This week I have been lucky enough to interview Aaron Patzer.
Aaron Patzer started Mint.com when he was just 25, after becoming frustrated by the amount of time it took him to organize his personal finances using traditional computer-based programs. Launched in September 2007, Mint.com is a free, Web-based money-management tool that automatically culls personal financial data and provides users with an easy-to-digest analysis of their spending habits.
Adam: You have packed a lot of experience into a very short time, what kind of knowledge did you take from your first start-ups into Mint?
Aaron: When I started out, not everyone had heard of the Web, and most of the businesses where I grew up were manufacturing companies who couldn’t see any value in having a website. At this point, I started reverse engineering search engines, doing what would now be known as SEO (search engine optimization) to get ranked under phrases like “web site development”. I picked up most of my clients that way, but actually made more money off providing SEO to others – ultimately it helped me pay my way through college, and taught me a lot about running a business.
Adam: Your interest in computers started at the age of about 6, how did you first get involved and start to build upon these skills?
Aaron: Where shall I begin? I grew up in Evansville Indiana, which doesn’t exactly have a lot of economic opportunity when you’re a teenager. I’d been using computers since I was about 6, ran a bulletin board system (BBS) when I was about 10, and have had email since the late 80s (and I was born in the 80s). When the internet came around, I decided to start the Web development business I mentioned above. So, when I was 16, I taught myself JavaScript & HTML, and started cold calling businesses around town, and an Internet entrepreneur was born.
Adam: How do you get potential clients to make the step from seeing your website to actually signing up with the service?
Aaron: Security -and trust- is obviously a massive issue. The other big factor in building user confidence quickly, which is often done with site design quality. Mint.com has one of the best graphic designers ever (Jason Putorti); he cares about every pixel, all the fonts, all the transparencies and effects. And that shows instantly. People do make judgments of trust on appearance – in the real world and online. The last thing is you really need to back it up! My third hire at Mint.com was our VP of Engineering, David Michaels, who has 15 years of experience in security, including financial Web services.
Adam: You have been extremely successful with Mint, it isn’t your first business though, what advice would you give to young entrepreneurs that haven’t quite found the right product yet?
Aaron: The most important part of any business, product, or invention is that it must solve a real need and a real problem. Observe the world around you – everything you do, and especially everything you hate to do – solve a real problem and the world is yours.
Adam: You started Mint without any funding and then raised finance for the business. How did you solve the problem of raising finance for a website that required potential users enter their bank details?
Aaron: Regarding security, keep in mind Mint.com has a read-only connection to your bank account, so you can’t actually move money around and no one can drain your accounts. We also have bank-level data security, along with low-balance and unusual spending alerts to help you proactively identify fraud or identity theft.
That said, pretty much every investor I went to said we would fail for exactly the reasons you outlined: no one is going to trust an unknown startup with their financial information. It turned out not to be true at all. In our first four months, over 100,000 people entered their financial information into Mint.com, and we’ve had no security breaches at all.
Adam: Mint saw very rapid growth initially, how has the business continued to progress during the economic downturn?
Aaron: We recently announced that we have received $14 million in Series C funding. This funding round was led by DAG Ventures. In total, Mint.com has received more than $30 million in funding since launching in 2007. To be approached with funding in this climate is acknowledgment of our progress and potential in helping Americans to save and do more with their money. Now that we have a sampling of about 2% of the nation’s online households, we can see some interesting economic trends, and are establishing ourselves as a source of close to real-time insights into the US economy.
We’ve also just crossed the 1.5 million user mark, and are the fastest-growing financial software in history.
Adam: Where do you see Mint going over the next five years?
Aaron: My goal for the next five years is to grow Mint.com to tens of millions of customers, and dramatically make them more prosperous in the process.
Adam: Do you have any marketing tips that really helped put Mint.com on the map? What really worked for you?
Aaron: Prior to launch, one thing we did to build buzz was start a very active blog with over 200 articles on personal finance. In order to get into the Mint.com private beta first, you had to put up a little badge on your blog or social network page that said “I want Mint!”. That gave us lots of free advertising, and a bunch of inbound links which improved our ranking in Google – not only was it free, it made those customers feel special when we let them in early.
Adam: Initially with Mint.com you were working about 100 hours per week, have things settled enough now for you to have better work-life balance?
Aaron: Really I just work flat out as long and as hard as I can. I don’t have any rules like “only answer emails twice a day” or anything. The most important thing I can tell you is to set aside an hour or two each week to sit alone in a room with no distractions and just think. Think about your business and your product.
Adam: You took on some pretty big names which the launch of Mint, it must have been quite daunting, how do you overcome the feelings of self-doubt that must go along with this?
Aaron: I was 25 at the time, and basically oscillated day to day between thinking “This is the greatest idea ever!” and “This will never work. Who am I to take on Intuit and Microsoft? If this was a good idea, someone would have done it before.” It’s very emotional, and I don’t think people ever tell you about that. You see your net worth quickly draining, you have no idea what’s going to happen next, and you’re sitting alone in a room with no help, no resources, just your brain and sheer will-power. Whenever I got down, I would listen to “That’s Life” by Frank Sinatra, or think about a Shakespeare quote I liked as a kid: “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we might oft win, by fearing to attempt.”
Since my interview with Aaron, Intuit Inc. has agreed to buy Mint.com for $170 million. To find out more, click here.
Adam Toren
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