How the Intuit Prosperity Accelerator Helped Small Businesses and Consumers

When COVID-19 became a growing pandemic, the financial pressures faced by small businesses and consumers became apparent. At the onset of COVID-19, half (49%) of Canadians report that they are $200 or less away each month from insolvency, according to the latest MNP Consumer Debt Index. CFIB reports that 48% of small businesses are making half or less their normal sales, with 50% stating they are most concerned about their business cash flow.

Intuit’s mission is to power prosperity around the world. They are a global financial platform with products including TurboTax, QuickBooks and Mint, designed to empower consumers, self-employed, and small businesses to improve their financial lives. Their platform of products help customers get more money with the least amount of work while giving them complete confidence in their actions and decisions.

At the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020, David Marquis, Country Manager of Intuit Canada, saw an urgent need to do even more to solve financial prosperity challenges for consumers, self-employed and small businesses. This presented an opportunity for the Intuit team to test a bold, first-of-its-kind ‘One Intuit’ program that invested in accelerating adjacent-to-Intuit innovations through the startup ecosystem, powered by our customer-obsessed employees and a partnership with a venture studio and capital fund, Highline Beta. Our shared mission led to a corporate-startup collaboration in the form of a pilot program accelerator model: the Intuit Prosperity Accelerator.

We saw an opportunity to tap into the energy, passion, and talent of the startup ecosystem in this time of uncertainty to help solve real challenges for Canadians. Highline Beta was an ideal partner to launch the Intuit Prosperity Accelerator because of their expertise designing programs, sourcing and selecting the right startups, and ensuring we provided meaningful mentorship and support to the startups along the way.

– David Marquis, Country Manager of Intuit Canada

Helping Companies Grow Beyond their Core

Highline Beta helps large corporations identify new opportunities to grow their business through internal and external innovation. We help companies build new ventures, partner with startups and co-invest in growth opportunities.

One of our key approaches is our pilot program accelerator model, which is focused on creating successful pilot opportunities for startups to work with our Fortune 1000 clients. Through decades of experience with startup accelerator models, we’ve designed a tailor-made pilot program accelerator that helps attract and source the best startups, and then accelerate partnership opportunities with corporates.

Each pilot program accelerator is based on a core 6-month program, designed to address the key concerns that both corporates and startups have when engaging in partnerships. Highline Beta provides the framework — customized to the specific needs of each corporate — that increases the quality of startups identified and the speed of successful pilot execution.

How the Intuit Prosperity Accelerator Works

The Intuit Prosperity Accelerator was launched on July 13, 2020. Working closely with Highline Beta, Intuit Canada focused on 6 challenges for startups to solve with innovative solutions, three related to consumer opportunities and three related to small business and self-employed opportunities:

The program received 225+ applications, out of which 8 startups were selected to participate.

Program Design

The key to a successful accelerator program is in its design. Highline Beta’s pilot program accelerator starts with a standard 6-month approach, customized for the specific requirements of each client and the participating startups.

Highline Beta worked with Intuit Canada to design a robust mentorship and training program. Due to COVID-19, program delivery was done remotely. The mentorship and training program was uniquely curated for the needs of the startup cohort. For example, many of the startups were interested in understanding how to track the right metrics, and so we delivered two webinars on Lean Analytics.

Additional programming, provided by Highline Beta and Intuit Canada employees included:

One of the key highlights of the programming was Design for Delight (D4D), Intuit’s take on customer-driven innovation methodology, refined over years and initially developed by Intuit’s co-founder Scott Cook. It’s rooted in three key principles:

The programming and training was designed to cover as many key topics as possible to help the startups succeed beyond the scope of working with Intuit Canada.

Startup Sourcing & Selection

The startup recruitment process lasted 2 months. Highline Beta used their extensive network of investors, founders, collaborators and more to identity potential startups. Startups were shortlisted for review, and we received feedback frequently from Intuit Canada to constantly improve our targeted sourcing efforts.

Each startup was assessed on a number of criteria to determine their fit for the program. These criteria are based on Highline Beta’s experience as accelerator operators and investors, and Intuit’s assessment of each startup’s adjacency to their products and compatibility with their values. Together with Intuit’s internal experts, the final selection of eight startups was made.

A concerted marketing effort was executed with Intuit Canada to generate as much awareness and buzz in-market as possible, which helped attract startups and drive applications.

Program Execution

In order to facilitate a strong working relationship and engagement with the startups, Intuit paired each of them with two Innovation Catalysts (ICs), employees at Intuit trained to champion and implement the Design for Delight (D4D) principals. These ICs worked closely with the startups to help them design experiments and apply a test and learn mindset to their businesses. The ICs met regularly with the startups and provided ongoing support and mentorship throughout the program.

Along with regular webinars, Highline Beta and Intuit Canada created an office hours program. Office hours were held monthly with Highline Beta’s founding partners and senior Intuit managers. Startups signed up for office hours to dig deeper into key topics such as fundraising, scaling internationally, hiring and sales. 

Each week, the cohort got together as a group to meet, discuss challenges and share progress with each other. This is a key component of a successful accelerator program because it provides the startups with opportunities to learn from and help each other. Numerous introductions, ideas and collaborations emerged from these all-hands meetings. For example, Willful and Emma partnered in order to provide Willful with exposure into the Quebec market, prior to their launch.

I love solving problems through design. And this was a great opportunity for me to bring that element and make a difference for a startup. It’s been a fun ride with lots of new challenges and excitement for me. I loved every moment of mentoring the Homewise team. It’s all about working and learning together. Jesse and the team are so motivated and open to learning.

– Sanjay Sen, Senior Product Designer

Throughout the program, Intuit and Highline Beta worked to promote the startups. When the startups were initially announced, we drove media attention through a variety of channels.

Several startups had an opportunity to present at CIX 2020 (Canadian Innovation Exchange) alongside David Marquis.

We created two videos highlighting the SMB startups and the Consumer startups, and promoted them on social channels.

We shared parts of the journey publicly, such as the kick-off week, to highlight how Intuit Canada and the startups were collaborating.

In every pilot program accelerator, it’s important to encourage successful relationships between corporations and startups, as well as tell their stories to the broader audience and community.

I found this program to be an amazing step towards streamlining the vision and product development strategy for our company. From the office hours with Highline Beta’s founders, to working closely with our corporate partner’s Innovation Catalysts on experiments and testing, to getting advice on raising, pitch decks, and investment rounds, it was a valuable time of learning and growth for myself and my team. We’ll definitely be taking everything we learned during our time in this accelerator on to future endeavours for our company.

– Octavia Ramirez Co-founder Paper & Coin

Demo Day

The Prosperity Accelerator Demo Day was done in partnership with TechTO, a media company focused on building the tech and startup ecosystem in Canada. Highline Beta and Intuit saw the opportunity to work with TechTO to increase exposure for the startups and share our collective learnings gained throughout the accelerator program.

Scott Cook, Intuit’s co-founder, participated in the Demo Day through a fireside chat with David Marquis. Scott shared a number of incredible stories from the early days of Intuit, and how he adapted to different circumstances while growing the company.

Each startup had three minutes to present their business and share their experiences participating in the accelerator. The startups did an incredible job explaining their businesses, with a focus on the problems they’re solving, their solutions and traction.

The entire event was made available on video to watch:

Over 380 people attended Demo Day on March 2nd 2021, and were able to see the startup presentations, network and celebrate the incredible work put in by everyone involved in the program. Additional key metrics: 360 networking sessions took place between participants; and 68 introductions (to the startups) were requested.

A public Demo Day is an effective way to generate attention for the participating startups, and interest in meeting the startups was captured throughout the event.

David Marquis also announced plans for a second cohort, with more information coming in the next few months.

When the playbook is not working, you’ve got to find a new play, and that means you’ve got to learn something new. So go find the best wheel maker and have them teach you. That’s one of my key learnings on resilience and adversity. I wish we had an accelerator when we started. One of the great benefits of a program like this one, and Highline Beta, is that it provides ‘experts on tap’ so you can be learning the next play you need to master.

Scott Cook, co-founder at Intuit

Success Stories

There were many success stories that emerged during the Intuit Prosperity Accelerator. We’ve shared a few below.

Working with Intuit Canada was great. They were open-minded and flexible as we navigated how to collaborate with them in the best way possible. Their willingness to test new ideas with us, and the way they challenged our assumptions, really allowed us to think and act quickly to improve our company.

Jesse Abrams, Homewise

The insights panel we developed during the program was huge for us. It was a problem we were thinking of in the back of our minds and we said let’s try to figure it out during the program. And it went from something that was just an idea to a beta to now something that is actually in Dryrun today, this was a bit of a surprise but a super welcome surprise. We weren’t expecting this to come all the way through and activate like that so that was terrific.

Blaine Berscht, CEO/Co-founder Dryrun