Mint, the popular personal finance site that won 2007’s TechCrunch40 conference, has closed a new $14 million Series C funding round. Silicon Alley Insider discovered the round in an SEC filing this morning, and we’ve just gotten off the phone with CEO Aaron Patzer, who confirmed the deal and filled us in on the details.
The $14 million round was led by DAG Ventures, and also includes newcomer Founder’s Fund. Existing investors Benchmark Capital, Shasta Ventures, First Round Capital, and Sherpalo Ventures all participated as well. Patzer declined to comment on the company’s valuation, but says that it is “decidedly an up round” and that it was preemptive. Mint hasn’t disclosed its revenues, but Patzer says that they’re up 8x year over year.
Since launching at TechCrunch40 in 2007, Mint has grown to 1.4 million registered users, tracking $175 billion in transactions and $47 billion in assets. The site also reports that it has identified $300 million in potential savings offers for its users. It primarily makes its money by generating leads for financial institutions, but it’s also sitting on a goldmine of user data that it hasn’t even begun to tap into yet.
Because Mint pulls data directly from financial institutions, it knows where people are shopping and how much they’re spending. It can use this anonymized data in aggregate to track performance of entire industries or even individual stores. Up until now Mint hasn’t done anything with its merchant level data, but it’s beginning to open that up to press (see the chart below for a look at how the downturn is affecting grocery stores, which shows high end stores like Whole Foods and Bristol Farms taking a big hit in the down economy). This kind of data can be very valuable — don’t be surprised if we start seeing Mint leverage in other, more lucrative ways.
Congrats.
You deserve a full pound of chocolate covered bacon. Maybe Peter T will send you some as congratulations too!
Isn’t this the same guys who stated that they would sell their user data to generate revenue?
http://www.read...d_data_from.php
No thanks Mint, you can keep your $14 million and shove it. I value a little thing called privacy.
I second that.
didn’t mint rip off yodlee.com?
How much debt do their 1.4M users have?
I use Mint. It has suggested some good savings and credit cards for me, and it is a very simple interface. I’m surprised it doesn’t get new users faster.
Because a very large % of people are still scared to death of handing over their banking and financial account information to a 3rd party. That is why.
I certainly am. Although Mint has all my credit card info, handing over my bank info was beyond me – even so, it does a great job tracking purchases.
I contacted my bank and asked them whether an API could be arranged. Mint would do well to work with larger institutions on this – it would probably make the banks happier to know that, for example, their users’ secret questions weren’t in the hands of third parties.
I find it more safe to be able to view and review all of your financial information at once rather than having all of your financial institutions and financial information in different places. I think people using Mint would notice bank errors or credit issues a lot easier than someone not using an aggregate site.
Maybe they will finally expand to Canada! goodluck getting the .ca domain though
I’m still waiting for this. Unfortunately I am both Canadian and a Mac user, a combination that leaves me with the worst financial software tool known to man: Quicken for Mac.
I second that. I looked into Mint a while ago and even created an account before I realized that they weren’t available here. Not only the domain, good luck trying to deal with our banks.
Then again, thinking about privacy maybe I’d rather my data stays north of the border and not subject to the Patriot Act.
Mint pulls data from Yodlee as far as I can tell.
Yes it does. Their security is rock solid. We’ve done ethical hacks and they passed with flying colors.
I use Mint and find it marginally valuable. It certainly saves me the time of logging into my four bank/credit card accounts. They need more facile analytics tools to make it valuable to me. Right now it’s pretty bare bones.
Incidentally, that graphic above is *awful*. Someone needs a huge dose of Edward Tufte in their lives, because that graphic only obfuscates the simple data set contained therein.
totally agree about the graphic
god heck yes thirded
I am starting to agree. I have been patiently using Mint since very early on, but I am starting to get frustrated with the many many quirks and down right problems that I have been trying to bring to their attention since the beginning. Some things have been improved – for which I applaud them – but there are some really critical issues that create a variance between what Mint thinks it is, a useful tool for people to centrally and visually manage their money; and what it really is, a lot of flash-bang that frustrates as you start using it more often.
They need to seriously focus on ironing out the wrinkles in what they offer now before they start expanding and branching out. The danger comes from losing the attention of early adopters and those least paranoid.
Just my opinion as a long time user though
Investment graphs need to allow individual investments to be turned on and off;
It would be really useful to have a real income/outflow comparison running in the trends as well as the spending categorization. That flow trend and future expense estimation are the two features that I think are nicer on Quicken Online than Mint. However, I’m still primarily using Mint. I have Quicken also tracking all my accounts though so I have that data pool available if I switch for other features later. I value privacy, sure, but where I spend more of my money is something I’m willing to divulge for the features I’m getting.
“It primarily makes its money by generating leads for financial institutions, but it’s also sitting on a goldmine of user data that it hasn’t even begun to tap into yet.”
Translation: They haven’t found a path to profitability yet.
better translation – they’ll know earning reports before the market does.
actual translation – “It primarily makes its insignificate money by generating leads for financial institutions, but it’s also sitting on a few billion dollars via user’s bank account info that it hasn’t even begun to tap into yet.
They’ve got a front row seat to what each one of their users does with their money. If you can’t figure out a way to monetize that, you need to find a new profession.
Wow, $31.8M for 1.4 users, that’s like $22/user.
Combine that with 1.4M registered likely means no more than 20% actually use it regularly, and you have a whopping $110/user.
Rock on.
Am I the only one for who the numbers got from my bank are not correct in Mint.com ? Mint credits me with more money that I actually have
and by a whopping $50k now. I think Mint got confused by BoA CDs rollovers. If it does the same for only 10% of its users (140K x $50K, it is $7B of fictive assets.
Hey, lucky you, free money!
My Mint account had problems in the other direction. It was duplicating some of my student loans, so it was showing I had less total assets than I really did.
Every time I see the name Mint name on TC I keep hoping it is to announce that they are expanding into Canada. Alas, that isn’t the case yet – hopefully soon!
GReat job! this is the way personal finances will be run in the future… and banks should carefully watch Aaron’s steps…
Am I the only person who gets nervous when they hear “This kind of data can be very valuable — don’t be surprised if we start seeing Mint leverage in other, more lucrative ways.” when the data in question is my personal finance accounts?
I know it’s being an alarmist when it’s probably not an issue but there should be an option to opt out of being included in this. Some people will say that other companies have the same access to data (credit card companies for example), but I don’t like it when they sell my data either. Two companies selling my data is no better than one.
When an internet start-up goes belly up they don’t have the government oversight and high visibilility that the banks do. And start-ups go belly up more often than big banks and credit card companies. I like to think that the shareholders of a start-up will destroy their servers containing customer data when they die, but more often the equipment is liquidated and could end up anywhere.
Yeah, I know how you feel. I never leave my house because I’m scared I’ll be killed by lightning…
Hmmm… one might be crazy to try to compete with these guys! :\
One might be crazy to hand over all your secure authentication and financial account information to a third-party Web start-up.
Kind of like getting all of your financial statements sent to you via a third party – the US mail. Scary stuff…
Quit being a jackass. None of the comparisons you are trying to make even come remotely close to sensible.
a) Using the US mail for account statements
Vs.
b) Giving out login credentials for one’s financial accounts to a venture backed startup w/o a fully baked monetization strategy
Perhaps you’ve heard of Acxiom? Equifax? These companies could provide an exit for Mint one day and not everyone wants that info so easily accessed by 3rd parties.
Then don’t use the service, its just that simple. But it is absurd to say people who use it are ‘crazy’. I use it, and I’m not crazy. It is a financial tool; like any other, used to your advantage it benefits you and has some potential risk which you CAN mitigate.
I tried Mint way back when and found it to be only marginally useful. The so-called “savings” were the standard kind of garbage you get like different calling plans for mobile. Gee, thanks. I also don’t like any one company having all of my data aggregated to it. I also seem to recall asking my account to be canceled and it took forever to happen. If this company becomes a success I’ll eat my…well, mint.
/Ira
it’s changed a lot, you should try it again.. that’s the beauty of SaaS. I tried it way back too and I’ve been very impressed with how much has changed, and for the better.
Mint has a future, hopefully one that includes making American’s smarter about their money.
I take a different view of Mint’s risks than most in this comment thread. I don’t see the fear of handing over account info as their biggest barrier. Not only do we already do this every day, we do it more and more. It’s part of life.
The risks I see instead are:
1. they make a living referring people to get new credit cards. In a world where consumer debt is evaporating, and lending standards tightening, this is a bad bet. Still a huge market, but so is real estate and I wouldn’t want to be in that market either.
2. I met Aaron and he was an insanely arrogant prick. Like, so much so that I wouldn’t do business with Mint. I hear I am not alone.
I can seriously see how they could make money…. serious money….. in a world where people supposedly will save. But, they don’t pay me….
Ha, that’s funny about Aaron. I remember being put-off my him when I bumped into him and 25 of his coworkers at my favorite taco place in Mountain View. There was definitely some arrogance in the interaction when I asked him if they were standing in line.
I used Mint way back when it first came out, but at the time it wasn’t separating personal accounts from business accounts, so it was useless. I should try using it again, though I already know I spend way too much on food and don’t need anything reminding me.
Wait, it can separate personal accounts from business accounts now? I have never come across that. All mine are mashed together and the trends reports are all but useless because it tries to classify all kinds of business expenses as things like groceries and shopping. For example, my transaction fees paid to Discover for accepting their credit cards get recorded as shopping trips to the Discovery store.
Love Mint, great site.
I’d say the business model eventually grinds to a halt when the banks who are paying mint commissions for new accounts realize that the 20% of users who might switch banks because of a Mint recommendation are just jumping back and forth between Wells Fargo and Ally. It could become just a jumping back and forth game and the banks will eventually figure that out.
Well that’s true of ANY customer acquisition vehicle / medium that is promiscuous (which is all of them). Take a look at the pulled filing for creditcards.com for instance — that thing is a cash machine in credit card referral fees, and the banks obviously know that they’re poaching each others’ customers.
47B among 1.4M users implies about 30K per user on average.
anyone who keeps 30K in bank deposits needs to have their head examined. no wonder these folks are willing to hand over the keys to Mint site unseen.
They also track retirement and brokerage accounts. Which you could be excused for not knowing, given that they’ve hidden that, Purloined Letter style, right on their home page.
In addition to retirement, brokerage, CDs and all the other kinds of accounts they track beyond just savings and checking, they also let you type in your own assets. You can put in the value of your cars, for example, if you want Mint to include it in your net worth.
Hope their fate is better than Yodlee’s
Their dataset is undoubtedly a goldmine, but I would bet that it does exhibit substantial selection bias. i.e. toward the young and toward the less wealthy. Wealthy folks are naturally going to be less likely to track or care about the minutiae of cell phone plans or credit cards, and have far too much to lose if the data gets stolen. Those two biases (younger and poorer) are correlated as well.
Still, I’ll bet these guys know how American Outfitters’ quarter is going before AO’s CFO does.
I have always been a big fan of Mint.com and the business has done extremely well in last couple of years. It is one of the rare success stories in the recent times. Lendingtree just launched a product similar to Mint’s – so the competition in this space is going to heat up soon.
Their plans for expansion seem to be going very very slowly, and I just wish someone from outside the states would invest in them. You only have to look through Mints forums and blog comments to see people screaming out for expansion into Canada and the UK, but with no response from anyone.
The UK in particularly is screaming out for something like this, I just hope they get around to it and soon.
Mint is not working directly with any banks in any region, so it’s no wonder they’re not expanding. They’re relying entirely on outside services like Yodlee to get bank data securely, so if those services don’t expand, neither does Mint.
regulatory issues make expansion difficult.
one security breach would make things even more difiicult.
obviously they are executing very well on the marketing front and require the capital for customer acquisiton expenses. the bounce rate of 50% indicates these are not small.
Mint needs some gears implementation badly. It logs you out every ten minutes and managing your money is inherently a “wait a second let me go find that…” type of exercise. Im at home, relax!
Plus I finally got rid of my B of A account (see you in the 9th circle of hell bofa) and I lost all the purchase data I created over 5 years. This site needs help!
You should have disabled the account by marking it ‘closed’ without deleting it. The purchase data would remain intact and be included in trends, while the account will no longer retrieve data from the bank.
I love mint. If one is afraid of using a utility like mint they might as well stop using ATM’s.
The best part of the image is the misspelling of “Change”
ha! they fixed it.
ok, in light of the hype i created an account and linked it to my credit cards.
mysteriously several of my charges show up twice causing me to login to the bank for a double take. and then, 60% of the charges came up as uncategorized. no useful tips to saving or reallocating dollars, beyond spammy iformercials offering credit checks and more credit cards.
i would be keen to learn more about the demographic that loves this.
The automatic categorization is partially learned as you get more transactions, and as you apply categories yourself. It is not necessary to do every one of them, after a month or two of data it starts to get VERY good at it.
There are other sites that are NOT good at categorization however. Geezeo, Buxfer, Yodlee, Quicken Online are all fairly bad at it, but Quicken is the better of the worst.
If ‘useful tips’ is what you really were after, a social networking tool like Geezeo would have been a better choice, but you should know how to save money already (stop spending some of it). The point of Mint is learning WHERE you’re spending your money by accurately tracking it, with a pain-free method. Everyone knows manually balancing all your accounts will give you the same info, it just sucks.
Wow, thats amazing. Who would have thunk it??
RT
http://www.anon...eb-tools.net.tc
I really didn’t use mint much until I added my Scottrade and my other investment accounts. I prefer this to logging into each site. Half of the investing companies have terrible UI’s on their websites and all have different security and password requirements. I must admit that I use mint a bit less since plugging all my investments into Google Finance. Problem is Google Finance requires me to update it with any trades or changes I make, if Google bought Mint, bowdown.
If Google bought Mint there would be thousands of people crafting new tinfoil hats. I agree it would lead to an amazing web tool though. I use Google Finance alot, and Mint would be very much improved by some hardcore Gearization and better statistics and trend graphs (Google Analytics style!).
Bottom line everyone, it’s a free service, like gmail and yahoo and so on. If it’s free your signing over some amount of your personal privacy. There is no getting around it. If you want to feed into the the mega-corps hands like Wal-Mart and other corporate atrocities hand over your personal information and play victim. They make personal financial programs for you and you alone to monitor your spending. Personally I think it’s a crock of shit. Good luck.
amazing !!!!!!!!!