Incorporated in Delaware in 1997, and headquartered in Mountain View, California, Intuit Administrative Services, Inc. (“Applicant”) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intuit Inc. (“Intuit”)—which has grown from a small start-up company that provided a simple version of personal financial software, starting in 1983, to a global software and services company with over 7,000 employees and world-renowned flagship software and internet-based services that, to-date, have been utilized by over fifty (50) million people in North America, Europe, India, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and other countries.
Applicant will operate the proposed .MINT gTLD (“the TLD”) on behalf of and for the benefit of its parent company, Intuit, headquartered in Mountain View, California. Applicant’s parent company has been publicly traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange in the U.S. since 1993, with annual net revenue that now exceeds $3.8 billion USD, is a part of the NASDAQ 100 and S&P 500 Stock Indexes, and was recently named the “World’s Most Admired Software Company” for 2012 by Fortune Magazine.
Intuit’s Mint.com (“Mint”) SaaS-based offering and mobile software are the premier solutions for U.S. and Canadian consumers to manage their personal finances – free of charge – all from one place. Mint now has over seven (7) million users across all platforms. These users rely upon Mint to help them manage their personal financial lives and to provide them with deep insights and ways to save money based upon their spending and personal goals. Mint has received numerous industry accolades from publications including: ABCNEWS.com (which named Mint one of the “Best Financial Web Sites”); CNN Money (which listed Mint.com as the “Best Site” for consumers to “cut spending and save more”); The New York Times (which described Mint’s mobile application as “[t]he best of the bunch”); Time Magazine (which named Mint number 16 on the “50 Best Websites of 2010”); World Economic Forum (which named Mint a “Technology Pioneer in 2011”); and Kiplinger (which named Mint as its “Favorite money management innovation” in June of 2011). Mint also garnered a prestigious Webby Award as a “Best Financial Services Website” in 2011.
Applicant and Intuit are committed to providing new and easier ways for consumers and businesses around the world to successfully manage personal and business productivity challenges. Accordingly, Intuit—both directly and through its various subsidiaries—continually strives to foster innovation in the delivery of software and services. Indeed, to that end, Intuit and its subsidiaries now offer software and services in a host of different ways—including through various mobile applications and devices, and through cloud-based platforms.
Applicant recognizes that as boundaries blur among PCs, mobile devices and platforms, with rapidly changing technological advances, the TLD offers Applicant and its parent the ability and opportunity to expand Intuit’s web presences, its existing suite of services and solutions and its long history of innovation, all into a new and exciting Internet space.
One mission of Applicant is to assist its parent to be a premier innovator and leader in mobile and web-based productivity and business solutions—with solutions that are so profoundly easy and useful that people who use them can’t imagine going back to the old way of doing things.
The TLD will enable Applicant and its parent to further the goal of adapting and evolving to ever-changing trends and opportunities in delivering, hosting and marketing these products and services.
Upon delegation of the TLD, and in keeping with Intuit’s mission to be a premier innovator in the financial and business software and services space, Applicant will initially conduct consumer-related research, such as marketing and⁄or technical research and testing, to determine the most effective and safest way for Applicant and its parent to market and provide its software and services to its consumers through the new TLD.
During this initial research period, Applicant and its parent will evaluate how best to use the TLD to provide information or services to the public, to prospects and to existing customers, but proposes to reserve the right to use the TLD for internal registrants and purposes, including the creation of the parent’s and its subsidiaries’ own test offerings and their own online marketing (for external viewing). Applicant will also research consumer- and security-based testing of the TLD for possible later public use. After the research is completed, Applicant proposes to either reserve the right to continue limiting its TLD use to internal registrants, as described herein, or, if an adequately-secure public use is requested by consumers and proven viable, to expand its use of the TLD accordingly to match Applicant’s customers’, third-party partners’ and Affiliates’ expectations.
Applicant recognizes that it is vital for every small business to have a website. In fact, Applicant’s sister business unit within Intuit—the “Grow Your Business” division—makes this process easy by providing the website creation and hosting services small businesses need to establish their Internet presences, including: domain name registration (through a strategic channel sales relationship with Tucows.com Inc., an ICANN-Accredited Registrar); self-service tools for building a professional-looking website; ecommerce and payments tools for selling products online; and web hosting. This “Grow Your Business” division takes pride in making it simple for both consumers and small businesses alike to create a website in minutes, regardless of technical skills or design experience. At present, hundreds of thousands of customers rely on these website services for their Internet websites and domain names. Applicant is willing to supply ICANN with additional information about the Grow Your Business division’s reseller relationship with Tucows.com Inc. upon request. |