This is a story that made us smile: Mint.com, the scrappy personal finance service that thumbed its nose at Quicken and other bulky online tools put out by the financial establishment, has been acquired by Intuit for $170 million. We knew Mint was going to do well -- founder Aaron Patzer first wowed us with his advice on interface design and marketing at the Webby Connect conference last October, and when we tried out Mint.com -- and the accompanying Mint iPhone app -- we were bowled over. In a blog post on TechCrunch, Patzer added some more details about the acquisition and the history of the company, and also made an interesting comparison with the other members of the startup class of 2006:
So that's the Mint story. $0 to $170m in three years flat. While everyone else was doing social media, music, video or the startup du jour, we tried to ground ourselves in what any business should be doing: solve a real problem for people. Make something that is faster, more efficient, cheaper (in this case free), and innovate on technology or business model to make a healthy revenue stream doing it.
Sources: TechCrunch, The Industry Standard, Mint.com, Webby Connect panel
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