My first emotional response to hearing that Mint had been acquired by Intuit was... To shut down my account and start over someplace else.
Why? Because I'm pretty sure Intuit has a lot of marketing pukes that will be given a mandate to "make this deal work!". As such, I the humble Mint customer, will be subjected to EVERY half-baked cross-sell/up-sell idea they hear about.
The Minters knew we were the geese that were going to lay their golden eggs, so they at least restrained themselves a bit when it came to this stuff. But I fear that the non-equity, salary only, employees of Intuit will see me as a cow to be milked instead.
Last time I checked geese had no teats. But we do have wings...
eddie
· 3 months ago
@Sean -- there's no sense belly aching about not being invited to bid on a Mint acquisition. Consider the possibility that Mint was not looking to sell but Intuit came knocking on the door and dangled the $170M carrot which was too much to resist. Not all people share your view of taking things to the billion dollar level ... the Mint entrepreneurs may have been weary and decided it would be nice to take a sabbatical ...
@Rhward3rd -- you're not the only one who is thinking of bailing, check this out from Daring Fireball (John Gruber's blog):
Intuit — the company so inept at shipping Mac software that they were apparently caught unaware that the Java bridge had been deprecated years ago and removed from Snow Leopard, rendering QuickBooks unable to be activated — has acquired the personal finance management web site Mint.com.
If you’re a Mint.com user, you can delete your account at the bottom of the Profile → About You page. (Thanks to Blake Seely.) Good luck, you may need it.
parkparadigm
· 3 months ago
Was just stumbling through the commentary across the web on the Mint/Intuit deal this morning over breakfast and was surprised at the amount of negative energy focused on Intuit. (They bailed out of Europe years ago so I've had no first (or even second hand) experience with them for almost a decade.) But the team and investors at Mint.com must have been aware of this; and if it played out like eddie suggested (which sounds highly plausible) all the more reason to send them packing. Trading 101. But most VCs don't know how to trade. It's a learned skill. Some people are more or less talented at it but nonetheless it is a craft that you learn not something you are born with.
As for the founders wanting to 'take a sabbatical', I have enormous sympathy with that but find it hard to believe that it was a driver here - the company wasn't that old, and it seems (but this could just be usual deal grease) that Aaron will get a big divisional management job with Intuit, which doesn't sound like much of a sabbatical...
One 'the huddle breaks' of course everyone has to be 'on message' but I wonder if there was any dissent in the Mint boardroom? Was everyone a seller?
In any event Eddie, you are right that there is 'no sense' belly-aching...
paulsweeney
· 3 months ago
Mint was also on my radar for a long time (picked them up at the Finovate conference in NY). I have to agree with you that this was a billion dollar business sold too soon. I think experienced, and perhaps more personally wealthy founders, would have pushed the boat out on this one. Just FYI, the cost of developing this proposition versus the cost of developing EGG, or Halifax Personal Finance shows how the cost of entry has dropped. On the downside, Mint never tested their Data-API to 3rd parties as a revenue stream, so maybe this was more about the potential upside of data driven services than cross selling.
Ed
· 2 months ago
@Sean -- a followup to your wondering about why Mint sold out so soon to Intuit ... check out Jason Fried's post from the 18th of Sept:
All Comments
Why? Because I'm pretty sure Intuit has a lot of marketing pukes that will be given a mandate to "make this deal work!". As such, I the humble Mint customer, will be subjected to EVERY half-baked cross-sell/up-sell idea they hear about.
The Minters knew we were the geese that were going to lay their golden eggs, so they at least restrained themselves a bit when it came to this stuff. But I fear that the non-equity, salary only, employees of Intuit will see me as a cow to be milked instead.
Last time I checked geese had no teats. But we do have wings...
@Rhward3rd -- you're not the only one who is thinking of bailing, check this out from Daring Fireball (John Gruber's blog):
http://daringfireball.net/
Intuit — the company so inept at shipping Mac software that they were apparently caught unaware that the Java bridge had been deprecated years ago and removed from Snow Leopard, rendering QuickBooks unable to be activated — has acquired the personal finance management web site Mint.com.
If you’re a Mint.com user, you can delete your account at the bottom of the Profile → About You page. (Thanks to Blake Seely.) Good luck, you may need it.
As for the founders wanting to 'take a sabbatical', I have enormous sympathy with that but find it hard to believe that it was a driver here - the company wasn't that old, and it seems (but this could just be usual deal grease) that Aaron will get a big divisional management job with Intuit, which doesn't sound like much of a sabbatical...
One 'the huddle breaks' of course everyone has to be 'on message' but I wonder if there was any dissent in the Mint boardroom? Was everyone a seller?
In any event Eddie, you are right that there is 'no sense' belly-aching...
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1927-the-next-ge...