Mintuit!

Image via Wikipedia

Mint.com announced today that they were acquired by Intuit for $170 million. 

It has been a short 3 years since we met Aaron Patzer at a STIRR dinner in the Valley.  Seven days after we met, he had a term sheet for his seed round and off he went.  During that time we have had a ringside seat while the company grew from a rough prototype on Aaron’s computer to an amazing personal finance tool with well over 1.4 million users and critical acclaim. 

There are so many things that Aaron did right it is hard to remember them all, but the things that stand out include:

•    Building a culture that relentlessly focused on the customer experience and continual product improvement
•    Blowing away the crowd at the first TechCrunch 40 conference and meeting his initial 3 month goal for user acquisition in 36 hours
•    Knowing when to hire a top executive team and then going out and doing so.
•    Continuing to own the vision of what Mint.com should be while letting that world-class team execute on his vision
•    Fundraising at exactly the right time with the right process bringing in awesome investors like Shasta, Benchmark, and DAG
•    Persevering to buy the Mint.com domain name when it looked like it was out of his reach

While I’m sure that Mint would have continued to grow and prosper as an independent company, the opportunity to accelerate Mint’s growth as part of the Intuit platform was extremely attractive.  This is a great outcome for Aaron and his team we are thrilled for them.  The champagne will be flowing as freely at First Round Capital as it will in the future former Mint headquarters.

The only downside is that after three years I will miss working with Aaron as he continues to delight his customers.  It has been a great ride and I have learned a tremendous amount playing a supporting role as Aaron built this company.  My loss, however, is Intuit’s gain and I am happy for them as they work with Aaron and his team to take Mint.com to the next level.

A hearty congratulations to Aaron and team for a job well done!

Comments

[Ryan Graves]

Congrats to Aaron and you guys at First Round Capital!

[Joseph T. Galietto]

Congratulations to you and your firm for having the foresight to invest in Mint.com and the patience to nurture it to this point. Also congratulations are due to Aaron and his team.

While I understand for you as a VC this was a great opportunity to cash out, as a Quicken customer who abandoned the product for mint.com; I think it is a sad day for mint.com. Intuit has left a bad taste in mouth of many customers for slow bug ridden product releases and generally poor customer service. Why do you think this will help mint.com in the short or long run?

Joe

[Alani Kuye]

congratulations on a job well done. staying focused is always key.