Mint, the personal financial site that won TechCrunch40, continues to thrive even as our economy sinks deeper into an economic decline. The company has just been selected as a TechPioneer by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland – an honor only given to 34 companies worldwide (other winners in the tech space this year include Brightcove, Etsy, Mojix, and Slide, with past winners including Google, 23andMe, Infosys, and Mozilla). The World Economic Forum is an international organization aiming to help improve the world, and each TechPioneer is chosen for its contributions towards meeting that goal.
Since launching at TechCrunch40, Mint has amassed 620,000 users – 4 times more than its closest rival according to Compete. CEO Aaron Patzer says that the site is now tracking over $150 billion in total consumer spending, and has also revealed a number of telling trends that display how the economy seems to have impacted consumer spending.
According to Mint’s aggregated anonymized data, overall spending has dropped $400 in the last year, with half of that coming in the last two months. Starbucks spending has dropped around 10% (Starbucks has recently reported a 7% drop in month over month revenue). This kind of data could be incredibly valuable to businesses as a means of predicting spending trends – don’t be surprised if Mint begins offering a premium service for businesses who would gladly pay for aggregated spending totals.
Mint is also going increasingly mobile. Earlier this month the site added SMS support for account updates (text BAL to 696468 (MYMINT) for updates), and a native iPhone application is on the way.
mint is the most really useful application i have seen for last 1 year. It is useful not only to small group of geeks, unlike friendfeed, etc. but to every person who uses bank services (which is must in todays finance system).
mint also serves a solid purpose of organizing and detailed reporting of spendings, and also suggests better alternatives to your current situation.
In a year or two Mint will go very big or will be acquired by a large bank for very big bucks.
Congrats to Mind, two thumbs up.
i guess you’ll soon see boca java sales go up people will start making coffee at home and work
At first I was concerned about them accessing all of my data, but then I used it. This is the killer finances app I was waiting for! Everything in one location! Everyone should use it, IMO.
Great news for Mint, and good to know that some startups, in the right niche, are thriving despite the gloom and doom.
I’m glad to hear it, I think mint deserves the success they’ve had so far. It’s definitely the most streamlined and useful web finance app out there, and I only see it getting better in the future.
I really like mint. Its constantly improving. The only downside of there biz model is that the people who need to use it the most, are going to be hesitant, because they want to avoid/ignore the reality of their situation.
I agree, Mint is very nice. The main benefit over something like MS Money is that Mint’s categorization works very well, so you can analyze your spending accurately. We were able to cut a lot of money out of our monthly spending. I could never use Money’s expense analysis, it couldn’t handle anything. These guys do deserve their success.
Once I read SLIDE was honored by the mention from WEF I stoped reading the post…
They obviously don’t know what they’re talking about…
I was thinking the exact same thing. Don’t they make superpoke or some such nonsense? This seems quite ridiculous. Who makes these choices and what are the criteria?
Hey, Slide is making the world a better place!
Slide will save us from the Great Depression!
I thought so as well, Davos usually has some high standards so I thought that it was great Mint got selected.. but Slide? Is this a popularity contest?
Slide is pure trash.
That just proves how clueless most people are.
The SMS updates have been available for much longer than a month, I’ve been getting them for at least 4 months now, maybe even a year I can’t remember exactly. The weekly balance reports are cool but the notices of unusual spending and other alerts always seem to have too much of a delay to really be useful. Also it would be nice if you visit the site and see the alert there that it wouldn’t then send the text later anyway. Oh well i’ll be getting the iPhone soon and by that time hopefully the mint app is ready.
Alright I didn’t read carefully enough, you meant just for balance updates, my bad. Mint rocks by the way.
I started using Mint soon after launch. By enabling me to view an integrating dashboard of all my accounts, I was able to quickly identify some fraudulent activity in one of my bank accounts. Mint enabled me to contact my bank in order to stop any further illegal credit card or loan activity.
My advise to all is to check your banking activity everyday via Mint.
Second that. I found a company called “Reservation Rewards” charging a monthly fee for a service that I hadn’t subscribed for.
Also, SMS updates for pending bills rock! Keep up the good work Mint!
congratulations Mint! Now, can we please get a version that works in Canada?
I used Mint for a long time but found that the amount of work I had to do to constantly categorize the checks and debits made it cost prohibitive.
Oh wait. It’s free.
I mean it made the opportunity cost rise.
Wait.
I mean I had to get back to Socom on the the PS3.
I would really, really, really love to be able to use this website in Europe.
QuickenOnline supports one of my banks, but Mint seems to be a vastly superior product.
I don’t find Mint that useful. It doesn’t do what Moneydance does for me. The aggregation scares the living daylight out of me. Why would I give free reign to a company over my spending? One day the company can hold me hostage like hosting companies did to my business. Oh well … people who think Mint is great will learn a devastating lesson that free isn’t always what it crack up to be. A company needs to make money, and they will do it however they can.
I agree it will be interesting to see what the need for revenue does to Mint. But I’m not sure what scares you so much. How are they going to hold your spending hostage again?
I love Mint.com. Over the past nine months, it has been a crucial tool for me in managing my finances. In fact, I just paid my credit card balance down to $0 today, and Mint helped me set up my monthly budget to get that done.
You’re a hypocrite. When millions of people are under the poverty level and you here worry about paying down your credit card bill? Where’s your humanity? Why don’t use your money to help the poor?!?
There should be law for people like you who has no sympathy for others.
Are you an idiot, Leah? Why do liberals always what to help others using someone’s else money. Use you own money and help whomever you want. Plus, a person can’t be efficient in helping others, if that person has loans and credit card balances to pay off.
Congrats Mint. Definitely beats the pants off Wesabe. And there was another that came out about the same time as Wesabe… can’t remember the name. Anyway, after trying to set up my multi-account view on both of those competitors and experiencing all kinds of difficulties, I have a greater appreciation for how well Mint works.
I suppose this is a problem for any personal finance application, but my purchases never go into neat categories. I’ll go into Wal-greens and get some gum and $30 back to buy beer across the street, and Mint will record it as health or whatever.
Anyone find good solutions for this kind of issue? Or do you do it manually?
I use to think the same thing, but In the newest version of mint you can now “split” your purchases. so in that case you can split it into two purchases with gum for a buck and 30 bucks for beer. you can also create your own categories now so you can really get some useful groupings like what you spend buying beer at the liquor store vs the bars.
so yea its manual. i find after a few adjustments to businesses i visit frequently it gets about 8-10 transactions categorized right. then once a week or so i sift through and adjust the rest. i just try to avoid cash and charge everything i can to my debit card. it can’t make some local businesses happy i guess though getting hit with the credit card fee for every transaction just so i can have it automatically categorized for me in my online finance app, haha. anyone else do this?
Mint is cool! It showed me how much I was really spending on fast food per month. yuck.
Their Flex interface is really nice as well!
Nothing is Free once you define the currency. Is Google free?
I concur with you. They will sell your data to the highest bidder without giving anything in return. This free service is fishy like how facebook like to hold hostage of my personal information. I asked them repeatedly remove my personal information, they refused. They said I can only deactivate my account. WTF!?!!? I will need to file a lawsuit with Facebook for violating my right to privacy.
Mint looks and feels pretty darned good, but it is frustrating that for most of the four months I’ve been using it, several accounts for extended periods won’t connect to Mint – they worked once, but don’t work now. If it only partly works, it’s not nearly as useful. I’m about to give up.
mint seems useful now
That’s awesome for Mint. We (NewsCred) was nominated but fell short of the final selection. I’ll be rooting for the others to do well and hopefully help in making the world just a little bit better. I do agree that I find it difficult to understand how Slide will do that, but I’m sure they’ll come up with something!
The problem I have with Mint is I just can’t seem to get over the idea of storing ALL of my user/passwords to my bank accounts one someone else’s server. Mint is such a prime target for hackers.
With a persons user/pass they can get old statements, account numbers, etc.
I would love to be convinced that this isn’t a big concern. Anyone? Desperately want to fire Quicken.
For those who can’t wait Moneytrackin.com does already have a native iPhone app available for its users
http://blog.mon...on-apple-store/