Most people don’t know what they spend in every single area, but they know they have a problem in particular areas. Aaron Patzer Read Quote
At Mint, we developed five pending patents on our technology, ranging from categorization to the Ways to Save system that calculates how much a new financial product would save a user given their present financial situation. Aaron Patzer Read Quote
Carefully calculate the potential size of your market to make sure you can grow. Before starting Mint, I knew that there were about 20 million people who had purchased ‘Quicken’ or ‘Microsoft Money’ over the years, and 80 million people using online banking in the U.S. alone. Aaron Patzer Read Quote
I always knew I wanted to be a technologist, so I went to Duke and got a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. Really, I thought my goal in life was to be an inventor, a problem solver, so I thought I needed a Ph.D. to be good at inventions, but it turns out that you don’t. Aaron Patzer Read Quote
When I was 8 or 9, I started using bulletin board systems, which was the precursor to the Internet, where you’d dial into… a shared system and shared computers. I’ve had an email address since the late ’80s, when I was 8 or 9 years old, and then I got on the Internet in ’93 when it was first starting out. Aaron Patzer Read Quote
In the first three years of Mint, from when it was founded to when it was sold, I can honestly say that in a sustainable way, I couldn’t have worked any harder on it. Aaron Patzer Read Quote
You don’t start a company because you want to be an entrepreneur or the fame and glory that comes along with it. You become an entrepreneur, and you create a company to solve a real problem. And by real problem, I mean a problem that is going to exist down the line. Aaron Patzer Read Quote
One third of the economy goes through ‘QuickBooks’ in terms of businesses invoicing other businesses. Each invoice contains a connection between vendors, suppliers, and customers, and also the price of that connection. Representing the payment graph is huge opportunity and something no other company can do. Aaron Patzer Read Quote
Before Mint.com, I was a long-time user of ‘Microsoft Money’ and Intuit’s ‘Quicken.’ Both were powerful tools, loaded with features and functionality around taxes, investment, budgeting – too feature-laden, in fact. They took hours to set up, forever to learn, and an hour a week to maintain. Aaron Patzer Read Quote
I think sports and bodybuilding were the only things that saved me from getting beat up. People are not pleased, for whatever reason, when you can answer all the questions in class. If not for the respect I got from track, cross-country, wrestling and bodybuilding, it would have been a disaster. Aaron Patzer Read Quote
