B2C · free budgeting app

How Mint grows

1 tactic and 2 figures from 2 interviews.

About Mint

What it is: Free, ad-supported online personal finance aggregator; acquired by Intuit and shut down in 2023
Business model: ad-supported (credit card and financial offers)
Outcome: Acquired by Intuit about two years after launch; shut down in late 2023 with users pushed to Credit Karma

As described in the interviews, not independently verified.

Mint's tactic

Mint · B2C · free budgeting app

Offer a free finance app paid for by credit card offers

Lost money on every user due to data costs; offers hurt the product

Mint was free and earned money from ads and financial offers (credit cards), pushing as many offers per session as possible while paying data aggregators heavy fees per user.

Failedpricing

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2024-04-17

Mint by the numbers

Metric	Value	Context	Said in
time to milestone	24 months approximate	Launch to acquisition by Intuit	Sub Club by RevenueCat 2024-04-17 2:21
users	millions approximate	People who used Mint over about a decade	Sub Club by RevenueCat 2023-12-27 10:33

Topics

Pricing a subscription app1

Interviews

Learning and Profiting from Black Swan Events — Val Agostino, Monarch Money · Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2024-04-17
How to Pitch Your App to the Press – Matthew Panzarino, Formerly TechCrunch · Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2023-12-27