>> Narrator: Live from San Jose, California in the heart of silicon valley, it's theCUBE! Covering QuickBooks Connect 2016. Sponsored by Intuit QuickBooks. Now here are your hosts Jeff Frick and John Walls. >> Welcome back to San Jose, California. We continue here on theCUBE our coverage of QuickBooks Connect 2016. Of course theCube is the flagship broadcast here on SiliconANGLE TV where we extract the signal from the noise and I tell you what, with our next guest, we have a lot of signal to bring you. Scott Cook, the founder and the chairman of the executive committee at Intuit. Scott, thank you for being with us. We really appreciate the time and have been looking forward to this for quite some time once we knew you were going to be on theCube. It's good to have you. >> Good to be here. >> Let's talk about just first off, look at where you are now, right? 30-some odd years. It's been quite a ride I would assume for you. >> Yeah, it started, you know Tom and I got together and then there were two of us and then we eventually had seven of us in a basement. Well they called it the garden level. But the only part of the garden you could see would be the roots and the gophers. (laughter) And then we hit bad times and the things ... We just couldn't get money. We couldn't get sales so we shrunk down to four people. Couldn't pay salaries. It was pretty ugly. And from that, to look at 5,000 people here today. 8,000 employees in the company. When I started the biggest PC software company was 160 employees, and they were huge! Oh these giants! (laughter) >> How do I manage all this? >> Yeah, yeah. >> Well a quote that we've heard a couple of times today. We heard on the keynote stage. About the corporate philosophy of we fall in love with your problems, not our solutions. And is that the driving force you think? I mean, why you've made it through 33 years? >> I think yeah. Yeah, I actually think that's pretty important not just to the success of Intuit and QuickBooks and Mint and TurboTax, but to business in general. My theory is what great entrepreneurs do is they find the intersection of two circles. So think of a Venn diagram and the intersection. One circle is what are people's biggest, most important unsolved problems? Not the problems that are already solved by someone else. Find the ones that aren't solved yet. And then look for the ones that we can solve. Cause you can't solve everything. But look where we can apply the best technologies in the world. What's in that intersection? And focus there. >> And in some of the research to get ready for this. You've talked about really focusing on the important stuff. You gave a great example in that Khan Academy talk about there's really only 1 1/2 things that you should really be focusing on to really move the ship forward. And that was a very great insight. >> Yeah, you know all of of us have the desire to do too many things. You get groups. You've got 10 people in a room, they each have their ideas and it's tempting to shoot at too many targets. And those 10 targets are not of equal importance. You got to go through and kind of rigorously and be disciplined and say what's the 1 1/2 most important? And stay relentlessly focused on that. >> And then how is your role changed? As time has passed and you're no longer the CEO. Now you're chairman head of the executive board. How have you kind of learned to still keep your hands on it but in kind of a little bit more of a distant role? >> Well, first of all, thank goodness for leaders like Brad Smith, Sasan Goodarzi who heads up our small business group, that's really the host of this show. Thank goodness for great leaders like that. So my role's changed a ton. I work really on two areas now which is strategy and coaching our entrepreneurs. So strategy over to Brad and our other leaders. I'm trying to help our leaders see the future and make the big strategic calls. What's really most important? How do we know? And then work with our entrepreneurs. We're a collection of entrepreneurs basically. We've got a couple hundred entrepreneurial projects going on inside the company at any one time. And each one of those is like a little startup. I mean, they've got a customer in mind. They've got a problem they're trying to solve to improve people's lives so fundamentally. And there are challenges. So helping grow our entrepreneurs and then grow the culture around them to allow great entrepreneurs to invent things to change the world and do that from within Intuit with a huge reach to be able to get the inventions out in the hands of millions. And change the lives of tens of millions of people. >> So, over the course of the run of the company, they haven't all been home runs. >> Scott: Oh yeah. >> Right. So how have you learned from those swings and misses? And applied them to the small businesses that you're serving? Who are swinging and missing on a regular basis and you're trying to narrow that margin, right? Trying to make them more successful. >> Scott: Yeah. >> So what did you learn you think maybe through your attempts about that culture of trying basically. >> I think maybe the most important thing really dovetails with what you just said. Early on, when the company was, before we even had our first product out, we'd build a version of it and then we would bring in test audiences of it and have them test it to see if they could figure it out without us saying anything. And they couldn't. So then we'd redesign it and then we'd test again. And then we'd redesign it and test again. Over time kind of lost some of that dedication to running experiments. And it became whose opinion? And you'd build, and it was the loudest opinion in the room. Or the boss' opinion. And that produced a number of failures. Things that just didn't work. Customers didn't buy it. Or they bought it and it didn't it didn't produce the desired effect when they bought it. So the thing I've learned about life and companies is to set up a culture where you make decisions based on fast cheap experiments. That very thing you were talking about. If you got an idea, figure out, okay, what's a leap of faith assumption, let's go try it. And don't debate it. Try it. And then we learned from trying. Oh, a bunch of those don't work. And then we learned from the things. Why didn't it work? And that teaches us something we didn't know before. That maybe the fulcrum, the pivot, to a new idea. And some of those do work or most of it worked. But other pieces didn't. And we learned by doing. Not by debating in a conference room. So to set up your company so that people throughout the company can take their idea and run the experiment. That produces great entrepreneurs and great learning. A continuous stream of learning. I guess the learning begins when you first get real people trying your idea for real. >> Let me follow up. Cause the other thing you talk about is that often comes from the youngest and the newest employees. Which is completely antithesis to a kind of hierarchical structure. Where these are the people that you should be listening and giving them the opportunity within this comfortable framework to do these experiments. >> Absolutely. Sometimes the very freshest ideas come from the people farthest from the boss. Newest in the company. Closest to the customer. But typically in a hierarchy, whose got the least clout? Whose ideas are the least listened to? It'd be the new person, the young person. >> Jeff: Right. >> And so part of the genius of running a company of decision by experiment is that everyone's ideas can be run as an experiment. The boss' idea. The CEO's idea. And the person that's new. We should be testing each of those. Except in a crisis where you got to make snap decisions. And hopefully those aren't very often. You should run the company so that each good idea can be tested, regardless of where it comes from. And then the great thing is, then you get the best ideas from all your folks and they learn from doing. If their idea doesn't work, now they learn from that. Ooh, okay. I thought it was going to do X, it did Y. Why? What didn't I know? That's where learning comes from. Learning doesn't tend to come from the successes, learning comes from the things that didn't work. >> So, I think we've all seen good executives. How they operate. They hire good people, right? That's ... You have a vision and then you hire people who surround that and amplify that vision. So when you're looking for people or when you've been looking for people to work with you. What's that common thread? Or what are the traits that you've looked for the most to think that's a good fit? Or this is the person that I want on my team. In order to carry on this vision to where it's expanded to where it is today. >> Let me break that into two buckets. There are a set of things which are unique to particular career paths. So certain things from engineers might be different than certain things from a salesperson or a marketer or a finance person. So let's set that aside. Let's cover the commonalities. I think there's a few things. When you think about the people you've most loved working with or for. There are people who are great creative problem solvers. Instead of seeing a problem or barrier and giving up or being unglued by it. Can figure out okay, how're we going to solve that problem? And then there's people who are there to serve. Where it's not all about them. I've got a thing that I tell our folks that others won't care how much you know until they first know how much you care. So if one of our speakers today said it. If your first job is to serve yourself you're not going to go very far. Because who wants to work with someone who's self serving? Who wants to buy from a company that's only looking after its own front P&L? Job one is you got to serve who you're serving. The customer or the person of the company who you serve. So we look for people who are really motivated by the outside to try to do right by the customer. I think you look for people who are achievement oriented. Who get stuff done. Who make things happen. Do you want to work with somebody who always needs to be dragged along? No. You want to work with somebody who's pulling you along. Who's getting a lot done. So you go, wow, that person gets a lot done. So I think those are pretty core. Solve the creative problems. Have the passion and energy to serve, do what's right for the customer. And then get a lot done. >> And then you've talked about the curse of success. And avoiding the curse of success. And you guys have done that, obviously. So what are the kind of the lessons to say fresh? This started as a checkbook register and now the future of payments and mobile and the options are just tremendous. Bitcoin, who knows where that's going. So, as the future keeps evolving, how do you stay fresh? How do you keep the team fresh? How do you not rest on your laurels even though you have 5,000 fans walking around San Jose convention center today? >> This is a real challenge for companies. Because success turns organizations. It makes them dumb and slow. It's tempting, the thing I would avoid is it's tempting to look at your achievements. To look through the rear view mirror. And look at boy, how much we've achieved. But that only makes you self satisfied. In fact, with an organization you need to do the opposite. Look to where we want to be. Look to where we should be. And we're here. And then say, well shoot we are not very far. So for example, and I define these in customer terms. For example, we started our first product helped somebody manage a checkbook and pay bills. If you look at it really, the problem of paying bills has gotten worse. It used to be all bills came in the mail. So you had a little physical reminder. Some come in the mail, some you get by e-mail with invoices from some people. Some you go online and find a website. You pay some at a bank website. Maybe you go to the biller, you pay some. You write checks for some. It's much harder now. We have not actually got to the point. When our nirvana is you never worry about a bill. And you're never late. And you're never overdraft. The overdraft rate in the country is around 30% of households have a late payment during the year from which they get fees. And the overdraft rates, the overdraft charges can be $30, $35. We have not solved that yet. We got to look and say with all that we've done, that's what we should have done. So we've got a team working on that right now. Because we got re-focused on it. So we'll be coming out in December with stuff in there. Look at tax. Tax many people would say is one of our best businesses. And it is. Look at all we've achieved. But, look at the reality. People are still spending a lot of time on tax. Who wants to be spending time typing stuff into tax software? Does anybody? (laughter) No. There's not an accountant, there's not a consumer. We haven't solved that yet guys. There are still a hundred million people in the country typing stuff in to systems to do taxes every February, March and April. That's where we want to be. Is ultimately there is no typing in. All that information you have that goes in your tax return goes in automatically. And if you're an accountant, it all goes in for your clients automatically. So that you can focus on the high level stuff and not the drudgery. So, viewed from the lens of really what life should be. What's our aspiration? Our ideal? Keep people focused on that. And it sure has helped motivate us. I mean, we should be finding a lot of money for small businesses. And we're launching, announcing today ways that we help small businesses find more money. We should be eliminating the drudgery of running a small business. Nobody wants to do the book work. Instead, they want to do what they love to do in business. It could be working with clients. It could be the craft of doing the business. It could be selling new business. Every business person has something they love to do. And it's not doing the books. And that yet, people still have to do it. We want to have it on your phone so you don't have to do the books. It's done automatically. And you got a question, boop boop, there's the answer. >> So you mentioned the phone. Is that the next big growth opportunity? Mobile this is top priority with so many different sectors right now. >> Yeah, yeah. It's the growth today. In fact, every new feature and new benefit that Sasan Goodarzi showed today in his keynote address. Every one of 'em, he showed it on a mobile phone. Every one. It's the fastest growing. TurboTax the great consumer business. It's the fastest growing platform by far. So yeah, if you can take stuff off a desktop and put it so automatically that you can just get on your phone, say, okay, yep, do it. >> Right, right. >> Yeah, so that's where we're aiming a lot of our innovation. And these are amazing platforms. A simple example, the fastest growing form of employment in the United States and in fact, in the world is self employed. Where you think of an Uber driver or someone like that. People who work as consultants, contractors, they work for themselves. They've got to keep track of all their business expenses. Or they lose that money on their tax returns. Money out of their pocket. They got to keep track of every individual business expense which of course, they co-mingle with their personal checking, personal credit card. And they got to keep track of every mile they drive for business. And keep it separate with contemporaneous records that the IRS requires with the starting odometer reading, the ending odometer reading, and the destination and what it was for. Well you can imagine that's such a pain in the butt. So many independent business people, freelancers fail. Or they do some but not others. And that's money right out of their pocket. Thousands of dollars they don't get. They should get that they deserve. So we've devised and a team really creative work, QuickBooks Self Employed. It sits on your phone in your pocket. It reads what's coming from your bank and your credit cards and anytime you're stopped at a stop light or you've got two minutes before a meeting starts. You can go through and say oh, that was a business expense, business, business. That was personal, personal. It's that fast. And then you get complete records for your taxes. Oh then mileage. There's lots of software out there that'll track your mileage but it does by pinging the GPS. GPS takes battery. You ping the GPS all day long, what happens? Zhoom. >> Goodbye phone. >> Bye bye phone. So it's worthless. Our guys we launched that. Quickly found out that people stopped using it because it drained their battery just like everyone else. So, three clever engineers. Together with a couple others came up with a really clever idea which we've patented now. And it tracks your location without pinging your GPS all day long. So it doesn't drain your battery. So now you had complete records. It can detect when you're driving and where you started, where you finished. How many miles. Keeps perfect record, just as the IRS requires. And then you just have to tell it which are business, which are personal. And then it learns. Which one are business trips. So that over time, it knows when you're driving on business and you don't have to do anything. You get complete tax records. We've got businesses using it who get on average $7,000 of tax deductions. $7,000 of tax deductions. Because of the way it tracks. >> And you're taking advantage of the platform. You're taking advantage of the accelerometer. >> Yes. >> More importantly I think. The thing about mobile that most people don't maybe consciously think of is the way we interact with it as you said is little bits of time here, there, and everywhere. >> Scott: Yes. >> It's not the sit down thing. But I think what I think is most exciting about this show is it's a lot of talk about technology. But at the end of the day, it's really more about business. And small business. And small medium size business. And getting business done. >> Scott: Yes. >> And letting people do those dreams like the gal that was on the keynote. >> Scott: Yes. >> Letting her build her company and her franchise. And not have to worry about am I getting all the right deductions. >> That's right. I think the technology is the enabler. But it's all to enable what? What are we trying to deliver? And you saw it, in the kind of lead of slides. We're trying to fuel the success of small business. This is all about success. The technology's an enabler but that's not the center, the star of the show. The star of the show are small businesses and how they succeed. And how the suite of things that hundreds of developers and hundreds of software entrepreneurs who all build for the QuickBooks ecosystem. The new methods, and new ways to drive small business success. And at the end of the day, we don't measure ourselves with software. We measure ourselves with how much more money did we make small businesses? How much time did we save them so they could do what they love? How did we help them grow their business? Running a small business is a, and I know from starting Intuit, it absorbs who you are. You identify with that business. It is your representation to the world. To your spouse, to your in-laws. And if that business is successful, it's something about you that's irreplaceably positive. If that business is struggling, it strikes to the core. I mean, you feel bad. You look bad. So helping businesses succeed. And move them from mediocrity to success is such a home run for the psychology of this growing part of our economy. For each individual, it's your report card on yourself. And we can help make those report cards much better. That's our mission. That's how we're going to change the world so, so dramatically. People can't imagine going back. >> I'd say that you've already changed it dramatically. And it is exciting to hear about the next steps but this whole blend of strategy and execution and culture you're being commended for. It's just a great example of all those factors coming together and make great things happen for a lot of people around the globe so congratulations for that and thank you for being with us Scott. We appreciate the time here on theCube. >> Jeff, John thank you very much. This was a pleasure. >> Jeff: Thank you. >> You bet. Back with more from San Jose in just a bit. You're watching theCube here on SiliconANGLE TV. (techno music)

>> From San Francisco, it's The Cube Covering Conga Connect West 2018. Brought to you by Conga. Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with The Cube. We are at Salesforce Dreamforce, they say a hundred and seventy thousand people have descended into downtown San Francisco, it's absolutely bananas. We found a little respite, a little oasis if you will. Couple doors down to the Thirsty Bear's, the Conga Connect West event, come on down they've rented out The Thirsty Bear for three days of, I just was told, free food, free drink and a lot of entertainment, also a lot of great Conga people as well, and The Cube's here, so come on by. We're excited to have, for our next segment, people that are really getting close to the customer because at the end of the day, it's really about the customer. So we've got Natasha Reid, she is the senior product management for Conga, good to see you. And also Justin Mongroo, the VP of sales excellence from Conga, also great to see you. >> Thanks. Before we get in I got to ask you, Justin, that is a great title, VP of sales excellence. I mean there really, it says something about what you think is important which is being good at selling, not a used car sales approach at all. How did you come up with that title and what does that personify for your team? >> Yeah, well I didn't come up the title but I think for us, Conga, what it means, sales excellence is about selling with integrity, our product provides real benefits to customers and so unlike a lot of products where they can't talk about the full set, sales excellence to us is being able really let the product shine and identify how it's going to help the businesses we work with. >> Right, and Natasha that's what I hear you spend a lot of your time with customers on. You know, you're product management, but you're using a lot of customer input to drive what you prioritize how you're kind of setting out your road map, what you're working on. >> Yes, absolutely. So, from a customer perspective, we really pride ourselves on customer interviews. There's really nothing that helps you understand what customers are doing and using with your products than watching them firsthand in their own environment, and it really just provides invaluable feedback to help drive where we take our products in the future. >> It's funny, we did the Intuit Quickbooks Connect show a couple years ago, we had Scott Cook on, and he used to talk about it at Intuit, they would just go, like you said, and sit and watch people engage with the application, not even surveys but actually see how users use it and it's interesting even if you watch someone else just use Excel, we all use it in a very different way, so that must be incredibly valuable feedback. >> Yes, I mean you really see the good parts of the application, you see the parts that maybe need improvement as well, but it's feedback that you really can't gather in any way except watching somebody. >> Right, I think it also is the philosophy that's very very different than kind of looking at the competitors all the time, if you listen to Andy Jassy or Jeff Bezos at Amazon who are just kicking tail and taking names, they're maniacally focused on what the customer wants. They don't really look at the competition, they don't really talk about the competition, they're always looking at that customer. What do they need, what do they need next, and you guys continuing to evolve your product line to kind of continue to go down that path. >> Well, and the reality is is the customer defines the product in a lot of cases, right? What better way to understand your market than to talk to the people who are already working with you and finding out what they want to buy next? >> Right, right. So you guys have some exciting announcements here at Salesforce this year, Salesforce is now integrating some of the Conga functionality inside of some of their core applications if you could give us a little bit more color on that. >> Sure, so we just launched Conga invoice generation for Salesforce billing, and Conga quote generation for Salesforce CPQ. So, these two products are taking the power of the flagship document generation product Conga Composer, and we're leveraging that functionality for very purpose-specific built document generation with Salesforce CPQ and Salesforce billing. >> That's pretty awesome. >> Yes, that is pretty awesome. >> So why did pick you guys? What were some of the feature sets, or working with Conga that helped Salesforce come to this decision? >> Sure, so Conga Composer, well known for best in class document generation, pixel perfect documents, so when you need to get your formatting just right, when you need very sharp, clean lines, et cetera, leveraging things like the ability to provide more information or merge more product line items into your documents, as well as supporting the formats that people want, things like Word and PDF. >> Yeah, and I would say in addition to the functionality, Salesforce also is able to trust just by seeing our customer experience through our net promoter score and our reviews online knowing that they could partner with us and that we would take care of our joint customers they way they want them to be. >> That's a pretty significant move by them to adopt your guys' technology as part of the core within some of their offerings >> It is, it's not something that Salesforce does often, so we're very proud and we're very grateful that they looked to us to help provide these solutions. I think another component of this is just ease of use. So very easy to install, Lightning-ready, very forward thinking in that capacity. >> Yeah, the Lightning thing is interesting, you get used to the old, "Who moved my cheese?" I was the old school front end on Salesforce and they finally made me jump over to Lightning, but I'm sure that opened up all types of new opportunities for you to deliver new functionality in that. >> It does, and I'll empathize with that sentiment. I think change is always hard, right? People always struggle a little bit when they're used to doing something one way and Lightning is a very different look and feel from Salesforce Classic. I will say though that once you move to Lightning, Salesforce has done a really great job of, Lightning is more than just a CRM, It helps you do your job better. It makes suggestions, they put a lot of work into UI, user interface and user experience, you don't have to think about how to do your job better, it actually just helps you do your job better. >> Right. >> So being able to build and develop on the Lightning framework is actually a tremendous benefit. >> It has been, and in the last piece you guys are sitting on a bunch of different pieces in this document life cycle, if you will. You don't call it that, but you're into the contracts, you're into the document generation, you're into the life cycle management, so all these things too, I imagine now are coming together in a more kind of synchronized, cohesive way. >> Well I mean it's really if you think about the customer's story they need a generated document to communicate with their customers before they are a customer, and then they need to do a quote to show them how much it's going to cost, and they may or may not need to negotiate that and then they need to sign it, and every business has this sort of interaction with their customers, from, "Here's what we do." to "Do you like it "enough to buy it from us?" To, "Here's how we make it legally binding". I mean that's business, and Conga has met our customers along every stage of that journey that they go through in making a customer a customer, and doing that in a visually stimulating, professional way. >> So, fun fact about Conga Sign, our e-signature product we launched in February of this year. E-signature was the #1 feature request, or problem to solve that the conga customer base has provided in the last couple of years. So, everybody wanted e-signature. We listened, we heard, and we built you e-signature. >> So how long did it take you to get it out, from the time you decided, okay we'll go ahead? >> Well, as the original product manager I can actually answer that very specifically. So, we started building in July of last year and we launched on February thirteenth of this year. >> So, less than a year? >> Yes. >> Definitely less than a year. >> Okay, great. And just final thoughts on this event? Dreamforce, obviously a huge event for you guys, big investment in this Thirsty Bear celebration at Connect West. What do you hope to get out of this week, what are you excited to see from both the Salesforce folks across the street, as well as this kind of gathering with all your customers? >> You know, for me I hope to learn. I want to learn what our customers are interested in, I want to learn what our reps are seeing in the market as they walk around, and what other businesses are doing, and then learn from the ecosystem and what tools are available that we can use ourselves to better help our customer which is our employees. >> My favorite part of Dreamforce is actually the Conga booth at the Moscone main hall. So we actually get lots of our customers who come to find us, who come to find specific people. They'll come and ask for, "Hey, this support person "helped us", and they'll actually identify that person by name, or "Hey, this professional "service person helped us, can I meet them? "Are they here?" And it's just incredibly gratifying, like it's very difficult to describe. You have literally hundreds of people coming to find you to just say, "Thank you, we love your products, "it makes my life so much easier, "what else are you guys doing?" >> That's great, and it's always so gratifying to know that there's always someone on the other side that appreciates the work and it's always fun when you get some kind of an electronic relationship, to cement that with a face and a voice and a name and a handshake. Well, thanks again for stopping by and congratulations on the big announcement. >> [Natasha And Justin] Thank you. >> Alright, he's Justin, she's Natasha, I'm Jeff, you're watching The Cube. We're here at Conga Connect West at Salesforce at Thirsty bear, see you next time.

(upbeat music) >> Hi, I'm Lauren Cooney, and welcome back to theCUBE. Today we have Jeff Frick with us, who is the general manager of theCUBE, and we're here to learn about what goes on at theCUBE, what the business is like, some of the most fun aspects of what he does, and go from there. >> Jeff: Great to be here. >> Thank you so much. So, Jeff, starting out, really, when did you join theCUBE, and really what are your goals and aspirations for theCUBE as you look to business going forward now? >> My first CUBE gig was, I've known John for a long, long time, reached out. It was actually Splunk.conf 2012 in the Cosmo, I'll never forget, and they needed an extra host, we were over-subscribed, and I went and did that show. I did it with Jeff Kelley, and was really touched by this format where you've got kind of this professional looking, newsy, opportunity for people to tell their story, most people don't ever get to tell their story in that context, which I thought was pretty cool. And then also just to personalize the people behind the tech because since Steve Jobs, and that genre of people, people want to know who the people are behind the technology. So not only the people that run the companies, but who creates it. I think Open-source had a lot to do with that where people are interested in other people, not just the tech for itself. And that's what I really like. >> You bring up a great point with stories, and luminaries, and visionaries. Can you talk about some of those folks that you've had on theCUBE, some of the best guests you've ever had? >> Oh my gosh, we've had so much. People ask me this all the time, I need to prepare my answer better. But like Scott Cook, from Intuit, was just phenomenal. Tremendously successful, still focused on the same core vision that he came up with when his wife was filling out her checkbook, writing checks, about just a better way to organize and manage cash. And that show is so inspirational because it's really a small business show pretending to be an accounting show. We've had Robert Gates on, I didn't get to interview Robert Gates, but served with many, many President's. We're really fortunate, we often get the keynotes. Fred Luddy, from ServiceNow, phenomenal founder, goofy, quirky. Maria Klawe who runs Harvey Mudd College, goofy, quirky, great personality. So there's just so many great individuals and then some that you don't know. We had, an original ServiceNow we had this little older lady who had got a ServiceNow POC through, it's some ancient company, I don't even remember what company it was, and it was just fascinating to me how this, you know, she wasn't young and hip and new and on top of things, was able to kind of see the vision, get it funded, get a project underway, and then eventually build into being a customer for them. And how she was able to do that, and what was the story, and how many peers out there are curious to know how they could do that for their company. And those, I love those stories. >> Those are great. And I think one of the things that we want to look at too is that we want to understand for the most part what are some of the bloopers that you've seen out there? What are some of the things that you've noticed that are funny or were oh my gosh, you know, while you were on air, while you were thinking about different things. Can you tell me a little bit about that? >> Well, of course, the classic one that we've referenced over and over and over, and if you've seen any of our promos you see, it was John Cleese. Ironically again, at another ServiceNow keynote he was doing their CIO Summit or something, and he came on and he basically decided he wanted to rewrite the end of the, it became a sketch, not an interview. And just stood up and threw his water all over John and Dave, fried Dave's laptop, and marched off the stage. Half the people there, we had a huge live audience, were laughing hysterically. The other half were petrified. Unfortunately, a number of those were the client senior executives who didn't really know, and we had to go out and do some investigation and find out he actually does it a lot to people. And in fact the guys ran into him later that night and he said, "Wasn't that fun, wasn't that fun?" So that's one that just jumps right off the page. Another great one was Michael North from the NFL was at an IBM event talking about how they build the schedule. And while the analytics are fine, and you run an algorithm and it can plug a bunch of numbers, it's really the softer side. You know, how do you leverage at that point a Peyton Manning versus a Tom Brady match up? Do you use it to leverage an existing relationship? Do you use it to build a new network? Do you use it in your feature presentation to get the most leverage from that asset? So a whole lot of kind of soft, softer sided things in terms of the decision making. Which I think is what's really interesting. >> Yeah, I think that's great. And I want to take it a little bit further into what are the business aspects of theCUBE? What do you do on a day to day basis? What are the things that matter the most for running this business? >> Big question. So most important area is our customers. So what customer, what value does theCUBE bring to people when they take us to their conference? >> Lauren: And who are the key customers? >> Well key customers, right. IBM, and we've mentioned ServiceNow, Splunk, EMC, Dell EMC now, Vmware and their ecosystem partners. So a lot of enterprise infrastructure, a lot of opensource, and a lot of applications. But really there's three key components to why people bring theCUBE and what we deliver when we're there. One of them is just great content. The format that we have, the conversational tone, the way that it all works, we just get people to say stuff that you wouldn't ever ask them to say, especially on the customer reference ones. So the content is great and, you know, conferences are looking for more great content. The second really is our community and our distribution. You know we are a media company, we're super active in the community, we leverage a lot of social tools. We try to ask interviews and get information that's topical and evergreen and can be used often and over and over, and really run that out through a number of different channels and different formats. And then the third thing, which we didn't use to talk about as much, but we really do now, it's really the theater of our presence. There's something to bright lights and cameras when theCUBE is at an event. It's like, oh, theCUBE guys are here. And we hear it all the time, theCUBE guys are here. >> Everyone likes to be a star. >> Everybody wants to be a star. And it does a little bit of, I won't say validates for the greater good, but certainly within our community when we're at an event it's a signal that something's going on, something's exciting here, theCUBE guys are here, and we're covering it. And we hear that over and over. We have people stop us literally in an elevator to say, I look at your guys' upcoming sheet to make some decisions as to where I should plan my schedule time. And, or we've also heard, you know, I just wait and watch theCUBE all day, I can't go, I just have theCUBE running in the background. And get a taste of not necessarily what happened in all the breakouts and all the keynotes and all the other stuff, but we generally get all the same people who run all the keynotes. You're getting those same folks, but you're getting them in a conversational tone, talking often about many of the similar topics, it's just a different way to get that message across. >> So how do you grow the community further? So you talk about the community you have, you talk about the community that's at large right now. How are you looking to grow your user base and your community further? >> Right, so it's really kind of along two angles. One is kind of this natural bundling of subsets within our existing community. And that's like our Women in Tech coverage that we started years ago. Honestly, you know things were kind of slowing again in November, so we're like, you know, there's some great women, they're not getting highlighted, let's go out and do some Women in Tech interviews and integrate that. So that's kind of more of a horizontal play if you will. In terms of more vertical plays, we're trying to get a little bit out of the application infrastructure space and more into the app space. So autonomous vehicles, autonomous drones, commercial drones, we've done a lot of just app shows as companies do their own shows versus more of an industry show. So like I said, I mentioned QuickBooks Connect was fun. So really getting into some of these other areas that are more application specific and not just kind of infrastructure, per se which is the roots. >> So when you so application specific, are you looking at for example, you know Microsoft for example is a very large company. They have application space. Is that what you're looking for? >> Love to do some Microsoft shows, yeah, we have a Microsoft build and Ignite, they have a number of shows. >> What about Salesforce? Salesforce is doing some really interesting stuff around applications and community and the whole nine yards. >> Right, so before we didn't really go after Salesforce per se, 'cause it was just really big and we were just really small, we were trying to get a lot of our processes and structure in place. Since then we actually covered one Salesforce lightly a couple years back. A friend of mine, Lynn Voinovich, was a CMO and we covered the kick off. >> I love Lynn. >> You know Lynn? But we need to get back to Salesforce, that's one that we should be at, it's an important show, we should be there. >> Great, so let's have, let's kind of end here with a fun fact. So tell me a fun fact about your job or something that you do that perhaps people don't know about. >> A fun fact about my job. Just, it's just a lot. >> Lauren: Let's make it fun, not a lot of work. >> Basically our job is kind of like the proverbial duck, right? When we run production, we do about a hundred shows a year. There is, I always tell people it's like catering. There's about a thousand details that you kind of have some idea about, and there's a thousand ideas, there's a thousand issues that you have just no control. So being able to dance, being able to be like that proverbial duck that looks smooth, and cool, calm, and collected on top, but it's really pumping pretty hard underneath, you know we've got a lot of people, we've got a lot of back end processes, we have a lot of dancing that happens to try to make it really smooth for the guests, really smooth for the consumer. And we screw up and things happen. But I think we're pretty good, and we're constantly trying to improve our process. >> Great, thank you so much, and thank you for being here again. >> Thank you. >> I really appreciate your time. And we'll be back shortly on theCUBE with something that is coming up in about 15 minutes. (techno music)

>> Narrator: Live from San Jose, California. In the heart of Silicon Valley. It's theCUBE. Covering QuickBooks Connect 2016. Now here're your hosts. Jeff Frick and John Walls. (upbeat music) >> Welcome back here in San Jose, we're live at the Convention Center for the second day of QuickBooks Connect 2016. A thriving community, 5000 plus attendees here enjoying where there have been some fascinating keynotes and breakout sessions. And it's our pleasure to bring you some of the brightest and best minds in the QuickBooks community. And we have that with us today in the form of Jim McGinnis, who's the Vice President of Product Management at ProConnect. Jim, thanks for being with us. >> Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. >> I got to tell you, I wasn't aware of your stature until Jeff informed me of last year when the two of you met. He said, "I could barley have a conversation with him because the man's a rock star". People kept coming up, they wanted to take selfies with him and it was nonstop. So apparently, your cache goes well beyond theCUBE. >> It's very kind, but the truth is, the rock stars are our 150,000 plus pro-advisors from around the world. These guys are making a huge difference in the small businesses' lives. They come here, they connect with small businesses, with each other, et cetera. Sometimes it feels a little silly, but I'm just honored to get to spend time with them. >> But they wanted the selfie so good for you. They're not asking for Jeff and John. They're asking for Jim. >> In the near future I'm sure. >> Give me an idea, first off, your feelings about the vibe. You heard us talking about, a little bit ago but your thoughts about what you're seeing here and the growth of this show over the last three years. >> I was having a conversation, you know this started on the back of a notebook three years ago where we said, "We're getting big enough that we believe we need to have a show to bring folks together". But we want to be different. We want to be about making connections. So the name QB Connect was born. We wanted to be the place where developers, small businesses, and accountants come together and meet. The vibe is phenomenal. The vibe it starts early Monday morning when we do the accountant kickoff. They go into training. A lot of them get certified in QuickBooks online and advance certifications as well. It continues the next day, yesterday, with these fabulous keynote speakers. Last night with a great band, Third Eye Blind. Sometimes these bands say, "Am I seriously playing for a bunch of accountants"? But they always come away and say, "That is one of the best "shows we've ever done because the enthusiasm, the excitement". Everybody loves to be here. And then today continued. We had fabulous speakers on the stage again. People like Tony Hawk and Simone Biles. >> Yeah, so what do you want when people leave here, and we're going to get into accounting and what's going on certainly in your world. But I'm just curious. The takeaway that you want people to have as they go back to all corners of the globe, frankly. What do you want them to do, and how do you want them to feel about QuickBooks when they go back and do their 12-hour day jobs? >> Absolutely. You know, I want them to feel empowered to really make a difference in their clients' lives, which is super fun. There was a quote yesterday from America who said, "You are modeling possibilities for someone else and you may not even realize it". And boy, our pro-advisors from around the world really model possibilities. They save small businesses all the time. In fact, 89% of small businesses say they're more successful because they work with and accountant. How do I want them to feel about QuickBooks and Intuit? I really want them to feel like we're their partners. Scott Cook founded this company believing that we're here to make a difference. To change our customer's financial lives so profoundly they can't imagine going back. When I talked to accountants last night, today, that's what they tell me. They want to change their small businesses' financial lives so profoundly, they can't imagine not working with an accountant. We're perfect partners. That's what I'd like them to take back. >> It's so funny right? The dirty little secret everyone thinks an accounting show. It's not an accounting show. >> No. >> It's a small business show. It's really a building businesses and partnerships, and really creating that foundation for other people to build from to be more successful in really pursuing their passions. I think that's why the energy is so strong. >> You said it well. It's all about possibilities and it's all about connections. >> Excellent. So lets talk about some big global trends that are not only impacting QuickBooks and Intuit, and your customers, and the accountants but everyone all over the place. The two big ones that have recently just overtaken everything, mobile and cloud. Huge impact on what you can build, how you can deliver it, how people consume it. How have those really changed what you guys have built and delivered at QuickBooks? >> That's great. I'll start with the cloud side because I think that's where it all starts. All those desktops, they're coffins. The data is buried underneath your desk and it's unusable in so many ways. When the data moves up into the cloud, now you can make connections between industries. You can do industry benchmarking. Now the data can just flow seamlessly from one application, like QuickBooks online, through trial balance to another application, like our ProConnect Tax online. We're able to connect up all these fabulous developers who are building solutions that we would never be able to build the creativity that we see and all plug in this online ecosystem. It changes everything. On the mobile side, boy isn't it fun to see all the tweets going by? Our reputations are being built for us. The best we can do is curate them at this stage. The other is it's anytime, anywhere isn't it? This idea that you can make an appointment with your accountant and he or you would drive across town to get some bit of information. It's just too slow in today's world. Mobile enables us to collaborate constantly with our accounting professionals and the accounting professionals to collaborate with their clients. >> And really in a different kind of form and function because mobile is quick. I got two minutes standing in line at the grocery store at Safeway. I got a couple of minutes while I'm filling up my car full of gas. I'm waiting for the kids to come out of the coach's meeting after the soccer games. So it's a lot more frequent little bits of connecting in the way that we use mobile apps to interact with our world. >> Absolutely. Think about all the productivity that's unlocked with mobile. Usually it's a simple question. I need something now. Make an appointment, drive across town, it's miserable. Instead you can ask a question and all that's successful because the data's in the cloud. >> Jeff: Right. >> So what do you do then in terms of, at least with a client base that has a reputation for being a bit slow to move. And there's not an enormous number of early adopters, it's almost like show me. But yet when you have these new possibilities like moving to the cloud, migration there, people are going to get left behind if they don't. How do you convey that sense of urgency and get them to convert and get them to adopt and take advantage of these great products and services that you're developing for people? >> I'm going to answer that by saying I say it ain't so. I think accountants and accounting professionals are some of the most forward people that I've known. Now, they have to be responsible. They have to look out for their clients. And they're under a lot time pressure. I think that if there's been some slowness in moving it's because we haven't gone fast enough to create applications that really save them the time. Software's a tough business, folks. Because before in my previous life I was in Proctor & Gamble. You knew the benefit up front. Software comes with immediate pain and uncertainty about whether it's really going to deliver the promise, the benefit that's there. What we have to do is we have to help show accountants that the possibilities are there and give them immediate satisfaction that the time savings that they seek is there. When we do that, we've already seen it. They move quickly. >> So you're kind of talking about, in a way I think, this firm of the future concept, right? That as far as where we're going in this 21st century. So talk a little more about that and what it means, brass tax terms. When the rubber hits the road here, in terms of the products that you're providing people and the changes you think the customer's going to have to make in order to really fulfill this vision of the firm of the future. >> That's exactly right. Sometimes our accounting professionals or pro-advisors come to us and say, "Can't you make it simpler? "Can't you break it down into a few steps "so I can follow a roadmap step-by-step "and get there?" And we've done that a little bit with our concept of firm of the future. The first step is the importance of getting online. That first client, that's a little scary. Put your next client online, see what its like, enjoy the benefits, learn the new operating systems, learn the new workflows. And then the benefits start to unlock. You can manage them all in QuickBooks online account. You can start tying in the different applications. You can see all of your clients there. And as you get your second and your third, you start to enjoy that. The second part of our pilar I would say, the firm of the future, is we do believe that the billable hour it's not scalable. Of all of the time savings that's coming by moving to an online platform, gosh, you'd have to have a lot more clients in order to make as much money as you're making today. We believe accounting professionals deserve to get paid for the value they create. And that means moving to fixed fee pricing, it means offering a range of services, that means going beyond just typing in data and compliance to actually creating more value through advisory services. And then that's the third pilar right there. Once you're online, and you're making money by creating value through advisory services, you need to get your name out there. Become a specialist in a certain vertical. Help people around the country, even around the globe, know the value that you can create. And they'll flock to you. We've seen little companies start up with two people, this one in Canada, has gone up to I think more than 500 clients in less than three years because they followed the firm of the future approach. >> That's really interesting. It was apart of the keynote too where a lot of the entrepreneurs said they started with their family accountant or family friend who didn't really have a specialization in the industries that they decided to build. Then at some point they had to flip because the value of accounting is not data entry. And it's kind of old school that automation should help you get rid of the redundant low value activity to free you up on the higher value activity which is asset planning, and tax planning, and future planning, and inventory planning, and the things where the accountant can bring much more value to the relationship that aren't tied to how many hours did it take to prepare your return. >> That's absolutely right. We say that the most important feature we can add into QuickBooks is an accountant. Sometimes there's some fear of technology, I have to share what I read recently in the Wall Street Journal which is, machines have been able to beat humans at chess. But there's a concept called centaur chess, which is half machine half human. When a chess expert is combined with a computer can beat any computer. And that's where we are in the accounting profession too. All this technology is fabulous, but where it really starts to sing is when it's combined with an accounting professional who understands it and leverages to give advice only a human being can give. >> Alright so a couple more trends now that are coming, get your reaction. Machine learning, big one, big data obviously it's been around awhile but the machine learning and the augmented intelligence, AI. Some people say artificial intelligence other people say there's nothing artificial about it. >> That's right. >> It should be augmented intelligence. The impacts of those on your software and your customers? >> Great question. Let's be specific. Things like chart of accounts. We can do a pretty good job of estimating what a chart of accounts should be for a given vertical. But they always get modified by the accountants because they know better than we do. When a few of them start to modify it and few more, pretty soon we can leverage the wisdom of the accounting profession crowd to get the very best chart of accounts for any given vertical. What a great opportunity. And then you think about benchmarks. I was talking to somebody before about when all of the plumbing industry is on QBO. And accountants can go in and say this is what accounts receivable should look like for plumbing, for a plumber. Think of the power of that. But one thing we know is every small business says the same thing, but I'm different. No problem, tell me how you're different? And in fact, we'll find 10,000 others who're different, just like you. >> Just like you, right. (all laughing) So, just going forward, you've go tax pros on one side, you've got accountants on the other, never the twain shall meet. Now you're bringing them together. And the importance of that, the value of that in terms of making sure there's an integration, there's a collaboration for small firms? >> In my new role as product manager for the ProConnect group, that's the part I'm really really excited about. Last year we launched QuickBooks online trial balance so that the data flows into the trial balance and from the trial balance mappings can be done and it flows directly into the tax software with a little modification, a click of the button, you can file right from the tax software. But our accountants told us, I don't understand. I don't want to run two different client lists when somethings going on in the tax side of it. I want to know about it where I do my work, in QuickBooks online accountants. So this year we've integrated the tax software right into QuickBooks online accountant. And now we're dreaming a little bit. Where as we talk about moving to advisory services, when it's a separate business impacts in my books, impacts in the decisions I make here, then get handed over the tax side of the shop. Now when it's all one application, those insights come back from tax and say, I wouldn't do it that way. I'd lease that. I wouldn't buy it because you're going to be in a much better position from a tax standpoint. And gosh, your business has really taken off. You need to think differently about your quarterly estimates. Because otherwise you're going to find yourself in a cash flow situation come October. >> So you're getting ahead. You're not looking after the fact and reacting. >> It's advisory service. It moves tax from being a once a year event to being an ongoing relationship. That's exciting. >> Well Jim, it's that kind of vision that I think, makes you a rock star. And if you got time for a quick selfie. (all laughing) If we all just kind of, you know... >> I'm all in. >> Jim McGinnis, Glad you could join us here. I look forward to seeing you down the road too. >> Thank you very much. >> Jeff: Best of luck to you. >> Jim: I've certainly enjoyed it. >> It's a little blurry, we'll have to do another one here. Back with more here from San Jose right after this. You're watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)