Mint
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Mint, founded in 2006 by Aaron Patzer in Mountain View, was a free personal-finance app that aggregated bank accounts, credit cards and investments into one dashboard with automated budgeting. Acquired by Intuit for $170 million in 2009, it grew to more than 20 million users at its peak.
02 / Mint FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Mint did not fail commercially — it was retired strategically. After Intuit bought Credit Karma for $7.1 billion in 2020, Mint suffered years of underinvestment while Credit Karma's credit-monitoring and financial-product marketplace proved far more lucrative. In November 2023 Intuit announced Mint's shutdown and migrated users to Credit Karma; the app closed on March 23, 2024.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Company founded
Aaron Patzer founds Mint in Mountain View as a free personal-finance web app.
- Product launch
Mint launches at TechCrunch40 in September 2007 and wins the $50,000 prize.
- Acquisition
Intuit acquires Mint for $170 million in November 2009.
- Closure announced
Intuit announces Mint's shutdown in November 2023 and closes the app on March 23, 2024, moving users to Credit Karma.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Free budgeting; 20M+ users at peak
- 02
$170M Intuit buyout in 2009
- 03
Starved as Credit Karma won inside Intuit
- 04
Retired March 23, 2024