Mint.com is a fantastic tool that I’ve used for quite a while.  Even more importantly, I believe it’s a great example of how to start a successful business on the web.  It follows a simple formula of finding a day to day problem that people encounter, then offer a slick, easy service  online to help people with such a problem.  With Mint.com, that problem is budgeting and spending patterns.

It was just announced that Mint.com was sold to Intuit (it’s main competitor) for $170 million.  An inevitable acquisition in my opinion.

From BusinessWeek, you can hear the story of Patzer’s journey to start Mint.com:

For six months, Patzer holed up alone in a room for 100 hours a week to write the code he hoped would result in a smarter alternative to Intuit’s Quicken.

Does This Inspire You?

It definitely inspires me. Although, I don’t have the time to spend 100 hours a week writing code anymore, it does get me fired up to wake up an hour early each morning and work on my online business ventures.