As John’s friend Jim Rogers noted, “Organizations are like households - they tend to fill the attic and basement with too much stuff, and it takes discipline to remove it.”įrom a human standpoint, it is easier for executives to say “yes” to a new product or feature than to say “no.” It takes even more work to kill an existing service or offering. It is the natural tendency of all firms, product lines, governments and even households to build up too much complexity - complexity that adds little value.

Why did the company that made its mark with a simple user interface (the very name “Intuit” is a riff on “intuitive”) have to buy Mint? Why couldn’t they have built it themselves? We’ve been pondering that question, and we think it’s because it is very hard for a complex organization to build something simple. According to the New York Times, they have tracked over $200,000,000,000 in spending and have 1.5 million users, meaning that Intuit is paying over $100 per user. Mint is a web- and phone-based tool with a simple design interface that helps people manage their finances in an integrated way - across all their credit cards and asset accounts.

This post was co-authored with Paul D’Alessandro.

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