Strands Absorbs Another Personal Finance Company
Strands has made a second recruitment in its effort to develop a Mint competitor called moneyStrands that leverages the same recommendation engine behind its video and music products.
Just over two weeks ago Strands acquired Expensr, and now the company is announcing its acquisition of NetworthIQ. Both are personal finance applications that Strands’ wanted mostly for their human capital, but also for some of their technology assets. The terms of both deals were also not disclosed.
While the media has yet to get its hands on moneyStrands and give it a spin, the product has been in development since December and it marks Strands’ attempt to aggressively apply its recommendation technology to new fields.
Just how that technology will be applied to personal finance is not altogether clear. The core Strands technology digests and analyzes behavioral information to make its recommendations. This is fairly straightforward when it comes to music: frequently play two or more songs with one another and Strands will learn something about how you prefer to experience music.
Apparently this technique will transfer over into personal finance by analyzing the sets of purchases that consumers make and then recommending how they can make better purchases. This analysis will not only consider the various purchases that one consumer makes; it will also compare these purchases to those made by others.
Aside from detailed personalized recommendations, Strands hopes to differentiate itself from competitors like Mint and Wesabe by providing superior mobile support and widget integration.
Strands is mum on the fate of NetworthIQ as a stand alone service, but I think we can safely assume it will shut down eventually as its team focuses on the development of moneyStrands.
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Mint Moves Into Investment Tracking
Brokerage, IRA, 401k and 529 assets can be managed. For now, only student loan accounts and mortgages are left off, although support for those types of accounts is coming soon. The site will show all your buys, sells, dividend distributions, etc. across multiple accounts. Dive into a single account or equity for its individual performance. Account performance v. the S&P and other indexes is graphed, and account charges are also shown.
There are some things you still won’t be able to do with Mint, such as stock trades, bill payments and funds transfers. Mint CEO Aaron Patzer says those features will eventually be added, with a focus on bill payments first. Funds transfers and stock trades are a little stickier, though, and may eventually require state and/or federal regulation of the company.
Investments will soft launch on May 6 for very active Mint users and roll out from there. Anyone who wants to be in the beta right at launch (whether they are a current Mint user or not) can sign up at mint.com/techcrunch and will be added on May 6.
Other services, including Cake Financial (another TechCrunch40 startup) Vestopia, Covestor, and UpDown also offer investment tracking.
We’ve been tracking Mint since their launch at TechCrunch40 last year. The 20-person company has now raised $17 million in venture capital and has 230,000 registered users (40% of which are active, Patzer says). 10,000 new users sign up each week (13,000 last week)
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Motley Fool Co-Brands With Mint
TechCrunch40-winner and Benchmark-funded startup Mint is having a good year. Their user base has grown 25% in the last month to 200,000. And today they’re getting access to 4 million more via a co-branded partnership with The Motley Fool, a popular finance portal.
The deal includes a co-branded version of Mint and promotion of the site on Motley Fool. Mint CEO Aaron Patzer says the deal is not exclusive, but wouldn’t give other details.
More than anything this is a sign of credibility for Mint, which continues to win ground v. competitors. Expect more partnerships soon.
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Mint Gets A Mint
Silicon Valley based Mint, an “online Quicken” that also suggest to users different ways to save money by searching for deals on credit cards, bank accounts, etc., will announce a third round of funding today - $12.1 million from new investor Benchmark Capital and all previous investors, including Shasta Ventures, Sherpalo, Felicis Ventures, Hite Capital and First Round Capital. The company has now raised a total of $17 million, most of it since October of 2007. Benchmark’s Bob Kagle is joining the Mint board.
Mint has grown to 160,000 users just six months after launching and taking the $50,000 top prize at the TechCrunch40 conference. CEO Aaron Patzer says the company is adding 10,000 new users per week, has organized over $10 billion in purchasing activity and has identified around $100 million in savings opportunities for users.
The average user logs in twice per week, Patzer says, and 10% have opted in for SMS alerts.
The company makes money via lead generations, and Patzer says users are clicking on presented opportunities 12-15% of the time.
We heard through a number of sources that venture capitalists were clamoring to get a piece of this deal. Patzer wouldn’t comment that, saying only that he was very happy to be working with Benchmark.
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Billeo Secures $7 Million In Financing
Online bill pay service Billeo has announced a $7 million Series B round of funding. ATA Ventures led the financing, with additional contributions from all of Billeo’s existing investors including Altos Ventures, Claremont Creek and Pacifica Fund.
There have been a lot of startups focused on enhancing your online personal finance, mostly around analyzing your investments (Cake, Zecco, Covestor) or expenditures (Mint, Wesabe). By contrast, Billeo functions as a straight forward tool for automating or remembering to pay your bills online.
You tell Billeo what bills you want to pay automatically or be reminded to pay and their service sends reminders and tracks you payment history online. Although a lot of banks offer online bill payment to third parties, Billeo also tracks your payment stats and compares them to the crowd. If you download the toolbar we previously covered, Billeo will also automatically fill out a lot of financial forms for you online. However, while other financial management tools haven’t incorporated online bill payment, it seems a clear feature addition that will compete with Billeo in the future.
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Mint Rakes It In
Since launching and winning the top spot at our TechCrunch40 conference three weeks ago, personal-finance startup Mint has been on a roll. On Friday, Mint was named Best of Show at the 2007 Financial Innovations conference (along with peer-to-peer lender Prosper and mortgage-finder Mortgagebot).
CEO Aaron Patzer reports to us that, in just the past three weeks, Mint has already helped organize more than $2 billion worth of people’s personal financial accounts, and identified more than $40 million in potential savings for those members. (Mint helps you find better interest rates on bank accounts, credit cards, and other financial products). Interest in the site spiked right after TC40. At one point, Mint was signing up a new member every five seconds. Not bad for a service from a previously-unknown startup that asks for access to all of your private financial data, including your bank and credit-card accounts.
Apparently, getting consumers to give up that level of privacy, has not been an issue so far. (The old axiom is true: people really will do anything to save a buck). Now comes the hard part. Getting all those people to keep coming back past the initial stage of curiosity.
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Mint Wins TechCrunch40 Top Company Award; Takes $50,000 Prize
Jason Calacanis just announced that Mint was chosen as the best presenting company at TechCrunch40. The provider of an impressive personal finance application will receive $50,000 as part of the award.
Mint presented its application this morning during Session 5, which was entitled “Productivity and Web Applications”. See our coverage of that session here.
Mint is a personal finance application that lets users track and monitor their financials in one place without the need of routine maintenance or accounting knowledge. Their application tracks bank, credit union and credit card transactions and alerts users to upcoming bills, low balances or unusual spending. Mint’s patent-pending technology automatically categorizes transactions, so users know with precision where they are spending money, what their bank and credit balances are, and how much interest they have earned.
Their application also helps people find ways to save money by constantly searching for deals on credit cards, bank accounts, etc. Mint’s technology also analyzes your finances and makes suggestions all while using the same security systems as top banks.”
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TechCrunch40 Session 5: Productivity & Web Apps
We’re live blogging each session, adding to the summary of each company direct from the floor of TechCrunch 40. Click Refresh to view.
Xobni
Zobni products aim to improve the way users organize, search and navigate their email. Xobni creates an information profile for each person a user communicates with, and provides historical information that is relevant to what users are working on. Xobni displays contact information, threaded conversations, attachments, related people, email usage statistics, and information from the web.
Xobni creates a profile of all the interactions you have with your contacts. It appears to be a plugin for your email client - sits on the right-hand side of the client as you browse your email. Gives context to each message that you view; you can browse your messaging history with people, see their portrait, look at connected people (social networking), import calendar openings into email text, search your email by people and keywords. Xobni automatically extracts phone and email contacts from email messages.
You can also view upcoming appointments, to-do items, and a “stay in touch” area (a list of people who used to email you but haven’t in awhile - the “ex-girlfriend” feature).
Currently available for Microsoft Outlook, others soon.
Main points: view threaded conversations, find attachments, use email’s social network, and search email and people.
Several email accounts will be supported in 2008.
Orgoo
Orgoo offers a web based “personal communications cockpit” that is a one stop site for email accounts, IM accounts, video chat, video mail, SMS and voice. Orgoo is free, requires no downloads, and can be accessed from any web browser or mobile phone.
Starts by asking how many people have more than one email and IM account. In addition to these, we have chat, SMS, etc. Problem: no way to access and organize all these conversations in one location.
With Orgoo, you get all your email, IM, chat, and SMS more integrated into single location available through any web browser or mobile device.
App2you
App2you is a custom web application creator that lets users create web apps without doing database coding or designing. All the app creators have to do is sketch their pages from scratch or by choosing a template from app2you’s gallery and customize it. Once the pages have been outlined app2you creates a hosted, database-driven web app.
Mint
Mint is a personal finance application that lets users track and monitor their financial information in one place without the need of routine maintenance or accounting knowledge. Mint tracks bank, credit union and credit card transactions and alerts users to upcoming bills, low balances or unusual spending.
Kerpoof
Kerpoof is aiming to become a leading destination site for children through a suite of activities that are enriching as well as entertaining. On Kerpoof, kids can create art, stories, and animated movies using a simple 3D interface, and when done, can save it to their gallery, share it with others, and vote on their favorites.
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