Mint.com is a free web-based financial management service created by entrepreneur Aaron Patzer. The product won Best Presenting Company, and $50,000 in prize money, at TechCrunch40 on September 18 2007. Mint has garnered media coverage from a number of blogs and media outlets such as the New York Times , GigaOM , VentureBeat ,the Orlando Sentinel , and the San Francisco Chronicle . Mint has raised over $5 million in venture capital funding from Shasta Ventures and First Round Capital , as well as from angel investors including Ram Shriram, an early investor in Google. The company is located in Mountain View, California. Currently, revenue is expected to be generated through lead generation in which Mint.com recommends financial products to its users.

Mint provides account access service through a deal with Yodlee.

Security Concerns

Many Mint users are concerned with Mint.com having access to all of their accounts. Mint has often been slow to address concerns, but holds that their servers are secure and data is safe.

The video on their website discusses security, but they're dishonest about the risk. They say that if ever someone broke in, they couldn't do anything with the little information (they say that all they have is your email address and your login name). In reality, for their system to do what it's supposed to, they need you to tell them your login information for ALL of your online bank accounts. If someone were to break in, they would then have all of this information. Their security should concern any of their users.

Competitors

Several competitors to Mint exist and offer similar financial aggregation services. Wesabe does not take bank login data, but requires users to upload bank output files. This can be seen as a more secure option. Quicken online offers a similar service as well. Pageflakes offers a similar aggregation service, but lacks the financial analysis tools of Mint.

References

External links

• Mint.com