

Mint.com Founder Happy To Sell To Intuit, VC Conspiracy Wrong - fromedome
http://www.businessinsider.com/mintcom-founder-wanted-to-sell-vc-conspiracy-wrong-2009-9

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mikeryan
Can anyone guess how much Mint's founder will walk away with? (from crunchbase
it looks like they took about $30M in funding and sold for $170M)

I've always figured $10M was walk away (from life) money. ($2M to buy a decent
house - $8M to invest so that even with a modest return of 5% you'd still be
making about $400K a year)

I'd say that's a great 2 years of work, I don't need Google Money and I'd be
fine with that.

~~~
paul
5% isn't as modest as you think once you take into account inflation and
taxes, and the fact that the stock market isn't going to magically go up 10%
every year (as many people erroneously assume). Living off of 2% of your
assets is a safer and more sustainable assumption.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Not to mention that if your house is already paid for, you can live on much
less than 5%. Housing is far and away most people's biggest expense.

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benatkin
I agree with this assessment of the situation. I still think that what
37signals is doing is way more interesting (not just their business, but their
blog, and the community they're leading), but who am I to criticize either of
their careers? They've both had success beyond my wildest dreams.

~~~
pclark
why is what 37 signals does cooler? what do they do? they sell software and
have slowly scaled, they aren't trying to go public or take over the world.
They aren't even _that_ innovative on the web.

there are probably hundreds of companies in an almost identical situation.

~~~
unalone
They're cooler because they so thoroughly document what they're doing, they
have fun doing it, and they don't take shit from people in the process?

As a kid in high school, 37signals was one of the sites that changed how I
thought about the Internet. I came across it, and suddenly here were some
people who had pretty good taste in design, made some cool products for some
cool people, who _sounded like people when they talked_. That's still how they
come across. There are a shitton of people who think that the point of the
Internet is fakery and deception and marketing—including half the people
here—and I give props to the people who're willing to be professionals without
handing in a part of their personality at the door.

The guys at 37signals like what they do, they're fairly successful, fairly
famous, they do good work, and despite all that they sound like people that I
know in person, they're willing to take risks and have unpopular opinions and
sound stupid on occasion. Meanwhile, all respect to you, pclark, but ben says
he thinks 37signals is cooler though they've both achieved wild success, and
you come in here all determined to remind us that 37signals isn't unique and
aren't cool and aren't innovative.

I guess what I'm saying is that the 37signals attitude of "We're people doing
something" is the opposite of the common Hacker News attitude of Objectivist
Manifest Destiny, and so they're cool for the clichéd reason that some people
had to learn from them that it's okay to be yourself and not somebody else.

~~~
pclark
I have a lot of respect for jasonfried, I'd kill to sit down and have a coffee
to chat shop with him.

37 Signals are a company with great marketing and an okay product. Kudos to
them, etc.

But its not _right_ [in my eyes] for people to aspire to _that_. Why would you
aspire for that? Are you going to sleep well knowing your product is _okay_?
Aren't most people on Hacker News technology people rather than marketing?
Isn't that the core difference - we focus on building great _things_.

Mint "selling out" is better than sitting on your products enjoying the small
profits for the rest of your life.

Do something awesome, life is too short to be mediocre.

~~~
unalone
Their product is better than okay. I can't think of anybody competing with
them who does what they do better than they do.

~~~
pclark
you're right that its better than okay, but I don't think its a revolution of
collaboration.

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credo
The article says "After busting your butt for two years on a startup salary --
and suddenly you have the chance to become a rich hotshot with a big job in a
big company -- wouldn't you?"

I'm assuming that some/many entrepreneurs would rather work on their startups
instead of working in "a big job in a big company". I'm not necessarily
suggesting that one is better than the other or commenting on Mint in
particular, but I think that the reporter is mistaken in his assumption that
people would always choose a big job in a big company.

~~~
wglb
His deal seems particularly attractive given this new information. One can
imagine that he has been working 100-120 hour weeks, has no external life. Now
he has buckage, gets to continue doing what he did over the last two years,
and gets to run something similar. Given that he still gets to work on his
startup, what is not to like?

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philwelch
This is consistent with a story that's been submitted here but not very widely
seen:

[http://www.mint.com/blog/updates/why-mint-com-plus-intuit-
is...](http://www.mint.com/blog/updates/why-mint-com-plus-intuit-is-a-big-
idea/)

Of importance:

 _After the acquisition closes, the Mint.com team will be leading the
development of both Mint.com and Intuit’s existing personal finance products,
Quicken desktop and Quicken Online. The fact that Intuit has agreed to acquire
Mint.com, and is leaving our team intact, is evidence that Intuit has been
impressed by and wants to build upon the user experience that Mint.com offers.
We’ll not only improve upon that experience for Mint.com but also bring our
know-how to the Quicken product line. Destroying the Mint.com user experience
does not make sense for Intuit, Mint.com or any of our users._

~~~
run4yourlives
Leaders of large companies often understand that they need to bring in outside
influence and new ideas to remain competitive; that's a good part of why they
make acquisitions after all.

The issue is - and you'll understand this if you've ever been acquired or have
have tried to innovate in a large organization - that large companies are not
run by their C-Suite Executives.

Large Companies are run by their internal cultures, bureaucracies and
departments; often there are several separate instances of these things too.
Like all cultures, they are resistant to being changed unless that change
comes from within.

Given that, acquired companies tend to be mis-matched in trying to contribute
what they know. Even if some of the company listens, there are many areas that
aren't interested in what they have to say.

The best thing that could ever be hoped for in an acquisition is that the
acquired company is run as an independent subsidiary, simply required to
funnel money to to parent company. Any time the two companies are asked to
merge in any real way, the result is inevitably, regardless of how it is done,
the loss of the bought entities ideals, culture and business practices is
inevitable.

~~~
philwelch
In the case of Apple and NeXT, it was Apple's culture that was lost in favor
of NeXT's.

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jwesley
"37signals' Fried, by the way, is a rare case in the Internet industry, in
that 37signals has never had to raise a significant amount of venture
capital."

That statement really shows how ignorant the business press is of the reality
of business on the web. The vast majority of web companies never raise money.
They are not glamorous, are not written about on the blogs every day, and many
are very small, but some of them do become very large businesses as well.

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jhatcom
I'm surprised Mint was successful at all, given that you have to give them
your financial account login ids and passwords to use their system. Storing
such data centrally seems like a big risk to me.

~~~
akeefer
They don't store it themselves; they use Yodlee to actually store everything,
and Yodlee is the one that actually has done all the work (and it's a huge
undertaking) to keep everything secure.

~~~
jacquesm
With all the writing about this deal and what gets stored where I think
yodlees' profile in the blackhat community has risen considerably in the last
couple of days.

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imgabe
That's exactly what someone who was under the thumb of an evil VC conspiracy
would say!

