UW Majors: Business, Finance, Investment & Banking
Chief Product and Design Officer, Intuit Mailchimp
Jon Fasoli is a tech executive with the heart of a hands-on tinkerer. His grandfather was a pioneering computer engineer, and throughout Fasoli’s childhood, he played with — and broke — more than a few early machines. When mobile devices hit the market at the beginning of his career, Fasoli was immediately enthralled with the idea of developing apps to run on a device in his pocket.
“The Wisconsin School of Business uniquely combined academic rigor with a team-oriented curriculum,” he says. “I learned the skills I needed to succeed, and more importantly, how to ensure others succeeded alongside me. Badgers aren’t taught leadership theory; they are graded on leadership outcomes.”
His passion for small business and technology landed him in Intuit’s Rotational Development Program in Mountain View, California, where he launched the company’s first-ever operating system for mobile devices. Within five years, he’d built the company’s global payment platform and was tapped to establish a new business in the company, dedicated to developing products and services for the self-employed.
“I grew up around small-business owners in my family and community. To this day, I continue to learn from their ability to solve problems with grit and creativity. If you give a small-business owner an extra minute in their day, they will use it to provide for their employees, customers, communities, and families. I started my career with a mission to give them more of these minutes with technology … and I hope to continue for the rest of it.”
In 2019, Fasoli was named vice president of the small-business segment, which grew rapidly under his leadership to more than 7 million small-business and self-employed customers worldwide. In particular, the QuickBooks Self-Employed platform grew from zero to 1 million paid subscribers in three years. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Fasoli mobilized his team to help connect QuickBooks customers with PPE loans and other emergency funding and tax tools to help keep their businesses afloat. He found himself deeply inspired by his clients’ resiliency and creativity during the bleakest months of lockdowns.
“For me, the halo of this terrible pandemic was seeing how small businesses and the self-employed innovated and pivoted, and how they picked up or transformed their businesses and took care of their employees,” he says.
In fall 2021, Intuit acquired Mailchimp, bringing the top marketing platform for small businesses into the company’s suite of small-business products and services. The $12 billion deal is Intuit’s largest acquisition to date, and Fasoli was named Mailchimp’s chief product and design officer. He relocated with his family to Mailchimp’s headquarters in Atlanta, and predictably, Fasoli has big, innovative ideas for the future of the small-business marketing platform. His team was on the forefront of developing generative AI capabilities for small businesses. “This is just scratching the surface of what is currently in development,” he says.
Beyond Intuit, Fasoli has served as an adviser and early investor at several start-ups. He also holds 12 patents which, in his words, “are all very nerdy and will put an audience to sleep.” Above all, he says he is most proud to call himself a great dad of two kids — and a grateful husband to his favorite small-business owner.
