Success Quote by Scott Cook

QuickBooks isn’t framed here as software; it’s framed as permission. Scott Cook is describing a psychological break with an older business world where “making something in the business arena” was presumed to belong to incumbents, not dreamers. The line’s engine is the quiet audacity of “even dream”: it signals that entrepreneurship wasn’t simply hard, it was culturally gated. In the late-’70s/early-’80s arc of personal computing, the revolution wasn’t only technical (cheaper machines, friendlier interfaces); it was social, handing people outside the traditional corporate priesthood the tools to build products that could sell.

Cook’s phrasing also tells you what kind of revolution he means: not barricades, but a shift in who gets to participate. QuickBooks’ success becomes evidence that business software could be designed with empathy for non-experts - small-business owners who didn’t want to become accountants to stay afloat. That’s the subtext: a bet that usability is a form of power, and that simplifying the paperwork maze is not dumbing down but widening the doorway.

There’s a second, more self-aware layer: “to me” keeps the claim personal, almost incredulous, which softens the grandness while still landing the point. He’s not mythologizing hustle; he’s recalling the moment the market validated imagination. The real punch is that success itself is treated as the radical part - the idea that a good product, not pedigree, could win.