Thomas Proulx

Thomas Proulx is an American computer programmer and entrepreneur. He was a co-founder and first programmer of Intuit and a pioneer of usability testing in the 1980s. He wrote the first version of Quicken. and later became involved with NetPulse.

In 1983, Scott Cook went to Stanford University in California, United States. He wanted a programmer for a planned home bill payment and bank reconciliation program. Proulx was the first person Cook met and subsequently co-founded Intuit. Proulx was the first programmer of the first version of Quicken, and the first Apple and Radio Shack versions. He obtained a patent for finding a way for a computer to verify that a user had correctly inserted blank checks in a dot matrix printer. This was essential to the near-universal use of such checks in accounting programs.

After he co-founded Intuit in 1983, the company ran into financial difficulties, with staff working at one point for nine months without pay.

In 1984, in what may have been the first case of usability testing with engineers, Intuit recruited people off the street to test Quicken with a stopwatch. After each test Proulx improved Quicken. Before this, experienced computer users spent an hour or more installing programs and printing a check. Novices often gave up. Quicken allowed inexperienced computer users to do it in less than 15 minutes, printing checks faster than writing them. The market share of Quicken varied from 65% to 98%, making it a killer application, which drove many computer sales. It also made usability testing a standard industry practice.

In 1985, the company lost key employees due to a lack of funds, with Proulx as one of four remaining employees working for free for six months. They worked on Quicken, which they used to create an advertising revenue stream. In 1985, while Proulx was one of three Intuit employees, Intuit became the first company to shrink-wrap floppy disks and manuals. This further revolutionized software development. By 1992, all major Intuit programs had a market share of 75% or more. Proulx created an Intuit credit card with a download service, that automatically classified charges. In July 2000, he was serving as Netpulse CEO.

Proulx was the Chairman of Netpulse from 2001 to 2018. In 2008, the company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection. Three months later, Tom Proulx came out of retirement and "traded his creditorship for the company’s remaining assets," announced on May 3 in San Francisco, and made the company solvent again.

Boards and committees By 2004, he had been a director on the boards of tech startups such as UpShot, Documagix, and NextSet. He was the chairman of Netpulse. On December 14, 2004, he was named a director of Izalex Incorporated. He remains on the boards of eGym and served on the boards of iControl, PlumChoice, and Dropwater. he has an estate in Atherton, California. He has two children.