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From the article: When we talked to Yodlee in 2006, the company was crumbling, having failed to get acquired and losing executives. They were also very aggressi
by hariis 16y ago
From the article:
When we talked to Yodlee in 2006, the company was crumbling, having failed to get acquired and losing executives. They were also very aggressive in negotiation, telling us they would give us six months' service nearly free and then tell us the final price we'd be charged going forward.
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This is pretty disturbing to me. It seems what Marc and Wesabe did was the right thing to do to not trust Yodlee HOWEVER, it also appears that the user doesn't care a damn.
How do you handle such situations?
- andreyf 16y agoYou weigh the cost/risk of dealing with Yodlee against making it yourself. Marc seems to have used a usually sound heuristic - I don't trust these people, I don't want to bother working with them. Personally, I would have agreed - a partner that's an aggressive negotiator with high executive turnover can end up being an enormous liability in more ways than one. Better avoid them. But heuristics are by definition imperfect. If Yodlee really gave Mint as much momentum as Marc thinks they did, this might have been an exception to the rule.
- ericb 16y agoIt seems like making a bad decision was key to Mint's success. They built their service so that it relied on the existence of an insolvent, unstable company and got lucky. Yodlee didn't implode, so their shortcut paid off.