not a newsletter. So, they redesigned their software accordingly. They soon realized that they needed data from Standard & Poor’s and Dow Jones, and an interface to Quicken, so they approached them.

Dow Jones and Intuit liked their idea so much they fought one another to buy the company. Intuit won. The founders and venture investors cashed out early. Intuit integrated the product, Investor Insight®, into Quicken Deluxe® and Quicken.com®.  Over the next few years as the internet took off, the functionality that Jim and Steve invented at the feet of customers became a commodity, built into CNN Money, Yahoo Finance, Google Finance, Schwab, and virtually every other web site that offers financial services, data, and news.