Brad Smith on entrepreneurship
From Championing West Virginia’s Entrepreneurs | Brad D. Smith on “Just Three Questions” · · President of Marshall University - Brad D. Smith
“In Silicon Valley if someone said let's start a business the response would be why not. And here if you say let's start a business someone would say why? Why do you think I'm capable of doing that? And so I always refer to Michelangelo's quote that success is seldom limited when you aim too high and you fall a little short. It's when you aim too low and you hit the target.”
On , Brad Smith, Former Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Intuit, spoke about entrepreneurship during Championing West Virginia’s Entrepreneurs | Brad D. Smith on “Just Three Questions” on President of Marshall University - Brad D. Smith.
About Brad Smith
Brad Smith, former Chairman and CEO of Intuit, has spoken at multiple QuickBooks Connect events between 2014 and 2018, where he discussed the company's strategy, product innovations, and the role of small businesses in the economy. At the 2014 event, Smith described Intuit's goal to be "the operating system behind small business success" and highlighted features such as QuickBooks financing, which he said had increased loan acceptance rates from 60% to 70% by using business data rather than FICO scores. He also stated that small businesses had created 60% of new jobs since the beginning of the recession and that if one in three small businesses hired one more employee, it would eliminate unemployment in the U.S. In 2015, Smith announced a $100 million fund for QuickBooks financing and said the company had facilitated over a quarter of a billion dollars in loans. He also noted that the company had testified before Congress as an advocate for self-employed workers. In a 2018 interview, Smith said he heard from customers that they valued connecting with one another, new product launches such as practice management, and innovations in payments, payroll, and capital access. He stated that "people don't care what you know until they know that you care" and expressed optimism about the company's future. In other appearances, Smith discussed Intuit's operating values, including a "70-20-10" resource allocation model and a "delight pyramid" for product design. He described an experiment where engineers developed a mobile feature allowing users to photograph tax documents for automatic data entry, which he said became a significant growth driver for TurboTax. Smith also spoke about his upbringing in West Virginia and his education at Marshall University, stating that leadership involves being true to oneself and playing to one's strengths.