Mint CEO on Web 2.0 Nonsense AND Who Needs Wesabe: INTERVIEW
Fred Wilson to Jason Calacanis: Web 3.0 is nonsense, and so is Web 2.0!
Nevertheless, Mint CEO Aaron Patzer IS thrilled that his online personal finance brainchild, Mint.com, took first place honors at the first ever foray into DEMO conferencing land by Web 2.0 champion TechCrunch. However, please DO NOT consider Mint merely a Web 2.0 play, Patzer underscored to me in New York City, the financial capital of the world!
Mint may have played up its refreshing, Ajaxy goodness in Silicon Valley demo territory, but in the Silicon Alley and Walll Street demo world, it was all about the money, serious money, at the serious FINOVATE on Tuesday.
I chatted with Patzer at the conference about his business model, life after TechCrunch40 fame and the chiding from competitor Wesabe’s Union Square Ventures backers that Mint ought to step up to the online finance plate for a bigger and better financial data “Bill of Rights.”
Why did Mint demo at Finnovate on the heels of TechCrunch40? Patzer told me he does not want Mint to be perceived as merely a consumer friendly cool Web 2.0 money app; He proudly notes Mint’s high-end, patent-pending Web-based financial application. By going head-to-head against the likes of Intuit’s Digital Insight, also demoing at Finovate, Mint helps establish itself as a big league finacial services player, Patzer indicated.
What does Mint aim to do with the $50,000 it pocketed from the coffers of Michael Arrington and Jason Calacanis? “Something yielding maximum PR value,” Patzer teased.
Did Mint recover from the server overload consequences of the TechCrunch phenomenon? Mint’s servers never actually went down, Patzer assured. While the sudden influx of registrants–three to five people per second–caused a backlog in pulling user data from third-party financial institutions, causing Mint user accounts to “time out,” the integrity of all user account information remained intact, Patzer indicated. To prevent a reoccurence, Mint has since procured greater server capacity and further optimized the database query process.
What is the Mint revenue model? Lead referral fees, in the $20 to $50 range, from financial services providers such as ING and HSBC. Patzer is most proud that indivdual Mint users are only presented offers if they really represent cost savings opportunities for the particular person. For example, if Patzer has already optimized his own financial transactions, he would not be presented a third-party promotion.
Why did Wasabe investor Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures partner, greet the Mint TechCrunch40 win by headling at his A VC blog “Who (really) owns your financial data”? Competitive sour grapes, perhaps? Patzer told me Union Square Ventures expressed interest in investing in Mint, but Patzer decided to go with other funding opportunities. Following the decline by Mint, Union Square Ventures invested in Wesabe, Patzer said.
Is Mint lacking from a financial “data bill of rights” perspective as was implied by the A VC post about Wesabe? “I don’t know what he was talking about,” Patzer mused. After all, Mint does have a publicly available four prong “How Mint Keeps You Safe” data policy.
What about Mint vs. Wesabe? NO CONTEST! Patzer conveyed.
“Put your finances on auto pilot” is the Mint slogan, and a reality for the Patzer vision. “Automatic and effortless” is how Patzer described the Mint registration process to me: “It takes two minutes to setup an account and automatic synchronization is done on a daily basis.”
Wesabe, on the other hand, requires multiple, manual, time consuming steps that must be repeated at each visit to the platform, Patzer indicated.
Who needs Wesabe then? “Unusable” was how another CEO presenter characterized such an individually labor intensive online financial services platform.
Who needs Mint? Patzer told me the site has been retaining new registrants over the last few weeks at a rate of about 75%.
PS: Is Web 2.0-3.0 really nonsense as Fred Wilson laments, today. His prognosis may actually be short lived. After all, last month he didn’t like the term “social graph.” Now, he does.
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