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Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

blog.precipice.org

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Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#141

Post by notahacker »

cobrophy wrote: post #41
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…

Apart from the fact that Mint is a credit card company in the UK and hold the top google result as well as Mint.co.uk

I don't think the developers of a personal finance app targeted at US consumers is too worried about UK consumers that don't monitor their finances in US$ and won't use any of the US financial services they profit from recommending. The cost of having to rebrand if they ever decide to launch localised versions for other countries is outweighed by the strength of the brand in the domestic market where the rich pickings are available.

- Despite it's huge popularity and domain mint.com is down on page four of a google.co.uk search for "mint" which suggests Google has done a good job of realising how useless it is for Brits. I suspect that UK service comparison site confused.com (another brilliant domain-based brand) doesn't rank too well in the US version of Google either...

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#142

Post by hyperbovine »

theBobMcCormick wrote: post #122
hyperbovine wrote: post #108

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…

Is that about risk then? Or is it about the advantage of being the guy with $2million in his pocket to drop on the business before he even starts, and the connections to get the sweetheart deal with Yodlee?

I don't know anything about the guy other than what I have read, but nothing I have read suggests to me that a) he started out rich or b) he had any sort of insider connection to Yodlee. (TFA plainly states that they could have gone the Yodlee route first, but chose not to.)

He just strikes me as someone who is a smart businessman, better at it than your average hacker.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#143

Post by csallen »

fmw wrote: post #125
pg wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it prove? That you can succeed with a mediocre name, not that picking a good brand doesn't matter. That is what I intended it to prove.

I agree that brands are overrated (not with their complete irrelevance), but the Google argument doesn't prove anything. There is a huge difference in people's willingness to try a new search engine, compared to many other applications. Particularly when it comes to sites that deal with your money. That makes people conservative and want something recognizable.

> There is a huge difference in people's willingness to try a new search engine, compared to many other applications.

Sure people were willing to try new search engines... until Google came along and built a better one.

Point is, branding takes a back seat to product quality, and the companies in question were clearly leagues apart in terms of quality. If they were of a similar quality, or if instead of "Wesabe" it was called "xXxVirus39" you would have a point. But that's not the case, so you've got your work cut out for you if you want to make a convincing argument that the brand played a relatively significant role here.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#144

Post by inthewoods »

StavrosK wrote: post #101
ollerac wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

You made me laugh as I setup breadandcirc.us and had the same sort of issues you highlights. I also own the name ben.to - which I've been considering for use on a company I'm working on, but I have that same concern. Opinions?

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#145

Post by rwhitman »

HectorRamos wrote: post #137
rwhitman wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, shoot I just made a comment about this. I was suggesting if they had focused squarely on enterprise earlier, they might have been fine. Do you think a future finance aggregation tool, that was focused entirely on enterprise (with subsequent accountability), would have had a better chance of success? So many smaller banks have online banking that is lacking, I'm always frustrated that there aren't more companies t…

That's actually what BankSimple is trying to solve, right? The problem with enterprise is, like I said, they have so many regulations and tight tolerances, they are not very startup friendly. However, if Wesabe was bought by Intuit and in turn Intuit offered exactly the same product that Wesabe already had, the banks would easily pay $10,000 a month for it just based on the name. For reference, Wesabe was around $2,5…

I thought BankSimple was its own online bank.

Yea, I imagine you could get away with a very hefty license fee. I know of one company that charges affiliate TV stations $5m a year license for essentially a glorified hosted CMS. If they can get that for something that doesn't even remotely require the kind of privacy a bank system needs, the price tag for an online banking tool should be pretty high. Even $500k-$1m+ a year seems reasonable by comparison. Its really all a matter of support and sales prowess

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#146

Post by Andrew_Quentin »

SHOwnsYou wrote: post #78
stackthat wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He said the 35% was completely out the top of his head. That is a guess. He has little information and really what he is basing such guess is on his opinion that the name has such a great effect as to count towards 35% of the success, which, no offence to lionheart whatever because he is an esteemed contributor and I really like his comments, is ridiculous.

The name might and does have some advantages, especially if it is short and relatively easy to remember, but the 35% should possibly go towards the two things mentioned, that is design, and user experience in filling in the form, 20% possibly marketing and the name would at best have a 5% effect.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#147

Post by frossie »

WesleyJohnson wrote: post #57

I had never heard of Wesabe until reading this article, though I'm not sure how I missed it. My biggest complaint against Mint is specifically why most people flock to it: it's automated and there isn't much you need to do to get existing transactions and analyze them. Maybe it's changed since Intuit bought them, but I signed up for their service two different times and toyed with it for a few hours before canceling…

I want banksimple.com, or some other kind of 21st century bank that will let me do all this stuff natively from my primary banking....

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#148

Post by lubujackson »

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…

I agree with both the fact that Mint is a great name and also that it's not a determining factor of success. But especially in this case, it played a bigger part than normal. "Mint.com" instills a lot more trust than WeSabe - clearly, money was spent on the domain "mint.com", and people understand that. WeSabe could be a fly-by-night operation, and when the biggest hurdle is the trust issue (this is your bank login!), you need EVERY advantage you can get for people to trust you - so design and domain name are a huge element.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#149

Post by pg »

mikeklaas wrote: post #121
pg wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Perhaps, but most high-priced domains will retain a significant chunk of their value if not appreciate over time. In the worst case, you resell it.

Interesting point. For most startups though the opportunity cost of having that cash tied up is a problem.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#150

Post by sovande »

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…

Replying to a (very good) counter argument with your original argument does not make your argument better nor does it bring the discussion forward. For my part, I'm very grateful to Marc for sharing his experience and thereby providing us with knowledge.
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