When Matt Rissell, CEO of TSheets Inc., agreed in December to be acquired by Intuit Inc., one of his friends made a bet with him: The new owners would make him take the beer keg out of the break room, and take the giant “T” down from the company’s new headquarters in Eagle.

Almost a year later, the beer keg and the “T” are both still there. And so is Rissell – something that doesn’t always happen when startups get acquired.

“I have no intentions to leave,” said Rissell, who is now vice president of TSheets for Intuit. “The people on this team are 350 of my best friends.”

In a deal that was finalized in January, Intuit acquired the Eagle timesheets software startup in 2017 for $340 million.

TSheets was founded in 2006 as an application to track employee time and started partnering with Intuit in 2012.

“QuickBooks has 80 percent market penetration,” Rissell said, noting that TSheets’ biggest competitor isn’t another company, but the paper and spreadsheets that he said 50 percent of small businesses still use to track time. “The brand carries so much equity. We have a massive market ahead of us,” he said, pointing out that companies need to be able to track their employees’ time before they can process payroll.

In recent months, TSheets has hired about 100 new employees. In the most recent batch of 15, three had moved to Idaho from California.

“I was surprised,” Rissell said. “We don’t pay relocation. We don’t recruit.” Instead, its best recruiters are its employees, he said, and the acquisition hasn’t changed that.

“To say this has gone well is an understatement,” said Rissell, who is not known for understatements. “There has basically been zero attrition, a fraction of a percentage. People want to work here. There have been changes, but everyone’s been real sensitive. They’ve embraced us and embraced who we are.”

For example, Intuit paid to upgrade the company’s technology and helped invest in TSheets’ new building, he said.

At this point, Rissell’s focus is on integrating more pieces of TSheets into QuickBooks.

“We’re only just getting started embedding all our functionality,” he said. And so far, the company and product has retained its identity rather than getting subsumed into QuickBooks.

“It is a very healthy company, growing ridiculously fast,” he said of the new parent.

The acquisition was also good for Idaho’s startup community in general, Rissell said.

“We just need more momentum,” he said. “We need more success stories. We need more founders and team members staying in Boise. It provides a voice, visibility, momentum and networking opportunities, and that attracts investors, attention and gets more people interested. Get a bunch of like-minded people together and great things happen.”