closed in April, hardly news

I’d still like to know who is doing PR for Mint. They have great access and ability to get ink on non-stories.

they will likely need series B by early Q1 next year

hopefully they will use a large share of the funds to increase security: http://www.nobosh.com/Article/.....fe%3F/712/

I think they should come out of beta. Their is a good chance it will be cloned, if they get delayed. I had applied for an entry and hasn’t got it.

http://blogkatt.blogspot.com

it is all about network network and network. not about the meat.

All those investors…what, did everyone chip in their lunch money?

I second Steve’s comments. What’s with all the investors? Too many cooks in the kitchen? Why so many people? I assume that one of these firms came out ahead in terms of equity and control. Otherwise, it’s going to be a hell of a board meeting…

Someone’s laughing all the way to the bank…

Techcrunch says Mint is tracking $2 billion of people’s money, but Mint’s press release from today says they are tracking $1 billion. What gives?

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-.....amp;EDATE=

Steve @ 2:

From their site:

Martha Shaughnessy
AtomicPR
martha@atomicpr.com
415.402.0230

We did not actually take money from NEA or Battery Ventures…that’s a misprint. Everything else is correct though!

Aaron Patzer
Founder & CEO, Mint.com

@terry

The press release says more than $1 billion. The number is actually $2 billion…not sure how that didn’t make the wire.

my website tracks in the amount less than 324 billions, the exact number is $483.00

so they actually look at the data being sourced?

“um.. interesting, this guy lost 2 mil last week.. ooo, the 2 mil went to this other woman. no wonder, they both spend 2 weeks in LV.. “

Aaron - that $1 b v. $2 b number is important, since it’s your users’ money.

I was posting as I was writing this one. It’s all fixed now.

Hmmn any idea when this will be available for foreign to the us users?

My question is what is the difference between Mint and Yodlee, (http://corporate.yodlee.com/) - which I have been using for some time now which is an excellent online application? Mint’s website states that it is - “the first free, easy and secure way to manage and save money online” and it has patent pending technology however, Yodlee lists Mints as one of it’s consumers.

Thanks,

- M

$1 billion worth of peoples money, how can one trust some sites so easily. I am interested in hearing the measures taken before making the decision.

http://vidsonly.blogspot.com

On the Mint website under ‘Privacy and Security - How Mint Keeps You Safe’ it says:

‘Your data is secure. Only you have access to your data on Mint.’

Clearly Mint also have access to users data, since they are able to query and track how much money they are managing on behalf of their users.

Now you guys (TechCrunch Team) really proving that you can lift a company’s face and also could crash it. We can now officially call you powerhouse in startup world. I have not been able to use Mint and one of the registers who signed up and never came back.

But anyways, i think they have good product, but you guys hyped it too much. And all that user data, they disclosed to “TechCrunch” …is there any check there…basically in short i am questioning integrity of techcrunch or Mint…u can always say…”Yes we verified”.

Hackers will absolutely love this!
Use MSBank.com coming soon in the MS Cloud!

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

#19

I was thinking the exact same thing. I didn’t know Yodlee was still around actually. BOA-Military used them.

Interesting that Mint is a customer of Yodlee. I believe Yodlee worked (over 5 years ago) the same way Mint does today. The user provides his/her login credentials and then the screen scraping begins.

Well-deserved investment for a great service.

I third the vote for Yodlee. Mint needs the ability to track accounts other than credit cards and bank accts. (Forgive me if they have upgraded, I was an early beta tester and haven’t been back since.)

It appears that Mint is using some or all of Yodlee’s automated logon services. Mint may be hitching itself to Yodlee…not necessarily a great model if that’s the case.

Wow, the comments seem pretty suspicious. I guess there’s no helping that in this genre. I still use Wesabe’s online financial product, partly because I have a relationship with the company, but mostly because they have a stronger community, better security, and better transaction classification. Last week I added my company’s financials in as well (we’re small). Wesabe has been a great replacement for Quicken and QuickBooks. It’s so much simpler and more helpful.

Hey Rob, (and others)

Here is a decent review of Yodlee vs Mint:

http://comments.deasil.com/200.....ee-wesabe/

And another regarding Yodlee vs Wesabe:

http://comments.deasil.com/200.....vs-wesabe/

- M

@Marcel, Rob

Mint does use Yodlee. Yodlee provides Mint’s backend connectivity to all the banks. Bank of America, Fidelity, and even MS Money use Yodlee for the same thing.

There are a few big differences between Mint and Yodlee:

1. Mint’s patent-pending algorithm automatically categorizes and classifies more transactions. This means you know precisely how much you spend on gas, groceries, Thai food, and Starbucks without putting work into the system.

2. Configurable email & text message alerts keep you on top of your finances without the need to login. You can get low-balance alerts, bill reminders, notices when your paycheck gets deposited, etc. Our goal at Mint.com is not page-views or time spent on the site. People don’t want to spend time managing their money…they want in and out in just a few minutes each week.

3. Mint’s SmartSave system finds the average user over $1000 in better interest rates or prices the first time they login. I just wrote a piece on how it works:
http://blog.mint.com/blog/upda.....ine-works/

I think we also have a better, cleaner, more friendly interface…

Aaron Patzer
Founder & CEO, Mint.com

@Aaron
are you ever going to answer Allen Stern’s questions?

@Erick
now that the post is updated, shouldn’t the updated parts be marked as such? maybe like Update: Blah. Throw cweeb a bone who called the actual close and predicted the search for the next round before the post was updated.

Nice addition though. I assume the insider story was disclosed with permission, but the “my accountants lose track of anything less than 500K” line makes him look like an a*hole or someone who needs better accountants. It recalls the famous Linda Evangelista quote.

I signed up with Mint after it won techcrunch40. But I closed my account last week cos the system just could not connect with all the banks and credit card companies. One connection attempt took 3 days and it still did not connect.

They have a great idea, but they need to get the connectivity working! I might try them again in a few months.

PS. what’s the famous Linda Evangelista quote?

When they claim “over $1 billion in user transactions” - I would like to know exactly what this means.

I suspect this figure includes any balance at all, e.g. credit cards, loans, bank, etc

I doubt there are 2 billion in hard assets here (bank account balances, etc).

very beautiful site, i tried it out 2 weeks ago and haven’t been back since.
its very nice to see it in action but once that wears off there isn’t much there to go back to.
the system only calculated less then 10% of my spending, the rest was unknown to the system.
also, it compared my sprint bill which is around $1500 a year and recommended vonage for 14.95 (or whatever it is) a month.

its a really a work of beauty this site… that’s for sure.

PS: i will give it a 2nd chance in 6 months.

I’m curious, what does everyone see as the weakness in Mint’s security model? The username/passwords are actually stored at yodlee… You worried about yodlee being compromised? You worried about Mint mining your transactions to sell to 3rd parties?

Just curious..

Linda Evangelista on elite models, “We don’t wake up for less than $10000 a day.” For reference, those were 1990 dollars.

checked it out and ran away..no way is there any trust to be had

Thanks Aaron for the run down. It’s not to say that I’m not a big fan of Mint and what it is trying to do and I definitely agree that the interface surpasses that of Yodlee’s. (or any other financial institutions for that matter.)

I’m definitely going to give Mint a shot and see how it compares to the other applications I am using. It gives me alot more confidence knowing that Yodlee is used for the back end connectivity especially since many big name institutions use them as well.

I’m also very interested to learn about the differences between Yodlee’s email and text notifications and that of Mint’s.

Mint definitely has the very intriguing uniqueness with its SmartSave system.

Thanks again for chiming in,

- Marcel

@phil

the concern is the violation of the terms banks’ fraud protection agreements by supplying a third party with your login credentials (writes the person with a hacked iPhone).

If Mint would indemnify users all questions along those lines would (or at least should) stop. Instead, the security issues have lingered (slightly unfairly) for 200+ TC comments across 3 posts.

a better,cleaner interface worths nothing. 3 mil for a interface, smarties.

@Steve

We might be working on just that…

I find Mint to be a really useful service. The only problem I have is that my company’s business account is linked to my personal online banking login, making the service relatively useless for me personally. I assume at some point I will be able to remove individual accounts that were brought in under one online banking login, but I haven’t figured out how to do so yet.

Other than that, I absolutely love the idea, and it’s something I really need. I’ve always been too busy to track spending, but I know I waste money in certain areas, and would love to know how to save more.

@ Andrew H

In our next release (scheduled for Tuesday), you’ll be able to exclude certain accounts from a particular bank. This is very useful for excluding your Wells Fargo business account from your Wells Fargo personal account even if you access both with the same credentials.

Aaron Patzer
Founder & CEO, Mint.com

I like Mint, but it is just a cool toy right now. It has to have use in order to sustain itself, or users will just register, check it out, then not use it ever again (and will probably be too lazy to delete their account, thereby inflating Mint’s apparent $2 billion sum). They claim they are saving money for customers (”thousands!”) but that is just because they say there are better interest rates out there. Mint needs to figure out what they are going to do with this to make people use it often, or it will be in the deadpool.

I’m a typical SV optimist but i hate to say it, this thing has ‘train wreck’ all over it. I would never trust a startup with my financial info, especially after losing personal data by IBM, Ameritrade and others–this within a span of only 2yrs!

I would worry less about who invested but rather how many high net worth individuals will get sucked in, only to have their finances hacked down the road.

aaron, thanks for run down on mint…..

with so many people questioning security, problems linking accounts etc….why can’t some one write software to scrape pdf bank statements (i am getting all my statements in pdf now) and give out saving info what mint is giving out

just two cents

Wow, TC really loves Mint… I’m starting to wonder, does a.) TC have a financial stake in Mint, b.) are they compensated as an adviser or director in Mint or c.) is this just a west coast circle jerk love fest?

@Aaron

way to hang in here with a tough crowd. If you can pull off indemnification, you will get a least one more user, and likely hundreds of thousands more. best of luck and thanks for listening.

2 billion could really mean 3-4 users.

google founders + youtube founders. easy..

Great idea, but by far not knew. Just wonder, how something like Aarons #29 (1.,2.,3.) that can get patented ? Quicken / Money and others are so close to this since a decade, they just did not implement it consequently.
I agree with most others, there is much TC attention.