Intuit Buys Mint.com for $170M
Posted on 15 September 2009 by Chris McDemus
I was surprised today to hear that Intuit bought Mint.com for $170M. Maybe surprised is the wrong word. From a deal and synergy perspective, I can certainly understand why Intuit would want to do the deal. Reportedly, Mint.com had 1.4M users, tracked $175B in transactions and $47B in assets and identified $300M in potential savings for its users. So not only does Intuit get access to Mint.com’s fluid and simple design but also all of the data they’ve aggregated on people’s spending/savings habits. That’s priceless.
What did surprise me was the timing. I was in love enough with Mint.com to know that it would be acquired at some point, I just didn’t think it would be within a month of closing their $14M Series C round led by DAG Ventures and including Founder’s Fund. Either the Intuit offer came completely out of left field or the parties were dickering sufficiently on the terms that Mint.com chose not to forgo its Series C round in the off-chance the Intuit deal never happened. Kudos too to the early investors, such as one of our locals – First Round Capital.
Great point about the timing. It would be interesting to see how quickly the deal came together. Not to mention that if they had a signed term sheet anywhere from 30-60 days before the deal was finalized, they shouldn’t be allowed to do deals that jeopardizes that non-binding agreement, right?
by CJ Jouhal
on 23. Sep, 2009
VC term sheets are for the most part all non-binding. I have to believe that the Series C investors knew of the Intuit deal – it would have come up as part of the reps or due diligence. Plus, that’s not something you hold back from someone who is about to put $14M into your company. In all likelihood, the Intuit deal was being discussed at the time of the Series C deal but just not a “for-sure” and Mint (wisely) wasn’t about to leave money on the table in an equity financing market like this.
by Chris McDemus
on 23. Sep, 2009
I see,. I also ran across this article:
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/chris-dannen/techwatch/mints-patzer-will-assume-greater-role-intuit-interview?nav=inform-rl
Touches a little on the background of the deal.
by CJ Jouhal
on 30. Sep, 2009
An interesting post regarding Mint.com’s early capital raises, burn rate, what they were burning on, etc. http://www.christine.net/2009/10/whats-the-secret-success-of-mintcom-the-real-numbers-behind-aaron-patzers-growth-strategy.html
by Chris McDemus
on 07. Oct, 2009