One Entrepreneur’s Story: Why Wesabe Lost to Mint.com
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
- Being the first mover isn’t everything. Though popular rumor had it that Mint started first, in fact Wesabe launched 10 months earlier. Waiting allowed Mint’s team to analyze where Wesabe fell short and design a better offering.
- Choose your name carefully. Wesabe went with a goofy name in hopes it might be the next Yahoo! or Google. But Mint’s far more intuitive name attracted more visitors, and browsers had no idea what Wesabe was about based on the name.
- Earning revenue does not equal success. Wesabe was generating money from late 2008 on — it just wasn’t enough money to sustain the business.
- Going viral isn’t necessary. Neither Wesabe nor Mint had explosive visitor growth, and since its acquisition, Mint’s has gone up and down. Total traffic matters, though, and Mint ultimately attracted five times the visitors of Wesabe, he reports.
- Make the user experience easy. Hedlund gives himself 40 lashes for not jumping on Yodlee, a technology that makes it easy for consumers to pull together their financial data. Wesabe’s system was harder to use as a result, driving customers interested in personal finance into the arms of Yodlee-enabled Mint.
- Get noticed. Mint garnered buzz by winning the first TechCrunch 40 conference. From there on, it was like Wesabe didn’t exist in the minds of key influencers, and the company faded from view.
- Being the first mover isn’t everything. Though popular rumor had it that Mint started first, in fact Wesabe launched 10 months earlier. Waiting allowed Mint’s team to analyze where Wesabe fell short and design a better offering.
- Choose your name carefully. Wesabe went with a goofy name in hopes it might be the next Yahoo! or Google. But Mint’s far more intuitive name attracted more visitors, and browsers had no idea what Wesabe was about based on the name.
- Earning revenue does not equal success. Wesabe was generating money from late 2008 on — it just wasn’t enough money to sustain the business.
- Going viral isn’t necessary. Neither Wesabe nor Mint had explosive visitor growth, and since its acquisition, Mint’s has gone up and down. Total traffic matters, though, and Mint ultimately attracted five times the visitors of Wesabe, he reports.
- Make the user experience easy. Hedlund gives himself 40 lashes for not jumping on Yodlee, a technology that makes it easy for consumers to pull together their financial data. Wesabe’s system was harder to use as a result, driving customers interested in personal finance into the arms of Yodlee-enabled Mint.
- Get noticed. Mint garnered buzz by winning the first TechCrunch 40 conference. From there on, it was like Wesabe didn’t exist in the minds of key influencers, and the company faded from view.
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