They were on their way to redefining an industry — one that was left for dead by the current custodians. I have never seen Mint and haven't used Quicken in ages. But isn't Mint the same thing only hosted? Where exactly did they innovate, I haven't heard of any exciting features. Anything here besides just "onlineness"?
It's the same thing as Yodlee.com (literally - Yodlee powers its backend) with a prettier user interface and waaaay better marketing.
prettier user interface and waaaay better marketing
a prettier UI and waaaay better marketing are clearly not to be poo-poo'ed as "no innovation", apparently.
I think it's fair to say that 37 Signals' aspirations are, at best, orthogonally related to profit maximisation. They're there to enjoy building things they like, their way. No, I'm not some sort of Kool-aid drinking acolyte. But ultimately, I'm trying to do the same thing - to have fun and do what I find fulfilling, at the expense of considerably faster and more lucrative routes to making more money - so I can appre…
I get that. Really, I do. But they keep saying it over and over again in a public forum. Who are they trying to convince: the reader, or themselves?
There's Point. If they were So happy doing that, they don't have to keep on saying it.
I'm not sure I'm making my point clearly enough, sharing in the success of someone else is not the same on a satisfaction level as achieving your own is. By giving that money you are denying someone the chance of achieving that on their own and keeping parity with you. Especially if you say 'here's 50 grand, I don't need it', as though 50 grand should be peanuts to them too. The asymmetry of the situation is what cau…
> I'm not sure I'm making my point clearly enough, sharing in the success of someone else is not the same on a satisfaction level as achieving your own is. > By giving that money you are denying someone the chance of achieving that on their own and keeping parity with you. I don't refute the fact that it's a tricky situation, but I think you and the OP might be talking about different situations. There is a big diffe…
The big trick here is I think if you are in that position to help people to help themselves.
That's the best kind of thing a friend could do.
Honor is preserved on both sides and when it is all done the friendship has only strengthened, not become lopsided.
It is sort of fuck you money, but honestly I'm more pissed off that a shitty company now owns one of my favorite webapps. Mint is now going to die. I also think something must have been going terribly wrong. The exit was tiny considering the huge amount of money that was invested.
For me, 10 million dollars would be enough to satisfy all of my personal and family needs: house, vacation money, pay off close friends' debts, tuition, health insurance, etc. More money just means more good that can be done in the world for my larger human family. Also, it is likely that nothing was going terribly wrong. The exit was only small for the later-round investors, who also made a killing on their investme…
pay off close friends' debts
I think it would be a better idea to loan them money to pay off their debts. Of course, your loan should be interest free, shouldn't have any strings attached, should give your friends very long time to repay - otherwise there wouldn't be any difference between your loan and the 'other' loans in the first place.
I'm sure Mint's founders and investors analyzed the acquisition quite heavily, more than any of us for that matter, and concluded that the acquisition was a fair and reasonable deal, otherwise they would not have agreed to its terms. Only time will tell if this acquisition actually becomes a detriment to Mint and its end-users in the long-term. I believe if Mint continues to have a focused and creative team behind its product, one which continues to effectively evolve the service in order to accommodate their users needs, they should continue to grow steadily.
FU money isn't only a big lump sum of cash. It can also be a residual flow of payments for SaaS or royalties or dividends. As long as that money is coming in every month, you're fine and can do most anything you want as well. Flipping a company is just one way to say FU to the man. I've said FU to the man lots of times, even when all I had was some cash I had saved up from working really hard and long hours at a sala…
lots of homeless people break free all the time and many of them are way happier than those receiving big exits for startups. That is not hyperbole. Do you personally know some? Tell us about them. They must be remarkable people. I'm not saying you're wrong, but your claim sure sounds like hyperbole. I know a few startup-exit-receivers who seem pretty happy. Of course it's hard to tell these things ( http://robinson.…
Well, let me take a harsher stance than you and call BS on his 'that is not hyperbole'. Most homeless people are rather miserable, if not about their immediate situation or their worries about the near future, then about the psychiatric diseases at least half of them are suffering from. Being homeless is hard and anyone that has taken any trouble to know something about homeless people knows that these romantic notions are utter BS. Being homeless is easy as long as you have the ability to fall back on a home, a fund, family, etc. Most homeless people do not have that option.
Is there any way to tell from the outside and at this point in time if the deal is a takeover from the inside like Apple buying Nexxt? Will the lead people at Mint have real power in Inituit? Will one of them be the next CTO? Are terms like those ever specified in a buyout?
"Will the lead people at Mint have real power in Inituit? Will one of them be the next CTO?"
Very unlikely. And even if someone from Mint were to become CTO, he would find it very difficult to change direction or focus. Intuit has multiple levels of management fiefdoms(within fiefdoms) and is infested with layers of clueless middle management and with a few honorable exceptions(mostly old timers from the old days, and some sharp kids just out of school, who don't stay very long) the tech people aren't very hot either (which is why, with all their resources and customer base and domain knowledge, they couldn't compete with a thin layer around Yodlee's backend).