Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million • Hacker News Board

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#51

Post by Elepsis » Mon, Sep 14, 2009, 1:38 PM UTC

I think it's interesting to see people's reactions here -- a good dose of "oh no Intuit" paranoia. But honestly, did anyone not see this acquisition coming? I was expecting them to have to pay more, honestly, but I think it was fairly apparent that Intuit was the obvious buyer and would do what it takes.

The other odd angle to this paranoia: How big do people really think the market of "people who don't trust Intuit with their financial information" is? For millions of people, it's already in Quicken... the step to doing that online, especially for a non-technical user, is not that big.

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#52

Post by gaius » Mon, Sep 14, 2009, 1:42 PM UTC

plinkplonk wrote: post #29

davidmathers wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crushing your enemy, seeing them driven before you and hearing the lamentations of their women is victory (e.g. Larry Ellison). $170 million is retirement.

"Crushing your enemy, seeing them driven before you and hearing the lamentations of their women is victory" While some management "self help" books use war as a metaphor for business, business isn't really war. The Genghis Khan quote you used might be appropriate for a medieval era barbarian general, not so much a businessman in the 21st century. "Victory" for a startup is meetings its founders'/investors' goals. No…

You say that, but I remember going to Oracle sales conferences in the 90s with lasers, employees lined up wearing black uniforms, Vanessa Mae playing her electric violin and a VP on stage ranting about bringing Oracle's rivals to their knees while the crowd cheered and punched the air.

Hell, I was only there for the canapes...

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#53

Post by coliveira » Mon, Sep 14, 2009, 1:45 PM UTC

davidmathers wrote: post #11

plinkplonk wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" just don't see Intuit as the right company to run Mint" It isn't. But (due disclosure: I worked at Intuit once and while I have no special knowledge about this deal, I know how Intuit works) Intuit had no choice really. Mint was high on management's radar and they were always scared of it. Intuit doesn't "get" the web, the whole company is structured around its success on the desktop and there are too many layers o…

The part I don't get is why Mint would take the quick exit rather than fight the fight. It looked to me like they were well positioned for a long term victory.

The reason is that Mint was created for an exit like this. They had no clear business model other than getting as many users as possible in order to scare Intuit. They have a great product, but I see no plan to make money with it.

Of course they have the thing of suggesting credit cards to users, but it doesn't seem that they were making any money on that...

In summary, if Mint was profitable, they wouldn't sell the company in the first opportunity.

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#54

Post by jhancock » Mon, Sep 14, 2009, 1:53 PM UTC

cvg wrote: post #14

davidmathers wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part I don't get is why Mint would take the quick exit rather than fight the fight. It looked to me like they were well positioned for a long term victory.

$170 million is why. There was a good amount invested over a few rounds, but what's left is probably enough FU money for Aaron and team.

I hope they do manage to pull something out of this. At $31M invested, a $170M sale could end up getting sopped up by investors. Anyway, congrats to them and I hope it works out.

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#55

Post by Poiesis » Mon, Sep 14, 2009, 1:55 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #27

timr wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The days of billion-dollar exits for zero-revenue companies are gone, and will probably continue to be gone for a long while to come.

Mint was making a rather significant amount of money as a credit card affiliate. (They also hawked other financial products, but that is almost certainly the most lucrative one. They have a lucrative CPA, a wider reach than home loans, and more repeat business in the demographics inclined to hand all their financial info to a Web 2.0 site.) Many, many affiliates who look at a million dollars as "Meh, not a lot of mon…

Do you have a source? Where do affiliates hang out and talk about business models?

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#56

Post by qeorge » Mon, Sep 14, 2009, 2:15 PM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #53

davidmathers wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part I don't get is why Mint would take the quick exit rather than fight the fight. It looked to me like they were well positioned for a long term victory.

The reason is that Mint was created for an exit like this. They had no clear business model other than getting as many users as possible in order to scare Intuit. They have a great product, but I see no plan to make money with it. Of course they have the thing of suggesting credit cards to users, but it doesn't seem that they were making any money on that... In summary, if Mint was profitable, they wouldn't sell the…

Hogwash. They were in a unique position to give trusted credit card reviews to their members, and collect the affiliate fees. Just because a site doesn't have ads or offer a premium subscription doesn't mean it has no business model.

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#57

Post by inaka » Mon, Sep 14, 2009, 2:36 PM UTC

wow. what really impresses me is mint isn't an engineering company - they're a marketing company that put some ajax on top of yodlee. yodlee's been around for over 10 years and they never built a brand or a community like mint.

mint is now #1 on my 'notes to self' when i get so focused on engineering my way to a solution i forget sometimes its' better to partner with a competitor and move on.

they outsourced the hard stuff (scraping/banking relationships) and then focused on building a product. nice work, brilliant execution.

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#58

Post by nsoonhui » Mon, Sep 14, 2009, 2:39 PM UTC

mingdingo wrote: post #33

jrbedard wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also http://www.buxfer.com , a YC company.

Talk about not giving up- the Buxfer guy just keeps going. Anybody know how Buxfer is doing?

I like Buxfer, and hope that it will prosper

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#59

Post by lallysingh » Mon, Sep 14, 2009, 2:55 PM UTC

plinkplonk wrote: post #12

davidmathers wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part I don't get is why Mint would take the quick exit rather than fight the fight. It looked to me like they were well positioned for a long term victory.

"It looked to me like they were well positioned for a long term victory." True. But I would imagine 170 million is a lot of money to the founders. A bird in the hand and all that...

Also, they're now free from the work, have $170 mil, and can enjoy their lives for a bit.

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#60

Post by plinkplonk » Mon, Sep 14, 2009, 3:12 PM UTC

thrdOriginal wrote: post #50

plinkplonk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Crushing your enemy, seeing them driven before you and hearing the lamentations of their women is victory" While some management "self help" books use war as a metaphor for business, business isn't really war. The Genghis Khan quote you used might be appropriate for a medieval era barbarian general, not so much a businessman in the 21st century. "Victory" for a startup is meetings its founders'/investors' goals. No…

The quote is from Conan the Barbarian: it is a funny quote, a funny post, and probably not meant to be taken as a metaphor for business.

"The quote is from Conan the Barbarian:"

You think? ;-)

And where did Robert E Howard get it from? Ole Genghiz said this a looong time ago. Look it up.