Sasan Goodarzi to take the helm of Turbo Tax maker Intuit, succeeding Brad Smith at the end of this year. CTO of company expected to step down as well.
On Thursday, Brad Smith announced that he is stepping down from the Mountain View, California-based maker of Quickbooks and Turbo Tax. He led Intuit for the past 11 years and saw customers double to 50 million, revenue doubled as well while earnings tripled during his tenure. He is expected to stay on as the company’s executive board chairman.
After news of Smith’s departure hit, shares of the finance software company fell. The announcement came as a shock as Smith is only 54-years-old and the company is doing well. But some good leadership principles state it is best to leave the company in good condition to a successor and that is what Smith appears to be doing.
Before announcing his decision, Smith told Fortune in an exclusive interview, “I never wanted to be that athlete who loses half a step or can’t complete the pass. I wanted to step down when I was still in my learning zone and still had gas in the tank.” He will hand the reins of the company over to the Executive Vice President Sasan Goodarzi on January 1, 2019.
Goodarzi is no stranger to Intuit and the products that it offers. He joined the company in 2004 and serves as Senior Vice President and General Manager of Intuit’s ProTax and additional financial services. He left for a stint as CEO of Nexant, only to return a year later to Intuit as the company’s Chief Information Officer. He ran Intuit’s fastest growing division which targets small business and the self employed and excelled in bring new ideas to the table to help it scale.
Smith said of his successor in a statement on the company’s blog, “Having led each of our largest businesses and served as our CIO during his 13 years with the company, Sasan is a proven leader and growth driver. He has been instrumental to the transformation of our company and was a key architect of our One Intuit Ecosystem strategy. He is both ready and primed to lead Intuit into the future.”
The company’s chief technology officer is also expected to leave by the year’s end. Tayloe Stansbury will be stepping down and replaced by current senior vice president and chief product development officer for Intuit’s Small Business and Self-Employed Group, Marianna Tessel.
Tessel in a statement on the company’s blog, “Tayloe has done so much to lead our transformation and has been a mentor and friend to me personally for the last 17 years. I believe we have a huge opportunity to make Intuit a celebrated, world-class technology organization where the best engineers want to solve meaningful problems and create amazing products. I am excited about what’s to come.”
