

Mint founder on Silicon Valley - aditya
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/14/the-value-of-techcrunch50-mint-acquired-by-intuit-for-170m-two-years-after-winning-tc40/

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mixmax
_"While everyone else was doing social media, music, video or the startup de
jour, we tried to ground ourselves in what any business should be doing: solve
a real problem for people."_

This is good advice for all aspiring entrepreneurs.

~~~
zaidf
While I can see where he is coming from(and have myself grown tired of the
social media stuff), his tone is kind of condescending.

Cool he sold his "real problem" startup; but to suggest YouTube, facebook
aren't solving "real problems" is interesting in the least.

~~~
modoc
If I woke up tomorrow and one of those sites was down for good, Mint is the
one I'd miss the most.

~~~
axod
Your comment isn't really useful :/ you're obviously an outlier. Most people
would go insane if they couldn't access youtube or facebook.

Social media, music, video _are_ real problems that people have, and need
solutions to. The problem comes when a startup doesn't really solve anything
new and just copies existing stuff.

~~~
modoc
I guess you and I have differing opinions on what "real problems" are.
Personal finance, yup. Facebook feed, not so much.

Out of people who use Mint and who use YouTube, I'd bet many would pick Mint
over YouTube if they had to pick one.

Honestly, if youtube or facebook vanished, and in this magical world, no one
propped up a replacement. People would moan for a week, and then they'd go
back to the same things they did before YouTube existed, with no change to
anything practical in their life. People wouldn't go insane, they'd simple
find other ways to waste time.

~~~
krschultz
Exactly. Vimeo & Hulu replace all the value of YouTube. It is commodity free
video hosting, there is no community at YouTube.

Facebook is useful for me, but I wouldn't pay for it if I had to.

I'd gladly pay for Mint.

Mint has nothing to do with taxes like axod says. It is about budgeting and
tracking expenditures.

I used to get a statement in the mail each month from 4 different institutions
related to bank accounts, credit cards, and investments. (Or check online at 4
different places). Then I would reconcile them with my checkbook / some pile
of receipts to double check.

Now I go to one place 1-2 times a week and check against my receipts right
away. It never builds up and takes significantly less time.

It also helps budget and gives you data to figure out where you are spending
your money.

If you are not one of those people who has money to keep track of or you don't
balance your checkbook, then sure the value is hard to see. But if you
actually take care of your money it is immensely helpful and saves me time and
money.

~~~
axod
>> "Mint has nothing to do with taxes like axod says."

>> "If you are not one of those people who has money to keep track of or you
don't balance your checkbook, then sure the value is hard to see."

I was really trying to work out why Mint seems to be valued highly in the US.
I can see some of the differences now.

The idea of having a 'checkbook' is incredibly quaint to most people in the
UK. No one uses checks anymore here, not for 10-20 years, we're used to free
banking, online account management, direct debits/transfers, etc. The majority
of people have direct debits (Automated bill payments) setup for all their
bills. They have their pay paid automatically into their bank by transfer (All
free of course).

Banks provide all the tools we need to manage our money for free generally.
Some online banking tools even allow you to access other banks that you may
have accounts with (With your approval), so you can see all your accounts from
one interface, and get a better picture.

I still think the added burden of having to file your own taxes would make you
more likely to need something like mint, but it's probably more the extreme
differences in consumer banking that's the bigger reason.

If I had to pay my bills by check, I'd go insane.

~~~
krschultz
I don't write checks either. I've written 2 checks in the last 12 months. One
for a used car and one for a bike. Both from private sellers so they didn't
take debit cards.

I use my debit and credit cards all day. I never even use cash, primarily so
that it all gets categorized automatically by Mint and I'm too lazy to do it
for cash by hand.

But in my mind a debit card is the same as checks.

Of course I pay my bills online and have bank access online (you must to use
Mint).

The difference I guess is that I'm using multiple companies. Why load up Bank
of America, Vanguard, WSFS, Wachovia, Capitol One and Fidelity's websites and
use 6 different interfaces on 6 different websites when I can use one unified
one?

You seem to have an anti-US bias that you think we are stupid or something. It
is a question of how you treat your money, not the tools available.

And you are horribly mistaken on the "burden of filing your own taxes", which
again, has nothing to do with Mint. 99% of the work for taxes is done by the
HR department at your office and by a tax accountant. I just hand the
appropriate papers to the right people, and sign it at the end. Total timer
per year: an hour at most. Maybe you shouldn't comment on things you obviously
have no knowledge of.

~~~
axod
>> "Maybe you shouldn't comment on things you obviously have no knowledge of."

Then I wouldn't be able to comment on anything at all! :/

Point taken, maybe things have changed in the US since I was there. My
understanding of things was that people still got paid by check, paid bills by
check etc, did not get free banking, and paid 'convenience fees' to pay things
online etc.

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arohner
Wow, one line out of the whole story mentions TechCrunch, and they run that as
the headline.

And it's slimy how TC implies that _because_ Mint launched at TC50, it
_caused_ Mint to be acquired.

~~~
physcab
Yeah I got the same weird feeling when I read that headline, but honestly,
getting that type of coverage probably helped them considerably. It seems like
most successful companies have the right proportion of hard work and luck.

~~~
arohner
Sure, good coverage helps, but with a good product and good execution, they'll
get it from anyone. If the formula is good idea + hard work + good execution +
coverage from TC, you can easily replace "coverage from TC" with "coverage
from NYTimes", and still be successful. TC didn't cause Mint to be acquired,
so they shouldn't pretend they helped.

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javery
This story does seem to gloss over the VC piece, to me it read like they
started with no money and got to $170 million without investment. Didn't they
raise 30+ million?

~~~
condor
it sounds like they they raised a little over $30M, and the last $14M of that
was @ a $140M valuation.

------
axod
What he doesn't mention is how much money Mint was making (If it was making
any at all).

Plenty of bubble valley hyping up about how it couldn't have happened anywhere
else etc etc. Bleugh.

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aditya
_Here’s to the Mint team, from New Zealand, from France, Tunisia, Armenia,
Ukraine, Russia, Canada, Greece, and all over the U.S._

Hm. So, they got their start in the valley and then hired people all over the
world? It reads like an ode to the valley absolutely till the last
paragraph...

~~~
kareemm
i read it as ppl from those countries are on the Mint team and live in the
valley.

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nobody_nowhere
excellent timing for the relentless techcrunch self-promotion machine...

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Oh come on...

    
    
      1. This was written by Mint's founder, not TC
      2. This *is* a success story for TC
      3. There's nothing wrong with self-promotion :)

~~~
nobody_nowhere
Hey, is there no room for snark about a snarky website? I've got a horse in
the TC50 race, so it's great that he bills it as "The Value of TechCrunch",
but isn't really about the value of Mint?

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mace
Aaron Patzer also gave a talk at Duke that has some good advice for startup
founders:

[http://media.fuqua.duke.edu/Content/Groups/EES/2008/Patzer_3...](http://media.fuqua.duke.edu/Content/Groups/EES/2008/Patzer_300K.mov)

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ieatpaste
_"We’ve attracted over 1.5 million users, found over $300 million in savings,
managed $50 billion in assets, and helped people track nearly $200 billion in
purchases."_

I'm not sure I would sell - $170m seems rather low. Furthermore, they have so
much room for expansion, which only will be crippled by working under a tax
software company. They might be trying to automagically do your taxes for you,
but they don't have enough relevant information without having it to be the
same hassle as using the software.

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daveungerer
I seem to be banned from TechCrunch and have to go through google cache if I
really want to read something linked from HN. Still trying to decide if that's
a good thing or not. It says:

 _TechCrunch is currently down for some scheduled maintenance. In the
meantime, please check out the other sites on our network of blogs for the
latest in tech news:_

The above is followed by a list of links. Been this way for at least a week
now.

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caa09hh
Mint is such a great website.

Can someone please tell me how they are able to access websites with scripts?
What languages do they use to do that?

~~~
madh
They get their information from Yodlee.

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brown9-2
I'm ignorant on how the TechCrunch50 conference works. Does TC have any
ownership stake in mint?

~~~
aditya
No, they just won the $50k prize... but it seems like Arrington got some
(advisor?) stock if you see the exchange between him, Calacanis and Aaron.

~~~
antonovka
Advisor stock? That's an enormous conflict of interest for a editor at news
("news"?) organization covering the space.

~~~
evgen
Conflict of interest? TechCrunch?

Say it ain't so! :)

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ramoq
sounds like they might have used java on the backend :)

~~~
bkbleikamp
the backend is indeed java

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giardini
I'm surprised they use Mysql, since IIRC it doesn't have transaction
capability.

~~~
auston
?innoDB?

