9 ms·

Mint.com Founder Happy To Sell To Intuit, VC Conspiracy Wrong

31 points by fromedome 17y ago

mikeryan 17y ago
Can anyone guess how much Mint's founder will walk away with? (from crunchbase it looks like they took about $30M in funding and sold for $170M) I've always figured $10M was walk away (from life) money. ($2M to buy a decent house - $8M to invest so that even with a modest return of 5% you'd still be making about $400K a year) I'd say that's a great 2 years of work, I don't need Google Money and I'd be fine with that.
- byoung2 17y ago
  I'd really like to know this too. I could walk away with much less than you, apparently, but my needs are small.
- paul 17y ago
  5% isn't as modest as you think once you take into account inflation and taxes, and the fact that the stock market isn't going to magically go up 10% every year (as many people erroneously assume). Living off of 2% of your assets is a safer and more sustainable assumption.
  - mechanical_fish 17y ago
    True. But I, for one, would be perfectly happy with $160k per year. ;)
  - HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
    Not to mention that if your house is already paid for, you can live on much less than 5%. Housing is far and away most people's biggest expense.
  - sadiq 17y ago
    I did the numbers a few months ago just out of curiosity. If you're buying TIPS (which returned 2% above CPI) and want 50 years of stipend out of your capital, you can get a 3.6% return above inflation. As in, $1m should get you $36k/year for the next 50 years, leaving you with nothing at that point.
  - run4yourlives 17y ago
    So a buck fifty a year with no mortgage and (I would assume) a really nice house... seems pretty decent to me - :)
- skinnymuch 17y ago
  Would you really be gaining 8% per year? I'm not sure how returns work when you're talking about millions of dollars. I assume you are going to leave 3% behind per year for inflation. Just to be safe, I'd rather say you take 3% out each year which would still be $240k, so it's still a lot.
- hyperbovine 17y ago
  $2M to buy a decent house Friend, it's time you moved out of the Bay Area :-)
  - mikeryan 17y ago
    lol true words.
benatkin 17y ago
I agree with this assessment of the situation. I still think that what 37signals is doing is way more interesting (not just their business, but their blog, and the community they're leading), but who am I to criticize either of their careers? They've both had success beyond my wildest dreams.
- pclark 17y ago
  why is what 37 signals does cooler? what do they do? they sell software and have slowly scaled, they aren't trying to go public or take over the world. They aren't even that innovative on the web. there are probably hundreds of companies in an almost identical situation.
  - fallentimes 17y ago
    Their linkbaiting is brilliant.
    - mattmaroon 17y ago
      It is. If only their products or support were. They were snippy with me when trying to get support for Basecamp (which kinda sucks, but we're too lazy to move elsewhere) because my email replies weren't working. Turns out it's because they come from an Exchange Server account. You're basically dirt to them if you don't use gmail. They've built a rinky-dink startup entirely on the back of their blog about how to do startups. That's ironic, but brilliant.
      - deleted 17y ago
        [deleted]
      - jasonfried 17y ago
        Matt, sorry you had a bad experience with our support folks. If you had a problem I definitely want to hear about it. Please email me directly with all the details so I can look into it: jason@37signals... Thanks.
credo 17y ago
The article says "After busting your butt for two years on a startup salary -- and suddenly you have the chance to become a rich hotshot with a big job in a big company -- wouldn't you?" I'm assuming that some/many entrepreneurs would rather work on their startups instead of working in "a big job in a big company". I'm not necessarily suggesting that one is better than the other or commenting on Mint in particular, but I think that the reporter is mistaken in his assumption that people would always choose a big job in a big company.
- wglb 17y ago
  His deal seems particularly attractive given this new information. One can imagine that he has been working 100-120 hour weeks, has no external life. Now he has buckage, gets to continue doing what he did over the last two years, and gets to run something similar. Given that he still gets to work on his startup, what is not to like?
philwelch 17y ago
This is consistent with a story that's been submitted here but not very widely seen: http://www.mint.com/blog/updates/why-mint-com-plus-intuit-is-a-big-idea/ http://www.mint.com/blog/updates/why-mint-com-plus-intuit-is... Of importance: After the acquisition closes, the Mint.com team will be leading the development of both Mint.com and Intuit’s existing personal finance products, Quicken desktop and Quicken Online. The fact that Intuit has agreed to acquire Mint.com, and is leaving our team intact, is evidence that Intuit has been impressed by and wants to build upon the user experience that Mint.com offers. We’ll not only improve upon that experience for Mint.com but also bring our know-how to the Quicken product line. Destroying the Mint.com user experience does not make sense for Intuit, Mint.com or any of our users.
- MaysonL 17y ago
  Interesting. I wonder if there is any possibility that this will have an effect on Intuit in any way comparable to the NeXT acquisition on Apple?
- jacquesm 17y ago
  I hear some echoes here of the pre-deal announcement of the MySQL acquisition by SUN. I'll believe it when two years have passed and Intuit has indeed seen the wisdom of leaving the team in-tact and giving them free reign.
- run4yourlives 17y ago
  Leaders of large companies often understand that they need to bring in outside influence and new ideas to remain competitive; that's a good part of why they make acquisitions after all. The issue is - and you'll understand this if you've ever been acquired or have have tried to innovate in a large organization - that large companies are not run by their C-Suite Executives. Large Companies are run by their internal cultures, bureaucracies and departments; often there are several separate instances of these things too. Like all cultures, they are resistant to being changed unless that change comes from within. Given that, acquired companies tend to be mis-matched in trying to contribute what they know. Even if some of the company listens, there are many areas that aren't interested in what they have to say. The best thing that could ever be hoped for in an acquisition is that the acquired company is run as an independent subsidiary, simply required to funnel money to to parent company. Any time the two companies are asked to merge in any real way, the result is inevitably, regardless of how it is done, the loss of the bought entities ideals, culture and business practices is inevitable.
imgabe 17y ago
That's exactly what someone who was under the thumb of an evil VC conspiracy would say!
jhatcom 17y ago
I'm surprised Mint was successful at all, given that you have to give them your financial account login ids and passwords to use their system. Storing such data centrally seems like a big risk to me.
- akeefer 17y ago
  They don't store it themselves; they use Yodlee to actually store everything, and Yodlee is the one that actually has done all the work (and it's a huge undertaking) to keep everything secure.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    With all the writing about this deal and what gets stored where I think yodlees' profile in the blackhat community has risen considerably in the last couple of days.
jwesley 17y ago
"37signals' Fried, by the way, is a rare case in the Internet industry, in that 37signals has never had to raise a significant amount of venture capital." That statement really shows how ignorant the business press is of the reality of business on the web. The vast majority of web companies never raise money. They are not glamorous, are not written about on the blogs every day, and many are very small, but some of them do become very large businesses as well.

31 points by fromedome 17y ago

Can anyone guess how much Mint's founder will walk away with? (from crunchbase it looks like they took about $30M in funding and sold for $170M) I've always figured $10M was walk away (from life) money. ($2M to buy a decent house - $8M to invest so that even with a modest return of 5% you'd still be making about $400K a year) I'd say that's a great 2 years of work, I don't need Google Money and I'd be fine with that.

byoung2 17y ago
I'd really like to know this too. I could walk away with much less than you, apparently, but my needs are small.
paul 17y ago
5% isn't as modest as you think once you take into account inflation and taxes, and the fact that the stock market isn't going to magically go up 10% every year (as many people erroneously assume). Living off of 2% of your assets is a safer and more sustainable assumption.
- mechanical_fish 17y ago
  True. But I, for one, would be perfectly happy with $160k per year. ;)
- HeyLaughingBoy 17y ago
  Not to mention that if your house is already paid for, you can live on much less than 5%. Housing is far and away most people's biggest expense.
- sadiq 17y ago
  I did the numbers a few months ago just out of curiosity. If you're buying TIPS (which returned 2% above CPI) and want 50 years of stipend out of your capital, you can get a 3.6% return above inflation. As in, $1m should get you $36k/year for the next 50 years, leaving you with nothing at that point.
- run4yourlives 17y ago
  So a buck fifty a year with no mortgage and (I would assume) a really nice house... seems pretty decent to me - :)
skinnymuch 17y ago
Would you really be gaining 8% per year? I'm not sure how returns work when you're talking about millions of dollars. I assume you are going to leave 3% behind per year for inflation. Just to be safe, I'd rather say you take 3% out each year which would still be $240k, so it's still a lot.
hyperbovine 17y ago
$2M to buy a decent house Friend, it's time you moved out of the Bay Area :-)
- mikeryan 17y ago
  lol true words.

benatkin 17y ago

I agree with this assessment of the situation. I still think that what 37signals is doing is way more interesting (not just their business, but their blog, and the community they're leading), but who am I to criticize either of their careers? They've both had success beyond my wildest dreams.

pclark 17y ago
why is what 37 signals does cooler? what do they do? they sell software and have slowly scaled, they aren't trying to go public or take over the world. They aren't even that innovative on the web. there are probably hundreds of companies in an almost identical situation.
- fallentimes 17y ago
  Their linkbaiting is brilliant.
  - mattmaroon 17y ago
    It is. If only their products or support were. They were snippy with me when trying to get support for Basecamp (which kinda sucks, but we're too lazy to move elsewhere) because my email replies weren't working. Turns out it's because they come from an Exchange Server account. You're basically dirt to them if you don't use gmail. They've built a rinky-dink startup entirely on the back of their blog about how to do startups. That's ironic, but brilliant.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
    - jasonfried 17y ago
      Matt, sorry you had a bad experience with our support folks. If you had a problem I definitely want to hear about it. Please email me directly with all the details so I can look into it: jason@37signals... Thanks.

credo 17y ago

The article says "After busting your butt for two years on a startup salary -- and suddenly you have the chance to become a rich hotshot with a big job in a big company -- wouldn't you?" I'm assuming that some/many entrepreneurs would rather work on their startups instead of working in "a big job in a big company". I'm not necessarily suggesting that one is better than the other or commenting on Mint in particular, but I think that the reporter is mistaken in his assumption that people would always choose a big job in a big company.

wglb 17y ago
His deal seems particularly attractive given this new information. One can imagine that he has been working 100-120 hour weeks, has no external life. Now he has buckage, gets to continue doing what he did over the last two years, and gets to run something similar. Given that he still gets to work on his startup, what is not to like?

philwelch 17y ago

This is consistent with a story that's been submitted here but not very widely seen: http://www.mint.com/blog/updates/why-mint-com-plus-intuit-is-a-big-idea/ http://www.mint.com/blog/updates/why-mint-com-plus-intuit-is... Of importance: After the acquisition closes, the Mint.com team will be leading the development of both Mint.com and Intuit’s existing personal finance products, Quicken desktop and Quicken Online. The fact that Intuit has agreed to acquire Mint.com, and is leaving our team intact, is evidence that Intuit has been impressed by and wants to build upon the user experience that Mint.com offers. We’ll not only improve upon that experience for Mint.com but also bring our know-how to the Quicken product line. Destroying the Mint.com user experience does not make sense for Intuit, Mint.com or any of our users.

MaysonL 17y ago
Interesting. I wonder if there is any possibility that this will have an effect on Intuit in any way comparable to the NeXT acquisition on Apple?
jacquesm 17y ago
I hear some echoes here of the pre-deal announcement of the MySQL acquisition by SUN. I'll believe it when two years have passed and Intuit has indeed seen the wisdom of leaving the team in-tact and giving them free reign.
run4yourlives 17y ago
Leaders of large companies often understand that they need to bring in outside influence and new ideas to remain competitive; that's a good part of why they make acquisitions after all. The issue is - and you'll understand this if you've ever been acquired or have have tried to innovate in a large organization - that large companies are not run by their C-Suite Executives. Large Companies are run by their internal cultures, bureaucracies and departments; often there are several separate instances of these things too. Like all cultures, they are resistant to being changed unless that change comes from within. Given that, acquired companies tend to be mis-matched in trying to contribute what they know. Even if some of the company listens, there are many areas that aren't interested in what they have to say. The best thing that could ever be hoped for in an acquisition is that the acquired company is run as an independent subsidiary, simply required to funnel money to to parent company. Any time the two companies are asked to merge in any real way, the result is inevitably, regardless of how it is done, the loss of the bought entities ideals, culture and business practices is inevitable.

imgabe 17y ago

That's exactly what someone who was under the thumb of an evil VC conspiracy would say!

jhatcom 17y ago

I'm surprised Mint was successful at all, given that you have to give them your financial account login ids and passwords to use their system. Storing such data centrally seems like a big risk to me.

akeefer 17y ago
They don't store it themselves; they use Yodlee to actually store everything, and Yodlee is the one that actually has done all the work (and it's a huge undertaking) to keep everything secure.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  With all the writing about this deal and what gets stored where I think yodlees' profile in the blackhat community has risen considerably in the last couple of days.

jwesley 17y ago

"37signals' Fried, by the way, is a rare case in the Internet industry, in that 37signals has never had to raise a significant amount of venture capital." That statement really shows how ignorant the business press is of the reality of business on the web. The vast majority of web companies never raise money. They are not glamorous, are not written about on the blogs every day, and many are very small, but some of them do become very large businesses as well.