#Intuit mint founded how to

It’s a very good brand name for what we’re doing. is quality, it’s a place where money is made, it’s short and spelled unambiguously. There are some people you will never convince, and who to this day won’t buy anything online. In our first four months, over 100,000 people have entered their financial information into, and we’ve had no security breaches at all. That said, pretty much every investor I went to said we would fail for exactly the reasons you outlined: no one is going to trust an unknown startup with their financial information. We also have bank-level data security, along with low-balance and unusual spending alerts to help you proactively identify fraud or identity theft. Regarding security, keep in mind has a read-only connection to your bank account, so you can’t actually move money around and no one can drain your accounts. Mint represents a neat idea, with a pretty absurdly bold requirement - having people punch their financial login credentials into an unknown site - how did you sell this idea to investors, and how were you so sure it would fly? I was new to Silicon Valley, and really didn’t know any other engineers or people who could help, so I did most of our pre-alpha or prototype release myself.Ģ. And I’m really persistent – I worked 14 hours a day, 6.5 days a week for 6 months straight before we had any funding. But I was really good at one thing: algorithms. I knew nothing about Java web services, little about databases, little about management, and only some on recruiting and building a company. Remember at the time, I had not done web development in 8 years. When ever I got down, I would listen to 'That’s Life' by Frank Sinatra, or think about a Shakespeare quote I liked as a kid: 'Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we might oft win, by fearing to attempt.' You see your net worth quickly draining, you have no idea what’s going to happen next, and you’re sitting alone in a room with no help, no resources, just your brain and sheer will-power. Who am I to take on Intuit and Microsoft? If this was a good idea, someone would have done it before.' It’s very emotional, and I don’t think people ever tell you about that. I was 25 at the time, and basically oscillated day to day between thinking 'This is the greatest idea ever!' and 'This will never work.

But I can’t live with going half-way, part-time.” So on March 1, I quit my job and began working on Mint. One day I said to myself: “If I give it 100% and fail, I can live with that. But it’s hard to find the time when you’ve got a full-time (and very demanding job). I began to think about the business nights and weekends. I got this idea in my head that I really don’t want to put so much work into my finances anymore – I want to make the whole process effortless and automated. In its first month, Mint signed up 50,000 users.īy the end of the year, it had passed the 100,000 user mark. Among 700 startups, narrowed to 40, Mint went on to win the event. In mid 2007 he emerged from stealth mode and launched at the Techcrunch40 conference on September 18, 2007. The company that would become Mint was born. After a disappointing experience with Microsoft Money, and Intuit's Quicken he figured there had to be an easier, quicker, and more automated way to organize his finances.

#Intuit mint founded how to

What followed was work for IBM working on the Cell microprocessor (used in the Playstation 3, and it has three of his patents on it) then for a startup, Nascentric where he learned how to build a company from scratch.ĭuring this time Aaron was working 70-80 hours a week, and neglecting his finances. He found that to be 'thoroughly impractical' and instead earned his MSEE from Princeton University. thinking that was a requirement of any good inventor. He attended Duke University earning undergrad degrees in computer science, and electrical engineering, and computer engineering. One of those freakishly-smart guys, he started playing around with computers when he was six years old, ran a BBS when he was 10, and started his first web development business when he was 16. Not a bad ROI.Īaron Patzer started Mint when he was just 25. After a struggle with the scammers my brother got a $328 refund, and a stop to the bleeding. I first started paying attention to Mint when my brother, a dirt-poor college student sent me an arm-flapping, breathless, urgent email telling me how he'd signed up at and that it found a $9 per month charge from an obscure company. Interview with Aaron Patzer, founder of Februin An interview