Mint.com makes everything about monitoring and managing your finances super-easy.
The site is a marvel of simplicity – simple copy, simple navigation, simple user interface.
What's amazing is: the conceptual “sale” they have to make to get you to share your financial information with them (necessary for their site to be of any real use to you) is a complex sale. They have to overcome a very rational fear on the part of their prospect (“why should I give these guys all my passwords? What will they do with that information?”).
Add to that the following complexity: after they've convinced you to give up all your usernames and passwords for all your financial accounts, then they have to interact with all those other websites to aggregate the data into a very user-friendly online “dashboard” of your finances.
It all appears very simple to the end user.
But it's all very hard to do.
And they appear to be making a fortune.
So how does one do such a thing?
- First, lots of thinking and planning.
- Then lots of hard work.
- Make a big investment in infrastructure and programming.
- Take a huge risk that it will all work.
- Spend time and thought on marketing that is smart, effective… and simple.
Probably not what most entprepreneurs want to hear – especially the part about “thinking and planning” and “lots of hard work”.
But that's how you make a Mint (.com).