mint.com sold for 170 million

[Domain Jedi]

Mint dot com is a business just like Google dot com.

In other words, it is not just a website and it is not just a domain name.

If you read the stories on this, you will see that this was the third largest competitor to Intuit in the online money management/finance. Please, don't assume it was a domain purchase. It was a business purchase that happens to be named mint dot com.

I have a strong suspicion that irregardless of the domain name, if quicken wanted to merge and boost their market share, they would have made the purchase not based on the name but the books of a company.

Thank you for the clarification Doc!

 

[Soofi]

Doc Com Thanks for the clarification, and anyone in senses & right frame of mind would know that it was sold based on its business capabilities.

 

[michaelcollins]

Crazy money!! Wish i had that lying around to buy businesses like that!

 

[dominator]

this is not about the domain name
and not about mint

the domain could be anything else

 

[talas]

Congratulations! Wait for the Right Price!

Intuit is interested in a domain I own, hopefully they will email me a generous offer soon :smilewinkgrin:

 

[Luke]

Awesome sale

 

[katherine]

Are you guys idiots? Development is the future? This is not some cheap-a** wordpress mini site, this is a full blown financial service that had $32 million in venture capital investment.

Don't get your hopes high regarding that "Awesome domain" that you own that might fetch the same price if you "develop" it.

Goes without saying but somebody had to say it. Thanks

 

[mjnels]

Development is the future.
Great sale.

still parroting silly sentences i see.

one day ill be rich like our hero Carter. one day ill fit in too. one day.

 

[Sonny Banks]

still parroting silly sentences i see.

one day ill be rich like our hero Carter. one day ill fit in too. one day.

Hey bro welcome back!
Have you sold some .mobi's in the last month?

 

[mjnels]

Hey bro welcome back!
Have you sold some .mobi's in the last month?

yup.. im almost up to making $170,000 USD per year like my good friend Carter makes.

although, lately i've been developing a lot... since its the future n' all.

 

[Sonny Banks]

yup.. im almost up to making $170,000 USD per year like my good friend Carter makes.

although, lately i've been developing a lot... since its the future n' all.

This is a great news...you develop a lot...of .mobi's

Don't cry too much this drink is for you!
Have a great day my friend!

 

[GAMEFINEST]

congrats to the winners

 

[bludex]

I can top this - anybody did notice this domain related business sale?
July 22, 2009: Amazon Buys Zappos.com for $928m

 

[dominator]

I can top this - anybody did notice this domain related business sale?
July 22, 2009: Amazon Buys Zappos.com for $928m

i do not understand how this is domain-related

(almost) every business has a domain name

and zappos has not been aquired because of its domain name

 

[Soofi]

i do not understand how this is domain-related

(almost) every business has a domain name

and zappos has not been aquired because of its domain name

Zappos (business) sale had Clothes.com included with a price tag of $6.1 mil.. k: which was earlier acquired from a different company last year for similar price range!

 

[dominator]

Zappos (business) sale had Clothes.com included with a price tag of $6.1 mil.. k: which was earlier acquired from a different company last year for similar price range!

ok, then this link from techcrunch is better

 

[sashas]

and you're selling Rappers.org built on wordpress lmao

yeah, but I'm not expecting $1M for it!

See, in a site like this, branding and the front end has a lot to do with value than the actual technology at play.

All the back end technology was licensed from Yodlee for about $2M/year.

So in two years, Yodlee got $4M, while Mint itself sold for $170M

Mint worked exclusively on the front end, making the site appealing to the average consumer (as against Yodlee, which is intended for financial institutions), incorporating a lot of smart coding and algorithms. But the basic technology was borrowed from Yodlee.

This is quite like YouTube. It didn't have any unique technology; it borrowed everything from Adobe. What it did, however, was make the front end and attract traffic. A ton of it.

I'm not taking anything away from Mint or YouTube. These are great services. But sales like these go to show that technology by itself without a user friendly and attractive front end is useless, especially if you are targeting the consumer web instead of the enterprise.

So leverage the technology you already have at hand.

A current good example would be the services built around twitter, especially the popular ones like TweetMeme.com, TweetDeck.com, OneRiot.com and Seismic Desktop. One of these companies will have a $10M+ exit soon and these are all built around other services.

 

[Soofi]

You've some great points there and I totally respect and regard your opinion plus knowledge.

It is actually interesting to note that how one company made the most out of the service which was actually being driven by some random third party service provider and that company got away with the most in the end, almost 99.9% profit eh!!

yeah, but I'm not expecting $1M for it!

See, in a site like this, branding and the front end has a lot to do with value than the actual technology at play.

All the back end technology was licensed from Yodlee for about $2M/year.

So in two years, Yodlee got $4M, while Mint itself sold for $170M

Mint worked exclusively on the front end, making the site appealing to the average consumer (as against Yodlee, which is intended for financial institutions), incorporating a lot of smart coding and algorithms. But the basic technology was borrowed from Yodlee.

This is quite like YouTube. It didn't have any unique technology; it borrowed everything from Adobe. What it did, however, was make the front end and attract traffic. A ton of it.

I'm not taking anything away from Mint or YouTube. These are great services. But sales like these go to show that technology by itself without a user friendly and attractive front end is useless, especially if you are targeting the consumer web instead of the enterprise.

So leverage the technology you already have at hand.

A current good example would be the services built around twitter, especially the popular ones like TweetMeme.com, TweetDeck.com, OneRiot.com and Seismic Desktop. One of these companies will have a $10M+ exit soon and these are all built around other services.

 

[sashas]

This happens all the time in business: one company focuses on the product, the other on the packaging. More often than not, the one with the *decent* product but great marketing will outsell the other with the great product but a crap marketing department.

From a marketing standpoint the internet presents some pretty interesting case studies. Look at what happened to MySpace and Facebook. MySpace was the pioneer while Facebook took the same concept but put a cleaner, safer twist on it. Result: MySpace is leaking users steadily while Facebook just grew past 300M users.

Like they say, you can sell sand in a desert if you market it right...

 

[dominator]

See, in a site like this, branding and the front end has a lot to do with value than the actual technology at play.

very common

Quanta Computer Incorporated is a Taiwan-based manufacturer of notebook computers, etc. It is the largest manufacturer of notebook computers in the world.

ever heard this name?

Its customers include ACER, Alienware, Apple Inc., Cisco, Compaq, Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, Gericom, Hewlett-Packard, IBM/Lenovo, Maxdata, MPC, Sharp Corporation, Siemens AG, Sony, Sun Microsystems, and Toshiba.

all made by quanta