Online Finance Startup Wesabe Heads To The Deadpool
In the letter, Wesabe CEO Marc Hedlund writes that the site has been operating on a shoestring budget lately, which has led to both some poor customer experiences and the potential for security issues, which is why they’re pulling the plug:
In recent months Wesabe has been operating on a shoestring budget, with support from some of the developers and operations people who made up our core team. While the site has remained online and we continue to hear from people who find it helpful, we have not been able to provide the support people need to use it for something so central as financial management. I’ve felt especially terrible that some members have a good initial experience but then hit a problem, often after investing many hours, and aren’t able to get help with it. That’s obviously a bad experience, and not what we want to offer. Also, because Wesabe stores such highly sensitive data, continuing to operate the service with shoestring operations and security staff is not acceptable, and we do not want to continue accepting new accounts if we cannot guarantee the security level we believe our service requires.
Wesabe was showing some growth in April 2009 when it launched its iPhone app, but traffic has dropped steadily since then. The site has largely been overshadowed by competitor Mint, which launched at (and won) TechCrunch50 and later went to on be acquired for $170 million by Intuit.
We’ve been covering the site since 2006. In Feburary 2007 it raised $700,000 from O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and later that year raised $4 million in a round led by Union Square Ventures.
Wesabe has been added to the Deadpool.