

How Mint Beat Wesabe - wensing
http://okdork.com/2010/10/14/how-mint-beat-wesabe/

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rubeng
I love getting this type of insight from someone that was there during such an
important time for Mint.

A couple of questions:

 _Authority. We got thought leaders in personal finance to back us._

Can you give one or two examples of how you guys accomplished this?

 _Dave had a the killer idea of the content network (blog) which was a HUGE
traffic generator and still is to this day._

Do you mean the Mint blog or were there others? If others, how many of them?

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noahkagan
Luckily, I was writing in personal finance for a few years before I joined
Mint so I knew most of them. Some of them included Ramit at
<http://iwillteachyoutoberich.com>, Cap from <http://stopbuyingcrap.com> and
Jim at <http://bargaineering.com> to name a few.

We just went and interviewed the guys above or asked thme for guest posts. You
have to think how to serve their interests (traffic / exposure / relationships
with a potentially cool company).

Yea, the Mint blog.

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rubeng
_We just went and interviewed the guys above or asked thme for guest posts.
You have to think how to serve their interests (traffic / exposure /
relationships with a potentially cool company)._

That totally makes sense. But if this is early in Mint's history then what's
the benefit for them? I'm assuming it's not traffic or exposure since they
already have it, right? This is a situation that applies to a lot of startups.
What do they have to offer early on?

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noahkagan
Everyone will do an interview. They want the links and possibly free traffic
for minimal work. It did help that I personally knew them. Once you get
interviewed, you are pretty likely to promote it if it's a good reference.

The issue is most people approach it with generic template emails and crappy
questions.

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mountaineer
I like that you shared the apathy and Excel insights. I learned this early on
too. Even today in the PF space, I'd still say that's true and shouldn't
inhibit anyone from trying to create something cool.

Thanks for adding the PR point too. I get tired of hearing the "Mint didn't
spend money to attract users" line.

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jdp23
this is a really great article and should be required reading for anybody
thinking of starting up a company -- or considering joining a starup.

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hyperlexic
I think the domain name ( mint -vs- wesabe ) is responsible for more of the
Mint victory than people want to admit. I know when I try and turn people on
to new services, that seemingly petty little detail has been the primary
reason whether they adopt it or not. That fact of life kills you inside when
you put so much blood sweat and money into a company - only to have people
talking about how to pronounce your name in blog comments rather than what
cool stuff you can do.

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djwald
It seems so simple. Yet I'm sure a lot of Marketing dudes get caught up in the
hype that ends up being the "wrong community."

Say my customer is a bit of a laggard, What would you recommend doing to break
through the traditional PR clutter in a very web 2.0 world? Is there a way to
connect the two that makes sense and might provide value/ROI?

Thanks Noah.

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mcalvey99
Really good and insightful post. Looking forward to the design post though you
mentioned.

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royrod
Noah, excellent breakdown as usual. And I totally agree with your take (vs.
Wesabe's post-mortem post).

I'm going to send your article to like a dozen people right now, that I preach
this stuff to and don't believe me :)

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brianbreslin
fascinating. no one ever explained to me in the thread about why wesabe
failed, how the freaking name is pronounced.

how much $ did wesabe raise? (I'm too lazy to go to crunchbase)

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wensing
$4M Series A: USV (lead), O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.
[http://blog.wesabe.com/2007/06/20/wesabe-raises-4m-in-
series...](http://blog.wesabe.com/2007/06/20/wesabe-raises-4m-in-series-a-
funding/)

$700k seed: O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.
[http://techcrunch.com/2007/02/28/wesabe-gets-money-from-
tim-...](http://techcrunch.com/2007/02/28/wesabe-gets-money-from-tim-oreillys-
oatv/)

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hazemawad
Very interesting article.

