We (RescueTime, YC08) have a lot in common with Mint. Having experimented with it a fair bit, I can safely say that if it's not a content site with CRAP-TONS o

We (RescueTime, YC08) have a lot in common with Mint. Having experimented with it a fair bit, I can safely say that if it's not a content site with CRAP-TONS of page views, it's really hard to make PPC ads work. Stuff like Gmail is not a big win in terms of CTR because users quickly learn to ignore the ads-- and neither is Mint or RescueTime (our baby). Mint can play the leadgen game (sending people to different banks) but bank changes and new mortgages are rare decisions and I'd imagine that Mint users often ignore the lead gen links and focus on their own content. I also imagine that they have a similar problem that we do-- giving people data visualization isn't inherently sticky and people drift away from data like this. It gets boring. And because it's self-improvement/awareness focused, it's like a gym that doesn't have a membership fee and has no cancellation cost-- few people are disciplined enough to stick with it. On the data asset front, we have the same type of asset. But it only really has value (beyond linkbait/PR) if it's a representative population. I'd wager Mint's userbase decidedly doesn't NOT represent a cross-section of America. I think Mint has a lot of promise, but I think they have some tough problems to solve. And by taking $14m (presumably on a $50m valuation), they've just signed up for a very very long road.