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Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

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Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#61

Post by wavesplash »

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…

Mint made referral fees on every offer they made "You can make 3% more a year by switching to ING Direct, etc". They made plenty of money, and all they needed was scale (which they proved they could do). The brilliance was that the offers were aligned with the user's wants/desires/needs and were super well qualified so Mint could charge more per referral.

They weren't created to flip - it was a solid business.

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#62

Post by [deleted] »

inaka wrote: post #57

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…

[deleted]

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#64

Post by fjabre »

inaka wrote: post #57

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…

So is this yet another reason to keep your web app basically free for the masses..?

$170 million in 2 years seems like reason enough for me.. but as Inaka points out: their execution was brilliant. So if you do have a brilliant app maybe you should keep it free.

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#65

Post by asnyder »

fjabre wrote: post #64
inaka wrote: post #57

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…

So is this yet another reason to keep your web app basically free for the masses..? $170 million in 2 years seems like reason enough for me.. but as Inaka points out: their execution was brilliant. So if you do have a brilliant app maybe you should keep it free.

Unlike most other webapps mint has a very lucrative revenue stream. They're able to offer you alternative financial services targeted towards you based on the information they have about your current financial products. I'm sure the financial companies offering their products on mint pay more than your average ad or click through.Most webapps don't have this sort of opportunity.

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#66

Post by asb »

FreeRadical wrote: post #28

I also think there is a good opportunity to take on the UK equivalent; Kublax. It's a seedcamp company that I tried to use a few times but it was too 'rigid' so I ended up going back to a google spreadsheet.

Yodlee will work with UK accounts, for whatever reason (perhaps legal?) Mint still haven't added UK support.

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#67

Post by mattmaroon »

I'm not sure I'd call $170m a great exit considering they were last valued at $140m. Generally VCs are looking for much more than a 20% ROI. I'd love to know if there were some special terms that make the VCs get more than their share here. Otherwise you'd think that either Mint was in trouble and needed this, or there was something else going on.

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#68

Post by gruseom »

I'm a little surprised by the fact that they sold now for what seems like a low price compared to what Mint would surely have grown into, given all the momentum they'd built up. It seems like they'd solved the hard problem of getting millions of people to let them into their bank accounts and were fast on their way to becoming a household word. I don't see why they couldn't have become a billion dollar company; the competitive landscape was favorable to them. This seems like a home run that turned into a double. I'd be interested to know the back story behind it.

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#69

Post by gruseom »

inaka wrote: post #57

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…

I had no idea that Mint was a layer on top of another product. Can you explain this in greater detail? What is Yodlee? (I realize I'm proving your point by asking!) And what is the nature of Mint/Yodlee's relationship?

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#70

Post by byoung2 »

asnyder wrote: post #65
fjabre wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is this yet another reason to keep your web app basically free for the masses..? $170 million in 2 years seems like reason enough for me.. but as Inaka points out: their execution was brilliant. So if you do have a brilliant app maybe you should keep it free.

Unlike most other webapps mint has a very lucrative revenue stream. They're able to offer you alternative financial services targeted towards you based on the information they have about your current financial products. I'm sure the financial companies offering their products on mint pay more than your average ad or click through.Most webapps don't have this sort of opportunity.

I'm sure the financial companies offering their products on mint pay more than your average ad or click through

You're right about that...these banks and credit card companies probably pay hundreds per lead, which is a drop in the bucket compared to how much they'll get over the life of the customer.

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