Making Personal Finance Effortless, Profitable, and Free
This is part 2 of Mint’s story written by Aaron Patzer, founder and CEO of Mint.com. Read part the first part here.
By trade, I’m an inventor of sorts – or at least I like to think so ;-). So in March 2006 I quit my day job as a software architect and came up with a (now patent-pending) way to categorize financial transactions with amazing precision (often 95%+ accuracy), just given a text description.
Automatic categorization — that’s our secret sauce. It let’s you see where your money goes. See how much you spend on DVDs, shoes, clothes, or Thai food – without having to put work into the system. That’s great, it’s an essential feature, but how was a startup going to compete selling boxed software against Intuit and Microsoft? I realized we didn’t want to compete with Intuit or Microsoft… we wanted to make a product for everyone else out there.
For starters, it seemed odd to think about “software-in-a-box” locked to single desktop. I mean really, who does that anymore? Easy decision, Mint would be web-based, available anytime and anywhere you make financial decisions.
Okay, what about price? Quicken charges $30-70 depending on the version; and they’re very clever about up-selling – the average purchase price is $54.
But wait a minute; personal finance software ought to help you have more money…somehow it seems wrong to charge for it.
Free is always the best price for consumers – especially if you’re supposed to be helping them do more with their money. So, we decided Mint would be completely free.
Then we realized Mint could go beyond free – it could actually make users money by…more to come.
So, What is mint, and where can I get it?
I’m really excited about this. CAN’T WAIT!
Free? Whats the business model then? Advertising?
I read that you have a patent pending, how does one go about finding an “honorable” patent attorney without the fear of him/her stealing your invention?
When will Mint be available to the public? I’d love to know more.
Cool, automatic categorization. The perfect feature for lazy guys like me! I’m looking forward to seeing how it works, I hate manually editing categories in Quicken.
Adam,
Mint is a free tool to track, manage and improve your money. It is a free web based tool that should be live in the next few months. We are working hard to make it perfect before we go live. Let me know if you have any other questions.
Joseph,
I talked with Aaron about the process he used to choose a patent attorney and here is what he said. An advisor recommended a certain patent attorney. I think finding one can be easily done online or in the yellow pages. Next, look up all their previous patents at the UPTO website (www.uspto.gov) and see how they word and structure patents. Then ask about their success rate on previous patents filed. As well, if any of their patents are sold you can talk to them about that process. I am sure there is more and this is not supposed to be comprehensive but hopefully it helps. Here is a write up that appears useful:
http://inventors.about.com/cs/patentlaw/ht/Patent_Attorney.htm
If anyone has suggestions, questions or comments; please feel free to email us anytime.
Thank you for your prompt answer!
I have a compound interest spreadsheet and was wondering what would be the Excel Formula(s) for withdrawals?
For Example;
Present Value $10,000
Withdrawal $200 (once a month)
Periods 36 (months)
Years 3
Interest Rate 5%
Future Value ????
Total Interest ???
How would I find the future value and total interest compounded in three years/ with no further contributions and with further contributions using an EXCEL Formula (for withdrawals).
Thank you in advance,
JOSEPH
Noah,
I appreciate your response but I am looking for the EXCEL formula in order to complete my spreadsheet.
Noah,
How are you addressing security and how large is your security team? With banks and credit card companies being compromised I’m more than a little concerned about my entire financial life stored in one convenient, online package.
[…] insight into the upcoming budgeting tool. One feature of the new tool that piqued my interest was automatic categorization of your […]
Aaron, Noah, and the Mint crew,
By way of introduction, I am the Co-Founder and CTO at In2M, the makers of Mvelopes Personal (www.mvelopes.com). You are actively marketing Mint as an Mvelopes alternative and I’m curious what you and those reading this blog didn’t find in Mvelopes that drove you to develop an alternative.
Interested in your comments.
Nick
Jeff,
I will have our VP of Engineering, David Michaels (formerly of PGP) address security in a future post.
Nick,
Nice to meet you. Please feel free to call me anytime and we can chat about Mint, 510 866 6624.
In short, Mint is a free, effortless personal finance tool that also shows you exact ways to save money. There are many different people with different needs around personal finance. Aaron, our CEO, wanted something extremely simple, free (why spend money when we are trying improve people’s finances?) and actionable. There was nothing out there like it and he started coding…
Hey..I am a psychologist interested in money issues….especially for women in their 20’s..once again I am noticing that the majority of the posts are from guys….where are you, young women of the US? About the financial interviews, I think I can shed some light on some of the topics so here it goes…I totally agree that sharing personal stories is one of the best ways to learn and this is especially true for women…who may all be on relationship blogs right now. The sooner you start, the better off you will be. My biggest mistake is the same one that most women make…not getting that interested in money until I got divorced and became a single mom. …and getting too much student loan debt in grad school. I love your idea and am on the list to be notified when your product becomes available . Currently I am using Quicken and I really like it…but guess what, I still write paper checks every week!!! My favorite money book and one of the best ( because it is all based on behavioral finance research and is not just opinion or common sense) is Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes by Gary Belsky. My best move is changing from being a growth investor to a value investor and finding an advisor that I really trust. My biggest is passion is trying to get women in their 20’s interested in money…mostly with my daughters but I have been known to ask my son’s friends if they have opened their Roth IRA yet….I think the Roth is great when your income taxes are still kind of low, before you get self-employed and hit the self-employment tax…it’s more flexible, you can use part of the proceeds at no penalty to make a down payment on your first house and if you are ever disabled you can tap into it with no penalty….take your distributions whenever you want after age 59 and 1/2..(Why the extra 6 months I have to wonder?)….anyway, keep up the good work…sincerely, Dr. Mary Gresham , Atlanta, Ga psychologist
Can we at least see some sort of preview/screenshots/intended feature set of the software. I am highly interested in a web based alternative to quicken for a number of reasons. I am also a fairly impatient person. I just need a bone to chew on to keep me around. I love what I’m hearing here and am very interested, but I’ve been looking at a couple others too. Free sounds great!!! I am also willing to pay a small fee for the features I need though.
I guess the real question I have is how exactly will your service measure up or surpass the completion (web based or not)?
I hope that doesn’t sound to harsh it’s not meant to be…I just don’t see a lot of details here:)
Paul: We do have a post with a slight preview of how Mint can track your spendings.
How well Mint compares to other services and software depends on who the user is. Some people actually like to use Quicken, and carefully categorize each of their expenses. We’re creating Mint for those that don’t have the time or capability to manage their finances (e.g., like categorizing each of their transactions).
In short, we’re focused on a free, simple, and secure personal finance tool that not only shows you where your money is going, but gives you personalized ways to save and make more money via patent pending algorithms.
Will you be able to easily create some sort of spending “budget”, track non spending accounts, and net worth?
I’ve just registered with Mint and and learning all the features. Reading your story I’m more assured that I’ve come to the right product because your story of dealing with MS Money and Quicken parallels my experience as well. Having to manually reconcile and enter missing ledger data was a chore all for just 5 minutes of analysis that I actually wanted which was usually where was I spending my discretionary dollars–dining, entertainment?–should I stay home a few more evenings and actually rein in my fast food spending? That’s all I wanted to know, and every product I tried made it so difficult to know this simple information.
Prior to finding Mint I looked into Mvelopes and QuickenOnline, but both charged monthly fees. I like you thought, “why should I pay to save?” It seems so counterintuitive. Someone who was likewise doing the trial period at QuickenOnline mentioned Mint and so here I am. With Mint I look forward to understanding my budget in 2008 and making management decisions with confidence & knowledge and not fear and intrepediation. If my wife asks me if we can treat ourselves to a nice restaurant this month, I’d like to say, “yes we can!” instead of finding out no we couldn’t when our credit card statement arrives. For accomplishing this simple task, I hope you get your patent!
Eric,
The business model seems to be in the ‘More ways to save’ tab of the software. It shows ways users can switch vendors of their existing services to save money, like Utilities and Credit cards (For example: “You now pay Comcast $150, switch to Verizon FIOS for $100 and save $50 every month.”) There’s a small label ‘Sponsored Advertiesement’ by the side of the vendor (e.g.: Verizon). It seems like Verizon and others pay to have their quotes presented to applicable potential customers. A great twist on the online pay-per-click search business model if you ask me. Looks like there’s growth in this model IMO because the potential cost savings for a user (i.e., a user’s real value) increases the likelihood that Mint actually results in actual business to vendors (as opposed to simply taking you to the vendor’s site and leaving the user to decide the value in selecting that vendor).
Thanks,
Riz.