In this article titled “Who is Scott Cook 101: American Billionaire Businessman?” we will provide detailed information about Scott Cook, the American billionaire businessman that our readers at Zatrun.com are curious about.
Who is Scott Cook?
Scott David Cook is an American billionaire businessman born in 1952 and the co-founder of Intuit. Cook also serves as a board member for eBay and Procter & Gamble.
He obtained his undergraduate degree in economics and mathematics from the University of Southern California and an MBA degree from Harvard Business School. Cook currently serves as a member of the Dean’s Advisory Board at Harvard Business School.
Career Life
Cook began his career at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he gained expertise in product development, market research, and marketing. He later started working as a strategic consultant at Bain & Company in Menlo Park, California. While there, Cook began looking for an idea for his own company using the knowledge he gained. One day, when his wife complained about bills, he thought that personal computers, which were just emerging at the time, could create a market for basic software that would help people pay their bills.
In 1983, he launched Quicken and named his company Intuit. Today, the company provides software and online products that help individuals and small businesses manage their finances. Cook was the President of Intuit from February 1993 to July 1998, and served as its CEO from April 1983 to April 1994. In 2002, Cook and his wife Signe Ostby founded the Brand and Product Management Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business, the first university-based center in the country to teach MBA students about brand and product management.
Both Cook and Ostby began their careers in brand management. In 2005, Cook ranked 320th on the Forbes 400 list with a net worth of $1.1 billion. Since the 1990s, he has doubled his donations to both Republicans and Democrats and provided maximum support to mainstream politicians such as Mitt Romney and Harry Reid in 2007.
Personal Life
Scott Cook is married to Signe Ostby. After working at Procter & Gamble and Clorox, Ostby founded Software Publishing Corporation, which developed productivity software for personal computers. They have three children and reside in Woodside, California.
Scott and Signe established the Valhalla Charitable Foundation, a family foundation worth $348 million, which provides funding for early childhood development, K12 education, medical research and innovation, talent, environmental literacy, data literacy, and collaborative philanthropy. The Cook family also owns and manages a farm that breeds and sells horses and show jumping horses, raised from European bloodlines, for the local restaurant trade.
