Disruption happens. If you are a startup, you try to be the disruptor. But what if you are an established company with billions of dollars in revenue? Then you try to create a culture of innovation that rides the wave of change before it leaves your company behind. The trick is to know when to catch that wave. Next week at TechCrunch Disrupt, Intuit founder Scott Cook and GE’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer Beth Comstock will sit down to share with the audience how they keep innovation humming at scale.
They will be joining other speakers including John Doerr, Michael Moritz, Barry Diller, Zynga’s Mark Pincus, HP’s Todd Bradley, Google’s Marissa Mayer, Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi, and Twitter’s Jason Goldman. (See agenda here, buy tickets here). → Read More
It looks like Intuit just acquired Cha-Ching, a Mac web app and iPhone app to help consumers manage their personal finance. According to the site of Midnight Apps, the developer of Cha-Ching, “The Cha-Ching team has merged with Intuit and will continue to provide you great design, useful features and incredible products as part of the Intuit Personal Finance Group.” See update below.
Cha-Ching appears to have been taken down from the App store. Similar to Mint.com (which Intuit acquired last year for $170 million), Cha-Ching’s Mac and iPhone apps allow users to keep track of daily transactions and bank accounts. You can schedule bills and payments, set budgets and upload receipts. → Read More
Quicken Online users have known for some time that the product they love would be terminated this year. With the shiny new Mint.com acquisition on board it was only a matter of time before they figured out that one of the two competing products would have to go. The thought was to merge the best features of both into one new product.
By February that idea had been changed. The new plan was to turn Quicken Online off at a set date and then merge all those users over to Mint: → Read More
Nobody likes doing their taxes, which is why an upcoming iPhone app from Intuit called SnapTax is so genius. As you can see from the exclusive sneak peek demo video below, the app lets you snap a picture of your W2 form with your iPhone and automatically fills in your tax return. The app uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology to translate the images into words and numbers, which it then uploads into a light version of Intuit’s TurboTax software. The tax filers then correct any mistakes, enter additional data not on the W2 (such as interest income), answers a few more questions, and they are done. They can even file electronically from their iPhone. → Read More
We track a lot of acquisitions on CrunchBase. At the beginning of 2009, acquisitions were at a standstill. But as the economy begrudgingly roused itself from recession, the deal flow started to pick up in the summer, and then rebounded more in the third quarter. There are still a couple weeks left in the year, and a lot can still happen, such as Google buying Yelp for more than $500 million. But with the year wrapping up, we put together an initial list of the top technology acquisitions of 2009.
We’ll update the list if necessary at the end of the year (for instance, we don’t include Yelp in our list because it is not yet final), but it is not likely to change by much. Out of $64 billion worth of technology M&A Crunchbase tracked in 2009, about $54 billion went to the top 30 deals ((see table below). These are only technology deals (Web, software, hardware, mobile) and do not include cleantech or biotech (nor do they include other industries Crunchbase tracks as well).
See the list after the jump. → Read More
Yesterday, 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 and general manager of Intuit’s Personal Finance Group. He is now in charge of not only Mint.com, but also all of Quicken’s online and desktop products. What will his first order of business be? I spoke to him today to find out.
“Over the next 6 to 9 months,” he says, “we will end-of-life Quicken Online and their customer’s data will be migrated over to Mint.” Just a few months ago, the Quicken Online team was questioning Mint’s success. Now, Patzer is their new boss.
It’s not so much revenge as it is a smart business move. Intuit doesn’t need two different online financial planning sites for consumers, and it bought Mint because it couldn’t beat it. Combining the two is the obvious move. (Both help consumers keep track of their money and spending by monitoring their bank accounts, brokerage accounts, credit cards, and other financial accounts). → Read More
A lot of people at Adobe weren’t all that happy when YouTube was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion in 2006. After all, YouTube was just a pretty front end to the core Flash web video technology created by Adobe. YouTube got rich. Adobe got peanuts.
Mint, which sold to Intuit earlier this week for $170 million, is Yodlee’s YouTube. That’s because, like YouTube, the core technology behind Mint wasn’t developed in house. It was licensed from Yodlee, who got paid very little for what they provided. → Read More
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 rumor on this. The deal should be announced in the next few days.
Update: CEO Aaron Patzer has just confirmed the deal on-stage at TechCrunch50, and written a guest post describing The Value of TechCrunch50 that contains more details.
This is a terrific exit for Mint, which first launched two years ago at TechCrunch50. Mint took the top prize at that event and has been growing fast ever since. Their last round of financing valued the company at $140 million.
In all, Mint has raised $32 million over three venture rounds. → Read More
Personal finance tracking site Mint.com added a bunch of new budgeting and trending features today. Mint presents consumers with a financial dashboard based on spending and income data from their bank, credit card, and other financial accounts. It expanded its charts to include spending over time, income history, asset allocation, and net worth over time.
You can now plan for irregular expenses such as property taxes, auto insurance, or vacations. Budgeted items can be rolled over into the next month if they haven’t been used up, and Mint now figures out your income based on your paycheck. It takes all of this data and projects your savings or shortfall over time.
All of these new features will be appreciated by Mint’s 1.4 million registered (and 550,000 active) users, but they also point to a new direction for the site: bookkeeping for small businesses. → Read More
Intuit, the company that makes personal and small business software, has launched a new capability called “Federated Applications” that allows SaaS developers to write their applications using any programming language and cloud platform and connect them to the Intuit Partner Platform. Intuit’s Partner Platform provides a foundation for developers to build and deploy apps that can be integrated with Intuit’s small business accounting software, QuickBooks. QuickBooks has close to 25 million users within 4 million businesses who can buy these apps on Intuit’s own version of its Salesforce.com-like App Store, Intuit Marketplace.
The “Federated Applications” functionality lets developers who have existing SaaS applications that are built with any programming language, database or cloud computing platform publish their apps on Intuit Marketplace. Applications won’t have to be rewritten to conform to QuickBooks but will instead go through a minor configuration process. → Read More
Intuit, the company behind the well-known Quicken suite of money management software that includes Quicken Online, can’t believe how well its competitor Mint is doing. In fact, they were so bewildered by Mint’s claims of gaining 3,000 new users a day and jumping from 600,000 to 850,000 users in a matter of months that they decided to send a threatening letter demanding an explanation for this apparently inconceivable feat. We’ve obtained copies of both Intuit’s letter and Mint’s reply, which we’ve embedded below.
From Intuit’s letter:
“While we do not wish to suggest that Mint.com is engaging in false advertising, the substantial difference in claimed user numbers over a short period time [from 600,000 to 800,000] is of some concern. As a result, we’re requesting that you provide us with the Substantiation and evidence that you rely upon to support the above reference claims… before February 6, 2009.”
Note that the letter says that Intuit doesn’t “wish to suggest that Mint is engaging in false advertising”, despite the fact that that was the entire purpose of the letter. Nice. → Read More
Trackvia provides software as a service for transforming ordinary spreadsheets into versatile databases. The Colorado-based startup has raised its first major round of institutional funding, the amount of which (while not disclosed) is being described as a “typical Series A”. The round’s investors include two VCs out of the Rockies – Flywheel Ventures and Access Venture Partners – plus some notable angels, including Tim Draper of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Prior to this Series A, Trackvia had raised less than $1 million since launching in February 2006. Trackvia appeals to SMBs that need to organize, access, and analyze business critical data that might typically be placed into Excel or Access files. By importing these files into Trackvia, the data can be searched and queried as with traditional relational databases. It can also be used to generate statistics, print out mailing labels, run email campaigns, create custom views, and generate web forms (think Wufoo). Images and other files can be loaded and associated with entries, and the system retains a comprehensive change history for all entries. Permissions can also be set on a per-entry basis. Trackvia competes with Blist (review) and DabbleDB (review), although its customers don’t tend to bring these companies up; they’re more likely to mention Intuit’s QuickBase and Act. Trackvia’s executives suggest that its customers are not so much interested in sharing their data broadly but are rather looking for better ways to handle information internally. CrunchBase Information Trackvia Blist Dabble DB Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Intuit wants in on the race to become the platform for enterprise apps in the cloud. It is opening up QuickBase to developers who want to build new hosted Web applications and businesses on top of it. QuickBase has been around for eight years and has amassed 250,000 users. At its core is an online database around which companies can create their own customized enterprise apps for things like project management or issue tracking. Now developers can join the QuickBase beta to develop their own enterprise apps on Intuit’s infrastructure. Intuit will host the apps, take care of the billing, and allow developers to charge whatever they want. Intuit is joining a crowded field. Salesforce.com has its AppExchange and Force.com. Amazon has its Web services, including SimpleDB. Google just launched its App Engine. And startups like Coghead are also angling for position. But Intuit already has a lot of small business customers that, in turn, can help it attract developers to its new platform. Bill Lucchini, the general manager of Quickbase tells me: It is great to have a cool piece of technology, but we have to make sure that developers build successful businesses. Giving them the tools to get in front of our customers is strategy No. 1 He realizes that decent technology is just table stakes. Developers will get access to QuickBase via APIs to use as a foundation for their apps, and they also get hooks into QuickBooks, Intuit’s accounting software that is used by nearly 25 million individuals in 3.6 million businesses in the U.S. alone. Developers will be able to build apps using Adobe Flex and the open-source Eclipse development environment. For the technically-minded, here is a screencast that goes into more details. Although the economics have yet to be fully worked out, Intuit plans to charge using a utility model similar to Amazon’s that goes up the mnore resources a developer’s app consumes. Says Lucchini: We are trying to price these things where developers can charge $10 to $20 per user per month and make a profit. Small businesses are pretty price sensitive. The Web platform wars are in full swing. Which platform will developers flock to for enterprise apps? → Read More
Intuit has signed a definitive agreement to purchase Web 1.0 survivor and website provider Homestead Technologies for $170 million. Menlo Park base Homestead launched in 1998 as a free web site host targeted at small businesses that competed with the then wildly popular Geocities. Intuit, best known as the creators of the Quicken financial software package said that the acquisition would allow the company to offer web site creation and ecommerce solutions to small businesses. Intuit has a checkered history online, with its business directory site Zipingo closing in August. Intuit currently has a partnership with Google that sees Google services embedded in Intuit products. The deal is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2008. CrunchBase Information Homestead Technologies Intuit Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Google and Intuit are announcing a partnership today at 1:15 pm California time. The meat of it seems to be that they are building Google services directly into Intuit’s QuickBooks, so small business users will be able to list themselves on Google Maps, create and manage advertising campaign with Adwords and post listings on Google Base. There is a conference call at 1:15 with Intuit President and CEO, Steve Bennett and Google CEO, Eric Schmidt that we’ll be on, which will have more details and at least some hints on the economics of the deal. The Google services will be built into QuickBooks 2007, available this Fall, for U.S. customers only. I sure hope there’s an easy way to turn this stuff off. Update: Notes from Analyst call: Eric Schmidt is talking about embracing the long tail of small businesses on the conference call. Less than half of Quickbooks businesses have an online presence. This will help them get online, he says. Businesses will be able to create an adwords account using pre-filled information from Quickbooks. If the business doesn’t have a website Google will create a notecard page for them. All businesses will be given a $50 credit to start. Google will also create a business listing for businesses for search on Google.com and Google Maps. Financial terms: In response to a question on the financial terms, someone said “We have some shared revenue and cost things”. Basically a non answer, although it’s clear Google is making payments to Intuit pursuant to this deal. They also say they are working on things with Google to expand partnership beyond QuickBooks base. Google will create a web page for businesses that don’t have one, since CPC advertising requires something to click to…So google will be charging these businesses to send them to a page served by Google. I wonder if those pages will have Google ads on them. Google and Intuit are looking at integrating this into Quicken as well. Additional Update: Press Release is here. Added a screenshot below. → Read More
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