Why Wesabe Lost to Mint
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Why Wesabe Lost to Mint
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Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint
#2The name is an albatross.
Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint
#3This is a really good article and it does cover a few things that were probably factors, but I remember looking at both Wesabe and Mint back when they were both new and I chose Mint for two reasons:
1. The design was better, which made me feel more comfortable about handing over my data (Mint's designer Jason Purtorti talks about this here: http://vimeo.com/15066599)
2. Mint seemed more focused on being a really simple-to-use webapp to analyze my finances, whereas Wesabe's messaging indicated that they were trying to leverage the wisdom of crowds to help people make better financial decisions. I don't want the crowd analyzing or managing my finances, and it wasn't clear at a glance how their goal could be accomplished while protecting my privacy.
Also, as he mentions regarding the Yodlee thing, Wesabe had a "download this application and it'll retrieve your bank data" thing, but Mint just worked with thousands of financial institutions, and that seemed much easier and more reliable.
Regardless, this was a great blog post and I wish we could see more introspective posts like this when ventures don't work out the way the founders hoped.
Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint
#4This "Myth":
Mint's design, while definitely very appealing and definitely a factor in getting people to trust the company, doesn't seem to me to be enough to explain the different outcomes,
Is contradicted by this: Second, Mint focused on making the user do almost no work at all, by automatically editing and categorizing their data, reducing the number of fields in their signup form, and giving them immediate gratification as soon as they possibly could
UX design isn't just pretty pictures - which is why its now called "user experience" as opposed to "user interface" now.
I think a lot of people dismiss ux considerations because they think its just the part of the site thats "pretty" and its not.
Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint
#5The key lesson seems to be that ease-of-use is of absolutely paramount importance. Maybe this can even be expressed in mathematical terms: you can't just look at the "raw value" provided by a service, you have to look at the ratio of value received to time and effort invested.
Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint
#6Mint focused on making the user do almost no work at all...Their approach completely kicked our approach's ass...Changing people's behavior is really hard
Hmmm, reminds me of an old saying, "When in doubt, leave it out." Now I'm going back to all my forms and mockups, wondering if there's anything else that can be removed. Short attention spans, human nature, and plain old laziness make "Keep It Simple Stupid" more relevant than ever.
A domain name doesn't win you a market; launching second or fifth or tenth doesn't lose you a market. You can't blame your competitors or your board or the lack of or excess of investment. Focus on what really matters: making users happy with your product as quickly as you can, and helping them as much as you can after that. If you do those better than anyone else out there you'll win.
Bulletin board material. Front and center. (I really should be spending more time writing code and less worrying about the market or reading Hacker News.)
[EDIT: We complain a lot here about "survivor bias". This is an excellent post and a great counterexample with much to be learned. Wesabe may have lost, but AFAIC, Marc is most definitely a winner.]
Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint
#7This "Myth": Mint's design, while definitely very appealing and definitely a factor in getting people to trust the company, doesn't seem to me to be enough to explain the different outcomes, Is contradicted by this: Second, Mint focused on making the user do almost no work at all, by automatically editing and categorizing their data, reducing the number of fields in their signup form, and giving them immediate gratif…
I think he talked about aesthetics in the first case.
Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint
#8Mint focused on making the user do almost no work at all...Their approach completely kicked our approach's ass...Changing people's behavior is really hard Hmmm, reminds me of an old saying, "When in doubt, leave it out." Now I'm going back to all my forms and mockups, wondering if there's anything else that can be removed. Short attention spans, human nature, and plain old laziness make "Keep It Simple Stupid" more r…
I really should be spending more time writing code and less worrying about the market or reading Hacker News.
I couldn't disagree more. Worrying about your market is how you know what to code. I think the number of startups who fail because they don't get sales, marketing, and product-market fit outnumber those who fail because they didn't write enough code or good enough code 100:1.
Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint
#9Its fun to look back and enumerate the reasons for success or failure, but dumb luck is just such a huge part of this game as well.
Marc had a vision, stuck to his guns, and the competitor "won". If Wesabe had won Techcrunch 40, we'd be reading an article about Mint's failure due to shoddy data accuracy and how Wesabe succeeded by "build[ing] tools that would eventually help people change their financial behavior for the better, which I believed required people to more closely work with and understand their data."
A startup can't implement every feature perfectly, and will ultimately have to make choices without knowing which was the "right" one.
Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint
#10I only used Wesabe because I'm from Australia and Mint doesn't support my bank, the Firefox uploader was great (a bit more control over access to your bank account, sort of) but the actual website wasn't useful enough for me to keep using it. Would love to see what Mint is like.