Intuit sells Demandforce to Internet Brands
Demandforce was part of a trio of divisions Intuit included in divestiture plans back in August, along with Quicken and QuickBase. — Financial software giant Intuit has sold its Demandforce software business to Internet Brands …
Context & Ripple Effects
This sale closes out the first leg of the plan Intuit laid out last August, when it named Demandforce, Quicken, and QuickBase for divestiture alongside mixed Q4 results. The buyer, Internet Brands, takes over a business that no longer fit Intuit's core tax-and-accounting franchise.
The other two legs followed within weeks: Quicken went to private equity firm H.I.G. Capital, and QuickBase was sold to another New York private equity firm with general manager Allison Mnookin installed as CEO of the spun-out company.
First-order effects
- Demandforce's small-business marketing-software customers and staff now sit under Internet Brands, while Intuit books the exit from a unit it had already written off as non-core.
Second-order effects
- With Demandforce gone, the remaining two divestitures became easier to complete on their own terms — Quicken to H.I.G. Capital and QuickBase to a separate PE-backed spinout — rather than as one bundled block.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points to large software companies treating acquired adjacent products as disposable once strategy narrows, and to private equity and specialist acquirers like Internet Brands becoming the default buyers for such units. Intuit's later $1.5B offer for BigCommerce before its IPO shows the freed-up focus eventually redirected toward e-commerce and platform bets rather than services software.
The trend: Intuit spent the mid-2010s systematically shedding acquired verticals — Demandforce, Quicken, QuickBase — to concentrate capital and management attention on TurboTax, QuickBooks, and later AI-driven partnerships.