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.
How financially fit are you? It’s a very important question these days, and the tools to keep you financially healthy are all the rave. 