More information is coming in about that $14 million third round of financing that personal finance service Mint closed last month. That financing, we’ve heard from two sources close to the company, valued Mint at a whopping $140 million post-money valuation.
That’s not bad for a company that launched just two years ago – Mint won the top prize at TechCrunch50 2007.
In a “normal” round of financing a company would dilute by 25-35%, meaning the expected valuation on a $14 million round would be, roughly, $45 million – $60 million. The $140 million valuation shows two things – Mint is on a roll, and they don’t seem to need much capital.
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.
They’d have 1,400,001 if they supported England banks
It’s quite sad, most exiting services are US-centric. But then, services such as Mint would have a hard time making inroads into other country. I don’t suppose the local regulators would play much nice either.
For UK bank I’ve tried egg money manager and buxfer and I’m sticking with the latter.
I think this is the opportunity for UK startups. Just copy the idea and make money.
Hello people,
In fact there *is* already a UK solution at http://www.kublax.com (twitter @kublax) …! (And IMHO it’s far better than egg money manager or buxfer)
I was a beta tester when Mint first launched in 2007, and they’ve come a long way. It wasn’t until this year that I really started regularly checking in on my financial accounts with Mint.
They aren’t just a pretty design, I’ve been recommending pretty much all my friends there for easy snapshots of your financial habits.
Congratulations, that’s good news! 140 mio is great Value !
Well, check it out, they’ll never be profitable if they always need financing. Its not as if they’re doing rocket science or something over there.
Somehow, I’m tired of hearing about funding rounds to companies that shouldn’t need them.
How much money do they make? That’s the real question. Are they profitable?
Didn’t you hear? They sell your data to credit card companies.
Yup. This is why they only offer credit card, brokerage, or bank savings, rather than the everyday kind of savings we could really use.
Should be based on our actual transactions, not accounts used to transact. See my post below.
They offer savings accounts. See the tab that says…. “Savings”. Or if you want to blow your mind, click “Checking”
They better be spending that money keeping my account info safe! Great way to track credit card spending, just got on board a few months ago.
Great product. Use it weekly. However, their savings offers are rubbish and their investment section has been broken since launch.
They should offer savings based on your transactions, not the cards and accounts you use to transact.
Yeah, the savings aren’t amazing.
300 million in savings out of 175 billion in transactions.
0.17% in savings?
That works out to almost $215.00 per user. I’d take it, even if that’s only 0.17% of each transaction.
I had an account there but deleted it. If they make it possible for me to pay all my bills through their site I will register again.
They will be acquired with in 6 months from what i can say..
cheers, Nag
It’s pretty good. I just have a few qualms (I still use it).
The iPhone app NEEDS TO HAVE A PASSWORD. PERIOD. I already have a password for my iPhone, but extra security is always a plus.
And if it were possible to edit information about my budgets, that’d be great. Right now the iPhone app is pretty bare bones.
Other than that, the service is great. Because I don’t actually put in information into the program, I actually use it more to check on how I’m *wasting* my money. It’s all around good.
To celebrate, TC should give away Mint t-shirts.
I second that
Funny. I put the value of my car/home at 1.1 billion. Funny how they use those numbers in their pitch.
“it’s also sitting on a goldmine of user data that it hasn’t even begun to tap into yet”
…By selling it to the Russian mob?
No, credit card companies
You could hit on retailers stock price using the info they can compile… what about that?
Aaron Patzer FTW
Mike,
Don’t you think, your 25-35% # is high for a Series C with previous investors returning to maintain ownership? The cap table is so crowded you could guess first round is the only firm who still has 20+%
mint is powered by yodlee, and yodlee does everything mint does way better. why don’t people just use yodlee?
because mint is cool.
because Yodlle is ugly and Mint is beautiful (and easy to use)
Congrats to Mint.
For those interested in having the choice of aggregating and tracking their finances for free via manual file uploads in addition to automatic bank feeds you can do so on moneyStrands.
@jagtesh
Manual accounts coupled with built in support for 44 different currencies also enables non-US users to benefit from the same personal finance management functionality those in US have been enjoying.
Atakan Cetinsoy
http://www.moneyStrands.com
LOVE LOVE LOVE the idea and the general idea and implementation Mint has adopted…BUT…services like Mint have to work with “The Banks” to be able to get/store your data going back more than 90 days.
For some reason when you signup to Mint.com or others you are limited to 90 days worth of data…why?
I would probably switch banks if one would buy a
Mint.com and offer SIMPLICITY in BANKING!
(that goes for my business account too!)
You’re only limited to 90 days of data going back from when you sign up. Mint will keep your history as long as your accounts are active. I have two years of spending data in Mint now.
Congrats Aaron. This is great, and you certainly earned it. It’s been fun watching you guys grow since those early STIRR events. Feels like every time I turn around Mint is being featured in some personal finance article or in an iPhone app. Keep it up.
I like the 1.4 million users. However, at the end of the day, what is their revenue (and revenue model). 1.4 million is a great number, but 1% conversion paying $2/mo is not interesting.
Congrats to Mint.
Lead gen is a proven way to monetize the consumer web and Mint has done a great job leveraging this.
The valuation must be placing a big value on the data that Mint is collecting as lead gen companies typically are valued at 9-10x net profits.
Using some industry standard assumptions, you can value Mint based on their lead gen business…
Assuming 1.4M users, a 5% conversion rate (typical), 2 leads per user (possible), that would mean 140,000 leads a year. Assuming a $50 lead price (typical) that would lead to $7M in revenue. Assuming 60% net margins (aggressive), that puts net margins at $4.2M. A multiple of 10X net profits puts the valuation at $42M.
There must be some magic in that data they are collecting.
All the customer financial credentials they muck themselves up with have to be worth at least $140 million in fraud.
“…but it’s also sitting on a goldmine of user data that it hasn’t even begun to tap into yet. ”
What do you have in mind ?
I happen to live in mountain view. I was walking and passed a sign that says MINT. It was the headquarters of this startup. It is in one of the most ruined buildings in the city. No security. I entered and nobody stopped me. Many PCs unlocked without people in front of them. I can’t believe people is entering financial information in this site!
I wouldn’t share my drivers license plate number with them! I hope they use this money just for customer security.
In my above comment regarding how lax Mint’s security is I forgot to add the following, absolutely true and irrefutable facts: I am a multi-billionaire, I am currently dating multiple super models, and the latest Batman movie is based on my life.
EVERYTHING YOU READ ON THE INTERNET IS TRUE!
Goes to show that a simple idea with stellar vision and execution can go long ways.
At the end of the day Mint is an affiliate website.
What are the revenues???? Amazing that the valuation is known but revenues are not.
This is a deserved valuation.
They’re one good CEO away from $140 in revenue too. If an Austin Ventures placed a CEO here like they did with CreditCards.com, they’d be over $100mm/yr by this time next year
$140M valuation for a company with zero revenue? What year are we in again?
i’m almost finally ready to sign up and trust them with my account info. almost.
I looked at Mint, discovered that UK users aren’t covered at all. Kept my account in the hope they’d at least do something about it. Deleted my account a few months ago as the have no interest in the UK.
Found Wesabe a few months, manual uploads mean a majority of banks are covered. Plus they cover some UK banks with automatic uploads too. It lacks a few features but the team listen and give feedback. Never seen that with Mint.
i m liking this!
Mint, please open up in Europe!
Both my current bank and my previous bank offer tools and services like this through their on-line banking. So why do I need Mint?
Yodlee is probably the one that supports your banks Mike, similar to the way they work with Mint.
Here is a savings tip, use CASH. We started going back to using cash exclusively. Easier to manage. Easy to save. No fees etc.
Wow, must be nice having barrels of cash lying around!
RT
http://www.anonymous-web.be.tc
Mint.com is no good for credit cards, Canadians or other countries. Try Wesabe http://www.wesabe.com or Quicken Online http://www.quickenonline.com
They both provide an iPhone password as well.
Mint stopped growing in January 2009. Just check Quantcast and Compete.
They have no where to grow into, as they hit a wall of the people willing to give their personal accounts to manage their money.
All this bull on identifying savings is a fancy way to say they manage to sell CPM ads for A LOT of money. Once advertisers will discontinue paying these rates then Mint will have a huge problem.
Just tried and deleted my account a few minutes later..
Not sure I really trust security of a company with staff of 28. Sure, the big boys have problems, but 2 things – I have some who I can sue and I don’t have all my data in one place. On mint I can loose it all. I need Chase, BofA, and my Schwab (401K) to all get hacked before I loose it all.. not at mint..
also, seems to be HEAVILY focused on add support. Givne the volume of advertising these days, the last plac eI want people asking me for money is when I am seeing how little of it I have..
I am guessing that mint is very profitable considering all the ads they have to get you to sign up for new credit cards, etc. I don’t know their rates but I know some credit card companies pay out $20 per referral.
Is this with valley investors or all investors? It’s the rut of DRY POWDER!! They have put the money in before.. so now they have to get it moving or else they have to wind down without exit!! na-na.. not a possibility. Interesting will be to find out who (ever) would give Mint an exit
I don’t think they even store your passwords. That’s all on yodlee’s side. Once you’ve confirmed once that you’re the account owner, my understanding is that mint effectively gets a token allowing them read-only access to your transactional data. I don’t believe they have full account numbers or any crazy data beyond your buying habits (which, frankly, I don’t see as ultra-sensitive).
I suspect the biggest opportunity for them is simply to grow internationally and possibly do various bizdev partnerships (e.g. cobranded “savings” portals and stuff like that)…140 MM at the end of the day doesn’t seem astronomical given that the only thing that even comes slightly close to their features is quicken online, which still lacks critical features imho.
http://pedatace...dc/blog/view/63
A look at the terms making up this most recent round, including price per share.
$140MM for 1.4MM registered users = $100/registered user. Really? What fraction of them are active?
I’m guessing that some hacker(s) from a former communist superpower, sees Mint as a ‘rich’ opportunity.
Mints awesome.