If geeks love it, we're on it

40 Comments:

1. jared
   14 Sep '09, 5:06 pm

   I don't blame Mint for cashing out, not at all.

   But I can't help but think Intuit is going to completely ruin a good (free) thing.
2. mas0n
   14 Sep '09, 5:13 pm

   ewww.
3. Thrax
   14 Sep '09, 5:33 pm

   Mint is fucked.
4. chrisWhite
   14 Sep '09, 5:37 pm

   Good move for both IMHO. Mint will now gain credibility with people who were too security minded to give a startup their bank information and Intuit will get the hip, social web app for the newer generations.
5. Snarkasm
   14 Sep '09, 5:43 pm

   Until they screw it up and dump all of the new generation.
6. CB
   14 Sep '09, 5:55 pm

   The instant that there is even a faint wiff of a rumor that Mint wont be free anymore, the outrage of the internets will arrive in full-force.
7. GHoosdum
   14 Sep '09, 6:03 pm

   Intuit's Quicken Online version began as a $3/mo subscription-based product. In order to not lose more market share to mint, they dropped the price to free. They still couldn't compete with mint for gaining new young customers in the cloud.

   I've been using mint for a while, and I really like it. If they can add Quicken's reputation to help iron out the few connectivity kinks that remain (banks in some cases are wary of mint's lack of history) and keep the product free, I'm all for it.

   Intuit has managed to keep a version of TurboTax Federal free for personal use, even providing free e-file. They charge extra for answers to tax questions and additional help. If they keep mint free but charge for 'extras' like financial advice and tax questions, I don't see a huge backlash.

   //edit: on the blog on mint.com the developer/owner of mint has stated that mint will remain free, and that he is going to be working in a leadership role at Intuit for the development of the next version of Quicken.
8. Cliff_Forster
   14 Sep '09, 6:13 pm

   If regulators don't step in on this they are not doing their job if you ask me.
9. chrisWhite
   14 Sep '09, 7:44 pm

   Ghoosedum's link to the blog post looks reasuring, only time will tell but I feel pretty optimistic about this, but then, I don't use Mint. It's always seemed great but they've never gotten my bank fully supported.

   Cliff, I disagree, Mint is different enough from Intuit's other products that I think it's reasonable for Intuit to pick up Mint.
10. chrisWhite
    14 Sep '09, 7:46 pm

    Man, 170 million is a lot of money.
11. Butters
    14 Sep '09, 7:47 pm

    Short Term, good move by Mint. Long term for Mint, depending on what Intuit intends on doing with Mint, it could be around for a while.

    Mint has the long-term cloud model, (which intuit does poorly in both consumer, SMB and enterprise applications quickbooks online sux and lacerte tax virtually non-existent).

    As the Accounting/Finance/Tax industry *slowly* and I mean *slowly* moves towards the cloud, Mint may have its place. If it can fully integrate to most other apps such as TurboTax, QuckBooks, Microsoft Accounting then there could be some potential.
12. chrisWhite
    14 Sep '09, 8:20 pm

    Just saw this Tweet

    “If the Mint CEO really is taking over Intuit's personal finance group perhaps the acquisition isn't such a bad thing” -@vafarmboy

    Via my friend @chartier
13. Zuntar
    14 Sep '09, 9:25 pm

    Been using quicken since the 90's, so I hope this works out for the better!
14. NiGHTS
    15 Sep '09, 2:10 am

    Surprised at all the Intuit hate. They've been looking to enter and control this space for some time, looks like they've finally gotten it.

    Okay, I'll bite - what on earth would regulators need to step in on?
15. airbornflght
    15 Sep '09, 2:30 am

    I'm not happy about this one bit. I saw the email from mint and choked on my drink. I can already see the downhill slide this is going to take. Feature creep and a corruption of the core functionality is looming. I'll use it till they mess it up, but I know intuit will.
16. mas0n
    15 Sep '09, 2:44 am

    Quoting Cliff_Forster

    If regulators don't step in on this they are not doing their job if you ask me.

    Wait, what?
17. Thrax
    15 Sep '09, 2:46 am

    I wanted to overlook that statement. I really did. I really really did. There's nothing for regulators to look at. There are numerous personal finance options.
18. Annes
    15 Sep '09, 8:03 am

    Quoting Thrax

    I wanted to overlook that statement. I really did. I really really did. There's nothing for regulators to look at. There are numerous personal finance options.

    I can think of three more without even trying: Yodlee (a HUGE service that Mint is actually built on top of, as are many online banking services from actual banks), Wesabe, and Buxfer.
19. Cliff_Forster
    15 Sep '09, 8:09 am

    Quoting Thrax

    I wanted to overlook that statement. I really did. I really really did. There's nothing for regulators to look at. There are numerous personal finance options.

    Intuit is exponentially bigger than Mint but with an aging business model.

    I'm not saying the deal won't make sense for both, if Intuit is intent on moving towards the Mint model, but we obviously don't want them buying them just to slow the pace of innovation to cling on to their dated way of doing business.

    I know what everyone is saying now but it just aggravates me when you have an innovative company like Mint that comes in to challenge the ten billion dollar establishment to ultimately sell out essentially just doing the legwork that ten billion dollar company should have/could have been doing on its own to innovate and move its business model into 2010. Robert, you should know me well enough to know that I am generally suspicious of anything a ten billion dollar company does, at least enough to want a few questions asked before just saying, "okay".

    Gee, I guess the whole thing with the recent collapse of banks, mortgage security's and the fact that jobs are evaporating at an alarming rate just makes me a little touchy any time there is a big financial transaction in the news. I think everyone could afford to be just a little less trusting these days.
20. Thrax
    15 Sep '09, 10:00 am

    Given that there are numerous competitors, neither of the involved parties are a bank, and all such services are little more than an excel spreadsheet, I sincerely doubt there's any need for regulation.
21. Cliff_Forster
    15 Sep '09, 10:18 am

    Quoting Thrax

    Given that there are numerous competitors, neither of the involved parties are a bank, and all such services are little more than an excel spreadsheet, I sincerely doubt there's any need for regulation.

    Banks are a party to all this, if not directly if will impact them indirectly.

    The emerging model for financial service software is for the banks to buy it from the provider as a service to the banks customers rather than sell the service directly to the consumer. Microsoft has recognized this shift, and now it seems Intuit has finally caught on. It just annoys me that the people that innovated are being bought out rather than providing any real stiff long term competition for the existing establishment.

    What it says to consumers and entrepreneurs is this. A ten billion dollar company that rests on its laurels can always say to the innovator, "join us or die". I'm hip to the reality of it, I know its how the world works, but I don't have to like it.
22. Snarkasm
    15 Sep '09, 10:24 am

    Mint didn't have to join or die. They could have refused the sale. They voluntarily received (a lot of) money for their hard work.
23. primesuspect
    15 Sep '09, 10:41 am

    Cliff, you're always one for the little guy. Do you know how Mint came about? It's a modern day "guy with a dream" kind of story. Mint won the grand prize in the TechCrunch50 contest, grew by leaps and bounds, and now they have become the belle of the ball... You should love this story!
24. Thrax
    15 Sep '09, 10:42 am

    Now if only Mint made passable quad cores.

    (OHSHI)
25. Annes
    15 Sep '09, 10:53 am

    I read this little piece in TechCrunch yesterday outlining the history of Mint from the CEO himself. Here's the best bit:

    So that’s the Mint story. $0 to $170m in three years flat. While everyone else was doing social media, music, video or the startup de jour, we tried to ground ourselves in what any business should be doing: solve a real problem for people. Make something that is faster, more efficient, cheaper (in this case free), and innovate on technology or business model to make a healthy revenue stream doing it.
26. Cliff_Forster
    15 Sep '09, 11:06 am

    Quoting Snarkasm

    Mint didn't have to join or die. They could have refused the sale. They voluntarily received (a lot of) money for their hard work.

    First of all, the Mint.com founder says he was inspired to develop it because Quicken was such an archaic non intuitive experience. He did it to offer consumers a real alternative. http://www.mint.com/company/

    Innovation is born, now consumers have a true choice, one that shows the giant established company that there may just be a better way, but rather than take enough time to let things play out Intuit jumps into action, goes to Mint.com and says something like this in a more professional, polite manner.

    Hi, were Intuit, don't know if you have noticed, but we are a ten billion dollar publicly traded company with rich and powerful investors, and you guys are not. Perhaps you would like to be like us one day, and you could if you work really hard and convert our entire customer base with your product that's far better than ours. Obviously that would be bad for our investors so here is the deal, we will offer you 170 million cash to go away, we will just take the infrastructure you built to move forward with the model you were innovating when we are forced to do so, in the meantime we will do everything in our power to cling onto our dated buisness model as long as consumers will accept it as the only option because after all, were a ten billion dollar empire, know what we mean, loads of money, so you can get on the bus, or we will just spend enough capital to steal your ideas for ourselves and market it fifty times more effectively than you ever could, what do ya say??

    Mint.com takes the cash. In a real capitalist environment Intuit would die a slow painful death for their failure to innovate and Mint.com would become the new ultimate power in the finanacial services software universe. Problem is, when your competitor that litteraly has 100 times the potential investment capital as you knocks on the door and says, okay, we see what you did there, you did something better than we have and customers are starting to notice, bravo. Okay, we want you on our team now. What do you do if your Mint.com, long term they had a product that was worth at least as much as Quicken, but under the pressure of a quick payoff and knowing that they can never realistically compete against the establishment they fold, it happens far too often and more often than not consumers are stuck with the bill.

    How many ways has this happened with the mergers of smaller and larger oil companies, Oracle buying Peoplesoft (our support from PeopleSoft tanked hard after Oracle bought them out). This is no different, the big company comes in, sees a smaller company that threatens them, so the merger or payoff is just a way of going to the smaller guy and saying, hey, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way, choose.
27. CB
    15 Sep '09, 11:39 am

    If I developed a cool web-app, then someone said, "I'll give you a hundred million dollars for your thing there, and I'll let you continue to run it if you want." I wouldn't be able to sign that contract fast enough.
28. Thrax
    15 Sep '09, 11:57 am

    A "real capitalist environment" that apparently doesn't include acquisitions and mergers.
29. Butters
    15 Sep '09, 11:59 am

    In the grand scheme of things. Quicken and other non-tax consumer products is whooping 11% of Intuits income. BFD.

    And Cliff, like Thrax said, Mint is a glorified Excel file. It keeps track of freakin Debits and Credits!!!?!?! No tax estimation or forecasting, no external application integration, and don't forget to sign up with one of the sponsor credit cards. Its a stretch comparing Mint's situation to an ERP. Though its true PeopleSoft sucked before Oracle, and it sux harder after.
30. Cliff_Forster
    15 Sep '09, 12:13 pm

    Acquisitions and mergers are fine when they benefit the consumer. What exactly does this merger do to benefit consumers? I mean, for real, without the Intuit corporate spin.
31. GHoosdum
    15 Sep '09, 12:34 pm

    Without the Intuit corporate spin... how about the mint founder & CEO spin? Did you read his blog post?

    Mint's stated goal was to make finances easier for the average Joe who doesn't know how to use Excel to understand. Here is what Aaron Patzer sent out in an e-mail yesterday:

    "I’ll personally be taking on the role of GM of Intuit’s Personal Finance group responsible for online, desktop and mobile consumer personal finance offerings."

    Which means, instead of your vision of Quicken dying while its entire market share is eroded by mint's innovative model, the entire makret share of Quicken will be taken up by that innovative model much more quickly with mint's former CEO at the head of Quicken.
32. Butters
    15 Sep '09, 12:40 pm

    And hopefully have the integration and features that would make me think twice about never logging into Mint again.
33. jared
    18 Sep '09, 11:28 am

    Great read, which I mostly agree with.

    http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1927-...ion-bends-over
34. Cliff_Forster
    18 Sep '09, 12:02 pm

    Quoting jared

    Great read, which I mostly agree with.

    http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1927-...ion-bends-over

    Jared,

    You are my forum hero for today. That blog completely nails it.
35. Snarkasm
    18 Sep '09, 1:13 pm

    And yet it still requires no regulatory intervention.
36. Lincoln
    18 Sep '09, 1:39 pm

    The Next Generation Bends Over

    Site is getting hammered right now.

    Mint's sale to Intuit really pissed me off.

    Why should I care? Because I think it's indicative of a VC-induced cancer that's infecting our industry and killing off the next generation. I don't know the full backstory, but I'd bet this sale was encouraged by a Mint investor.

    Here's a fresh new company that was gunning for an aging incumbent. And not only gunning, but gaining. They had a great product, great design, and great potential. They were growing rapidly and figured out the revenue game. They were on their way to redefining an industry - one that was left for dead by the current custodians.

    They were everything their main competitor, Intuit, was not. While Mint was inventing, Intuit was out of it. People used Quickbooks/Quicken out of habit and legacy. People used Mint because they loved it. Intuit was disgruntled, Mint was disruptive.

    ...
37. Snarkasm
    18 Sep '09, 1:40 pm

    Er... exact same link?
38. Lincoln
    18 Sep '09, 2:05 pm

    Ah sorry, I forgot Jared is on the forum again. I didn't bother checking the new comments because no one else here woulda caught that so quick.
39. NiGHTS
    18 Sep '09, 10:56 pm

    Web users express rage in favorite toy being purchased. Baw.
40. Mike Block CPA
    22 Sep '09, 2:13 am

    Consider the Mint buy with Intuit's $1.7 billion buy of Digital Insight bank software and $170 million buy of Paycycle online payroll.

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