What to Learn from Mint.com (Intuit's $170M Acquisition)

Aaron Patzer, the founder and CEO of Mint.com (who Intuit this week acquired for $170M) wrote a guest column on Techcrunch.

Lessons?

Stick to the fundamentals (no fads, gimmicks, comprehensive strategic plans, the yaddas):

• Solve a problem.
• Help a lot of people.
• Stay absolutely frugal.

Quotes from the article:

• "We didn’t have money for a lawyer, but no fewer than three offered to help us incorporate and accrue $25k in legal fees for a little bit of the company."
• "We shared office space in a type of incubator, renting by the cube to avoid a long-term lease."
• "We didn’t have money for advertising, so we started a blog. We didn’t have money for writers, so most of our original blog content then was guest posts from other personal finance blogs..."

A solid businessperson can drive a business to success in any era; the fundamental rules remain intact:

1. Provide ridiculous value to the world.
2. Conserve your resources - fanatically.
3. Prosper.

If you enjoyed What to Learn from Mint.com (Intuit's $170M Acquisition), get a complimentary subscription to our freshest articles through email or through your feed reader.