This is a great story. I remember when you guys covered (and raved) about Mint. Seemed like a fairy tale happy ending.

Any ideas on how big the company is right now?

http://www.traderbots.com

wow… few yr old co and now sold. wow

Wowwww !! Congrats to Mint’s team !!

I used Mint just because it wasn’t Intuit and Quicken. I liked the fresh approach it provided. Time to see how it turns out.

mint is a great service but i’m afraid that with intuit’s sticky fingers all over it it’ll just turn into a web version of quicken. ugh =(

A $170m sale after a $140m round does not seem terrific to me (although it possibly was a coup for the founders).

Congrats Mint!

I never trusted Mint with my passwords, because it was a startup. With Intuit backing . . . I might.

Of course, if Intuit kills the awesome stuff everyone keeps telling me about Mint, then it is all m00t

http://www.traderbots.com

Damn the Valley valutions have come down since the YouTube days.

Not at all an awesome exit. Pretty timd, actually.

It wasn’t a $140M round, it was a $140M valuation on a $14M C round (maybe that’s what you meant). In fact, it is terrific – as in a terrific selling valuation for investors and founders alike. Intuit obviously thinks it’s worth it (I tend to agree, although will watch with interest)

I am betting on freshbooks for one of the next deal in this space: I love them and hope they will soon add a light CRM service.

Mint never actually touched the passwords, though. They’re handled through third-party banking aggregation software provider Yodlee, who supplies similar software to big banks. (Which is the only reason I ever “trusted” Mint, to be fair.)

Nick, yea that is exactly what I meant. Clearly it is good for founders, but it is absolutely fuck-me-in-the-head awful for the C round investors. How could it be good in any way for them?

congrats to mint

adding my congratulations here, great product and great people. Intuit is getting a bargain :)

[...] G on Sep.13, 2009, under Entrepreneurs, Technology, Web 2.0 TechCrunch by Michael Arrington:- Intuit has acquired the free online personal finance service Mint, we’ve [...]

congrats,mint done a very good job,i would like to use mint..

Congratulation! This is awesome.

I noticed that Mint is down for maintenance. I wonder if it’s related.

http://post.ly/4vqj

Title: Intuit to acquire

Body: Intuit has acquired

which is it?

+1

Good question.

Congrats to Mint team for awesome exit!

Huge.

Congrats Mint. Well done. Queue “I’m On A Boat” and repeat.

congrats to Aaron and his team, and to Rob Hayes at First Round Capital, who funded them way before everyone knew how cool they were!

Invest $14M in August and get $17 in September… that is not the worst investment for the Series C guys.

This is awesome for Aaron and team. They’ve been killing for the last three years straight.

Mint is powered by yodlee.
And yodlee sees Intuit as a big fish competitor.

So what does this sale mean to yodlee ?

This seems like a great exit for Mint. Michael – why do you think that they raised capital just before exiting? If their last round was a $140MM post-money valuation, this does not seem like a big step up from that.

Congrats to Aaron and Mint … a great team which built a great product that profoundly improved people’s lives.

yeah, the new investors were DAG and Founders Fund. Both made a good return given how long they’ve actually been investors.

a deal like this could have come together very quickly. Perhaps that last round forced Intuit’s hand. I have no idea, just speculating.

I believe Mint is a former TechCrunch40 winner, not TechCrunch50. Right?

Sigh.

Another unprofitable startup that finally got a sugar-daddy in quicken.

Mint would probably *never* have been profitable based on all the investments and expenses that went into it. The business would not have acquired enough paying customers, or enough customers that they could have “saved” money for.

The fundamentals just did not add up.

All in all, Quicken bought mint so they can convert Mint’s large free customer base into their paying online services. Why? Because besides the snazzy front-end that Mint has, there is nothing behind that facade that quicken is not already doing better.

In fact, I’ve sort of changed my mind… Mint was brilliant with this one! They put together a snazzy “web 2.0″ facade to draw in a lot of people blinded by the flashing lights, in the hope that a large profitable company (such as Quicken) would buy them for their potential customer base.

In the end, this deal was never about any techology, just about the hundreds of thousands of people who signed up and gave up some of their financial profile.

If anything, I’m surprised that Quicken got it for so little.

Big congrats to Aaron and team and advisors! First Round gets to cork another bottle of Dom Pérignon.

[...] is reporting that Intuit (Previous Cloud Ave coverage of Intuit can be found here, here, here and here), the [...]

On the one hand I hope that this brings true Canadian support, but on the other I fear that Intuit will just plain ruin Mint. :/

So you think the other partners at DAG and FF will be congratulating whoever led this deal? Seems unlikely to me.

Regardless, congrats to Aaron and team, that’s a phenomenal two years.

Congrats to Mint. I really love their service. I have been using it ever since they debut at Techcrunch40. I just hope they keep the Free user model in tact. We will see now that Big Brother Intuit has acquired them.

Congrats to the Mint team!

Congratulations to the Mint team – would love to see the service rolled out internationally.

You clearly have never read any of mint’s or techcrunch’s posts as to how mint makes money. For starters, there is no paid tier of service.

I do hope intuit doesn’t ruin Mint though.

I joined Mint.com because I despised Intuit. Now I have to abandon a great product because an evil company has acquired it. (Yes, evil. Go Google Intuit’s involvement in creating e-file.)

On one hand this is surprising given the recent funding and that from the outside, Mint would seem a long term, possibly independent company. On the other hand, it had limited revenue and was mainly sizzle with little steak.

[...] Link Diesen Artikel Twittern, Social Bookmarken, Drucken oder per E-Mail versenden: [...]

Without any serious competition online and a killer business model it seems like a lot of future potential and $ were left on the table for the Mint team and the investors. I don’t think any VC is in this business to make a 20% return.

According to compete their US traffic was a bit flat until July. Did they stall and find they needed a way to gain more users quickly to remain viable? Personally I don’t see the upside, it seems more like an act of necessity, because if they could continue growing on their own there is a few hundred million in value that could have been realized. Sounds like its a matter of the cash not carrying them far enough with soft growth adding to the pressure.

By the time it all gets divided up the employees of Mint are not going to walk away with much (1% is $1.5m and consider most employees have far fewer shares than that)

I was at one of the recent events, related to angel investing, and there the investors (Rob Hayes, Aydin Senkut, etc) were talking about when Aaron (Mint founder) was just starting out and was looking for funding, etc., so it’s truly fascinating to see him and his company go from an idea to a $170M exit in about 2-3 years.

Even though I personally don’t know Aaron, I’ve heard that he is simply a great guy and I’m happy for him! He definitely deserves everything he got and more!

Congrats man!!

Major Congrats to Aaron, Matt, Poornima and the whole team. I remember when Aaron first demo’d the idea asked me “do you think this is fundable?”, “I said, you’re joking right? We’re having FoundersTable with Josh Koppleman tomorrow – I’m setting an extra seat for you – you’re getting funded”. They hit it off and the rest is history. Kudos to Mint, FirstRound, Softtech, Felicis and all the others involved.

[...] 8:21 am on September 14, 2009 Reply Tags: business (102) Congratulations to the Mint guys who have been bought by Intuit for $170million. [...]

[...] Intuit, the company behind Quicken and other small business accounting software, is reportedly buying online personal finance site Mint for $170 million, according to TechCrunch. [...]

[...] all:&nbspNews TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington is reporting that personal-finance behemoth Intuit is about to buy Mint, the nifty financial site that has provided stiff competition (as well as inspiration) for [...]

[...] Shared Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million [...]

congrats aaron and team, and to first round and the other folks involved — you guys killed it

Michael,
What was their revenue? We don’t see analysis of revenue of any of these companies? does any one have more info on this?

Congrats to Aaron and team. Also well done to the great PR machine that helped contribute to the company’s rapid success.
Will Aaron stay on contract with Intuit as part of the deal?

yeah, its handled by a thirdparty and is only view access, can’t transfer or withdraw…

Congrats! on the exit. But must say @ $140M valuation in the last round to an exit @ $170M is kind of low for a service that is good.

Well Done!

$170mio
1.4mio free users
$121 / free user
How to recoup the $121 on a free user?

If Quicken can’t answer that quickly then they have done a stupid deal.
$170mio is money you need to earn.
$170mio is a big marketing campaign lasting several years.
$170mio is a lot of developers and development time.

[...] Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million Intuit will acquire the free online personal finance service Mint, we’ve confirmed from a source close to the deal, for around $170 million. The deal should be announced in the next few days. TechCrunch [...]

Well done, my apprentice.

Congrats, great Deal, guys!

I think it is a good exit but I’m still a little surprised. Mint is a great service and I think it would have only gone from strength to strength. Perhaps Aaron was getting itchy feet – will be looking out for his next project.

Deleted my mint account just now. Intuit is not the software company I want to do business.

[...] Mint gets acquired by Intuit for $170M (Techcrunch) [...]

[...] TechCrunch reports that Intuit will buy Mint.com in a deal valued at around $170 million. [...]

And condolances to Mint’s users. Now Intuit can hose this great product up like they do with everything.

Sorry for the Intuit hate so early in the morning, but as a software company, they’re predatory and reprehensible. Not only do they intimidate users into paying $70+ a year whenever they upgrade their product, their upgrades almost never go smoothly, their support is expensive and the techs are dense, they break compatibility with their own product every time they upgrade . . . .

And for MAC users, they haven’t released a product in 3 years. Quicken Financial Life was slated for early this summer release, but now it’s been pushed to 2010.

I recently had this conversation with a friend who bought a Mac and was asking if Quicken could be had on a mac. I told him there were several alternatives to Quicken, like iBank, Jumsoft Money (my favorite) and mint.com . . . . I guess the list just got shorter.

Very honestly, Mint could have made SO much money off all the data they’d collected.

I feel they made too quick an exit. Two more years, and they could’ve easily turned into a $50M+ p.a. revenue company

[...] TechCrunch confirms the acquisition and pegs the price tag at $170 [...]

I doubt it!!! probably some retaliation after Facebook Punk’d TechCrunch ;)

[...] Intuit To Acquire (Former TechCrunch50 Winner) Mint For $170 Million [...]

I just hope they don’t screw up Mint now.

Interesting…

I wonder if they had any hesitation selling to Intuit, given that that they don’t really seem to “get it” and Quicken is such a terrible product. If it was my company I’d be afraid Intuit wouldn’t get the vision and would mess up Mint. But then again, you get a $170 million offer and no one can fault you for taking the money.

I’d also be curious to know what profit multiple Mint sold for.

I’ve used Quicken since 1991. Over that time I’ve gone from loving it to completely despising it and Intuit because of their generally close architectures.

I had high hopes for Mint though. Until now. Intuit acquiring Mint absolutely sux.

[...] Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million – Tech Crunch: Intuit will acquire the free online personal finance service Mint, we’ve confirmed from a source close to the deal, for around $170 million. The deal should be announced in the next few days. [...]

If this was a typical venture deal then the Series C shares probably had ‘participating preference’. Which means that they got their money back first, then they got their equity exposure to whatever was left.

If this is true then their $14m in will have become around $28m, depending on how much existing money had preference and at what levels. (I am assuming that there was $32m invested, all with 1x preference; $14m + 10% x ($170m-$32m) = $27.8m). This is a great IRR and not a bad absolute return, even tho it is probably not what the investors had hoped for in the upside.

thats good, I feel good with intuit having my information. As secure as it is it was always a concern of mine

[...] Posted by Rob Diana in Business, Internet I read some interesting news this morning when I saw that Intuit will acquire Mint.com. I have been following Mint for quite some time mainly because I always wanted to track my spending [...]

I think Mint’s step into business finances was a warning sign for Intuit. To me, this is purely a, “we need to buy them before they hurt us” acquisition. The first warning sign was Intuit going after Mint about their numbers.

Who really thinks Intuit purchased Mint for the monetary potential?

Michael — is there any word about how Mint and Intuit will merge the ops & tech teams? Will Mint continue to run as its own little island without much interference from Intuit; e.g. has Intuit made any statements regarding how the two companies will merge?

-Jeff

Awesome Mint!A deal like this could have come together very quickly. Perhaps that last round forced Intuit’s hand.Let us see to what more has Mint got in store for us.

It’s really good for Mint, but as a user I am concerned.

For now, I’ll continue to use it, but I’ve opened up an account at Yodlee, and if I don’t like the way things are going at mint, I’ll jump ship.

The interface isn’t as nice, but it does have features Mint is missing – like transfers and manual transactions. Mint seems to do better with displaying investments, though.

[...] to acquire Mint, a San Francisco-based provider of online personal money management solutions.TechCrunch reported it at a price of approximately $170 million. Founded in 2007, Mint offers free online [...]

*sigh* well, i just hope that intuit doesn’t f’ck mint up w/ their archaic business models and sh’t software quality.

intuit’s incompetence was the reason i joined mint… hopefully they’ll leave the vision in the hands of the mint folks and leverage their market presence to force retarded banks (JP Morgan 401k) to stop blocking access.

time will tell…

Mike, this is why I read techcrunch! Great Story

“And condolances to Mint’s users. Now Intuit can hose this great product up like they do with everything. ”

Exactly. This news is good for Mint, terrible for Mint users.

Hopefully they won’t go and kill it. =/

-Oh-A big defensive move by Intuit….:)

Great. Now I won’t use Mint any more.

time to spin up “Eye of the Tiger”… ;)

awesome job, guys. way to keep exceeding everyone’s expectations, both customer & investor alike.

Rob, Josh, MarkG: good eye… drinks are on you folks!

This has nothing to do with Quicken and everything to do with another Intuit acquisition, Digital Insight and their Finance Works product which Intuit currently sells to FIs.

The value prop for this deal is surely competitive in nature, not to enhance the FinanceWorks product. In time there may be exchange of functionality, but this is all about preventing the competition (or new competitor) from getting into this space.

Until I see a press release, I will wonder if this story was leaked too early and will cause some competitive bids…..

We were a proud sponsor of the first TechCrunch50 event and very happy to see the grand prize winner achieve such great success.

Congratulations to Aaron and the entire Mint team.

Regards,
George

Hopefully, the deal was made with the best interests of users in mind; as with any acquisition, there is tremendous possibility for new product innovation to come out of the merging of the minds (certainly we benefited from some of the things LendingTree can offer Thrive).

It also shows just how large, and legitimate, this space is becoming. Congrats to Aaron and team for demonstrating just important personal financial management can be and I hope Quicken chooses to take that a step further to serve those who truly need it.

Mike:

Here’s a link to an article that has the Series C terms for Mint:

http://pedatacenter.com/pedc/blog/view/63

Darn. I’d gradually stopped using Quicken Online because it didn’t seem to give the budgeting tools I needed. I was considering Mint as a replacement. Looks like I have to go back to my OpenOffice.org spreadsheet and cut and paste. Has any bank got the clue to offer a mint-like suite of tools to its online customers? My bank is closing (it was decided pre-crash) and it’s time to switch. I’d pay a small premium for a good integration of banking and tools.

How much of that $170m do you think they’ll write off in two years time?

Mint had so much momentum – did they strike while the iron was hot, or could it have gotten hotter? The value of the company was only going up. Every day they became a bigger threat to Intuit. Time was on their side. As a dedicated Mint user, I feel like they exited too early.

Agreed. Good for them, bad for us Mint users.

I don’t know about you guys, but the reason I chose to use Mint in the first place was that it was NOT Intuit. Goodbye smooth web app, hello bloatware.

They went for 4x? That’s just too low…

Never said they don’t make money. I said they were unprofitable.

How much did Patzer get out of this? Guesses?

This showcases, again, the problem with VC investing.

This return is good as shown — however, it’s the 1 in many that actually return anything. If this is the return that VCs get these days on the extremely few that have such “successful” exits, than the model is even more broken than we thought.

After all, they get nothing back from most of the investments…so they need an occasional home run to compensate. If this is the measure of a home run, it’s time for VCs to run home.

[...] Mint.com?by anonymus Intuit (INTU) will acquire personal finance site Mint.com for $170 million, according to TechCrunch, which writes that the deal should be announced in the next few days.The post notes that Mint had [...]

Hopefully this is good new for Canadians like me who’ve been waiting for Mint to come here.

+1 on both issues.

Quicken was a pretty decent market leader at least in the pre Web 2.0 days, hopefully they will keep it minty fresh…

and bring it to Canada.

[...] TechCrunch reported that Intuit will acquire the free online personal finance service, Mint, for around $170 million. The deal, which should be announced in the next few days, puts Mint [...]

That’s exactly what I thought once I read who bought the company. Hope Intuit is willing to stay true to what made the site so successful and attracted their attention in the first place.

> Mint never actually touched the passwords, though.

Doh! They should let people know that…

Out of curiosity, what budget tools do you feel you need? We just did a budgeting pass at Thrive (www.justthrive.com) and are continuing to iterate that feature over the next several sprints, so it may be that we’re headed your direction…let me know what you’re thinking and I’ll see what we can do to meet your needs.

I’m curious why not? That is, Mint already does many of the things that people seem to be afraid Intuit will do (like selling user data), so unless you think the performance of the Mint site itself is going to be downgraded, why make a move if you were already willing to use Mint?

I wrote a comment talking about how this shows how the VC model is broken (if this is the measure of a terrific exit, the model is in trouble)…and it was posted, although briefly. No profanity, no negative attacks…just questioning the VC model.

Then the editors deleted it for some reason. Makes one really wonder why????

Ericson, you are aware that if you “change your mind” within a post, you can delete the previous irrelevant text? Then again, your whole post was irrelevant.

I’m curious why so many comments about leaving the service. That is, Quicken Online is currently free and unless people believe that Mint’s product quality is actually going to go down, if you were willing to use Mint yesterday, why not today?

The one concern I could see is business practices, but given that Mint already was making money by selling your data, I’m not sure what other concerns there might be.

I suppose one potential is that Quicken could start charging a subscription fee. That is, Quicken Online originally charged for use, then went free as a way of competing with Mint – having acquired Mint, could they be trying to force a return to a subscription, or even a freemium, model?

[...] servicio de finanzas personales Mint parece que va a ser comprado por Intuit por una cifra que rondaría los 170 millones de dólares. La última ronda de financiación de la compañía la situó en una cifra que rondaba los 140 [...]

Yeah . . . I guess I had a traumatic experience. A friend had a startup that needed credentials from other services, who they kept telling me

1) They don’t store user passwords
2) All transmissions are via secured protocols

While he was telling me this, I remembered how their main dev was IMing me asking if there was a way to tell that SSL was actually turned on . . .

For me, I feel like once you start having real savings, the benefit you get from Mint have a hard time competing with the feeling of security and peace of mind. That was the only thing keeping me away from Mint.com.

Now, if my banks allowed me to authorize Mint.com for view-only with some kind of auth token . . . that’d be a different story. any chance it works that way?

http://www.traderbots.com

Or maybe they were scared of Mint.com . . .

Sure a big company might kill Mint, but for Intuit that might be 170 million well spent . . .

http://www.traderbots.com

I’d be interested in the answer here as well, given that Intuit does the aggregation piece in-house.

As I noted elsewhere, I’m curious why this reaction. In what way is Intuit more evil than Mint?

Good point for all the people that are concerned. There are plenty of competitors in this space: us (Thrive), MoneyStrands, Wesabe, Yodlee’s MoneyCenter. People continue to have a choice.

If mint goes away and gets merged into intuit I’ll mvoe to something else. I hate hate hate intuit products.

Terrific news! Congrats to all involved!

Why would ask for the $50,000 grand prize back? I hope TechCrunch is joking.

David is right and all other above, at an user and competition perspective it is not great. Period.

Intuit with its Quicken Online product for consumers is a direct competitor to Mint, and put in a Shareholder/Stakeholder perspective it will be inevitable to merge the two products. For employees of both companies will this news mean that some jobs _will_ be made redundant.

Sorry at @apatzer, @jeffclavier, @joshk, @billgurley, et al. who were involved in this exit. But wouldn’t have been an IPO in 2-3 years been better or just not to sell to a direct competitor? This is like any tech/tech product company selling to Yahoo/MSFT/Google/IBM/Cisco/Oracle/SAP&Co. Its seems sometimes so OK but its the easiest option sometimes too. And they just have the big pockets right?

I would love to see more VCs and entrepreneurs & communities to build and grow and nurture more. That is what we need for the future. Because that is most important for the future what we need right now.

Because the fast buck and quick exit is/was the culture that brought us into this business culture … now I am drifting off the initial theme …

If they can convert even 75% of those users into new eFile customers by April 5 then the deal would pay for itself.

It is said that you should never be afraid of making a profit. It might not have been a maximized exit, but it was definitely an exit to be proud of.

One in the hand…

[...] interesting post on TechCrunch caught my eye this morning. They are reporting that Intuit is a few days away from announcing the [...]

Whats going to happen to the Quicken vs Mint page? – http://www.mint.com/quicken-online-vs-mint/

Funny, I was just thinking about that.

I think having both Mint.com and Freshbooks would do wonders for Intuit’s reputation, but I really doubt Intuit would just throw away QuickBooks Online.

I just deleted all of my accounts from Mint. I sent them an email asking for some basic answers:

What will change?
Who will have access to my account?
Will they strip down the free services to force people to pay for what’s currently free?

There is no announcement on their site, no updates on their blog section, just a list of tweets from followers…

If I don’t get an answer in a reasonable timeframe, my Mint account is gone (darn, it was a great service!) and I’ll make sure all my friends and clients to whom I recommended the service know what I did and why I did it…

I guess I will be canceling my mint account soon. Intuit is a horrible company. I doubt they will do anything with mint besides ruining it.

This deal kinda upsets me. Mint was just about to become a serious competitor to Inuit. Now that they are a threat Intuit buys them out. With Microsoft exiting the Personal Finance relm and Intuit being the only major player in town, is there any chance the FTC will step in and stop this deal on anti-trust grounds?

If not i am probably going to close my mint account. I don’t want intuit to have that power and then charge me 2.95 a month.

brilliant move by intuit buy out the competitor before they crush you in the future. looking back i bet yahoo regrets not buying google for a billion

Matt:

This is what will happen:

- The Mint team will send out a note today or tomorrow saying that nothing will change, that for users is Business as Usual.
- Intuit has never been able to offer a product that appeals to the users. If they had, Mint wouldn’t had a chance and wouldn’t be so used.
- Intuit directors, completetly missing the point that their business approach is the real reason they were loosing to Mint, will start thinking about backing away fom some of Mint’s free services and make those services available for a fee, or if you buy their software.

I do agree that all this negativity from us is mostly perception, but you know what? It was working for Mint. Mint gave users something new, something different, a fresh approach to personal finances that Intuit couldn’t.

It has nothing to do with performance. It has all to do with people perceiving Intuit as “Old School” and Mint as the way to go.

[...] Mint launched two years ago at the TechCrunch 50, winning the conference’s top prize. Based on investments, the company is currently valued at around $140 million. [...]

I’m curious about this too. I hear this all the time too.

I think a lot of people had problems with older versions of Quicken or TurboTax and they started these “evil company” comments.

I know about Intuit’s involvement with e-file too. I honestly don’t care. Have you tried TurboTax online? It’s a great value. I think I spent $30 to file my taxes in about an hour last year.

that sucks. i loved Mint. no doubt they’ll ruin it and only bought it because they felt threatened.

Intuit has lots of other properties too, like QuickBooks

Techcrunch – you should make the grand-prize and investment in the company according to a factor on the last valuation :-)
This will also make you chose the company you truly believe has the best potential for a M&A/IPO…

What a sad day. I’m in the process of deleting my Mint account completely.

Very interesting. I’m not sure how Intuit has “never been able to offer a product that appeals to the users” considering Quicken is #1, TurboTax is #1 and QuickBooks is #1 in their markets.

Also, I think it’s important to note that Mark Goines (Mint.com board) was a Senior VP at Intuit. I’m pretty sure that Intuit and Mint will play well together :)
http://www.mint.com/company/board/

Seeing how the Series C Pref got no election of BoD members, and the last round represented approx 10% of the total issued/outstanding, the newer investors still got a pretty good return on a short stay. Still got to wonder what if….

[...] fast-growing consumer brand and a highly successful Software as a Service (SaaS) offering.” TechCrunch first reported the deal, which has garnered a good bit of [...]

I’m not trying to defend Intuit, I just wish people would say a bit more about their accusations of evil. Mint sells user data and pays bloggers for coverage; what does Intuit do that makes people that Mint is somehow going to become “worse”?

But that assumes that the only point of business is profit. I’m not saying that I believe this is bad for users, but if it is, doesn’t that count for anything?

[...] personal finance service that took the webs by storm is being picked up by online rival Intuit.  Techcrunch is reporting the price to be $170 [...]

Tostada, thanks for elaborating…it is nice to see someone saying more than Intuit = Bad. I’m an academic rather than a businessman, and I got involved with Thrive because the founders were, and are, genuinely interested in helping people.

We got acquired by a larger company (LendingTree) that has been accused of profit-mongering, but honestly, they seem to be committed to the vision of a world in which people have access to free financial advice and have stuck to that.

So perhaps I’m just seeing it from a different perspective, considering that I’m at an acquired company that has managed to retain its core values.

Be interesting to see where it goes, certainly.

You know Matt @ Thrive it doesn’t do your service own competing service many favors to throw around comments such as these. If you’re going to make comments such as this, provide sources, otherwise its slander.

That seemed like a joke to me.

Does this mean Mint is gonna suck now too?

If you don’t mind, why not share it with us? That is, as I’ve indicated in other comments, I’m not sure why the anti-Mint/Intuit reaction. As a service in the same space, I’m sure a flood of people leaving Mint would be good for us, but I’m not sure I understand why the negative reaction. Care to elaborate?

[...] The TechCrunch 50 hasn’t even begun yet and already it’s making news. Online personal finance site Mint, which took the top prize at the event in 2007, has evidently been acquired by Intuit (INTU). Price: a reported $170 million. [...]

Wow. What a smart move for Intuit. Congrats to Aaron and team and a big congrats to Intuit for their foresight. :)

(having worked a short spell at Intuit, I am not entirely surprised…there is a change in culture going on there.)

Interesting, just read that “Patzer will be responsible for online, desktop and mobile consumer personal finance offerings [at Intuit].” Intuit has tons of respect for Aaron :)

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/intuit-to-acquire-mintcom-2009-09-14

Er… 50,000 grand !?
maybe aaron should have retired right after the TC award.

A few of the smaller things – they like to make you pay for stuff. They hate Macs and Linux clients. They don’t “get” why the consumer should be happy before they put their money in the bank.

I love Turbotax online… But Quicken, in all its variants is a nightmare to deal with… And if you look outside the webspace, at what happened with Quicken vs. Quickbooks, it’s more than mildly frightening how things might wind up to the average Mint user. Definitely bummed, myself…

Congrats to anyone who makes it in today’s marketplace. Don’t be bitter. Just realize that maybe just maybe things are starting to loosen up.

[...] who will be the next Mint? Stay with us over the next two days to find out. [...]

I was thinking the same as I’m sure Mint will migrate to Intuit’s aggregator now. That dramatically lowers Mint’s cost structure, but it also means less coverage of financial institutions for users. All speculation, but curious how this subplot plays out. Then again, Yodlee has been competing against its own customers for a while, so I’m sure they’re not too concerned either way.

[...] a provider of free, online personal finance planning and budgeting tools.  The deal, according to TechCrunch, is reportedly worth $170 [...]

[...] TechCrunch50 could not have asked for a better start:  they get to announce that personal finance startup Mint winner of the $50K grand prize @ TC50 two years ago just got acquired for $170M. [...]

[...] Business, SaaS September 14th, 2009 TechCrunch50 could not have asked for a better start:  they get to announce that personal finance startup Mint winner of the $50K grand prize @ TC50 two years ago just got acquired for $170M. [...]

[...] of Mint.com, a personal finance site that launched two years ago at TechCrunch40. Last night the news broke that Mint is being acquired for $170 million by Intuit. Patzer has written two previous guest posts [...]

Sorry Zed; these things are well-known for people in the space, so I often forget to cite. Also, these are the kind of things that companies usually “announce”, so citation can be difficult. For selling data, at least, Mint has talked about it publicly (see the link below). For paying bloggers, the only reason we know is because bloggers that accept money from Mint have told us that they do.

And just to clarify, my point wasn’t to accuse Mint of anything: there is no ill will there. I’m just trying to get clarification on why people think Intuit is “evil” as compared to Mint; Deano, thanks for answering that.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aWJnLqF0Y8zs talks about the data selling

$$$ talks in this economic climate. Great acquisition for Intuit at a reasonable price. They take out there biggest threat for $170MM and protect $3B of revenue and a $9B market cap. Who knows – maybe they’ll actually be able to do something with the product too. Either way – smart.

I am a little concerned, as a user, as to what this means for Mint. And, I’m trying to think of Acquisitions where a great product got even better after it was taken over by a company that has had its fair share of stumbles. I have a feeling Mint may disappoint us in the long run with Intuit leaders at the helm.

Congratulations to Mint. How long before we see Mint services integrated into Intuit Developer Network?

Any VC’s or other companies see the obvious here?

All you need to do is take the mint.com user experience and apply it to small businesses. You won’t even need to make that many changes – perhaps just an ability to more easily modify a chart of accounts, and two more tabs for accounts payable+receivable. Make it work the same, and in 3 years you will have a $170M exit.

It won’t be enough for the medium/large business, but my guess is that there will be a minimum of 10M SOHO/small businesses who it would be good enough for.

the fundamentals do add up. this is exactly the type of outcome that silicon valley is all about.

Who were the sell-side / buy-side advisors on this?

Mint+Intuit: It’s done – for $170M…

I have made no mystery over the years that out of the 65 companies I have invested in over the past 5 years, Mint and its CEO Aaron Patzer, was one of the most exciting. It definitely met the “3-asses” rule: a young, brilliant, kick-ass CEO (Aaron), a …

Yeah, I don’t understand that behavior either, honestly. Same thing happened with the Facebook Friendfeed thing.

This is a wonderful exit and just about win-win all around–excect for banks and definitely for Yodlee. Intuit can take Mint to new places, especially with Turbo Tax integration and banking partners.
Having almost sold a company to Intuit almost 20 years ago–I can say Intuit is a machine and the result here is that millions more will experience the delightful interface of Mint over time….

Mintuit…Congratulations guys.. Great exit. Nice to see the personal finance space valued :)

First Round capital post on it here.
http://permanentrecord.firstround.com/2009/09/mintuit.html?awesm=frc.vc_7Y&utm_campaign=firstroundcapital&utm_medium=frc.vc-copypaste&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_content=site-basic

[...] acquisition is interesting because Intuit had previously sent Mint a letter demanding an explanation for how they jumped to [...]

A couple of things here -

I’d like to see the revenue multiple. This seems to be a little early for Mint, having just come out of beta less than a year ago. If the business model is as strong as Aaron says it is, they definitely left money on the table. They may be getting pressure from user growth decline as the economy gets better.

That being said, this was a simple, lean company, meant for a quick exit from the beginning. Intuit got genuinely intimidated… because they charge for an inferior product. It’s doubtful that this transaction is good for the consumer; Intuit is buying a vision.

All in all, a decent exit for Aaron and the team. Well done!

Here are some of my reasons for my neutral-to negative reaction to the Intuit acquisition. Intuit has been around for some time now. What do they do? Quicken, TurboTax and QuickBooks. Unless you’re in the financial sector, you have no idea of the rest of their portfolio. So let’s talk about the ones people know:
- QuickBooks – Small Business Financial Management. Too much stuff to manage your personal finances.
- Quicken – Again, too much stuff to manage your personal finance. Plus the limitation of any software-based solution: You need to be on the PC that has the application installed. And don’t get me started with Intuit’s policy of making sure you feel insecure and less of a person if you don’t buy the latest update.
- TurboTax – Easy, too easy to use. But have you ever known anyone who can keep a happy attitude….doing their taxes????

After years of crappy products, along comes Mint. It is true that winning the TechCrubch50 helped them, but there’s more: it was simple, intuitive, and enough to be a complete solution. Imagine: All your financial data in one place with just one logon, with easy to use screens, functions and options. Ads? Yes, they were ads, but only if you wanted them – you needed to go to the “Ways to Save” page to be bombarded and even then it wasn’t that bad. It was bearable. Timely reminders and warning, weekly update. Wow!

Intuit had their time, but they stood too focused on their internals that missed the trends in personal finances: easy, accurate, convenient and in the cloud.

And if you want more proof that Intuit will kill Mint, think about this: Why hasn’t an email been sent to all Mint users about the acquisition? Why is everyone finding out that the place that holds all their financial life is being sold? Is that the attitude of a young, modern active company or a sample of how the old company thinks users are not important? Treat your users with respect and they will follow. Kindle deleting books vs. Netflix crediting their users before they even knew there was an issue. Think about that.

But what about the users? Why is no one thinking about the users? Are we invisible? Don’t we exists?

Mint was a incledible free service. Think about this: FREE Service. and they were bought. A company that offers a service without charging for it and their competitor got scared. Who did that? Nor Aaron, not Intuit. WE DID THAT! We the users did that.

Is any of the other personal finance companies paying attention? We the users have the power to turn FREE into MONEY. Respect us, and you’ll see the doors of the Financial Heavens openth upon you with blessingsth and IPO’s and VC fundingth and ….well, you get the idea.

Or do you????? I hope you do….

Thanks for expanding; I appreciate it. That does make more sense as to the negative reaction of some, particularly the last paragraph. I’m not sure the brand halo matters, in that what matters is what a company does, not what it has done, but I can understand why people have the reaction.

And certainly looking at how it is done is worthwhile. The next six months will be key in evaluating this…thanks again for posting a bit more.

Great exit.

Lets hope Intuit doesn’t screw up Mint like they did with PayTrust!

I’m canceling my account and sticking with Yodlee.

I really really hope that everything over at Mint.com stays the same, it would be sad for even one feature, policy, or attitude of the site to stray from what the original intention of the site was.

Hopefully there won’t be data mining sketchiness, and if there is … a way to opt out.

I agree with a lot of the comments before this. Selling for $170 after being valued at $140 in last round is a total bust. That means the last round investors get almost no gains.

Also breaking it down that means the buyer paid $1.75 per user. Something must be wrong there since the company supposedly makes so much money per user from the data.

All in all it doesn’t add up. The early investors who have 5 percent at exit get around $8 million, which is peanuts. Later investors get no step up from last round. It looks like everyone jumped ship on the company.

[...] use Mint to get a handle on your spending, but on the business end of the spectrum, it looks like the personal finance web site has been acquired by Intuit—a company that’s made its name with personal finance software like Quicken and [...]

Let me Google that for you: Why Intuit is evil:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9112083
and
http://articles.latimes.com/2006/dec/05/local/me-taxes5
and
http://www.ctj.org/blog/2006/12/small-victory-for-ordinary-taxpayers.html
for starters.

First round capital is a joke does anyone really take them seriously anymore? Sold too early again and the 5 percent they own only gets them around $8 million.

Now that they have close to 100 companies in the portfolio why would any sane entrepreneur raise money from them? i heard that some of the hottest startups, like foursquare, have recently rejected them from investing in their rounds, and a lot of other investors are losing respect for them.

Selling out early from what was in all likelihood the hottest company in their portfolio only confirms their downward trend.

Matt -

This is a huge opening for Thrive. User exit from Mint will obviously be good for you as negative connotations about Intuit influence users, but in order to capture those users, Thrive needs to be more… well… Mint-like. The tendency with these systems (Intuit being the worst offender) is to be invasive and overly structured. Mint was beautiful in that if all you wanted was a weekly financial summary, you could get it easily with no strings, ads, or buy-this-upgrade-nows attached. Intuit will kill this. Someone please step in to fill the gap.

Jake
Strategic Investments
Visa, Inc.

You forgot the word “may” and “anonymous” there. Big, big difference. You say they *do* sell user data. Your link says they might start selling completely anonymous data about what people in general are spending money on.

Sounds pretty similar to slander to me.

[...] in a Series C round that valued the company at 0 million, the online personal finance service Mint has agreed to sell itself to Intuit for 0 million, TechCrunch is reporting. Mint and Intuit’s Quicken are competing services, and the two [...]

[...] which took the top prize at the event in 2007, has evidently been acquired by Intuit (INTU). Price: A reported $170 million… [...]

[...] Golson | Monday, September 14, 2009 | 11:32 AM PT | 0 comments Intuit said today it’s spending $170 million to acquire Mint.com, a site that helps people manage their personal finances through budgeting and [...]

[...] ［原文へ］ [...]

Jake, we’re certainly there on the “no strings, no ads, or buy-this-upgrade”; we are 100% free and we’re staying that way. In terms of being more Minty, there are certainly things I think we need to add that Mint already has: some good historical graphs are a good example.

As with most the players in this space, we have things they don’t, they have things we don’t…this acquisition doesn’t change our strategy, which is to listen to our experts and our users, and to keep building things that we can prove help people spend less, save more, lower their debt, increase the credit score, and lead happier lives.

Too bad. I love Mint the way it is (the user-friendly, free, helpful alternative to Intuit) – I wouldn’t want it to be influenced in the least by Intuit. Any word on Intuit’s plans for Mint?

Every Intuit product I’ve ever used is excessively difficult, bulky, and expensive (not to mention unintuitive and ugly – the opposite of Mint.com) – I don’t see them allowing Mint users to continue to use the service for free.

I hope I’m wrong but as disappointing as Intuit’s services are in comparison with Mint.com, I would expect that we’re probably going to see a lot of downgrades in the service.

@Dan: It would only be libel if it were, in fact, untrue; we’ve met some of the folks who have bought data from Mint, so I’m not too worried. So yes, they *do* sell uesr data.

But let me be 100% clear on the anonymous point: so far as I know, Mint never sells non-anonymous data. If that we implied, I’m sorry, that was not at all the intent. And again, I want to be clear, my point here was not “Mint does bad things”, it was “What does Intuit do that is evil and not something Mint already does”?

If you’d dealt with Intuit and Quicken for any length of time you would know they abuse customers and financial institutions alike.

Of course, Mint asking you to share your bank password is a terrible idea, regardless of whether a some magic word like ‘Yodlee’ makes you feel any better about it, so they may well be a suitably evil fit.

Mint’s competitors in ‘cloud’ financial tools should be pretty happy about this deal.

I’m not sure “Intuit Evil” would get me those results. *grins*

But thank you for pointing them out: I actually was unaware of both, particularly the Californian money spent to oppose what sounds like, to me, a very good program for people. I’m not sure that it connects to “Intuit will make Mint an instrument of evil”, but certainly it does speak to the overall actions of the company that may get inherited. This will be an interesting acquisition to watch.

Matt, you are so full of shit it’s unbelievable.

Is Thrive’s primary PR technique having you swinging on the balls of blog posts about Mint? Is that what they pay PhD dropouts for nowadays?

[...] use Mint to get a handle on your spending, but on the business end of the spectrum, it looks like the personal finance web site has been acquired by Intuit—a company that’s made its name with personal finance software like Quicken and [...]

“For paying bloggers, the only reason we know is because bloggers that accept money from Mint have told us that they do.”

That’s still hearsay bordering on libel. I can find you bloggers who say Thrive beams communist death rays through their televisions.

Doubly agreed. I switched from Quicken to Mint because I got so frustrated with Intuit’s software issues and corporate jackassery. Here’s to hoping someone else rises up to provide a valuable alternative.

Matt,

Mint does not sell user data. Sharing the total amount of money that is spent at a given merchant, is not personal data, it can’t be broken down into any constituent pieces. Aaron already has said as much to to press.

Thanks,
Jason

If you have any doubt about Intuit’s ability to screw up a product go to Amazon and read user reviews about the latest versions of Quicken and QuickBooks Pro. Intuit is a horrible horrible company and they make horrible products. Like many, I was an early adopter of Quicken and QuickBooks and the products were okay back in the late 90s. But they decided that instead of improving products they could just hold hostage their current users and force them to upgrade to crappy bloatware. I like Mint but I’m going to start looking at alternatives because I have no doubt Intuit will screw up this program.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_financial_management

Just for reference, here is a list of some of the alternatives.

[...] said today it’s spending $170 million to acquire Mint.com, a site that helps people manage their personal finances through budgeting and [...]

[...] said today it’s spending $170 million to acquire Mint.com, a site that helps people manage their personal finances through budgeting and [...]

I just opened an account with Yodlee:

-It was kind of difficult to find the option to open an free account (looks like they don’t want people to open free accounts). They get a “Mint was better on this” rating.

-Setup was easy and fast. On this, they get a “Same as Mint” rating

- Added one accout to see how it goes. Easy setup, no problems accessing the account. On this, they get a “Same as mint” rating.

- But wait! The balances I see are from last week! So I click on the update option and…..what? same totals? That was last week’s balances, stupid system!. After 17 update clicks, I still see old data. On this, they get a “Mint ate your breakfast and stole your girlfriend” rating.

Darn, looks like I’ll have to keep searching for a personal financial management tool.

Exactly! If you assume the deal closes on November 1, that’s at least a 463% gross IRR (on a 1.49X return) for DAG LPs. If you use today’s date (not a realistic time estimate for cash-on-cash, but as an example, it would give you a 4 digit IRR. 400%+ IRR’s are hard to beat in any market. This is a stellar deal for every founder and every investor. Here are some calculations to support the 463% gross estimate. http://vator.tv/n/a93

Wow. I am just shocked. What a terrible decision. You make a cutting-edge web service, show everyone how web 2.0 done right can really change the game, build up a massive but loyal userbase… and then throw it all away, just to make a crapload of money?! I mean I just don’t know what to say. Who in their right minds would even do that? Mint is MILES ahead of Intuit in terms of technology and their business model. They’re the anti-Intuit. They were set out to squash Intuit.

This is like if Facebook had sold out to Yahoo or Microsoft. No, instead, Marky said “We’re better than that, we have something the other guys don’t and we intend on keeping ours and figuring it out on our own, thankyouverymuch.” And now they’re more successful than MySpace was.

I can get that businesses have to make money somehow, and I know Mint was basically depending on investors, and that probably couldn’t last forever. But to sell out to an inferior company — that’s just insulting to your users. I mean, who knows, maybe Intuit will be smart about this and not meddle with Mint. But pulling moves like this is nothing new to Intuit, they’ve been jacking their users for years, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they decided to fold Mint into Quicken Online (and then spectacularly fail at it).

Alright, I’m off my soapbox ;)

time to delete my mint account.

[...] TechCrunch Leer más: Compra, Intuit, Mint, Quicken, techcrunch, techcrunch50 Enviar a Twitter Compartir [...]

[...] TechCrunch reports that Intuit will buy Mint.com in a deal valued at around $170 million. [...]

Looks like about a 3x return for VC’s, I would guess that there is no profit. Not iLike bad, but not a great exit for the VC’s.

Again Matt, the Bloomberg headline was completely inaccurate. I work at Mint, and I can tell you we haven’t sold any user data. Period. The total dollars spent by our entire userbase at a merchant like Target, isn’t user data. It’s a summation with no components.

Aaron responded to Bloomberg here:
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-interview-mint.com-ceo/

[...] TechCrunch reported the deal Sunday night, citing unnamed sources. [...]

Wow, congrats to them!

[...] entirely, by inspecting the payees on expenses and categorizing them automagically. (Mint.com was acquired by Intuit for $170 million yesterday, so that was obviously a useful [...]

Mint was built on Yodlee. Yodlee has done the hardest work (connecting to financial institutions). Mint is just the pretty UI on top of Yodlee with ads.

I wonder what the structure of that underlying deal was. What happens to Yodlee now?

Boo.
I am quite sad to hear that Mint’s been sold. Two questions in my mind:

-wasn’t there a much bigger potential than selling for a few millions. I mean the founders are not even going to become billionaires ? In fact barely millionaires.

- what is going to happen to the site and its database. Should I delete my account and see what happens first ?

I loved this site.

i second this congrats!

[...] use Mint to get a handle on your spending, but on the business end of the spectrum, it looks like the personal finance web site has been acquired by Intuit—a company that’s made its name with personal finance software like Quicken and [...]

Jason, I appreciate your clarification. I wasn’t trying to take a stand on what qualifies as “user data”, simply to figure out what it is that people think will suddenly change at Mint under Intuit. I’m honestly a bit puzzled by the negative reactions people have given, though the second page has some comments that I think clarify objections.

So to be clear, I can see where you can make an argument that the data Mint is selling isn’t “user” in that it isn’t given on a user-level. But it does come from users (it isn’t data that Mint self-generated or got from merchants, for example) and hence, user data. I am in no way trying to imply Mint is selling individual, non-aggregated user data – I’d be shocked if that happened from you guys.

Jason, see my comment on my first page, but I’ll clarify here as well: I am not trying to imply that Mint is selling individual user’s data. Rather, they are selling data harvested from users in aggregate, and the point of the post was not “Mint is evil” but “Why so much anti-Mint/Intuit sentiment, given the current Mint practices?”

incledible?

The “L” key is nowhere near the “R” key!

Congratulations to the Mint team.

Good move Intuit.

My only hope is that Mint is nurtured by Intuit, rather than suffocated.

Given the perceived trajectory of this company, this exit seems low. I really don’t think the reporting on this story is complete if someone doesn’t ask what happened here. If the company was on a very fast trajectory, the investors wouldn’t have been happy with this.

VCs want to make a massive return on their successes, to make up for their losses. This was not a huge win for them. There is something going on here.

I think people are missing the real story here.

They had 50,000 engaged users? That is incredibly low considering the age and perceived momentum of this company. They have ~200,000 uniques. Very low for a company that is talked about this much.

They sold for $170 M. This is a very low exit for the VC. They are looking for huge wins to make up for the majority of investments that are losses. This isn’t a loss, but it definitely isn’t what they are trying to achieve.

There is another story here. It looks like they were struggle a bit, and sold low.

Hi there Tostada…

I’m pretty surprised we have different data to Mint.com, since we power them (and Matt@Thrive!)…. Let me know if it doesn’t resolve “instantly”…

Otherwise, come to https://forum.yodlee.com and I’ll give you my personal email and we’ll fix.

Peter Hazlehurst
SVP Products
Yodlee Inc.

[...] Intuit To Acquire (Former TechCrunch50 Winner) Mint For $170 Million Intuit will acquire the free online personal finance service Mint, we’ve confirmed from a source close to the deal, for around $170 million. The deal should be announced in the next few days. [...]

[...] biggest news at the event was the acquisition of Mint.com by intuit.com for $ 170M, Mint was launch at TechCrunch40 in 2007 and won the grand prize of [...]

[...] a story on the Mint.com purchase from the New York Times, and a blog post in TechCrunch (with lots of follow up [...]

you got bought for $2M and change and still dont have a product anyone uses!

[...] Holy cow! Personal finance software giant Intuit (makers of Quicken, Quickbooks, and TurboTax) is set to buy online budgeting site Mint.com for $170 million, reports Silicon Alley Insider and TechCrunch. [...]

Mike:

Lots of people are mad becaue of the Mint sale. I know, I am one. How dare Mint let the media and blogosphere know about it, and send an email late in the evening from Aaron to basically say: “Yo users – I sold Mint. And I’m on my way to Intuit to make them great also. Sorry, forgot to tell you earlier”?

Well, I can confirm (got email proof) that the Mint team was also surprised to learn about this. “No one outside of the executive staff had any knowledge of this prior to late last night when it was actually leaked to TechCrunch by one of our investors (and we’re pissed about that).”

Anyway, still mad at Mint. Will not go to Intuit for the time being. Deleted all my accounts from Mint. Opened a Yoodle account. Will watch and see.

If I decided to put in your hands my financial life, you better tell me before anyone else if you’re planning to bring a new boyfriend to sleep over.

Food for Though:

Was the Mint adquisition a move to eliminate a competitor, bring Aaron onboard to Intuit….or both?

Just wondering…

Keep your friends close, your enemies closer….and Aaron across the hall in an office overlooking a parking lot.

Mint.com must be really scared of the new Yodlee beta which pretty much crushes them. If Mint.com is worth $170 million, then Yodlee is worth $1 billion. Mark my words.

[...] broke the news yesterday that Intuit are buying Mint in a deal worth £170m (£102m). A very handsome price for a company [...]

[...] TechCrunch – Intuit To Acquire (Former TechCrunch50 Winner) Mint For $170 Million [...]

[...] Vía: TechCrunch [...]

greate.I would love to see more VCs and entrepreneurs & communities to build and grow and nurture more. That is what we need for the future. Because that is most important for the future what we need right now.

[...] Intuit To Acquire (Former TechCrunch50 Winner) Mint For $170 Million [...]

Well I bet you are the same guy who writes the “if you dont like the service why are you still a customer, stop complaining” type posts too.

I stopped using quicken because it was terrible and they deliberately made my purchased version of the software stop working. Removing Intuit from my life was a great decision and eliminated headaches big and small. Ex. my bofa account was $1,670 dollars off for over three years. I just had to remember that number in the back of my head all the time because fixing whatever happened was even more cumbersome. Then there was the investment tracking that never worked right etc etc.
And now they are back against my will. You dont see the value in heading off something so consistently problematic? Intuit is a weak link.

Speaking of the Small Business version, I’ll be the first on to sign up.

Anyone know of any solutions that currently exist?

[...] Techcrunch news [...]

[...] dell’avvenuto affare è stato dato da Techcrunch nel corso della manifestazione [...]

@desqjockey: Is that first comment directed at me? If so, not at all. I’m the guy that guarantees that if you send us an email at support@justthrive.com, you get a prompt answer from an actual human. If you call our support phone number (which is on every page of the site), I’m often the one that answers.

I absolutely believe that businesses should be about service, to individuals and the larger whole, and that there is a reasonable profit to be made in doing that. Zappos as a case in point.

As I note in a comment down the page, I think every business move you make should be customer focused. When Thrive was getting acquired, we had several offers and we chose LendingTree because they understood our customer service vision and gave us the resources to continue it.

So I absolutely think that you should lobby for appropriate customer service, and if you haven’t received that from Intuit, that is reason to be concerned. We can only hope that the Mint acquisition will improve, rather than degrade, customer care.

I think 1 to 2 more years in the market and the would’ve been sold for 400-500 millions! Bad decision in selling the company.

[...] have A-list judges like Marissa Mayer and Paul Graham, there’s even the fortuitous timing of Intuit acquiring 2007 TC50 winner Mint for a respectable [...]

[...] Intuit To Acquire (Former TechCrunch50 Winner) Mint For $170 Million (tags: finance software intuit mint acquisition) [...]

Congrats Mint, you deserve it. “Mint” yeah Baby!!

[...]  http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/13/intuit-to-acquire-former-techcrunch50-winner-mint-for-170-milli… [...]

Anyone know what the most recent transactions for mint.com were on sharespost.com? Just curious as to what could have been…

haha, bravo Matt way to bridge that into a pitch.

As for what bugged me about Mint (while you are here): when you drop an account all your financial data goes with it. Hope you guys dont do that.

[...] who won the top prize at the conference, has grown incredibly since its launch and was recently acquired by Intuit for $170 million. TechCrunch50 startup LearnVest is serving a different purpose when it [...]

@Matt, I’m surprised that you of all people are surprised. The hatred for all things Quicken and Intuit surely has driven people to your service as well. (I know it has driven me to both justthrive.com and mint.com.) As of today, I’m deleting my mint account and hoping that you guys will carry the day as the more responsive, cleaner, and less buggy alternative. It’s not even the pay vs. free thing so much. It’s that Intuit bungles everything, stuffs their products with bloatware, forces stupid upgrades onto their users, and then provides horrible “support.” They essentially hold your data hostage–knowing that you’ve put lots of time and data into their software, they start charging you for access to it, rather than charging you to actually improve the product (which I wouldn’t mind paying for). Maybe mint won’t be ruined by this acquisition, but I’m not going to stick around to find out. If mint is still any good in a few years, I’ll re-register. But after being burned by Intuit too many times, I vowed not to be involved with that company again, and I won’t be unless there are tremendous changes. For now, I’m hoping that justthrive will provide more of mint’s functionality (like manual entry, split transactions, etc.) and continue to use a hard drive based product as all of this unfolds.

mint.com has a great story and is a great service. I love their name (I am biased though, we have mintio.com, ours has that fresh flair with the ‘io’, but there is something to be said about a good four letter domain name)

[...] And during my absence, a lot has happened in the world.  One thing that I just found out about today that is worth commenting on is the acquisition of Mint.com by Intuit. [...]

[Please note: I am not an employee of Intuit, I am merely a fan]

The best and only? small business solution out there is currently only offered to banks who pay for it and then offer it to their customers. This revitalized company made their intentions known on November 30, 2006 when they proclaimed a “New Generation of Online Banking Solutions”. On March 13, 2007, they made it clear what there intentions were, – Digital Insight®, an Intuit company, today announced the upcoming release of Personal FinanceWorks and Small Business FinanceWorks, two products expected to lead the next generation of online banking.

Small Business FinanceWorks was finally launched on February 18, 2009 — Press Release Link: http://about.intuit.com/about_intuit/press_room/press_release/articles/2009/DigitalInsightArmsFinancialInstitutions.html

Product Demo: http://www.diproductsite.com/demo/sbfw/suite/withpayroll/home.html

[All information was cobbled together by reading the Intuit Press Release Archive]

My hope is they combine the best of Small Business FinanceWorks with the best of Mint and create a non bank version for all the small businesses out there.

My two cents on Yodlee vs Intuit aggregation. Mint via Yodlee has my Bank Name Wrong name wrong after signing up. It uses a defunct bank name from February 2004 and Intuit got it right from day one.

The Lowdown. My bank bought a bank in February 2004. My account was opened in June of 2004 at the acquiring bank (not the bank that was taken over). Mint showed they were compatible with my bank and my log in work (just did an update as I right this). I just do not understand how Yodlee gets this wrong. Mint was notified. Whatever. I use Quicken Online.

The Mint story indicates what can happen when ideas become reality. Everything past, present and future starts with a simple idea.

[...] servicio de finanzas personales Mint parece que va a ser comprado por Intuit por una cifra que rondaría los 170 millones de dólares. La última ronda de financiación de la compañía la situó en una cifra que rondaba los 140 [...]

[...] Balancionin palvelua voi pitää monella tapaa mullistavana. Palvelu ratkaisee ongelman joka on hyvin tunnettu ja jonka helpottamisesta moni yksityishenkilö on valmis maksamaan. Ongelman ratkaisua on vain aiemmin totuttu pitämään pankkien reviirinä ja täten markkina ei ole kehittynyt. Amerikassa vastaava markkina on jo lähtenyt räjähtävään kasvuun ja odotettavissa on Balancionillekin koventuvaa kilpailua myös Euroopassa. Yleistä markkinan heräämistä voi tässä tapauksessa pitää kuitenkin vain hyvänä asiana. Onkin hyvin todennäköistä, että myös nykyinen yleinen taloustilanne edesauttaa Balancionin menestystä ja tarjoaa palvelulle näyttävää julkisuutta jatkossakin. Esimerkiksi merkittävin kansainvälinen kilpailija Mint.com myytiin tällä viikolla 170 miljoonall… [...]

[...] when firms were smaller, nimbler, and more adept at helping to build companies from the ground up [Source] [...]

[...] Mint.com, der Sieger der TechCrunch 50 aus dem Jahr 2007, ist dieser Tage von Intuit übernommen worden – für stolze 170 Millionen US-Dollar.   « Bald Voice-Chats [...]

Design of the Mint site is gorgeous! I see a nice idea behind that project and the rest is well done!

[...] Mint.com owes much of its success to one such investor, First Round Capital, which opted to back the fledgling company at a time when other VCs demurred. Indeed, the Mint.com acquisition is First Round Capital’s largest exit, beating out the $100 million sale of portfolio company Powerset to Microsoft (MSFT). And although First Round Capital would not quantify the return on its investment, co-founder Josh Kopelman says the Mint.com deal generated the highest return of any deal the firm has done. Previously its best return came when eBay (EBAY) acquired StumbleUpon for $75 million, which generated more than 14 times First Round Capital’s original investment. “I don’t think this changes our strategy,” Kopelman says. “It is continued validation for our approach.” [...]

It already exists: it’s called Xero, (http://www.xero.com). we use it for our start up and it is awesome.

http://www.xero.com …i use this for my start up. love it. it is truly “mint-like” in the beauty and ease of the app, it does everything a small biz needs, and it is really cheap.

[...] Intuit’s Quicken Online. That competition is about to come to a screeching halt, however, as Mint.com has been acquired by Intuit for $170 million, as confirmed by Mint.com CEO Aaron Patzer at the TechCrunch50 event this month. [...]

[...] Intuit’s Quicken Online. That competition is about to come to a screeching halt, however, as Mint.com has been acquired by Intuit for $170 million, as confirmed by Mint.com CEO Aaron Patzer at the TechCrunch50 event this month. [...]

[...] Intuit’s Quicken Online. That competition is about to come to a screeching halt, however, as Mint.com has been acquired by Intuit for $170 million, as confirmed by Mint.com CEO Aaron Patzer at the TechCrunch50 event this month. [...]

[...] 3.  Intuit, one of my favorite innovative companies, and the provider of most of our firm’s technical software, just agreed to purchase another fav site of mine, mint.com – GoSee [...]

@desqjockey: Wasn’t trying to pitch, just scared me – I’d hate to be the guy that says “don’t expect good customer service.” I’m pretty loud about the fact that good customer service should be your first consideration, not your last.

Can you say a bit more about “drop an account and all your financial data goes with it”? That is, do you mean that when a user deletes an account, we also delete your financial data? Because we certainly do that as a routine part of our security: if you tell us to delete your data, we do it.

Am I not understanding your question correctly?

@ethel08: We certainly have seen a number of signups since the announcement and in the past, we’ve had plenty of users tell us that they had bad experiences with Quicken. What puzzled, and still puzzles me a bit, is why people are ready to move away from Mint preemptively: the only difference between yesterday and today is that a different company now owns your data. If Intuit is going to drive Mint into the ground, that would seem to be the time to leave, not now.

But I am also mindful of the point you make: there is a sunk cost effect. If you truly believe Intuit is going to ruin Mint, then you should delete your account or at least stop putting effort into maintaining it. That is, time you spend on Mint as it gets ruined by Intuit is time you could be building up your financial history and growth somewhere else. I just don’t have personal experience with Intuit, so it is hard to bend my mind around the idea that a company would pay $170m for something they couldn’t improve on.

In terms of Thrive improvements, we roll out new features around once a month and both of the features you mention are on the to-do list, with split transactions coming much sooner than manual entry. This is in part because manual entry is a thorny problem; easy for Mint because they aren’t actually offering any advice, but somewhat harder for us, because we base our advice on your data and if manual data gets munged, we’ll offer bad advice. So we have to take our time in implementing that correctly.

[...] I did interviews with most of the TechCrunch50 experts backstage and there was a common gripe about the companies launching there: Not enough passion, not enough swinging for the fences, not enough trying to change the world. There were too many people building safe businesses, too many companies just trying to make existing things slightly better, and too many people wanting to be the next Mint.com, not the next Google. Nothing against Mint, but Silicon Valley wasn’t built on $170 million exits. [...]

[...] I did interviews with most of the TechCrunch50 experts backstage and there was a common gripe about the companies launching there: Not enough passion, not enough swinging for the fences, not enough trying to change the world. There were too many people building safe businesses, too many companies just trying to make existing things slightly better, and too many people wanting to be the next Mint.com, not the next Google. Nothing against Mint, but Silicon Valley wasn’t built on $170 million exits. [...]

[...] dia 14/09 o site TechCrunch noticiou a compra por U$ 170 milhões da startup Mint por parte da empresa Intuit (criadora do [...]

[...] I did interviews with most of the TechCrunch50 experts backstage and there was a common gripe about the companies launching there: Not enough passion, not enough swinging for the fences, not enough trying to change the world. There were too many people building safe businesses, too many companies just trying to make existing things slightly better, and too many people wanting to be the next Mint.com, not the next Google. Nothing against Mint, but Silicon Valley wasn’t built on $170 million exits. [...]

[...] which sold to Intuit earlier this week for $170 million, is Yodlee’s YouTube. That’s because, like YouTube, [...]

[...] Earlier this year Mint and Intuit had a humorous clash over Mint advertising claims of gaining 3,000 new users a day and jumping from 600,000 to 850,000 users in a matter of months. Intuit sent a letter to Mint demanding an explanation for this apparently inconceivable feat, which we obtained and printed here. Read more …… [...]

[...] Mint by Inuit (Quicken/TurboTax) for $170 million [...]

[...] Mint by Inuit (Quicken/TurboTax) for $170 million [...]

[...] Intuit Acquires Mint for $170 Million Mint.com, which launched in 2007, is a free tool for tracking income and spending. A sort of next-gen quicken, the site pulls together electronic information from checking and savings accounts, loans, investments, etc., and offers up nifty charts and graphs to show network, spending trends, and other useful info.  The site makes money by pushing out ads and offers from firms that might improve a user’s financial position.  Mint.com was a previous winner of the TechCrunch 50 – the $50,000 startup showdown associated with the popular online news site. [...]

[...] Mint by Inuit (Quicken/TurboTax) for $170 million [...]

[...] Mint by Inuit (Quicken/TurboTax) for $170 million [...]

[...] rumors broke yesterday and the confirmation came today. Intuit is buying two-time Finovate Best of Show winner, Mint for [...]

[...] Generally, I just figured that people were upset because their “home” was just thrown into disarray. However, the past week has seen some commentary on the state of startups and the acquisition of Mint by Intuit. This changed the way I am looking at these things, and I saw something interesting. First, the comments from Sarah Lacy were very interesting and the opening paragraph is really important: I did interviews with most of the TechCrunch50 experts backstage and there was a common gripe about the companies launching there: Not enough passion, not enough swinging for the fences, not enough trying to change the world. There were too many people building safe businesses, too many companies just trying to make existing things slightly better, and too many people wanting to be the next Mint.com, not the next Google. Nothing against Mint, but Silicon Valley wasn’t built on $170 million exits. [...]

[...] Intuit To Acquire (Former TechCrunch50 Winner) Mint For $170 Million [...]

[...] TechCrunch reported that Intuit will acquire the free online personal finance service, Mint, for around $170 million. The deal, which should be announced in the next few days, puts Mint [...]

[...] 23, 2009 · Leave a Comment When Intuit acquired TechCrunch darlings Mint.com a couple of weeks back, many people were upset. Shouts of [...]

[...] in the new two acquisitions in the Tech space which are pretty close to home for me. The first was 170 million acquisition of Mint by Intuit. My initial thoughts of starting a Personal Finance SaaS company for Asia was inspired  by [...]

[...] mit der Handhabung verbundener Sachen auf dem persönlichen Niveau vom Geld zu folgen. Weg: TechCrunch Posted by Vickie J. Denton at 1:47 PM Labels: mint green, mint [...]

[...] с управлением на персональном уровне денег. Путь: TechCrunch Posted by Mike E. Zimmerman at 7:59 AM Labels: mint green, mint [...]

[...] with which we’ll be presenting includes some heavy hitters including Mint, which was recently acquired by Intuit.  And the audience is comprised of execs from Citibank, ING Direct, Wells Fargo, and other banks [...]

[...] di Mint – non paghi, evidentemente, di esser stati acquisiti per 170 milioni di dollari dalla cara vecchia Intuit – pubblicano sul loro blog l’interessante infografica che [...]

[...] http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/13/intuit-to-acquire-former-techcrunch50-winner-mint-for-170-milli... “Intuit will acquire the free online personal finance service Mint, we’ve confirmed from a source close to the deal, for around $170 million. Silicon Alley Insider first reported a rumour on this. The deal should be announced in the next few days.” [...]

[...] Some of the larger deals during the quarter were VMWare buying SpringSource for $362 million and Intuit buying Mint for $170 [...]

[...] announcement comes just two weeks after porfolio company Mint.com sold to Intuit for $170 million netting the firm the highest return in its history, though Kopelman said the planned expansion was [...]

[...] funding, they don’t even *really* believe that you’ll be successful. Yet companies like Mint can claim that being acquired was part of their 2 year plan. I say [...]

[...] don’t plug the TechCrunch feed directly into your brain stem: MINT is the wildly successful, soon-to-be-acquired-by-Intuit, #1 personal finance site…and oh yes, full disclosure that First Round Capital is a thrilled [...]

[...] it to third parties for money. This includes email lists or personal data like personal finances. Mint recently sold and their purchase price is mainly so high because they had so much information about [...]

[...] isn’t absolutely essential to your site’s success. Just look at Mint, which was just acquired for $170 million by Intuit. There’s nary a video in sight, and — at the risking of [...]

[...] isn’t absolutely essential to your site’s success. Just look at Mint, which was just acquired for $170 million by Intuit. There’s nary a video in sight, and — at the risking of [...]

[...] isn’t absolutely essential to your site’s success. Just look at Mint, which was just acquired for $170 million by Intuit. There’s nary a video in sight, and — at the risking of [...]

[...] Facebook-Friendfeed, Google-On2, Yahoo!-Xoopit, VMWare-Springsource, RIM-Torch Mobile, Intuit-Mint, etc.) Some acquirers are returning to the market with multiple strategic deals (Adobe, EMC, IBM, [...]

[...] I started using Mint.com about 2 months ago – apparently at the wrong time according to some people. I’d tried it out a couple times in the past – but I [...]

[...] There’s no reason to think Mint.com could do better with Yodlee’s online personal finance software than Yodlee could. But Mint coupled that technology with a terrific user experience and a smart financing strategy. The end result: Mint is to be acquired by Intuit for $170 million. [...]

[...] acquired SpringSource for over $400 million. Benchmark also had an exit with Mint.com, which was bought by Intuit during the quarter. Nor was all of the good news on the exit side of the business. Benchmark [...]

[...] Facebook-Friendfeed, Google-On2, Yahoo!-Xoopit, VMWare-Springsource, RIM-Torch Mobile, Intuit-Mint, etc.) Some acquirers are returning to the market with multiple strategic deals (Adobe, EMC, IBM, [...]

[...] recently had a successful exit to Intuit for $170 million.  While some, such as Jason Fried, have argued over whether the exit was a good decision or a [...]

[...] wanting Mint.com and their personal finance application to get setup within the UK. Unfortunately Mint was acquired last month by Intuit and it doesnt look like I will be getting Mint in the UK any time [...]

[...] the ATM, Debit & Prepaid Forum 2009 conference, Wesabe, Mint (recently Acquired by Intuit) and Billeo shared a panel to discuss their value proposition for consumers and [...]

[...] was the case recently with Intuit’s acquisition of Mint.com for $170 million. For Intuit, though, it signaled a sea change at the company when it replaced the [...]

[...] Intuit closed on its previously announced $170 million acquisition of personal budgeting site Mint, making Mint founder and CEO Aaron Patzer the new vice president [...]

[...] the heels of the Mint acquisition, a Bangalore based startup – Perfios – is hoping to replicate some of that success in the [...]

[...] the heels of the Mint acquisition, a Bangalore based startup – Perfios – is hoping to replicate some of that success in the [...]

[...] Estos nuevos proyectos ya están demostrando ser útiles para sus usuarios y clientes, lo que les está permitiendo abrir nuevas vías de negocio interesantes para los inversores que confían en las posibilidades que ofrece la innovación en el sector financiero. Así ha quedado demostrado en el éxito de otros proyectos internacionales, basados en la independencia y la innovación financiera, como Mint, la firma de gestión del presupuesto personal que recientemente fue comprada por Intuit por 170 millones de dólares.  [...]

[...] product. Companies such as Yammer and Mint were past winners. The latter of which was recently sold to Intuit for [...]

[...] One of the most talked about attributes about Mint.com was the site’s peerless focus on design. Every page was fresh and bright and consumers naturally gravitated towards the Mint.com’s beautiful user interface, even though Yodlee.com offered the same services and provided the back-end technology. Within two years, Intuit bought the Mint.com for $170 million. [...]

[...] “Building Big Dreams”, inspired by Les Misérables. Not even Aaron Patzer, who just sold Mint for $170 million, gets a [...]

[...] paying $300 million for Revolution Money (which would have put it at No. 35), Intuit’s purchases of Mint (No. 45) and PayCycle (No. 46) for $170 million apiece, Google’s $106 million acquisition of [...]

[...] The second is Sarah Lacy’s review of TechCrunch50 There were too many people building safe businesses, too many companies just trying to make existing things slightly better, and too many people wanting to be the next Mint.com, not the next Google. Nothing against Mint, but Silicon Valley wasn’t built on $170 million exits. [...]

[...] is a FREE online personal finance (web 2.0) service similar to Quicken.  Mint was recently acquired by Inuit for ah… mint.  I decided to look at Mint to see what the buzz is about.  For the past 6 [...]

[...] For example, many people that stay up-to-date on startup news know about Intuit’s recent acquisition of Mint.com. Well, Gordon knows a few things about what it’s like to start something that would later be [...]

[...] surprising– avenues. An obvious first foray into finance 2.0 was Mint.com. Thanks to its sale to Intuit, Mint helped validated the category in a Valley that’s suspicious of Wall Street. But Mint was [...]

[...] If you need any further proof of this paradigm shift, Mint.com was acquired by Intuit last September. [...]

[...] TechCrunch: Mint by Inuit (Quicken/TurboTax) for $170 million [...]

[...] raised a $6.5 million Series B round. And though Pageonce hardly gets neither the fame nor the fortune of its competitor (Mint), it is still a very solid way to manage your online accounts. Unlike Mint, [...]

[...]  http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/13/intuit-to-acquire-former-techcrunch50-winner-mint-for-170-milli… [...]

[...] don’t plug the TechCrunch feed directly into your brain stem: MINT is the wildly successful, soon-to-be-acquired-by-Intuit, #1 personal finance site…and oh yes, full disclosure that First Round Capital is a thrilled [...]

[...] finance solution that offers one place to manage your money and was recently acquired by Intuit for $170 million, offers sound financial goal setting advice on their [...]

[...] a Consumer SaaS venture, however, “only” raised US$32 million over 3 venture rounds before getting acquired by Intuit for a handsome US$170 [...]

[...] don't plug the TechCrunch feed directly into your brain stem: MINT is the wildly successful, soon-to-be-acquired-by-Intuit, #1 personal finance site…and oh yes, full disclosure that First Round Capital is a thrilled [...]

[...] which has over 3 million users–more than double since they sold last fall to Intuit for $170 million. (Disclosure: I moderated an Intuit Town Hall event on kids and money with Mint founder Aaron [...]

[...] which has over 3 million users–more than double since they sold last fall to Intuit for $170 million. (Disclosure: I moderated an Intuit Town Hall event on kids and money with Mint founder Aaron [...]

[...] Mint.com, which has over 3 million users–more than double since they sold last fall to Intuit for $170 million. (Disclosure: I moderated an Intuit Town Hall event on kids and money with Mint founder Aaron [...]

[...] is a TechCrunch40 company that was acquired by Intuit for $170 million last fall. The company also recently launched an Android app. CrunchBase Information Mint.com [...]

[...] is a TechCrunch40 company that was acquired by Intuit for $170 million last fall. The company also recently launched an Android app. CrunchBase Information Mint.com [...]