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Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

blog.precipice.org

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Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#11

Post by edw519 »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #8
edw519 wrote: post #6

Mint focused on making the user do almost no work at all...Their approach completely kicked our approach's ass...Changing people's behavior is really hard Hmmm, reminds me of an old saying, "When in doubt, leave it out." Now I'm going back to all my forms and mockups, wondering if there's anything else that can be removed. Short attention spans, human nature, and plain old laziness make "Keep It Simple Stupid" more r…

I really should be spending more time writing code and less worrying about the market or reading Hacker News. I couldn't disagree more. Worrying about your market is how you know what to code. I think the number of startups who fail because they don't get sales, marketing, and product-market fit outnumber those who fail because they didn't write enough code or good enough code 100:1.

Worrying about your market is how you know what to code.

You're absolutely right, Ryan, in theory all the time and in practice most of the time. But there are exceptions...

OP is an exception. When it came to understanding his market and satisfying their needs he did so many things right and still got his ass kicked. By someone who "dumbed it down".

I can't tell you how many times I've beaten enterprisey competitors with teams of marketing and domain experts because the customer understood my simple offering over their complex one.

I really hate that old Henry Ford quote, "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said 'faster horses,'" but there's a grain of truth in it. At some point, you just gotta stop asking everyone what they think, say "fuck it", build what you think is right, get it out there, and find out for real. I believe I'm at that point, that's all. Whether others think they're also at that point is for them to decide for themselves.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#12

Post by mikeryan »

xentronium wrote: post #7
mikeryan wrote: post #4

This "Myth": Mint's design, while definitely very appealing and definitely a factor in getting people to trust the company, doesn't seem to me to be enough to explain the different outcomes, Is contradicted by this: Second, Mint focused on making the user do almost no work at all, by automatically editing and categorizing their data, reducing the number of fields in their signup form, and giving them immediate gratif…

I think he talked about aesthetics in the first case.

Yeah but I think its a mistake to try to distinguish between aesthetics and user experience when its being done as a single discipline.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#13

Post by precipice »

mikeryan wrote: post #4

This "Myth": Mint's design, while definitely very appealing and definitely a factor in getting people to trust the company, doesn't seem to me to be enough to explain the different outcomes, Is contradicted by this: Second, Mint focused on making the user do almost no work at all, by automatically editing and categorizing their data, reducing the number of fields in their signup form, and giving them immediate gratif…

(This is Marc, the author of the linked post.)

You're right, I both credited and dismissed a very large category with the word "design." In my view some people believe that it was just the visual appeal of Mint's site that did us in. In my view that helped them but not enough to kill us. I do think that we spent our usability effort (as I say in the post) in the wrong place, making editing, for instance, easy, instead of making editing totally optional.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#14

Post by bmelton »

mikeryan wrote: post #4

This "Myth": Mint's design, while definitely very appealing and definitely a factor in getting people to trust the company, doesn't seem to me to be enough to explain the different outcomes, Is contradicted by this: Second, Mint focused on making the user do almost no work at all, by automatically editing and categorizing their data, reducing the number of fields in their signup form, and giving them immediate gratif…

You're conflating design with UI and UX.

I think the point was that being prettier alone wouldn't have won Mint the war, but being way more usable totally did. If you stripped the pretty colors, backgrounds and images from both products, the user experience for Mint is still miles better than Wesabe's was, and that is the difference.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#15

Post by precipice »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #8
edw519 wrote: post #6

Mint focused on making the user do almost no work at all...Their approach completely kicked our approach's ass...Changing people's behavior is really hard Hmmm, reminds me of an old saying, "When in doubt, leave it out." Now I'm going back to all my forms and mockups, wondering if there's anything else that can be removed. Short attention spans, human nature, and plain old laziness make "Keep It Simple Stupid" more r…

I really should be spending more time writing code and less worrying about the market or reading Hacker News. I couldn't disagree more. Worrying about your market is how you know what to code. I think the number of startups who fail because they don't get sales, marketing, and product-market fit outnumber those who fail because they didn't write enough code or good enough code 100:1.

I talked about both of these needs in a post in 2006, when I was wrestling with exactly these issues:

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/03/entrepreneurial-pr...

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#16

Post by vaksel »

seems like their mistake was ignoring yodlee and trying to make their own stuff...which lost them a lot of traction.

had they launched with yodlee, Mint would have been nothing more but a "better designed wesabe"

seems to me like they should have spent the cash to subscribe to yodlee, and then spent their effort building their own version like they ended up doing.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#17

Post by city41 »

Maybe I'm just ignorant but I never even heard of Wesabe until this HN post. I've been an unhappy Mint user for years though (I still argue Mint is nowhere near as good as Microsoft Money was).

So if I'm representative of "average people", then lack of marketing may have been a folly too.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#18

Post by Sukotto »

I looked at both Wesabe and Mint when trying to decide on a aggregation service. I ended up choosing Mint.

- Mint was easy to remember, and easy to spell. Wesabe was neither. I often typoed the name as "wasabi"

- Mint didn't make me do any real work. Wesabe made me do all the work.

- Mint felt private. Wesabe wanted me to work with "the crowd" of other users

- Mint was simple and beautiful. Wesabe looked rough around the edges

So I went with Mint.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#19

Post by ryanwaggoner »

edw519 wrote: post #11
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really should be spending more time writing code and less worrying about the market or reading Hacker News. I couldn't disagree more. Worrying about your market is how you know what to code. I think the number of startups who fail because they don't get sales, marketing, and product-market fit outnumber those who fail because they didn't write enough code or good enough code 100:1.

Worrying about your market is how you know what to code. You're absolutely right, Ryan, in theory all the time and in practice most of the time. But there are exceptions... OP is an exception. When it came to understanding his market and satisfying their needs he did so many things right and still got his ass kicked. By someone who "dumbed it down". I can't tell you how many times I've beaten enterprisey competitors…

Fair enough; I understand that there are a variety of cases, and I was responding to what I perceived when I read it as a general statement, rather than a self-assessment of your particular situation.

because the customer understood my simple offering over their complex one

This is a good example of a better product-market fit. My problem is that I have a tendency to do what a lot of hacker-entrepreneurs do: hack. But that's often not what's most needed.

Re: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint

#20

Post by nanijoe »

precipice wrote: post #13
mikeryan wrote: post #4

This "Myth": Mint's design, while definitely very appealing and definitely a factor in getting people to trust the company, doesn't seem to me to be enough to explain the different outcomes, Is contradicted by this: Second, Mint focused on making the user do almost no work at all, by automatically editing and categorizing their data, reducing the number of fields in their signup form, and giving them immediate gratif…

(This is Marc, the author of the linked post.) You're right, I both credited and dismissed a very large category with the word "design." In my view some people believe that it was just the visual appeal of Mint's site that did us in. In my view that helped them but not enough to kill us. I do think that we spent our usability effort (as I say in the post) in the wrong place, making editing, for instance, easy, instea…

Too bad you did not have the funds to continue, I thought it was pretty a useful service.
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