Two things to add about the Mint.com success formula, based on a presentation I heard Aaron Patzer give at the Webby Connect conference about one year before he sold Mint to Quicken:
1) Patzer spent about 20% of his time talking to media or other blogs. He basically would make time for anyone that wanted to interview him, understanding the viral potential in terms of follow-on press coverage and of course, new customers. (Incidentally, Salesforce's Marc Benioff describes a similar approach to press in his bio, but mostly concentrated on major publications and journalists in the early days -- this was before most blogs and viral phenomena)
2) Patzer described spending a lot of time on finding (and paying for) the right name. Easy to understand, spell, and enter into a browser address bar were key. He thought his competitors were crazy for choosing names that were hard to spell or pronounce -- he specifically mentioned Geezeo.com and Wesabe.com .
One other thing: Patzer claimed he didn't spend anything on marketing in the talk that I saw. But from Putori's post, it seems that Mint.com did spend money on a PR agency, which surely wasn't cheap.
1) Patzer spent about 20% of his time talking to media or other blogs. He basically would make time for anyone that wanted to interview him, understanding the viral potential in terms of follow-on press coverage and of course, new customers. (Incidentally, Salesforce's Marc Benioff describes a similar approach to press in his bio, but mostly concentrated on major publications and journalists in the early days -- this was before most blogs and viral phenomena)
2) Patzer described spending a lot of time on finding (and paying for) the right name. Easy to understand, spell, and enter into a browser address bar were key. He thought his competitors were crazy for choosing names that were hard to spell or pronounce -- he specifically mentioned Geezeo.com and Wesabe.com .
One other thing: Patzer claimed he didn't spend anything on marketing in the talk that I saw. But from Putori's post, it seems that Mint.com did spend money on a PR agency, which surely wasn't cheap.