Last night I posted the video of Mint CEO Aaron Patzer’s 45 minute presentation on building startups from the ground up. If you are an aspiring startup entrepreneur, you’ll want to watch that more than a few times. The candid disclosures and advice he gives is rarely seen in Silicon Valley.
Some readers requested to see the presentation deck as well, so here it is. Patzer shows how he raised and spent money, and generated revenue, throughout the lifecycle of Mint, from the very beginning to the $170 million acquisition. He also showed historical slides from early presentations to investors and compares those to the actual results.
I’m also re-embedding the full video below.
Seems like a very cool presentation. Read through it and it offers some great advice.
Any chance on getting an HD version uploaded to Vimeo?
Where are the Yodlee licensing fees in the financial breakdown?
Thats the basic and biggest expense. Because of Yodlee Mint exists.
What are the licensing fees that yodlee charges banks and Mint.com? Are they $7 or $8 per user per year? Or is it a one time licensee fee?
Nice presentation. What an amazing site on a perfect domain.
Arrington, two solid posts for you today. Nice!
Some have claimed that Patzer is an “insider.” He does make it look easy, as in you just ask for money, then get it, then build something and iterate until you get 170 million.
I realize he went to Princeton and all, but do his connections to investors go deeper than that. Also, Mint is great to use. I like it. I’m not knocking the product, but am curious what Patzer’s connections were. It’s argued that the average Joe/Jane just doesn’t have the hookup he had in the first place.
he had no special connections before mint at all.
I think he is one of the coolest CEO I’ve seen in a wile. Young smart and successful. And this document is quite valuable and simple.
Thanks for sharing.
This is a good overview of the classic VC model, adapted for web 2.0 (with a much lower cost to build the first shipping version).
VC only works for massive markets — e.g. $1B. For everybody else, welcome to the world of bootstrapping, a la Picnik and Urbanspoon.
It would be good to have a similar presentation for bootstrappers, given that only a small fraction of startups ever get that classic $5M A Round.
Awesome work Mike!
Simply amazing, I might watch this monthly.
Many thanks
I wonder how he managed with $30k per year.
Would love to see his personal budget plan. Preferably in the Mint format
I think Aaron should do a series of such presentations or blog posts with valuable insights from his real experiences.
There is so much BS out there and its refreshing to see such real data.
I totally agree!! great idea!
maybe he lived next to his parents: eating and cleaning done by his mother ?
Startup story from inside. Quite inspiring cause I’m also in the similar path.
Listening to the presentation it appears like starting a company is a daunting task. I’m sure it will be fine once you jump in, but seems like a steep hill to climb. $100K in the prototype phase is a lot of money which you might never see come back.
$100K to some is like placing $10 million in the hands of others.
I love when CEOs overshare, these guys have a great product and clearly a great team too.
This is exactly what makes Techcrunch great
Thanks for posting this, I really enjoyed it.
I disagree with the comment love fest for Aaron Patzer. He perpetuates the businessperson vs. engineer stigma that still pervades technology companies. The dangerous part of his speech is when he effectively says you don’t need the “suit.” But, a start-up needs creativity, vision and someone whiling to test those concepts in front of actual customers. By encouraging engineers to put their heads down and develop a prototype in 6 months they will miss all of this.
A good “suit” tests the product positioning, messaging, target market, and promotion strategy long before the product is shipped. This info is critical and should be passed back to the engineering team, so any misdirection can be changed.
He was fortunate that his vision and creativity hit perfectly with Mint. But this is the exception. To build the right product, engineers need the right business people, as much as these suits need great engineers.
BC
This is a great presentation. Mike, thx for posting
This is a real resource. Great information and focus on the presentation.
Excellent content !
Great presentation !!! Been following Mint for quite a time… does anyone know if they plan to go outside the US. We all wait for it to come here in Europe !
would love to see revenue vs expense actuals for each year …
a post by mike earlier about twitter talked about how revenue can be a bad thing, so wondering how this played out here…
Not sure about the business man is bad concept, but overall a very inspirational video/presentation.
I want to see a bootstrapper version of this plan too.
Surely someone out there must have a uber story out there of going from eating out of Dinty-Moore’s to ordering in Cipriani’s.
How can one afford SEO, SEM and Legal if your entire budget is the KBB price of your Subaru
Right on. Or less… Subaru’s have pretty good KBB
Archived
Any idea what Aaron had to pay to secure the mint.com domain? I would imagine buying a good domain name can eat into that garage stage budget.
Aaron did a deal with Hite Capital and gave them a “substantial” amount of Series A stock for the domain name. It paid off for them, with the acquisition at $170m, their realisation for the domain name is about $2m!
http://bit.ly/mintdomainname
I’ve been following mint.com as well. It was actually introduced to me by David Michaels whove I’ve met at a party a couple of years ago. Kudos on the exit!
Michael,
Nice post but certainly not the averate startup, this guy has probably more connections that many prime ministers of many small countries do and on top of that getting funded and especially with so large sums it is very hard to achieve in Europe, not to mention Asia.
Just a my 2cents of contribution however it is good to get inspired by such cases.
Elias
I didn’t know that you could actually start paying salaries to yourself during “Garage” state.
Was the Q&A recorded? Can it be posted?
This is very insightful especially since we are in the garage phase ourselves.
Aaron Patzer is the best Duke grad ever. Admittedly, there is not a whole lot of competition.
-Duke student
Fantastic talk, thanks.
Slide 7 mentions $10m in revenue in 2009. He said they pretty much nailed their projections of $30/user/year. They have 1 million users now so that would put their revenue at $30m not 10m. So does that mean they only make $10/user/year?
Impressive, simple sage advice and wisdom.
Refreshing presesentation, in an overwhelming editorial society.
Worth your valuable , but limited time, to listen in and absorb.
Roy
Here’s a question: what was Mint before the Mint.com domain was purchased in an exchange for equity during the Series A round? Where was the Mint platform hosted?
That’s a good question. I would like to find out when that deal was made as well.
Aaron did a deal with Hite Capital and gave them a “substantial” amount of Series A stock for the domain name. It paid off for them, with the acquisition at $170m, their realization for the domain name is about $2m (1% of the company).