By Isabelle Bousquette

Intuit Chief Executive Sasan Goodarzi has watched his company's market value plunge over recent weeks as a frenzy over new AI tools spooked investors of more traditional software. He's not fazed.

The Iranian-born executive who moved to the U.S. at the age of 9 and flunked out of school with just a 1.9 GPA before attending community college has been through worse.

As to the challenge of ushering Intuit into a new era where pundits question whether AI could displace the entire concept of software-as-a-service? Goodarzi says that taps into resilience he has learned through difficult times.

"When there's so much turbulence around us, I'm built for these moments, " he said Wednesday at The Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute's Technology Council Summit in Silicon Valley.

Seven years ago, Goodarzi took over Intuit and immediately executed a fundamental business change from a tax and accounting software platform to a full-service provider. Now it helps customers, including individuals and small businesses, manage credit, wealth, taxes, cash flow, inventory and other things with what it calls a combination of human intelligence, data analytics and AI.

It is also working to build the type of cutting-edge AI agents that some investors think threaten its entire raison d'être. Those are a work in progress, he said.

Despite the latest market dip, Goodarzi said he has delivered since taking the helm in 2019. "When I took over, we were growing like 8% to 9% and we were about $4 billion in size. We're now $20 billion in size, and we're growing double the rate," he said, citing revenue numbers.

Goodarzi credits much of his leadership success to resilience he developed growing up as an Iranian child in the U.S. during the 1970s. He remembers other kids bullying him during the Iran hostage crisis and struggling so much in school that he was ultimately kicked out.

"That is really what shaped me. It's the notion of building grit and resilience that tomorrow will be a better day," he said.

Goodarzi said he only hires employees with "grit." He admires Amazon CEO Andy Jassy because of his "incredible grit." He doesn't read books and thinks they are a waste of time, but if he had to recommend one, it would be Angela Duckworth's "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance."

"I was interviewing somebody yesterday, and the whole time my focus was do you actually have the grit? Have you had pain and suffering in your life? Do you actually know how to go through pain and suffering? Do you know how to get on the other side of pain and suffering and create greatness?" he said.

Goodarzi was looking for a challenge when he returned for a second stint at Intuit in 2011. He had worked at the company from 2004 to 2010 before serving as CEO of clean-energy startup Nexant. When coming back to Intuit, Goodarzi said he asked then CEO Brad Smith if he could become CIO -- despite later saying he was completely unqualified for the job. Smith said yes.

Goodarzi said it was the best experience he has had because it helped him learn an important leadership lesson: how to influence people when you have no control. "Generally, people don't want to listen to the CIO, " he said.

The biggest mistakes of his career, Goodarzi said, are when he went against his gut and hired employees who didn't have what it takes to handle the pressure.

He is always looking to assess whether a candidate is the type who is "looking for a balanced life," versus wanting to win, being hungry and having a chip on his or her shoulder. If you're the latter, you're in.

Write to Isabelle Bousquette at isabelle.bousquette@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 12, 2026 07:49 ET (12:49 GMT)

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