
How Mint.com Acquired 1.5M+ Users - faramarz
http://jasonputorti.com/post/472866002/how-mint-com-acquired-1-5m-users
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ilamont
Two things to add about the Mint.com success formula, based on a presentation
I heard Aaron Patzer give at the Webby Connect conference about one year
before he sold Mint to Quicken:

1) Patzer spent about 20% of his time talking to media or other blogs. He
basically would make time for anyone that wanted to interview him,
understanding the viral potential in terms of follow-on press coverage and of
course, new customers. (Incidentally, Salesforce's Marc Benioff describes a
similar approach to press in his bio, but mostly concentrated on major
publications and journalists in the early days -- this was before most blogs
and viral phenomena)

2) Patzer described spending a lot of time on finding (and paying for) the
right name. Easy to understand, spell, and enter into a browser address bar
were key. He thought his competitors were crazy for choosing names that were
hard to spell or pronounce -- he specifically mentioned Geezeo.com and
Wesabe.com .

One other thing: Patzer claimed he didn't spend anything on marketing in the
talk that I saw. But from Putori's post, it seems that Mint.com did spend
money on a PR agency, which surely wasn't cheap.

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cryptnoob
I'm actually a little disappointed in that 1.5M number. Mint is held up as
such a success story, I had assumed, given things like Dropbox's 4M number,
that Mint would be much higher.

For those of us that are in much smaller niches, and with expectations of less
press coverage, etc, than Mint, we mentally discount our potential user number
as some percentage of Mints (or Dropbox's, or pick your success story)

When doing such mental math, the larger the successes number, the better you
like it. Say your niche is only 5% as large (Mint's niche was pretty much
"anybody with money and a computer). So, best case, you're looking at 5% of
Mint. If Mint is only 1.5M, of which, probably most were non-paid ... You get
my drift.

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JarekS
I think that you should look at that 1,5mln users number from different
perspective.

It's HUGE amount if you think of these people as being brave enough to give
their _PASSWORDS_ and bank account details to the startup!

Using Dropbox doesn't put you in any risks. To be an early Mint adopter you
must be very ... well... adventurous.

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jmatt
I began with a bank account that I kept for depositing checks locally. And a
credit card I rarely use. From there I slowly built up trust and added more
accounts. All of that being said, it's safe to say I'm adventurous and a risk
taker.

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smackfu
I have another candidate: Licensing the hard software part from another mature
company.

Mint is really just a Web 2.0 face on Yodlee (which provides all the bank
interfacing parts). And there's nothing wrong with that, but it got them to
maturity a lot faster than starting from scratch would have.

<http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/18/mint-is-yodlees-youtube/>

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vinhboy
This article is very insightful. Thanks for the great read.

Landing pages -- that's one magical knob everyone should definitely turn...
Infographics -- The Oatmeal is another great example of the effectiveness of
this

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samd
37 Signals, Fog Creek, Mint, can you even be a successful web company without
a blog and an audience?

~~~
replicatorblog
Facebook, Google, Zynga, yeah I guess you can!

That said I know they have blogs now, largely targeted at developers and early
adopters, but in the early days they didn't. However, I'm a big fan of blogs,
think every professional/company should have one. Great way to spread ideas,
make contacts, etc.

~~~
JarekS
Blog is not enough. What Mint did (and is still doing) is selling their
byproduct - in their case is statistics they can dig from their user data.

Statistics are always very popular among the press crowd - this can be easily
sold and drives additional traffic.

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sunchild
I'd be interested in attrition after the sale. I wiped out my Mint.com account
as soon as I learned who bought them.

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jasonlbaptiste
ive been showing this quora post to everyone i know at startup event past few
days. glad jason made it public.

