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Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

blog.precipice.org

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Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#71

Post by njharman »

lionhearted wrote: post #25

He doesn't give the name element enough credit. It's huge . Mint is one of the two examples I give of best brand names ever. Not kidding. Ever . Silk Soymilk is the other example I use. Mint's a killer brand name, I think it'd be literally impossible to beat Mint on natural branding in personal finance, it's the most perfect name I could imagine. It has double, good meanings - "Mint" as in a place where coins/money a…

Until this comment I exclusively associated it with the plant and thought it was retarded (other than being short) name for a finance app. [disclosure: I often miss the blindingly obvious]

I used mint cause coworker raved about it and when I tried it the UI was slick and it auto catergorized my purchases with 95+% accuracy.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#72

Post by njharman »

precipice wrote: post #58
lionhearted wrote: post #25

He doesn't give the name element enough credit. It's huge . Mint is one of the two examples I give of best brand names ever. Not kidding. Ever . Silk Soymilk is the other example I use. Mint's a killer brand name, I think it'd be literally impossible to beat Mint on natural branding in personal finance, it's the most perfect name I could imagine. It has double, good meanings - "Mint" as in a place where coins/money a…

(This is Marc, author of the linked post.) I think people attribute success to a name because that fits the mental model people have for success: You just choose the right name! And then you win! That's nonsense. Winning is a long series of decisions that have to go right far more often than not. I pulled out the decisions I thought really were critical and irreparable turning points -- hard decisions that required a…

Marc, I suspect writing an article like that might be kind of hard. Thanks for sharing your inside view.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#73

Post by pg »

The essential point seems to be that Mint was easier for users. This is something we constantly emphasize at YC. You care a lot about your startup. You have no idea how little a potential user cares. So you can't let the activation energy be high.

Plus users are mostly not programmers. They're terrified by software. Most software they've tried in their lives has caused them pain, either by not working right or by being incomprehensible (which are indistinguishable to the victim).

So imagine you're designing your app for someone who's both apathetic and cringing with fear at the same time. You cannot make it too easy. If there's something you can do that will take a week and make your app 1% easier to start using, it's worth doing.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#74

Post by HaloZero »

lionhearted wrote: post #25

He doesn't give the name element enough credit. It's huge . Mint is one of the two examples I give of best brand names ever. Not kidding. Ever . Silk Soymilk is the other example I use. Mint's a killer brand name, I think it'd be literally impossible to beat Mint on natural branding in personal finance, it's the most perfect name I could imagine. It has double, good meanings - "Mint" as in a place where coins/money a…

I know there are counter examples like Yahoo and Google that don't impact their name but I also have to mention

flickr Dropbox (good name) didn't even own their own domain name for a long time.

The name has a valid impact, but it's not make it or break it. The people who saying "oh man if you switched names you would be ahead" are putting way too much into a name and not enough into a product.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#75

Post by csallen »

lionhearted wrote: post #64
precipice wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(This is Marc, author of the linked post.) I think people attribute success to a name because that fits the mental model people have for success: You just choose the right name! And then you win! That's nonsense. Winning is a long series of decisions that have to go right far more often than not. I pulled out the decisions I thought really were critical and irreparable turning points -- hard decisions that required a…

> I pulled out the decisions I thought were really, critical and irreperable turning points -- hard decisions that required a lot of analysis and a lot of work to fulfill, both for us and for Mint. Buying mint.com was a hard and critical decision for Mint - they paid $2 million for it in equity during their series A. I think you massively underestimate it as a reason they won. I think if the names are flipped - if yo…

> I think if the names are flipped - if your company was named mint.com, theirs wesabe.com, then quite possibly you win.

Whoa there, you're jumping to extreme, unsupported conclusions. No one disagrees that Mint's branding is great. But to count that as the main reason why they won? Even top 3-5 reasons? That flies in the face of the wisdom given by every successful startup veteran: it's all about execution. If Mint.com hadn't provided the instant gratification that got people talking, if they hadn't won TC50, if they hadn't spent heaps of money on marketing, they would have been dead in the water.

Don't get me wrong: branding is important. But if your product+marketing is inferior, you'll probably lose, and if it's superior, you'll overcome all but the most disastrous names. (Nobody knew what a googol was, most people still don't, and look who's running the show.) You're focusing on the name to such an extent that you're ignoring most of the factors that lead a business to success or death... it's like MBA guys who've never built a product in their lives, yet say things like, "Oh I'll just outsource it, it's not important." Yeah right.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#76

Post by Dn_Ab »

ollerac wrote: post #35
lionhearted wrote: post #25

He doesn't give the name element enough credit. It's huge . Mint is one of the two examples I give of best brand names ever. Not kidding. Ever . Silk Soymilk is the other example I use. Mint's a killer brand name, I think it'd be literally impossible to beat Mint on natural branding in personal finance, it's the most perfect name I could imagine. It has double, good meanings - "Mint" as in a place where coins/money a…

Something about Mint struck me as refreshing; I thought it was mostly their home page design because I always thought their name a little generic. But you're completely right -- it's a great name and their website design really reinforces the feelings associated with the plant. I'd love to hear what you think makes a really good name. What about playful-type/kinda-made-up names like Google and Yahoo and Reddit? I spe…

Thought I might leave this feedback even if I am an odd one out in the case you might be interested. But the first way I read that was Less 'O N(a)uts.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#77

Post by nileshtrivedi »

sandipc wrote: post #38
vaksel wrote: post #16

seems like their mistake was ignoring yodlee and trying to make their own stuff...which lost them a lot of traction. had they launched with yodlee, Mint would have been nothing more but a "better designed wesabe" seems to me like they should have spent the cash to subscribe to yodlee, and then spent their effort building their own version like they ended up doing.

yes, but even before Mint, there was Yodlee MoneyCenter... so you could say that Mint was really nothing more than a "better designed MoneyCenter"

Yodlee MoneyCenter was a surprising discovery for me. Sure, I had head of them because of Mint, but I didn't know that they supported most Indian banks. I've been using them for some time and quite satisfied with it.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#78

Post by SHOwnsYou »

stackthat wrote: post #70
lionhearted wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mint is a great name agreed but what's the actual impact? 5%? 10%? 50%? Possibly not even 5% Impossible to measure that, because you can't do controlled experiments. But if you're asking, "Why did Mint make the first blockbuster web-based personal finance product?" I think you'd have to have their name/branding in the top 3-5 reasons. Edit: But if you put a gun to my head and demand that I guess - then 35%. Totally…

So you think a startup's 35% of success is based on their name?

He thinks 35% of Mint's success was based on their name. That is exactly what he said and it seems like you're trying really hard to lay out some flame bait.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#79

Post by precipice »

njharman wrote: post #72
precipice wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(This is Marc, author of the linked post.) I think people attribute success to a name because that fits the mental model people have for success: You just choose the right name! And then you win! That's nonsense. Winning is a long series of decisions that have to go right far more often than not. I pulled out the decisions I thought really were critical and irreparable turning points -- hard decisions that required a…

Marc, I suspect writing an article like that might be kind of hard. Thanks for sharing your inside view.

Thanks. I'm naive - I thought it would mostly be of interest to friends and family. I was wrong, but I'm glad if it's helpful.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#80

Post by gojomo »

efsavage wrote: post #37
lionhearted wrote: post #25

He doesn't give the name element enough credit. It's huge . Mint is one of the two examples I give of best brand names ever. Not kidding. Ever . Silk Soymilk is the other example I use. Mint's a killer brand name, I think it'd be literally impossible to beat Mint on natural branding in personal finance, it's the most perfect name I could imagine. It has double, good meanings - "Mint" as in a place where coins/money a…

Yeah, a name like mint.com has a truckload of authority, while wesabe sounds like some foodie's blog. "I think the examples of Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, Google, and plenty of others make it plain that even ludicrous names (as all of those were thought to be when the companies launched) can go on to be great brands. " None of those names are "ludicrous", nor were they when they started. They don't have much to do with thei…

'Wesabe' sounds like a foodie's blog... if you know what 'wasabi' is, in which case you might think the spelling should be 'wesabi'. If the 'wasabi' connotation isn't triggered, you might think the 'a' is long and 'e' silent, 'we-sayb'.

'Wesabe' is a passable name for something mostly discovered by reading or direct links, but a big drop from 'Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, Google' (for syllables/familiarity/multiple ways to pronounce&spell), and each of those is one notch below 'Mint'.

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