

Ask HN: Do you hate all personal finance software? Want to make a better one? - keithwarren

I never liked Microsoft Money though I used it. Then Redmond killed off the product and suggested I switch to Quicken. So I did, and I HATE IT. I think it is terrible. It tries to do 4,000 things and does none of them well. My wife asked my today if I had paid the Macy's bill, I pulled it up, found the search and entered 'Macy' - pretty straight forward use case...alas, no luck.<p>I am thinking of attacking the problem. Creating something that has the best of the desktop world and the value of the internet world while staying ultra-paranoid secure. Something wholly extensible where hackers can embrace and extend and offer their wares to the rest of the community through an extension market as part of the system.<p>I look at the position of Intuit in the market, their competitors and feel like they are ripe for a 37signals, do less better type of sniper hit.<p>Anyone interested in helping?
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albertsun
Mint is the new standard to beat.

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keithwarren
Mint was bought by Intuit.

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count
Mint also forces me to give them my account info. I don't even let my Quicken
copy talk to the web (disconnected VM), let alone give all my account info to
a 3rd party for storage and use. I'm sure I'm just being irrational, but that
terrifies me.

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clyfe
I have this same idea for a long time. One thing I thought (to gain market) of
was to restrict the clients for the app to a single country (personalized by
local laws etc.) but in my country there is already a competitor, and making
for other countries seems a bit over my hand.

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gopsig
Some entrepreneurs at SproutBox are attacking this problem, too.
[http://blog.sproutbox.com/2010/07/28/sproutbox-announces-
nex...](http://blog.sproutbox.com/2010/07/28/sproutbox-announces-next-sprout/)

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marknutter
It's a very crowded space, even for the whole 37signals style apps. I suggest
you do more research into all the other startups and smaller, simpler
solutions that exist out there and determine if there's really an opportunity.

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tjpick
Xero? <http://www.xero.com/>

