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Intuit demands Mint’s numbers…what?

by Dennis Howlett on February 20, 2009

TechCrunch has obtained letters from both Intuit and Mint. The story goes like this:

Intuit, the company behind the well-known Quicken suite of money management software that includes Quicken Online, can’t believe how well its competitor Mint is doing. In fact, they were so bewildered by Mint’s claims of gaining 3,000 new users a day and jumping from 600,000 to 850,000 users in a matter of months that they decided to send a threatening letter demanding an explanation for this apparently inconceivable feat.

On reading this, my immediate reaction was ‘What? Where do they get the brass neck to demand?’ Subtly it seems:

“While we do not wish to suggest that Mint.com is engaging in false advertising, the substantial difference in claimed user numbers over a short period time [from 600,000 to 800,000] is of some concern. As a result, we’re requesting that you provide us with the Substantiation and evidence that you rely upon to support the above reference claims… before February 6, 2009.”

Here’s another example of explosive growth: Anne Petteroe’s People Against Facebook’s new Terms of Service hit 100,000 members in a couple of days.That was yesterday. This morning it stands at 120,000 members.

Most UK people know the US mints [sic] more lawyers than it knows what to do with but they mostly find jobs it seems. I’m staggered that Mint gave in so easily. Who’s next? Freshbooks? Mint sets a dangerous precedent by giving into these kinds of demands. More to the point, what does it say about Intuit? It has its own online service. Is it struggling and can’t therefore believe what Mint is achieving? TechCrunch implies that to be true:

The bottom line here is that Mint is growing so quickly (it will soon pass one million users—no doubt spurred by the bad economy and tax season), that its competitors literally can’t believe it.

The above Compete.com graphic would suggest otherwise but that overstates the case because the Intuit/Quicken graph line is for the whole of that domain including its online book-keeping service offerings.

As an aside, services like Mint could prove very valuable to business people anxious to ensure they have done as much as possible to justify personal expenditure when it comes to HMRC investigations. Just saying…

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  • 100% user growth yearly since 2004...
    http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/02/19/gabe...

    Of course, everyone would rather spend their cash on games, right? Interesting analysis of The Future regardless. :)
  • Oh come on, its an industry standard to quote user numbers like that. The follow on question is always, what % of users are active?

    That said, Mint is a phenomenal product. It takes a seriously tough technology challenge, solves it and makes it looks easy to the user. Thats why they are overtaking offerings from the likes of intuit, the banks and credit card companies (discover card *if i'm remembering correctly* is advertizing a competing product on tv in Cali at the moment)

    Can you believe the cojones of intuit though? I'm just disappointed Mint deigned to respond to it (although Mint has to be secretely happy they've ruffled Intuits feathers!)

    ian
  • I wasn't bothered about the numbers per se, I was concerned that Intuit felt it could get away with trying it on in this way. As to standards - well - I've seen variety in the methodology and frequently see arguments about what constitutes 'a customer.'
  • Well, at FreshBooks, as good Canadians, we try to be friendly with Intuit, so they can just call us if they want to pick our brains.

    However, I don't think anyone should be surprised by good numbers in small business/financial SaaS right now. I think the numbers for the industry are showing a lot of lift for everyone.

    I felt compelled to blog about this since everyone seems to be throwing numbers around, and I thought it was interesting to celebrate and consider our combined successes:

    http://www.freshbooks.com/blog/2009/02/20/small...

    -- Sunir, FreshBooks
  • Chelsea from Quicken here...

    We’d like to apologize to Mint.com if our letter came across as anything but a simple request to understand how they count their users. Businesses do this all the time and we appreciate their reply.

    We are so pleased with the rapid growth of Quicken Online, we were just curious about how we’re doing. And now that we have a common yardstick by which to measure, we know we’re doing great based on an apples-to-apples comparison. Quicken Online now has more than 650,000 users and has been adding on average approximately 45,000 new users a week since Jan. 2009.

    So now you know…customers are choosing Quicken Online more than ever before.

    Thanks,
    Chelsea, Quicken Online
  • I would direct those folks at Intuit that wonder what is going on to call their customer service number and test the system. Or call me.

    Their customer service is worse than awful. I support their products because my clients want it.

    I hope that this Quicken Online users fare better than my client who tried QB online.
  • Chelsea,

    as my Dad says "you won't get it if you dont ask for it" so in that sense there is no harm in asking! (although i would probably pick up the phone rather than have the lawyers write the letter)

    Sunir,

    happy belated Canadian Family day and congrats on the growing user #s. It seems every time i blink you've added another 100k users. And I agree with your post wholeheartedly (i made a very similar post a while back myself - http://www.anoowa.com/blog/?p=18)

    @dahowlett - i'm late to your party here but am enjoying your ascerbic,witty and insightful tweets!

    Ian Sweeney
    @billFLO_ian
  • JJ
    Hi Chelsea, the friendly Quicken cut-and-paste-robot, what's 2+2?
  • Hi there, Chelsea from Quicken again.

    @Ian, Thanks for your suggestion related to how we handled the request.

    @JJ, 2+2 is 4. I'm human, not a robot :) I should have linked back to our response though instead of doing the copy and paste. Another good suggestion.
  • This isn't surprising at all. Intuit, Microsoft, and the like all missed this one big time. Mint realized that EVERYONE wants two things: 1. to keep track of their money, especially these days, and 2. they want it to be easy. Mint does both. No one else does. Plus, Mint is so easy to use and beautiful. Who wouldn't want to use it? Your can set it up, forget about it, and it still works perfectly. Every other solution requires work and time. I'm not surprised at their fast growth; I'm surprised they're not growing 10x as fast. They will. Word gets around. Everyone I've told about it raves about it. I have never even heard of someone referring people to Quicken or Microsoft Money. No reason. Mint? Well, the numbers speak for themselves.
  • Seeing Brian's comment reminded me of the fact that seemingly every ERP has the most ridiculously complicated interface imaginable. I was just explaining SAP to someone last night and amused myself by realizing how many times I had to add, "no, it's a little more complicated than that."
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