Thank you so much, everybody, for your patience as we get this Intuit session going. A real delight to welcome back, home, Sandeep Aujla, a former Goldman alum, I take it?
Yes, thanks for having me back.
Yeah.
It's nice to be back from a different side of the stage this time.
Exactly. Congratulations on becoming CFO of Intuit.
Thank you.
Maybe you could just give us a brief introduction, what you did at Intuit before the CFO job, and also what you did during your Goldman days, if it's not too embarrassing.
Yeah, no, not embarrassing at all, 'cause we'll just stick to the daytime hours. No, I started my career in investment banking, doing largely tech M&A at a mix of Goldman and Morgan Stanley. Really joined Intuit in 2015, so I've been there about eight years. During my tenure at Intuit, I spent majority of my time with the small business group, which most of you know as the QuickBooks franchise. Really, the mandate for what I was brought in was leaning into my non-traditional background to help accelerate that business transformation for, from being a source of truth for your books, largely an accounting software business, to being a source of truth for your business, to being a platform that has payments, payroll, Mailchimp, time tracking as part of its core offering.
So in essence, that platform journey that we've been on. And as of August first this year, I had the good fortune of being the CFO of the company, so it's been a fun ride over the last eight years.
That's great. That's great. What, what is the mandate for, Sandeep, as, as CFO of Intuit? What, what does the board want you to do? What does the CEO want you to do?
Absolutely. You know, again, I've been at the company eight years, so the last five years, I've been amongst the top 20-24 people at the company, responsible for finance for the largest part of the company, over 50% of Intuit's revenue, as well as working with our CTO over the last several years as we have leaned into being an AI-driven expert platform.
Mm-hmm.
As the two of you know, we declared our focus on being an AI-driven expert platform five years ago-
Mm-hmm.
long before it became fashionable to talk about,
Yeah
... AI. And, what that meant is, over the last several years, I've had my fingerprints and I've had my influence in how the company has managed its investments-
Mm-hmm.
how the company has leaned into growing as a platform business, how the company has leaned into scaling our profitability by being efficient in how we manage the business, and finding operating leverage across the investments that we made. So looking forward is continue to build on that, on that great platform.
Mm-hmm.
On preserving the value that's there, but also to help put tangible growth points.
Mm-hmm.
on the board.
Mm-hmm.
So as I look ahead, it's an opportunity to continue to lean into executing across our five big bets.
Mm-hmm.
Is lean into penetrating our TAM.
Mm-hmm.
We have over $300 billion TAM that we are currently 5% penetrated, and as we lean into executing our big bets, as we lean into incorporating Gen AI, we see massive opportunity to continue to further penetrate that TAM. So that's what I'm looking forward to delivering on over the coming years.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and we'll definitely get talking a little bit about Intuit Assist that you guys announced, Intuit Assist, which you guys announced today. But even before we get there, I'm really curious to get your thoughts on, you know, the state of the SMB environment and confidence of consumers today, just given, you know, the having the SMB platform, the QuickBooks platform, Credit Karma, and all the other touch points that Intuit has.
Yeah, great question, and, you know, across our platform, we serve 800 million customers, both mix of consumers and SMBs. So the perspective that we get on the economy is based on both what we see in our own platform, that people use to manage their financial lives, to manage their businesses, as well as externally. So let me start with the SMB side. I personally continue to be amazed at the resilience of the small business owners and their entrepreneurship. What we are seeing is that they continue to have strong reserves. Their cash reserves are higher than their pre-pandemic level.
Mm-hmm.
Albeit it's down about 10% from where it was last year at this time. They're having a much better time of attracting and retaining talent than what the environment was 15 months ago. And they are facing less pressure from the supply chain, as well as inflation on their cost structure. So those are all the positive, the glass half full aspect.
Mm-hmm.
On the other side, we are seeing access to capital becoming constrained. The cost of that capital has continued to go up, and the pricing power of some of the SMBs continue to get impacted. So net-net, it remains a pretty mixed picture for the small businesses out there, and we think the environment remains uncertain, and that's some of the factors that we incorporated when we talked about our guidance a couple of weeks ago. So that's on the SMB side.
Mm-hmm.
On the consumer side-
Mm-hmm.
What we are seeing is that FICO scores are down about 12 points since March last year. We've seen consumer balances on their debt is up around 30%, particularly for those in the 600-660 FICO. You layer in the fact that they're, they're carrying higher balances, and the cost of those, that debt has gone up order of magnitude, just given the rate environment that we are living in. And so the consumer is feeling that pressure from the higher debt payments, and that's all before we even get into the student debt repayment starting, which I think happens later this month.
Yeah.
The consumer picture also remains a bit uncertain, but, you know, they still have good cash reserves, and it's a matter of, you know, how those cash reserves are preserved or not over the coming months.
... Yeah, no, I think that that's a really good color into the landscape that, you know, you have such, your purview you have is unparalleled. And I think that you mentioned actually hiring and within SMB, and I wanted to double-click on that.
Sure.
I know Kash doesn't love that term, but-
No, it's just personal, that's it. So what-- To give you the context, I said, we're gonna really try and steer clear of clichéd terms such as double-click, dig deeper- Segway-
Yeah.
Shift gears.
Yeah.
We'll expand on that, that's okay.
Expand on that.
No, we'll make sure we keep our ducks in a row here.
Yeah, exactly. That's another cliché.
Exactly. I remember all the Goldman clichés.
Yeah, so I mean, when it comes to hiring, how does that impact Intuit's perspective and what Intuit is maybe potentially, how it's shifting the, the dynamics and your appetite for hiring?
Absolutely. You know, for us, a couple of things I would state is that we have always been prudent in terms of our hiring. We always make sure that we continue to lean into growing our revenues faster than expenses. So part of that comes with that we make sure even when the times were great about a couple of years ago, when everyone was, you know, hiring hand over fist, that we were being prudent in terms of the headcount that we hire, and we lean into making sure that we are hiring coders, hands-on-keyboard, or that we are hiring folks that are gonna be bringing incremental revenue, helping us grow into new growth opportunities for the business. So we've always been prudent, and we—that prudence continues in our hiring in this current environment.
What we are seeing in this current environment is that employee retention has gone up significantly.
Mm-hmm.
So that means that we are having to naturally hire less because we have less vacancies to fill. But, in terms of our hiring practices, we've always been prudent, and we continue to lean into that prudence and hire folks who are going to help us unlock additional growth opportunities as a business.
Unlocking growth opportunities definitely brings us to AI. I know you guys just announced AI as Intuit Assist.
Right.
this morning, and there's, it really touches on all aspects of the Intuit platform. Where do you potentially see a more of an outsized impact, whether it be in, QuickBooks or online payments, or whether it be in TurboTax or Credit Karma or Mailchimp? Like, you know, we can keep going.
Yeah, no, absolutely. You know, I know we had Innovation Day earlier today at 9:30 A.M. Pacific. Many of you are, were here in the conference. So let me just set a little bit of context, and then I'll-
Sure
... definitely address the question you have. As a platform, we have multiple advantages that set us up well in the era of Gen AI. First and foremost, we declared our strategy to be an AI-driven expert platform five years ago, and we have been investing in AI talent over those years. We've been investing in machine learning models over those years. We've been investing in knowledge engineering over those years. So we had a massive head start in this space.
It took five years to do this.
Right.
Because there, there is a prevailing view that you can use any of these generic LLMs and teach it how to do taxes.
Exactly. And I'll address that as well.
Yeah.
I think
I'd love to.
The prevailing view is sometimes a bit optimistic based on what the reality tends to be on some of these areas. So we've had a head start. On top of that, across those 100 million customers, we have a set of data that is uniquely accessible to us because it's behind our firewall. We have 60,000 attributes per consumer across their financial lives, across their income, across their expenditures, the categories they tend to spend in. We have a 360-degree view of the SMB, across their customers and suppliers. And there are 500,000 unique attributes that we have per SMB in terms of their cash flow, in terms of their cost of goods, their cash balances, their capital needs.
All that data, as I shared, is behind our firewall. So it's uniquely accessible to us to train our models on, to help deliver differentiated value to our customers, to, in essence, make the data from the 100 million customers on the platform available to improve the prosperity of each and every individual participant on that platform. That is a unique competitive differentiation that we have. So based on that, what we announced this morning was Intuit Assist. It is, in essence, a continuation of our platform, going from one where small businesses and consumers came to do the work to get the benefit, to now having a lot of the work done for you automatically, to where they're getting accelerated time to benefit, and continued better insights to make smarter financial decisions as a small business owner or as an individual.
That is, Intuit Assist, and what excites us for the opportunity ahead is that we think it's gonna provide us an opportunity to unlock the TAM.
Mm-hmm.
I shared earlier, 300 billion-plus TAM, that's only 5% penetrated. By making it easier for customers to come and onboard onto our platform, to discover various capabilities across our platform and adopt those capabilities, to get repeat insights and benefits delivered to them in their pocket so they can make smarter decisions, it just opens up the aperture on how we unlock that TAM. Secondly, we are uniquely positioned as a business to make sure that at Intuit, there are no dead ends with Gen AI, 'cause we're in the business of providing our customers 100% confidence. Sometimes to get to the 100% confidence, you need to go beyond Gen AI.
In our experiences, when they're dealing with a unique situation, when they're filing their taxes, or they're dealing with a unique complexity, when they're making a business decision, with one click of a button, they will be linked to an expert who will have contextual awareness of their situation and can provide them that insight to give them that 100% confidence.
Mm-hmm.
So that's an upsell opportunity to drive adoption of those agents. And thirdly, there's an opportunity for us to price for this innovation that we're building into those platforms. So both in terms of the innovation we are delivering and the benefits we deliver to the customers, and the business outcomes that'll deliver to our company, we are quite excited for.
Ths is both across QuickBooks and TurboTax, right?
QuickBooks, TurboTax, Credit Karma-
Yeah.
Mailchimp, it's across the entire platform.
How do we monetize this value add?
You know, the monetization strategy is across those three prongs I just touched on.
Mm-hmm.
One, unlocking the TAM-
Mm.
F or us by making the product easier to adopt
Mm.
And get onboarded and get benefits from. Two, opening up the funnel to live-
Mm.
-agents-
Mm.
-to drive that upsell, as customers want to go beyond GenAI to get to 100% confidence. And thirdly, we've had a long-standing tenet around pricing for value. As we add more capabilities to our product-
Correct.
it just opens up the opportunity for us to price
Yeah.
price for that value that we're building into the offerings.
We've not had a price increase in about a year or so, right, for QuickBooks, or maybe-
We actually announced one recently.
Oh, just recently?
Yeah, just recently.
That includes the AI, capabilities as well?
That does not. So AI is not included in the guidance that we provided a couple of weeks ago.
So, will the AI be able to charge more for this capability, or only be paid the three ways you just talked about?
You know, in the near-term, Kash, we are really focused on making sure that we're delighting our customers with the AI experiences, that we're driving repeat usage of those experiences. And as the two of you well know, our company, we are always out there experimenting across our lineup.
Mm-hmm.
-across our products, to see what the pricing
Sure.
-that works. Or even if, you know, down the line, there could be standalone SKUs or bolt-on SKUs that are AI-focused.
Mm-hmm.
So these are things that we are going to be experimenting and learning from customer feedback. But in the near term, we are focused on making sure we're delighting our customers and driving repeated usage of Intuit Assist across the platform.
Is it going to be broadly available at some point to everybody? Or, what's the rollout schedule?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So, right now it's in beta.
Okay.
And, depending on if you're in the beta, you have access to it, but in the coming months, we will be going to general availability across these offerings.
So you're comfortable with the ability to scale across 100 million users? I mean, that's a pretty massive rollout if you make it available to that large of an audience.
It is, and, we are comfortable-
Yeah.
With that, with that rollout. And quite frankly, it's one where we are, we feel we are advantaged.
Yeah.
'Cause one of the things that, also behind your question is, rolling it out to 100 million customers, if you're doing it relying on third-party solutions, it, it's a harder rollout.
Yeah.
It's a significantly expensive rollout.
Mm-hmm.
That's why we have an advantage in the sense that we have our own proprietary data.
Mm-hmm.
We are building our own large language models, which are not just contextually more relevant to the financial situations that customers are trying to address, but they're also much more cost efficient-
Mm-hmm.
-to run-
Mm-hmm.
thereby aiding the rollout.
That's, that's interesting. Can you tell us a little bit about this? Is that where we should be talking about the GenOS platform and what you've built?
Yeah.
Good segue? I should not say segue, right? It's a, it's a good lead into GenOS.
Sure.
Yeah.
So GenOS, for the audience, context, is basically our internal platform that helps technologists, so engineers across the company, leverage our AI capabilities, our large language models, to build solutions for, all of our products at an accelerated pace. So that accelerated time to development then leads to accelerated time to market, and therefore, the potential uptake and, business benefit from the offering. So the GenOS is an internal capability we have that basically helps our developers, develop more efficiently and quicker.
Mm-hmm.
And it's something that's pretty unique for us across the entire platform.
Got it. So we're gonna roll it out, and customers will start using the Assist product, and they are gonna be made aware that this is a free trial period, upon expiration of which would lead to a subscription. How, how are they going to be-
So right now, when we go to GenOS.
Yeah.
Sorry, general availability, the AI offerings will be in the product.
Mm-hmm.
We will not, we're not intending right now to have messaging around this is a free trial for period X. It's a capability that's in the product.
Okay.
Over time, one, that will unlock the TAM. Two, just the way the product is structured, it'll unlock the opportunity to connect with a live agent.
Okay.
And three, we'll continue to lean into testing to either price for it-
Yeah.
-discretely-
Yeah.
or earn the right to increase the prices.
Yeah
across the SKUs.
Over a period of time.
Over a period of time.
Okay, got it. The reason I'm drilling on that is that there have been two responses from companies when we ask them about generative AI products and pricing. Some talk about how they have a separate SKU, like Microsoft-
Mm-hmm.
And ServiceNow has a separate SKU, Pro Plus, which is 60% more than the Pro version. And then, they're gonna stick with that and try to sell that SKU. And there are other companies that say, "Well, we're not gonna have a separate... We're not gonna raise prices for this, but it's gonna be part of the product, but it'll be in a higher tier. So we hope that people will buy the Enterprise Plus tier, which will include the AI stuff for free, effectively." So yours sounds like it's a hybrid somewhere between the two.
It, it is a hybrid, and that's really just given the unique aspect of our business. A lot of the companies you mentioned tend to be enterprise based companies.
Correct, yeah.
What we are seeing is, one, it drives product adoption, because it just makes the product that much more easier to onboard-
Mm-hmm.
And get benefits from, get insights into your cash flow, get insights into, can you take on a new job, and should you, get access to QuickBooks Capital to buy supplies to-
Mm-hmm.
Effectively execute on that job?
Mm-hmm.
Should you refinance your mortgage?
Mm-hmm.
Or your car loan? So those are all things that are gonna drive benefit of the, of the platform
Mm-hmm.
And drive adoption of the platform.
Mm-hmm.
At the same time, we will experiment to see, do we put into certain SKUs and take up the price of those SKUs?
Mm-hmm.
That's what we have been doing over the years.
Yeah.
As you know, we're pretty good at experimentation.
Mm-hmm.
We're not ruling out that over time we could have a standalone SKU. As an example, say, in Mailchimp, you have a Mailchimp Essential SKU, and there could be a discrete SKU to help you run your marketing campaign end to end.
Mm-hmm.
That's a bolt-on offering that you could buy. These are all things that we wanna make sure that we are leaving the optionality open for us to experiment-
Mm-hmm.
And lean into to see what's the right offering that resonates with the customer.
One of the motivations is to increase product adoption. What about the customers? You have 7.5 million or so QuickBooks customers that have already adopted, right?
Right.
How do you get them to value the AI capabilities and pay for that?
Absolutely. So the customers have already adopted QuickBooks. As they use Intuit Assist, as they engage with Intuit Assist to get insights into the cash flow, and cash flow is the biggest variable, that's a key determinant of the success or failure-
Mm-hmm.
Of a small business. You have insights such as, well, you could improve the cash flow situation, as an example, by driving payment-enabled invoices, so that drives cross-sell and up-sell of our payments-
Mm-hmm.
Offering, which is separately monetizable.
Yeah.
You similarly have insights around, when you come to Credit Karma to get insights into, your debt situation-
Mm-hmm.
There's an opportunity for you to get better cost of debt by refinancing. So these are all opportunities that we think drive that cross-sell.
Mm.
n addition to driving increased adoption. It's 7.5 million-plus customers
Mm-hmm.
But that's a fraction of the TAM that's available to us.
Got it.
I, I wanted to actually ask you a question, still on generative AI, but more on the cost side. When we think about, like, the models themselves, right? We're talking about it really being embedded into a variety of different components and use cases within the Intuit platform. Are you training individual models across those different areas, and how are you managing the cost for something like that?
Absolutely. There's a couple of points there. One is, if you're relying purely on external models to run your Gen AI, as a company, those are quite expensive. Those models, you're paying per character or, you know, to process for answer, and the cost scales up pretty quickly. That's where we are leaning into building our own large language models.
Mm-hmm.
So currently, we do use some external models, and we also have our internal large language model that we are using, and the teams are working on building more models. So it will be a mix of those, and that's what quite frankly gives us a competitive advantage, not just in the experience we're delivering to our customers.
Mm-hmm.
As an example, if you were to go to one of these external models and ask for help in doing a journal entry, the model would think you're talking about writing a journal, like a nighttime diary.
Mm.
As opposed to when you come to our large language models, 'cause they're trained on financial data, and they have the contextual awareness that you're asking a financial question, they will answer the journal entry question around what's the right journal entry to make, depending on the expense or the situation that you're dealing with.
Mm.
So it's a competitive advantage
Mm-hmm.
That just also happens to come with a cost structure advantage as well.
Yeah, that's great, and that, is that included into your guidance?
Oh
Cause I know you mentioned that the top line contribution is not right now.
So, sorry, I missed that part of the question. So cost of development and running
Mm-hmm.
The Gen AI models is included in our guidance. We are not including the potential business upside from Gen AI in our models, in our guidance, sorry.
Plus, the improvement in retention can be a pretty powerful lever, too.
You know, improvement in retention, conversion rate, using QuickBooks as an example, and mainly because I've spent years in that business-
Mm.
You have many customers that come and buy QuickBooks.
Mm.
Then they discover a few weeks later that, you know, maybe the product is too complex for them, and it's taking them too long to set up, or it's taking too much work to get repeat benefit from it.
Mm-hmm.
So, they churn it.
Mm-hmm.
Now, with Gen AI, we could, in essence, help them seamlessly get onboarded-
Mm.
nstantaneously give them the benefit and insights into their cash flow, insight into when is the right time to maybe add an employee to help uplift their revenue profile as a business. So they're getting instant first benefit-
Mm.
And much more seamless and almost no-work repeat benefit. That just drives better, product retention
Mm-hmm.
To your point, as well as the conversion, because now we are having them come in, experience the product, and convert from maybe a free trial into a paying user.
Got it. I'm gonna ask you my least favorite question. Probably it's the least favorite question or topic for a lot of people here.
Okay.
Taxes.
Yeah, yeah.
Which we all dread doing. I dread doing taxes-
Yeah
But, it has to be done.
That's why a lot of people are delaying doing their taxes.
I know.
Everyone dreads doing them.
I know. Lessons learned in the fiscal 2023 tax season and lessons applied to fiscal 2023, can you just talk us, talk to us a little bit about that?
Yeah, absolutely. Let me share some of the learnings from fiscal 2023. So one is, I think us and the entire industry, including the Internal Revenue Service, were surprised by just how much of the COVID-era filers who filed their taxes just to get the COVID benefits, were still in the baseline. So that, in essence, was the key factor that led to our performance in the tax business this past fiscal year being below what our expectations were for that business. So it's largely a macro impact. The biggest learning there is that consumer behavior is just really hard to predict.
Mm-hmm.
When given a chance, you should almost bet on the ability of the American populace to procrastinate doing their taxes.
Mm-hmm.
So that was a learning. But let me share some of the real positives that came out of this past tax year.
Mm-hmm.
One of the big opportunities for us as a business is that 87 million filers who file their taxes as an assisted.
Mm-hmm.
Meaning they work with someone else that signs the tax return on their behalf.
Mm-hmm.
That's a market that's fragmented, highly inefficient, that we have an opportunity to disrupt using our Gen AI capabilities and our live platform. What we discovered this past year in our full service offering is that the product recommendation score was 84. Most of you who look at product recommendation score, something in the 60s is considered, you know,
Is pretty good.
-really high-end.
Mm-hmm.
A lot of our products are in the high 40s. A score of 84 means we got pretty solid product-market fit. We are actually looking forward to leaning into a go-to-market motion to really drive the penetration of assisted category there next year. That was one excellent learning that came in. The second learning that came in is that across our Credit Karma platform, we have about 45 million monthly active users, about 129 million members, and they all need to get their taxes done. By improving the integration between Credit Karma and TurboTax, by having customers be able to take their Credit Karma information into TurboTax and get their taxes filed, we saw a 5x increase in number of customers going from Credit Karma to TurboTax.
So we're leaning into making the experience even more seamless next year.
Mm.
And vice versa, we saw a 45% increase in TurboTax customers adopting Credit Karma Money to get access to their tax refund within minutes of the IRS adopting it. So those, you know, while it was a tough tax season, there were many good learnings that came out of it that, you know, one, has only bolstered our confidence in our long-term opportunity with the tax business.
Have you ever thought about having a promo and say, "You know, if you, if you're a Credit Karma customer, you want to get your taxes done for free with generative AI, our product will help you do that, but it's only on one day or two days," right? And then get people to see how valuable it is, and so... Or you do it one particular season, next season, you go back to normal pricing. You could instantly convert 87 million or whoever the intersection of 87 million-
Right.
and your Credit Karma customer base. Not that everybody would be, that's a different demographic, which I completely understand.
Yeah. You, the two of you have known our company for years, you can rest assured we are floating around disruptive ideas as a business and experimenting with those ideas all the time.
Click here to pay your taxes.
Without giving away too much competitive intel, stay tuned for all of us to implement all the learnings.
Yeah
from this year into what we bring to market next year.
Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. So there's, we're onto something here. I mean, I didn't make it up.
Collective thinking around it.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's the least we can do to make taxes as exciting as they could be.
Exactly, right.
On pulling on that thread, how creative do you think Intuit needs to be to continue to drive the user growth that you guys have been seeing? I know your long-term goals are still to drive user growth of 10%-20%, and so maybe walk us through that within your SMB segment, as well as also the other side of the house, which is more of the ARPC, or Average Revenue Per Customer.
Sure, absolutely. Your question is mostly focused on the small business side of the house?
Yes. Switching over a little bit to the-
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So in our small business segment, our growth algorithm is 10%-20% customer growth, 10%-20% ARPC growth. We continue to see meaningful runway ahead in terms of that of the customer growth.
Mm-hmm.
We have significant opportunity in the mid-market, as well as the core SMB. We describe our core SMBs as those with 0-10 employees, and mid-market as those from 11-100 employees, and over time, we expect to scale that up. But there remains opportunity for us to continue to lean into driving that product adoption, both in the U.S., as well as the international geographies that we are a part of. And the acquisition of Mailchimp has only opened up the aperture there. Mailchimp is really going to be the tip of the spear in helping us drive international adoption. One of the delighters that we had when we were going through the diligence process on Mailchimp is, almost through happenstance, purely through a passive approach, the company had half its revenue internationally.
So what we have done is, we have taken a deliberate stance in how we lean into international growth, including translating the product into five languages that have the largest addressable market out there, as an example, Spanish, Portuguese. And what we're seeing is better product adoption and an uplift in the funnel conversion metrics by just doing good language translation. And now we're leaning into the localized go-to-market motions and the localized lineup across that. So we expect that to drive international growth. And on top of that, the mid-market runway on Mailchimp and our core QB offering just remains strong. All the improvements we've made, we are seeing Mailchimp mid-market retention be the highest than it has been in the last two years.
So all those factors give me confidence in our 10%-20% customer growth algorithm for the small business segment.
... Sasan, in case you're listening, Sandeep's doing a great job. He does listen, I mean, sometimes. I'm sure he does. He was here last year on the same stage. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Pause, check anybody with questions for Sandeep, if you have a question. I see one raised hand. Can we get the mic over, please?
Yeah.
All the way in the back. Back there.
Maybe we can hear you. There we go.
Thanks for taking my question. I guess maybe when you think about GenAI, you know, to what extent can you use that maybe as a tool to be very disruptive at the kind of core DIY part of the market, right? Where you have this, like, large group of free users and also this long tail of competitors, where it feels like you guys could probably gain another leg of share, just either by being very disruptive to your product or just through pricing. It'd be great to get your thoughts on that.
Got it. I missed the first part of the question. Your question is basically, are opportunities Intuit to be disruptive in DIY category using GenAI?
Yeah, exactly. Precisely, yeah. Yes.
Yeah. Absolutely. I think, GenAI allows us to be disruptive across all bands on the tax category, assisted as well as DIY. A couple things on the DIY opportunity that we have is, everyone dreads doing their taxes. It might come as a surprise to some, but folks don't like to do their taxes, and with GenAI, some of the things that we experimented, even this year with, you know, TurboTax Express, we were able to get people through the tax experiences, some people through the tax experience, I should say, in 5-10 minutes. So GenAI just, order of magnitude improves the ability for us to make that tax filing experience, particularly for the simple filers, that tend to be largely DIY, just that much more seamless, which, I agree is a disruptive opportunity.
You layer onto that the unique competitive differentiation we have in terms of the 60,000 attributes we have on the consumer, the large data set, and our own large language models. I think we do have a massive advantage vis-a-vis other offerings in the marketplace to be disruptive, not just in the DIY category, but also in the assisted category.
Any other question? We had a question on the guidance for SMB 16%-17%. That's a little lower than where you've been operating, or maybe the small business online ecosystem has been running significantly faster. So, if we don't have a recession, looks like Jan Hatzius, our Chief Economist-
Yeah
... has been right all along in calling for a soft landing. We call it a software landing. It's patented by Goldman. Hopefully it will be. So if we have a soft landing-
Yeah
... What are the upside factors that could cause that projection to be conservative?
You know, what I would say about our small business is that the context is this last year, the business grew 24%. Four points of that growth came from the acquisition, the timing of the acquisition of Mailchimp. So the organic growth rate is 20% on that business. We've shared previously that 80% of the business is subscription-based, so it's a recurring revenue, making it quite predictable.
Mm-hmm.
We saw really good trends in the areas we focused on, such as mid-market and the live platform, as well as our opportunities in the fintech area, such as our money offerings. That is all the areas that we have confidence that goes into our guidance of 16%-17% growth. Now, on the other hand, we are seeing a pretty uncertain environment-
Mm.
-out there.
Mm.
With all due respect to Jan Hatzius and his perspective, we take perspectives from external, folks such as Jan Hatzius, but also combine that with what we are seeing in our platform.
Yeah.
That's part of the prudence we are taking in our guidance, just because we do expect the next 12 months to be uncertain, and we don't want to be banking on an expansionary environment, hence the guidance that you saw from us coming out.
Got it. On that note, we've perfectly ended on time. It was perfect. That was a great landing. That was a good landing.
With the two of you managing it, are you surprised?
Thank you so much, Sandeep.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
Um-
Appreciate it.
Welcome back home, and thank you so much. Let's join for cocktails at 5:00 P.M. Thank you.