New York-based Loudwater Labs has sold the assets of its online personal finance management application Thrive to Tree.com (Nasdaq:TREE), the company behind services such as the formerly IAC-owned LendingTree and RealEstate.com. This means that the publicly listed Tree.com now has a very good resource in its hands as well as sufficient reach to give Mint and other personal finance management tools like Wesabe, Geezeo and Buxfer a good run for their money.
Tree.com Chairman and CEO Doug Lebda commented that the acquisition of Thrive is a perfect fit with the strategic vision of Tree.com, and you don’t have to be a genius to see that he has a point there. Tree.com operates a number of strong brands in the financial and real estate space, and its customer base can clearly benefit from free tools like Thrive which enable users to better monitor, manage and improve their personal financial health, particularly in the tough economic times we’re in.
According to its website (which also includes funny bios for their team members), $225,209,097 is currently managed with the help of Thrive at the time of this writing. For the sake of comparison, Mint says it’s tracking $50 billion in transactions, $15 billion in assets and has identified more than $100 million in potential savings for its users.
The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed and are said not to have had a material impact on the operations of Tree.com. According to the about-page, Thrive’s investors included current and former executives from Paypal, Citigroup Investment Banking and Limewire.
I think Mint is great. I’ve yet to use Thrive, but if tree.com put nearly as much effort as they’ve put into their other properties I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to keep a close eye on it.
It will be interesting to see how they combine the services of of their different sites. Particularly how they combine LendingTree with Thrive. Up until now, these financial aggregator sites (mint, wesabe..etc) have really only provided you with information on what to do with your finances. They have not provided direct mechanisms (with in the same site) to actually do something with your money (e.g. apply for a loan, open a savings account …etc).
Hilarious! The charade continues.
The best part? Mint “has identified more than $100 million in potential savings for its users.” The key word being “potential” but would more honestly be worded as “unlikely” given the financial shell game most Americans play with credit, consolidating debt onto new “low introductory interest rate” cards so they can max out their existing account once more.
Of course, banks (AKA the investors of Mint et al) are quite aware of this behavior. They should be. They created it. Makes a great business plan, unless you have a soul.
If that’s not where Tree.com is taking Thrive then hats off to them but if I were a betting man…
Pity. But what do I know? I’m just a “get out of debt and stay out of debt” kool-aid drinker.
Bill: Set the marketing aside. Leave it completely out of the picture. Then go look at Thrive. Sure, we have a business model and will generate a profit so that we can stay in business. But we didn’t have to build the Financial Health score. We don’t have to give people advice on Spending Rate, Debt-to-Income ratio, and the like. We do these things because we’re committed to helping people improve their financial lives.
The day I decided to put my PhD on hold and join Thrive is the day Avi (co-founder) told me that he wanted to end bad debt in America. This isn’t Mint, which was founded when Aaron Patzer couldn’t get the graph he wanted out of Quicken: there was a mission when we started this and Tree.com knows where we stand – they wouldn’t have it any other way. Remember that LendingTree was started when the founders wanted to find a way to make lenders compete for customers, instead of the other way around.
But look at the specific idea that we want people to get a low card so they can max it out. If that were true, why would we give advice about reducing spending and encouraging people to move money into savings? Banks created these cards for their own reasons, but what we do how we use them to help people get people out of debt and start saving. We can use the same tactics that some banks use to keep people in debt to keep people out of it. How many startups do you know that have a behavioral psychologist? I’m here specifically to beat the folks that want you to spend at their own game.
Give us a try – you might be surprised.
Matt, I sincerely believe every word you said. Your heart seems to be in the right place and I encourage you to follow it. Its hard. I know it.
The issue with Thrive and others like it is the “lead a horse by its tail” approach to budgeting. What Thrive and others call “budgeting” is accounting/spending tracking, looking backward, not forward. Budgeting is a plan on what you intend to do, not a snap shot of what you have done.
I hope readers do not misread my remarks which were targeted mainly at Mint and the like. My hope for Thrive quite possibly got lost in my rant, which seldom happens in blog comments!
I actually agree – we haven’t been able to build out the budgeting feature nearly as much as we’d like to, and there are much better ways to do it than what we have now. Keep an eye on us: I think what we have coming over the next year in terms of new features will really push the envelope of the ways that the web can help people lead better financial lives.
Thanks for taking the time to respond, by the way: we put a ton of heart and our own passion into building this, and it is always nice when people see it peeping through all the things we have yet to do.
Hmm.. so can someone clarify this? What does Thrive actually help me with? In the decision making process in things like choosing a credit card or what investment options to pursue? or a visual display on how I’ve allocated my money, my budget, my future expenses, etc..?
what a load of crap. if thrive wasn’t in business to make a buck off its customers, it would be a nonprofit organization. you guys have no more claim of altruism than intuit, mint, wesabe, h&r block, or the hundreds of other companies managing people’s money.
@garbage… Hello Mr. “I don’t understand people or business and I only define things in black-and-white.”
Even if there was something wrong with combining altruistic motivation with one’s entrepreneurial goals, there would still be a ton of reasons not to be a non-profit. It’s so restrictive that even some charities don’t bother. See Google’s philanthropic arm.
Out of all these services, it seems like Buxfer is the only one that may possible work with Canadian bank accounts… I would love to be able to use something like this north of the border!
We actually do our best to work with as many Canadian banks as possible – if yours isn’t working in Thrive, let us know at support@justthrive.com so we can work hard to add it!
Matt, I would highly recommend that you would change your sign-up process and actually allow a Canadian zip code to be entered! And you’re right, TD and CIBC work fine… AWESOME
I promise it is coming; it is on my list of things to do, but there are so many great features we want to add we honestly can’t keep ahead of them all! It is a nice problem to have.
Glad to hear we have your banks!
When making the comparison to Mint.com though, it’s also important to realize that JustThrive.com was launched 3 months back. The fact that they were able to reach an acquisition opportunity in this economy from a well-known company like tree.com (parent of LendingTree, et. al) and grow their management to a quarter billion dollars is awesome.
Thrive, Mint and others..tell me whats the business model? Swapping out credit cards???? Cmon–who the F wants a new credit card—I’ll take a debit card thank you (and thats not Citi’s Thank You) Tree.com?—don’t they have enough problems in their core business—does this mean they are exiting mortgage leadgen… Good luck Tree managing this remotely…and competing with Mint’s $30Ms wacky vc money they raised.
@moneybutt You are obviously not privy to business models on the web. Mint.com is not going to have to look hard to find their model.
oops!
@monkeybutt…I like @moneybutt better!
hey i love mint—its rootin for them but a money makin venture it aint
moneyBUTT!
I would argue that Mint is poised to build a business model around licensing for financial services. All it would take is for them to license out their platform to brokers, banks and credit card services. At this point Mint is a far better platform for financial management than anything I’ve seen.
I’m surprised when I see all these social media companies getting 8-9 figure valuations, but I believe Mint might have a gold mine. Maybe we’ll see them buy up a PayPal-like service and give Ebay a run for their money. Financial services are going to be huge in the next two years and I think Mint could bring value to this puzzle. I know they’re not directly involved in financial services; but they could be. They already have the respect and trust of $50 Billion worth of transactions.
Mint has become an indispensable service for me. I’m not sure what thrive’s competitive advantage is, but i’d love to see more players in this space.
Also, I’d love to see Mint license their services out to brokers. Scottrade could learn something from Mint when it comes to user interface and interoperability.
Mint has a great iPhone app, by the way…
Congrats to Avi and his team! They are a superb group of entrepreneurs – hard-working, ethical, and fun. I can’t wait to see what they do at Tree.com and beyond.
just as was said the other day. Zecco should buy one of these companies….. clock is ticking
i love how people think mint etc have some magic wand to help you save money. get a new credit card? gee how come i didn’t think of that.
these sites could be replaced with a simple static html 1.0 message:
IF YOU FIND HAPPINESS IN BUYING STUFF, YOU WILL NEVER BE HAPPY AND SOON BROKE. TRY THE LIBRARY INSTEAD OF THE MALL.
“TRY THE LIBRARY INSTEAD OF THE MALL”
Have you been reading our blog?
http://blog.jus...rary-save-1000/
Tree is turning into a juggernaut…..
The problem with mint is I don’t have any money to manage.
The amount of people moving into this space is going to be increasing as we see more consumers focusing on cutting corners, and finding ways to save in any way possible.
Mint is just a front-end UI for Moneycenter.Yodlee.com’s data. Without Yodlee’s back-end infrastructure, Mint would be nothing.