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Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

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Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#91

Post by [deleted] »

byoung2 wrote: post #70
asnyder wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#92

Post by scotch_drinker »

This is terrible news for consumers of the software. Quicken is a horrible product if you like good user interfaces and software that just does the job. You have to constantly handhold Quicken and on top of that, many times your bank will charge you to let Quicken have access to your data. The big two (Quicken and Money) personal finance software suites had no way of competing with Mint. I would rather have had Mint start charging a fee for the service instead of selling out their users. Intuit will probably do both.

Obviously, if your reason for starting a business is to get a huge lottery ticket payout, keeping it free and hoping some megacorp buys you is a great idea. I'm disappointed that this was the plan from Mint. I had hopes they would find a business plan that made them money AND that was good for users.

Of course, if Intuit doesn't fundamentally change Mint, maybe all my handwringing will be for naught. I hope I'm wrong.

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#94

Post by lurkinggrue »

njharman wrote: post #72
Elepsis wrote: post #51

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…

I don't think it's about not trusting Intuit with financial information. It's about believing Intuit will make a mess of mint.com ruining good and useful about that site.

I just see them not getting Mint and I am reminded when they first added product activation to Turbo Tax.

The DRM would fail and support would tell you to buy the software again. That was enough to drive me from Intuit for good as it just seemed they were far too interested in profit over customer service.

That was enough to drive me from Intuit for good.

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#95

Post by timr »

wavesplash wrote: post #90
timr wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Unlike most other webapps mint has a very lucrative revenue stream" People keep saying this as if it were fact, but never provide evidence. From what I've seen, Mint has a great potential for revenue. I've not seen any public statements about their financials.

For a privately held entity, how exactly would you like a 3rd party to provide evidence? You have to either know someone on the inside or work by proxy. Assuming you don't know someone, your best proxy is the 10x valuation jump. The $145million valuation wouldn't come without proof of the revenue model to an unproven team. They were executing revenue, and executing very well.

"For a privately held entity, how exactly would you like a 3rd party to provide evidence?"

If I knew how to answer that question, then we wouldn't be having this little debate. Fortunately, I'm not the one making claims about their profitability.

"They were executing revenue, and executing very well."

That's a strong statement. Prove it.

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#96

Post by encoderer »

Poiesis wrote: post #55
patio11 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

the trouble is cutting thru the sleaze in the industry. But if you're willing to tolerate it, you can find gems in their communities. Wickedfire.com. Shoemoney. DMConfidential. On and On, really.

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#97

Post by tonystubblebine »

cdr wrote: post #39
tonystubblebine wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a good competitor, Wesabe. Disclosure: I helped get that product launched and still have some stock. They have many of the same features, are catching up in the polish area, and have a strong data privacy angle.

Wesabe is not a good competitor IMO. When it first released it had a lot of promise (philosophy of data freedom, etc). Unfortunately that's pretty much completely been lost, which I guess to some extent because some of it was too hard to be realistically accomplished with limited resources and time (pulling your account data with software controlled by you rather than giving Wesabe your account password). The core ap…

I thought the same thing at the beginning of the v2 release, but the features that were important to me came back quickly. There's something pretty nice about seeing your accounts aggregated in one place and then being able to tag them. Mint did a great job, but I always preferred to have my financial data stored with people I trust, even if sometimes the software was rough around the edges (hey, it's a startup!).

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#98

Post by netsp »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #73
gruseom wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yodlee is the service that took on the painful and expensive problem of actually building an engine that can securely store bank and brokerage passwords and use them to scrape hundreds of different financial sites. They have a consumer front end. It's quite decent, actually, and it's free. Go to Yodlee.com and sign up. But they apparently make most of their money by (a) licensing their back end to services like Mint,…

Someone should license front end to banks.

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#99

Post by netsp »

timr wrote: post #95
wavesplash wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a privately held entity, how exactly would you like a 3rd party to provide evidence? You have to either know someone on the inside or work by proxy. Assuming you don't know someone, your best proxy is the 10x valuation jump. The $145million valuation wouldn't come without proof of the revenue model to an unproven team. They were executing revenue, and executing very well.

"For a privately held entity, how exactly would you like a 3rd party to provide evidence?" If I knew how to answer that question, then we wouldn't be having this little debate. Fortunately, I'm not the one making claims about their profitability. "They were executing revenue, and executing very well." That's a strong statement. Prove it.

Teapot

Re: Intuit To Acquire Mint For $170 Million

#100

Post by numair »

wavesplash wrote: post #90
timr wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Unlike most other webapps mint has a very lucrative revenue stream" People keep saying this as if it were fact, but never provide evidence. From what I've seen, Mint has a great potential for revenue. I've not seen any public statements about their financials.

For a privately held entity, how exactly would you like a 3rd party to provide evidence? You have to either know someone on the inside or work by proxy. Assuming you don't know someone, your best proxy is the 10x valuation jump. The $145million valuation wouldn't come without proof of the revenue model to an unproven team. They were executing revenue, and executing very well.

For a privately held entity, how exactly would you like a 3rd party to provide evidence?

That's what "audited financials" are all about. You think it's any different for a public company?

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