Aaron Mints $170M

I never imagined this would be my first post, but last night I wrote down that Intuit needs a product to compete with mint.com.

Today, I received the email from Aaron Patzer, that Intuit is buying mint for $170M.  So I thought I better get started!

This is brilliant for Intuit, as mint solves the biggest problem of Quicken – its relentless insistence that every user account for every last cent (I don’t know about you, but I don’t balance the checkbook, I just need something to tell me with the least possible effort what we’re spending money on each month so we can adjust course if necessary) –  and adds the fabulous auto-categorization of major expenses, all within a gorgeous UX.

On GigaOm,  they point to the value of masses of customer data, but I think the value is in the team that has created an online finance solution that people actually like.

Brilliant for mint users?  Time will tell, but it’ll be tough to keep the team together if they’ve made a boatload of cash from the transaction.  It’d sure be nice if they keep up the pace of recent improvements such as the improved budgeting and charting released on August 19th.  I’ll certainly retreat to Excel if they turn mint into an ugly step-child of Quicken.