Impact Achieved with the Intuit Prosperity Accelerator: AI
Intuit worked with seven early-stage, AI-driven startups from across North America to build upon innovative solutions helping to overcome today’s biggest financial challenges. This year’s Demo Day showcased the impact and accelerated growth that is possible when startups and large corporations collaborate.
Highline Beta partnered with Intuit Canada, a global financial platform known for products such as TurboTax, Quickbooks and Mint, to launch Intuit Prosperity Accelerator™:AI. This five-month accelerator program focused on carrying out customer research and conducting in-market experiments with 7 early-stage startups leveraging AI to address some of today’s most pressing financial challenges faced by small businesses and consumers.
The program provided in-depth product and technology expertise through dedicated tailored sessions and connections to Intuit’s exclusive network of highly qualified Innovation Catalysts (ICs), AI mentors, and other experts based on the startups’ priority needs. Startups were able to leverage Intuit’s Customer Connect program to obtain insights from, conduct experiments with, and test their solutions with Intuit customers.
Being an Innovation Catalyst to me means coaching and teaching others how to use Intuit’s Design for Delight principles to solve their biggest challenges.”
Rosie Hoa
Innovation Catalyst, Intuit Senior Product Marketing Manager
Startups were coached on Intuit’s design thinking methodology, Design for Delight (D4D), paying close attention to its three defining principles: deep customer empathy, go broad to go narrow, and rapid experiments with customers, followed by quick iterations and measurable results.
Listen to what Intuit’s Innovation Catalysts and the participating startups had to say about the program:
As an innovation Catalyst, I get to help unlock solutions to customer problems that have big impacts on the lives of everyday people.”
Bianca Pouttu
Innovation Catalyst, Intuit Senior Program Manager, Talent Programs
The program concluded with an inspiring Demo Day hosted in partnership with TechTO. The event featured an opening fireside chat with Intuit Canada Country Manager David Marquis and Michele Romanow, Dragon’s Den venture capitalist and CEO of Clearco, followed by pitches from each of the participating startups:
Adaptive Pulse (Waterloo, ON) helps businesses keep a pulse on every customer while predicting and prioritizing their retention efforts, reducing churn and increasing revenues.
Aphrodite (San Francisco, CA) is a plug-n-play data analytics platform intended to help users drive revenue by providing financial clarity and data-driven insights to small businesses.
Bankuish (New York, NY) is a marketplace that provides gig workers and freelancers a simple way to access affordable banking.
Beam.city Inc (Toronto, ON) is an advertising automation platform that helps businesses optimize their performance and skyrocket profits automatically.
Boom (New York, NY) is on a mission to level the playing field for the 110 million renters in the US by making housing more flexible, affordable, and attainable.
QuoteMachine (Montreal, QC) is a software that brings humans back to digital commerce by helping independent retailers close more deals through simplified and personalized sales processes.
Stamped AI (Quebec City, QC) is an AI platform that streamlines and automates accounting data certification, making small businesses year-end ready, all year round.
The event concluded with the presentation of awards to some of the program’s stand-out solutions. Michele Romanow returned to the virtual stage to present the Best Pitch Award to Bankuish. Judges were particularly impressed by how they were able to convey their solutions’ unique value proposition, scalability, go-to-market plan, and execution.
Bennett Blank, Innovation Leader at Intuit, was then welcomed to present the Customer Obsession Award to QuoteMachine. This startup stood out to judges because of how they embraced deep customer empathy, did deep probing interviews with customers, and focused on the problems that they could solve for their customers.
Learn more about the Intuit Prosperity Accelerator™: AI Demo Day by rewatching the fireside chat, the startup pitches, and the awards presentation.
To learn more about our corporate accelerator programs, contact us today.