Fortune / Courtesy of Danny Ortega
Brad Smith / Sasan Goodarzi
In a surprise move, one of Silicon Valley’s champion CEOs is stepping down.
After 11 years at the helm, Intuit chief Brad Smith will hand over the job to Executive V.P. Sasan Goodarzi on January 1 and will oversee the transition as executive chairman. “I never wanted to be that athlete who loses half a step or can’t complete the pass,” he told Fortune in an exclusive pre-announcement interview. “I wanted to step down when I was still in my learning zone and still had gas in the tank.”
The announcement, made at the market close Thursday, came as a shock because Smith is only 54 and Intuit, maker of TurboTax, QuickBooks, and related software, is performing exceptionally well. Even as the share price has recently hit record highs in a generally pricey market for tech stocks, Wall Street analysts have become more upbeat about its future. Six of them now rate the stock a “strong buy,” up from two in May; none recommend selling.
While Smith’s move is surprising, his successor’s identity is not. Goodarzi, 50, runs Intuit’s biggest unit, which targets small businesses and the self-employed with QuickBooks Online and other services; despite its large size, it was Intuit’s fastest-growing division last year. He previously ran Intuit’s other main unit, the consumer business that sells TurboTax, and excelled there also. Smith says, “Sasan is better prepared to be CEO than I was 11 years ago.”
Goodarzi will face formidable challenges, leaving aside the problems of following a star predecessor and taking the reins when many analysts think stock prices generally are unsustainably high. Intuit has transformed itself from a product company to a platform company that sells services in the cloud—a transformation that is Smith’s most important achievement—but “we still have a lot of work to do” on that project, he says. Such fundamental change is hard in any organization. And while Intuit dominates in the U.S. and has a presence in Canada, Australia, and the U.K., it’s virtually unheard of elsewhere; upstart competitors are already becoming entrenched in major global markets, threatening to cut Intuit out of tomorrow’s best growth opportunities.
Continue reading Fortune's Geoff Colvin's interview and watch the video here.