What happened to Mint? • Hacker News Board

Re: What happened to Mint?

#131

Post by colinloretz » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 6:11 PM UTC

sugarpile wrote: post #93

I've been using https://lunchmoney.app/ since it launched. On top of being one of the cleaner saas apps I use the developer has been super responsive whenever I've submitted feedback or feature requests. It's the first budgeting/expense tracking app I've ever actually stuck with which I attribute to the aforementioned "cleanness"/usability. Genuine +1 from me (and I'm not even including my referral link)

LunchMoney has been amazing and the quality & speed of new features has been impressive considering it's being built by one developer!

Re: What happened to Mint?

#132

Post by s17n » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 6:15 PM UTC

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #29

Co-founder of a (yet to be launched) Mint competitor here [1]. One pattern I think we all see over and over again is when products get bought by a large company, they often lose their "soul" (and the original team). Both those things happened with Mint. Another important pattern I've seen is that products, in the long-term, morph to take the form of their revenue model. Many personal finance products are free, but ma…

Hey, just wondering: was the fast company article was placed there by your PR people?

Not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm just curious.

Re: What happened to Mint?

#133

Post by rafiki6 » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

There are so many avenues to lead generation that Mint can take that would also benefit the consumer that they just choose not to take. A simple one could be helping me optimize which credit card products I have to maximize my rewards. Another is offering an API to mint to allow developers to build out plugins and tools. Mint really has an opportunity to become the defacto personal finance platform and have market dominance similar to FB but they just aren't capitalizing.

Re: What happened to Mint?

#134

Post by jethro_tell » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

orev wrote: post #32

I had been using PocketMoney for a very long time, but it was recently destroyed by the company that acquired it. Seriously looking into GNUCash to try to avoid that kind of thing in the future. Using an online service for financial tracking seems crazy to me, given the data free-for-all that is going on now.

I just started into GNUCash during the break. It can be simple or really complex, but the walk through and into guide was really good, once you get a full month done with thing in the right place, i.e. you can mark your mortgage as an expense but it's actually separated out into interest and equity and it needs to be split into both those boxes. Once you get everything set up, updating it and keeping it going seems pretty simple.

Re: What happened to Mint?

#135

Post by ASinclair » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

sshumaker wrote: post #57

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #29

Co-founder of a (yet to be launched) Mint competitor here [1]. One pattern I think we all see over and over again is when products get bought by a large company, they often lose their "soul" (and the original team). Both those things happened with Mint. Another important pattern I've seen is that products, in the long-term, morph to take the form of their revenue model. Many personal finance products are free, but ma…

This space is really difficult to crack for a few non-obvious reasons. The first is that the total TAM is less than you think; for most people, tracking their spending to manage budgets just doesn’t appeal to them. For many consumers, just seeing all of their finances is incredibly depressing. I suspect the 13mm Mint users are a large portion of the addressable market for this kind of product. So without a strong mon…

> I think you could run a reasonable lifestyle business here if you don’t take VC, but I’m skeptical this can ever be truly mass-market.

You Need a Budget (YNAB) is proof of this. I don't believe they've taken any VC funding and are a pretty successful lifestyle business in the Budgeting/Finance space.

Re: What happened to Mint?

#136

Post by tegansnyder » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 6:18 PM UTC

Does anybody know of automated waterfall budgeting solution? I want to be able to forecast the future if I stick to my pay off plans. I want to be able to enter my bills, what I owe on them, then run scenarios on my financial future if I payed certain things off before others in waterfall fashion. Having an idea of the future helps motivate.

Re: What happened to Mint?

#137

Post by cryptica » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 6:19 PM UTC

It was just a shell company, nothing but a social monetization machine. Like most startups of that time.

Re: What happened to Mint?

#138

Post by overcast » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 6:20 PM UTC

djstein wrote: post #92

Just going to post a great alternative that people over at http://reddit.com/r/financialindependence/ recommend Personal Capital http://personalcapital.com/ I've been using it for about 4 years now. Best money management system I've used in a long time

Personal capital is amazing for investments, but it's shit for budgeting, and that's why Mint still rocks.

Re: What happened to Mint?

#139

Post by beardedman » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 6:20 PM UTC

Bought out. Lack of innovation. After a while it feels a lot like lack of trying (in a relationship sense). I'm looking at you Evernote.

Re: What happened to Mint?

#140

Post by cryptica » Thu, Jan 23, 2020, 6:20 PM UTC

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #29

Co-founder of a (yet to be launched) Mint competitor here [1]. One pattern I think we all see over and over again is when products get bought by a large company, they often lose their "soul" (and the original team). Both those things happened with Mint. Another important pattern I've seen is that products, in the long-term, morph to take the form of their revenue model. Many personal finance products are free, but ma…

They didn't lose their soul. They never had one. It was a financial scheme from beginning to end. There was never any intention to produce anything useful. Probably one of the founders had a rich daddy.