PhilMur's thoughts on biz/tech/money/life

One of the more fascinating technology stories of the year, which transcended both the software and SaaS communities, was the sale of Mint.com to Intuit (the makers of Quicken).

Mint.com was the brainchild of a 20-something named Aaron Patzer who was frustrated with the lack of a good online money management solution.  The company took off, and two years and 1.7 million users later was purchased by Intuit in early November 2009.

Intuit purchased Mint.com for $170 million, which is an incredible sum — and yet, it was probably worth it for Intuit to stay the top-dog in personal financial management for the indefinite future, particularly given Microsoft’s recent announcement that they were ceasing development and future sales of MS Money.   Mint.com’s momentum in the online money management space was simply too quick for Intuit’s new Quicken Online offering to compete with.

In the future, I will blog more extensively about some of the strengths and weaknesses of Mint.com’s product, as well as review the other players in the online personal money management world.

But as I have followed these recent developments with the sale of Mint.com in a variety of news sources and technology blogs, I must say that one of the most impressive aspects of the story has been the level-headedness maintained by 29-year old Aaron Patzer after selling his business for a huge amount of money–Patzer now heads up the personal finance division at Intuit.  A good example of his attitude is found in his response to a question posed by a reporter in a recent NY Times article about any changes that may have occurred in his life since the sale of Mint.com and the resulting financial windfall:

Q. Have you relaxed it any since the sale?

A. My personal rule is I’m not touching anything I got from the acquisition. I’m just going to continue to live off of my income. I’ve relaxed my budget on travel and hotels just so I can do a little more exotic travel. I’m going to New Zealand this Christmas and I’m very excited about that. I relaxed my grocery budget so I can shop at Whole Foods instead of Safeway.

His maturity and humility are no doubt the same characteristics that led to the growth of Mint.com to start with.

Popular technology blog TechCrunch published Aaron’s account of the building of Mint.com, and the article included this description, by Aaron, of the early days:

Mint was built in the Silicon Valley way. It started in my apartment, with Matt Snider and Poornima Vijayashanker. We interviewed the first real “professional,” our VP of Engineering, David Michaels in our kitchen.

Most astounding of all is the fact that this was only 2 short years ago!  Surely these humble beginnings, and the quick and rapid rise of his company with little time for him to get comfortable and relax, has aided in the preservation of his humility today.

Instead, in his new role now at Intuit he “wants to keep pushing online, as well as mobile, desktop apps, and international (which is hard to do in finance with a 38-person startup)”, according to another TechCrunch article.

ALL of us can learn from the lack of emphasis he is putting on his new-found wealth and his focus instead on continued excellence and leadership in his work.