Jason Del Rey

Recent Posts by Jason Del Rey

A Techstars First: Startup GoodApril Gets Acquired Before Demo Day

So-called demo days for startup incubators are supposed to be when entrepreneurs pitch their businesses to media and investors with the hope of raising awareness and attracting funding. But VCs interested in tax software startup GoodApril will be disappointed at today’s Techstars Boulder demo day: The company will announce that it has already sold itself to Intuit.

Techstars Boulder Managing Director Luke Beatty

Techstars Boulder Managing Director Luke Beatty

Luke Beatty, the managing director of the Techstars Boulder program, said this is the first time in Techstars’ history that one of its more than 300 startups was sold before demo day.

The acquisition price is not being disclosed, but GoodApril co-founder Mitch Fox said it was less than $20 million — the threshold at which Intuit would need to disclose an acquisition price in public filings, he said. He and his co-founder, Benny Joseph, have agreed to take director positions within Intuit’s Consumer Tax Group, which houses the TurboTax team.

GoodApril unveiled earlier this year a product called Tax Checkup, which let people upload their tax return and get feedback on what credits and deductions they qualified for. At Techstars, the co-founders had been working on a tax preparation subscription product that individuals would use throughout the year to get recommendations on what investment and loan payment changes should be made in order to pay less in taxes.

GoodApril will no longer offer the products and Fox says he has gotten no guarantee that Intuit will bring them back to life. But he’s confident there is an alignment in vision.

“I think Intuit’s interest in us and our interest in working with them is that we have very similar visions about how to make tax filing easier for consumers,” he said.

GoodApril had raised just $18,000, along with a $100,000 convertible note.

Latest Video

View all videos »

Search »

I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik