Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

blog.precipice.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–206 of 206 posts

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#201

Post by 83457 »

illumen wrote: post #191
philwelch wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point here is that "Google" attains a level of adequacy that "Wesabe" doesn't seem to, for the reasons I pointed out. Past adequacy, I agree that "Google" was a worse brand than its competitors and that it didn't matter.

It sounds like goggles, and goggling - ie looking. It also means the large number 'googl' 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 - vast scale. It's not meaningless, and does relate to their product. The google brand and message - with its single input box, and 'just search' focus was awesome. Wesabe is a completely wrong…

Google sounds like goggles? I'm not sure I have heard someone suggest that, nor do 99% of Google users know about the mathematical significance of the name. I think it is a good name because it is simple, unique, easily spelled and the name of the best search engine for the last 10 years.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#202

Post by RudeBaldGuy »

It is clear that Wesabe lost. What is not clear to me is that Mint won. Yes, Patzer got $170M out of Intuit for the investors, got his share, and a nice new job at Intuit. But now what? Mint's revenues were not that great, and as for profits....who knows. Now it is being absorbed into the Intuit Borg. Intuit is still trying to figure out what the heck it did when it bought Digital Insight. Will Intuit ever see an ROI on its $170M? Oh I forgot, this is Silicon Valley. ROI doesn't matter. But Mint is a neat name. That and $5 will get you a coffee at Starbucks.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#203

Post by db911 »

Winning the DEMO contest put Mint on the radar for me. First time I heard of such a business. Knew of Quicken but the idea of taking it to web was 'a ha!'. Never heard of wesabe - and I consider myself web savy - flickr, delicious etc.

I loved the idea but did not trust putting such info online. Then I saw yodlee relationship. I knew banks trusted Yodlee so I gave them (mint) extra trust because of that. I read through their TOC and it gave me more confidence.

On a related thread...I wanted to do online bill pay some time earlier and knew that there was some independent company-yodlee (not wanting to tie myself to my bank) that did it but darned if I could remember the name). So yodlee lost business because of that odd name (in my - survey of 1- case). Love the post and cmts. Good luck with your next venture. Bring same passion - and invest in good URL

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#204

Post by tyn »

Elepsis wrote: post #183
kscaldef wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I've only ever heard it pronounced to rhyme with "mikey". What other variants have you hears?

In a number of countries I've heard it pronounced to rhyme with "Mike."

Ironically enough, that's the way it's pronounced in Greece.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#205

Post by hoop »

mikeklaas wrote: post #123
hoop wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the same boat as you. I'm a happy Mint user and had never, ever heard of Wesabe.

Yes, this is equivalent to the statement "Mint succeeded and Wesabe failed", and not the reason it did. Mint reached probably an order-magnitude more people ultimately, so it isn't surprising that most of us haven't heard of wesabe.

I disagree. I see mint reaching that "more people" as the reason why it succeeded, not a side effect
Post reply on HN