What's the Secret Success of Mint.com? The Real Numbers...

http://www.christine.net/2009/10/whats-the-secret-success-of-mintcom-the-real-numbers-behind-aaron-patzers-growth-strategy.html

by kakooljay • 17 years ago

76 31 17 years ago

christine.net

arithmetic2• 17 years ago

I wonder if they use mint.com to track their startup expenses :o

Shamiq• 17 years ago

Eating what you cook -- a great way to know what's wrong with the food.

diN0bot• 17 years ago

> "$100K from friends and family"

shoot and dang.

coglethorpe3• 17 years ago

He went to Princeton, so I'm thinking he had some cash among his friends and family.

rodyancy• 17 years ago

Would anyone have a problem raising 100k from friends and family, knowing that in 12 months if you were unable to raise a series A, you would be forced to tell them that they had little chance of seeing their money again?

arithmetic2• 17 years ago

That's one hell of a supportive "friends and family"!

Ras_• 17 years ago

Around here we would call that house money, not "garage money".

spencerfry2• 17 years ago

The legal fees are kind of astounding. $10-50K/month in legal fees for a 30 person company? We spend maybe $2.5-5k/year on legal fees for our three person company after the initial $20k operating agreement/TOS/PP/copyright. The $10-50k/m figure seems a bit outrageous to me. Can someone with more experience than me explain that in more detail?

ph0rque• 17 years ago

I suspect it has to do with the financial nature of the startup.

spencerfry2• 17 years ago

Yeah, you're probably right. I'm guessing the legal nature of having access to everyone's bank account is a tricky situation. But usually once you've outlined (legally) how you're going to approach something there isn't a monthly cost associated to that legal work.

simonk• 17 years ago

This is also for all the fundraising. You just start accounting a % of it as your legal costs.

webwright• 17 years ago

I'm pretty blown away at the $30-50k for the first engineering hires. I assume they are either:

A) getting LOTS of equity B) really naive about equity

Are any of the startups here paying their first hires in this range? If so, what kind of equity package are they getting?

auston3• 17 years ago

Personal experience, I've been in this range & been offered 1-5% (declined because I felt neither was worth it).

mbrubeck• 17 years ago

It sounds like they gave everyone significant raises after 6-9 months (seed round) and again after another 12 months (series A). I'd be more willing to take equity in place of salary if I knew it was only temporary.

pxlpshr2• 17 years ago

We're starting a new company, hiring 2 developers and paying ~$50k, ~2-4% equity (4yr vesting), and providing health/dental via AdminiStaff. However, we're based in Austin so that's closer to ~$70-80k along west coast. As founder, I'll be taking a salary around ~$30k unless we receive our full ask.

I suppose it's also worth clarifying that this is an angel round to build the prototype, 9-12 month runway. Salaries will go up if all goes well of course.

sutro2• 17 years ago

AminiStaff -- thumbs up or thumbs down? Can you share what you're paying on health/dental per employee? Thanks for the info.

auston3• 17 years ago

That woman is so freaking beautiful I can't concentrate on the article. I had to firebug/edit html her picture out so I could get it done.

After reading it: It was a nice look into the strategy/numbers but I am not sure I can take anything away from it. Like (pretty much) everyone else here being a programmer/developer - I do not see raising $100k for my prototype as feasible for me.

spacejockeys• 17 years ago

um, wow and thanks?! yer makin me blush. :)

auston3• 17 years ago

You're welcome!

startingup• 17 years ago

This is a great article, but keep in mind that the numbers are illustrative of one type of company. Mint was dealing with financial information, so they had to get "serious" fast and that means spending on things that, say, a Facebook or Twitter would not have had to spend. They project $30/per user for user acquisition (if I read that right), which again is very different for different kinds of companies, and different business models. Extremely high value niche companies would pay hundreds of dollars per user. On the other side Twitter being a mass player, would spend far, far less. Financial sites are valuable, so $30 seems like a good deal.

teej• 17 years ago

Typically you don't refer to acquisition cost in terms of $/user/year. The $30 was referring to revenue/user/year. That doesn't preclude your point that they had to approach user acquisition much differently than Twitter or Facebook.

ctb9• 17 years ago

I believe Aaron is on the record saying that Mint never purchased traditional advertising, instead they relied on pr/word of mouth.

What's the Secret Success of Mint.com? The Real Numbers...

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