Sunday, September 13, 2009

Intuit acquires Mint.com for 170 million!

And my reaction is ....

Bwaaaaa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!

People I worked with in Intuit will understand why I am rolling on the ground laughing and wiping tears of mirth. (especially those who attended the very first "generate ideas for GBD" meeting).


And there was this one manager who smirked when I said that Mint.com was a big threat to Intuit and that Intuit would eventually have to pay big money to acquire them, if the "startup within the company" efforts proceeded on their existing trajectory.

Now who's the chump boyo? :-P

Don't get me wrong. Intuit had (and has) a lot of very nice people working for it, but it is hardly the most congenial environment for "startups".

My (politically incorrect now doubt) opinion is that this is a *good* thing. Large companies with entrenched bureaucracies can be many things but the one thing they can't be is innovative. They *should* innovate by acquiring startups who do. In that sense this is a great deal. Intuit has the money. Mint.com has the people with the tech chops. Win Win.

*If* handled correctly (big if) an Intuit backed Mint.com (however it is branded tomorrow) could be fearsome. But, as I said, it is a big if.

From the WallStreet Journal.

"Intuit plans to rewrite its Quicken Online software to be powered by Mint's technology."

We'll check back next year to see how that goes!

2 comments:

Swaroop said...

Interestingly, have you seen the Intuit India Money Manager? It does some very cool stuff, going beyond Mint to include loans, investments, etc. (http://twitter.com/IntuitMnyMgr) ... they're probably powering http://www.arthamoney.com/money-manager-tour.aspx because it has the same name and features (pure speculation).

Just to be clear, I'm not related to Intuit in any way, in fact, had previously co-founded a "competitor" to them :)

Regards,
Swaroop
www.swaroopch.com

Ravi said...

@swaroop,
on intuit's money manger powering am. I know the answer but can't publicize it :-)

I heard you left Ion. What are you doing these days?