Hello {Intuit Developer} World

Hello World

   class IntuitDeveloper {
       public static void main(String[] args) {
           System.out.println("Hello, developers!");
       }
   }

As you’ve probably read, our fearless leader, Avi Golan, is starting a new chapter down under as the Chief Digital Officer of Air New Zealand. And you may have also seen a picture or two from our send-off party for our friend and colleague. Late last week, I officially started in my new role as the leader of the Intuit Developer team. I’m excited to work with all of you in our community, and I’d like to share a little bit about me.

I’ve held a variety of roles as a developer, manager, and engineering exec in startups and multi-national companies. Early in my career, I also founded a three-person startup on the Apple platform. I have walked in your shoes, and I have felt the pain of building a business on a platform. So let’s start from the beginning, kind of a brief timeline:

• I’m an engineer by background, with degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. I hail from India, but I’m a man of the world, having lived in France, New York, Texas, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and now settled in sunny California. When I lived in Minnesota, I lived in the only city with just one lake, but I did visit some of the other 9,999.
• I started my career writing business apps, real-time data acquisition systems, large-scale databases, and MVC frameworks on the Mac, X-Windows, and later Windows.
• In 2000, I felt the call of the Dot-Com boom and joined the Java group in Sun Microsystems. As part of the J2EE team, I helped create J2EE 1.3, 1.4, and the Java Web Services Developer Pack from its inception.
• In 2004, I followed my GM and other Sun execs to an early cloud-computing startup, where we pioneered private cloud technology. Unfortunately, we were ahead of our time and burned through a lot of cash.
• In 2008, I joined PayCycle where I led engineering and was part of the exec team that grew a healthy SaaS business. I had no connection to this space, but I coached YMCA basketball with a principal engineer who referred me to PayCycle — a true Silicon Valley networking story.
• In 2009, Intuit acquired PayCycle, and I embarked on an exciting career at Intuit where I continued to grow as a leader and work with great folks across many disciplines. After leading our Payroll engineering team, I moved over to lead the QuickBooks Online team. As part of a great team, we scaled QBO, launched it globally, and created the V3 Services you are using today. During that time, I worked closely with the Intuit Partner Platform (IPP) engineering team as part of my extended team. Since then, I’ve taken on larger roles in Intuit, leading our Small Business product offerings across accounting, payroll, and payments.

Which brings me to Intuit Developer. I already know some of the folks on my new team, having worked with them over the past few years. I’m excited to learn more about my new role and meet you all. I’ve heard we have some epic drink-ups — err, meet-ups. And I’m fully shwag’ed out with stickers, t-shirts, and my own Unicorn mug.

So let’s build some great apps together! Here’s to a prosperous 2016. I’m looking forward to meeting you at an Intuit Developer event in the near future. #UnicornLibations, baby.