How Mint.com Acquired 1.5M+ Users | Hacker News Reader

How Mint.com Acquired 1.5M+ Users

jasonputorti.com

100 pointsfaramarz17 comments

Two things to add about the Mint.com success formula, based on a presentation I heard Aaron Patzer give at the Webby Connect conference about one year before he sold Mint to Quicken:

1) Patzer spent about 20% of his time talking to media or other blogs. He basically would make time for anyone that wanted to interview him, understanding the viral potential in terms of follow-on press coverage and of course, new customers. (Incidentally, Salesforce's Marc Benioff describes a similar approach to press in his bio, but mostly concentrated on major publications and journalists in the early days -- this was before most blogs and viral phenomena)

2) Patzer described spending a lot of time on finding (and paying for) the right name. Easy to understand, spell, and enter into a browser address bar were key. He thought his competitors were crazy for choosing names that were hard to spell or pronounce -- he specifically mentioned Geezeo.com and Wesabe.com .

One other thing: Patzer claimed he didn't spend anything on marketing in the talk that I saw. But from Putori's post, it seems that Mint.com did spend money on a PR agency, which surely wasn't cheap.

I'm actually a little disappointed in that 1.5M number. Mint is held up as such a success story, I had assumed, given things like Dropbox's 4M number, that Mint would be much higher.

For those of us that are in much smaller niches, and with expectations of less press coverage, etc, than Mint, we mentally discount our potential user number as some percentage of Mints (or Dropbox's, or pick your success story)

When doing such mental math, the larger the successes number, the better you like it. Say your niche is only 5% as large (Mint's niche was pretty much "anybody with money and a computer). So, best case, you're looking at 5% of Mint. If Mint is only 1.5M, of which, probably most were non-paid ... You get my drift.

I think that you should look at that 1,5mln users number from different perspective.

It's HUGE amount if you think of these people as being brave enough to give their PASSWORDS and bank account details to the startup!

Using Dropbox doesn't put you in any risks. To be an early Mint adopter you must be very ... well... adventurous.

I began with a bank account that I kept for depositing checks locally. And a credit card I rarely use. From there I slowly built up trust and added more accounts. All of that being said, it's safe to say I'm adventurous and a risk taker.

Anyone: 1. with money 2. who owns a computer 3. located in the US 4. willing to give mint.com access to their banking credentials

I don't know if Dropbox or Mint are reporting active users or just sign ups, but I'd think that those that sign-up with Mint put in a great deal more time and thought.

Also, Dropbox users can easily create several accounts (I have) for various purposes. Seems unreasonable for the Mint users.

I have another candidate: Licensing the hard software part from another mature company.

Mint is really just a Web 2.0 face on Yodlee (which provides all the bank interfacing parts). And there's nothing wrong with that, but it got them to maturity a lot faster than starting from scratch would have.

http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/18/mint-is-yodlees-youtube/

This article is very insightful. Thanks for the great read.

Landing pages -- that's one magical knob everyone should definitely turn... Infographics -- The Oatmeal is another great example of the effectiveness of this

37 Signals, Fog Creek, Mint, can you even be a successful web company without a blog and an audience?

Facebook, Google, Zynga, yeah I guess you can!

That said I know they have blogs now, largely targeted at developers and early adopters, but in the early days they didn't. However, I'm a big fan of blogs, think every professional/company should have one. Great way to spread ideas, make contacts, etc.

Blog is not enough. What Mint did (and is still doing) is selling their byproduct - in their case is statistics they can dig from their user data.

Statistics are always very popular among the press crowd - this can be easily sold and drives additional traffic.

the nature of blogs is that they are essentially miniature social media networks in disguise, when done right. Facebook is a giant "blog", that's why they don't need any blogs.

I find these individual blogs more valuable than a company blog.

I want to hear the success story from the designers perspective, another from the technical lead, and another from an engineering point-of-view and so on.

I think that kind of blog is very different. The general purpose blog is for customers (or potential customers). The Tech/Eng/BD blogs are great for startup enthusiasts, but aren't going to be very efficent channels to get customers to sign up. Unless the potential customer fits one of those groups and is interested on a couple levels. I agree with you though, I find the behind the curtain stuff fascinating.

37 signals and Fog Creek target very sophisticated users, so in their case a well respected blog goes a long way. You could probably make the same argument for Mint, although I think their main target is a rung lower than the other two.

I'd be interested in attrition after the sale. I wiped out my Mint.com account as soon as I learned who bought them.

ive been showing this quora post to everyone i know at startup event past few days. glad jason made it public.

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