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Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

blog.precipice.org

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Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#101

Post by StavrosK »

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…

Let me tell you, choosing "historio.us" as the name was a bad decision (for two reasons). People are surprised by the extension and it takes some explaining to get them to spell it as ".us" (here, something like historious.net would help a lot), and they always spell it "historius". We might just rename it to historius and redirect to historius.com just to get rid of all the hassle...

The moral of the story is that you should try to minimise homophones of your name, so "lessonauts" would basically be impossible to tell people, they would parse it as "lessonnauts", "lessonnotes", "lessonotes", etc etc. Unambiguity is a big advantage.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#102

Post by reinhardt »

Aetius wrote: post #50
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…

Nor does he seem to understand the difference design can make. He hints that he understands, but I don't think he really gets just how much of a difference the stunning first impression of Mint made. It's like the difference between meeting your favorite actress, and meeting some b-list reality star like Paris or Snooki. Per your assertion, I think Nike (greek goddess of victory) is the best brand name of all time, a…

Wow, I'm a native greek speaker and I never made the connection Nike -> Νίκη; they're pronounced completely differently.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#103

Post by [deleted] »

mikeryan wrote: post #4

This "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…

[deleted]

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#104

Post by pg »

johnrob wrote: post #98
pg wrote: post #73

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 bei…

Your reasoning can be applied on a micro level also, comparing the name mint to wesabe. The former is unquestionably easier to remember, type, and tell friends. Is it worth spending a lot of money to get a premium domain? The question sounds very similar to asking 'how much effort should I spend making 1% improvements in usability?'. One of my friends spent (from what I heard) over 200K for a very good domain. It see…

Depends on the situation and the name. I can't imagine many situations where it would be worth paying 200k. You can get good enough names for free usually, or at most 10k. It just takes some ingenuity.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#105

Post by brianbreslin »

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…

how did YOU think wesabe should be pronounced? I pronounce it like it was spanglish. "we" like in english "sabe" sa (sayonara) be (better) sabe = "know" in spanish

follow up comment. I signed up for wesabe EARLY on, but didn't get what it was supposed to do. none of my friends could easily explain it to me "its supposed to help save money" whereas mint was VERY clear on its value proposition early on. great post btw, commendable to write a post-mortem like that.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#107

Post by [deleted] »

Aetius wrote: post #54
bmelton wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, in that case, I respectfully disagree. To me, the 'visual design' of a site is what it looks like in Photoshop, or Gimp, or what have you, before it is even necessarily sliced into even HTML bits. Once it is sliced into HTML, and the mouseovers, hover elements and all that jazz are added (or not, depending on your workflow), that's when I consider it a 'UI' instead of a 'design'. Before either of those happens, y…

You're wrong. Design is the graphics and user experience taken together. Most companies still have a designer that designs both UI (graphic element style and placement) and UX (dictation of frontend behavior).

[deleted]

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#108

Post by hyperbovine »

To me, the larger story is about risk. A lot of people here, if directed to build a personal finance startup, would go about it in much the same way that Wesabe did. Launch early, attempt to build a community of enthusiasts, and grow the site organically (through word of mouth) as opposed to advertising. This is the time-honored way, and a lot of startups have succeeded by it.

What did Patser do? He went and dropped $2 million on the domain name before he even had a single user, and then inked a sweetheart deal with Yodlee to gain an overnight technical advantage on the competition. He spent money on advertising, artwork, and design. (Interestingly, the claim that Mint spent $1/user conflicts with something I read earlier: http://www.slate.com/id/2228846/. Not sure where the truth lay.)

He did everything that the 37 Signals / MVP crowd says you shouldn't. I'm not criticizing, but in their pursuit of instant profitability / dislike of VC money, they sometimes seem to lose sight of the value of gambling big. Patser took risks, and the market rewarded him for it.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#109

Post by fmw »

pg wrote: post #68
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 agree with Marc. Google is a mediocre name.

Pointing to Google is such a non-argument, in my opinion. What does it prove? That you can succeed with a mediocre name, not that picking a good brand doesn't matter. I don't like it when people say "Google does X, so it must be fine". Google is a much better name than Wesabe, anyway. Of course picking a good brand helps. Will it make or break your company? No.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#110

Post by nextparadigms »

gamble wrote: post #60
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…

If name alone could carry a company, sex.com would be a billion-dollar business.

Common words don't do well as names when they are words that describe exactly what the company does. Common words can be better used when they have nothing to do with what the company does.

For example, Apple is a much better name for a computer company than "Computer", would be. Same Amazon is much better for an online bookstore, than "Bookstore.com" would be.

The reason they are better is because they can be uniquely associated with that company. How many Apple companies are there that sell computers? How many Amazon's that sell books?

They use a common word to actually turn it into an unique one.

Sex.com like names are usually highly valued as domains because of the perception people have on them, thinking that a name so descriptive MUST be valueable as a brand.

It's actually absolutely worthless as a brand name, and if you follow the track records of the companies that have used domain names like that you'll see that most of them have failed. Sure it might help a little bit with SEO, but that benefit is not nearly enough to compensate for how bad a brand like that is and how easily people will forget it.

As for what Marc said, I agree with the fact that their approach was not about the automation is probably the biggest factor in their eventual failure. However, the Wesabe name did create some friction as opposed to Mint.

When you have a bad name is like trying to drive a car with your foot slightly pressing on the break pedal. No matter how fast your car (product) is, your speed will still be dramatically reduced.

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