Posts Tagged ‘Aaron Patzer’

The Huffington Post launched Small Business America, a new, FedEx-sponsored blog focused on the emergence, development, and continued growth of small businesses in the United States.

Co-founder and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington posted on her blog:

The economy is not bouncing back anytime soon. Even worse, it’s clear that Washington is not up to the task of creating the conditions for the job growth the country so desperately needs. And as we find ourselves in the silliest stretch of the electoral silly season, it doesn’t inspire confidence that the government that emerges on Nov. 2 will do any better.

A deep-seated cynicism is not an unreasonable response. But I’m pleased to report that hundreds of thousands of Americans across the country are choosing to react by taking action. As a result, a parallel economy is being created by people who, finding that there are no jobs, have decided to create their own.

Through the creative use of technology, social media, and a focus on community, this new wave of small businesses is making its mark in a true convergence of left and right. At the moment, our government may be can’t-do, but more and more of our citizens are solidly can-do — and irrepressibly American.

To turn a spotlight on this nascent movement and encourage its continued growth, HuffPost is launching Small Business America, a new blog sponsored by FedEx, where entrepreneurs can exchange ideas, get advice, and keep up with the latest small business news. Small Business America’s contributors will run the gamut from CEOs to mom-and-pop business owners to policy-makers, business writers, professors, and social-media experts.

Some of those we’ll be featuring in our first week include: Aaron Patzer, founder of online personal finance site Mint; William Aulet, managing director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center; Karen Mills, administrator of the Small Business Administration; Tim Westergren, founder of online radio site Pandora; and Christopher Hytry Derrington, whose company helps firms outsource their work to rural America instead of overseas.

Small Business America will also feature the first-person accounts of people who have already jumped in and started their own business — as well as those thinking of taking the leap.

How do you start a small online business in a sector with ginormous competitors, one of whom is Microsoft, and then flip it for $170 million dollars just three years later? Just ask Aaron Patzer, founder of financial management service Mint.

Patzer founded Mint when he was 25 in 2006, charging head-first into a field dominated by Microsoft Money and Intuit’s Quicken. He later sold the company to Intuit for a hefty sum. The name of the game for Patzer was simplicity.

“Mint was born of a personal frustration of using personal finance tools which entailed way too much work. Maybe there was a problem when you have to go through 50 screens of setup,” said Patzer in an interview with Pluggd.in, AKA the “TechCrunch of India.”

Patzer’s startup began gathering customers before the service even launched. About 9 months before launching, the Mint team began writing a simple personal finance blog. They used it to collect 20,000 email addresses, which they then used to get people to place Mind badges on their own sites. Essentially free banner ads. The company also got a publicity boost by launching at the TechCrunch40 conference.

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