Jessica Stillman reports that at age 25, Araron Patzer sold his start-up business mint.com for $170 million to Intuit. He shares his views about how Gen Y entrepreneurs face competition from established decision makers:
I wanted a personal-finance tool for people who didn’t want to be accountants, something you could setup in ten minutes and spend less than five minutes a week on. Mint is now that tool. …
(It puts) your finances on auto-pilot. Whether you log in or not, it will send you a weekly summary of your balances and biggest purchases, and how your investments and budgets are doing, along with sending you alerts on unusual spending and low balances.
Simply executing and having a reason for every decision you make goes a long way (toward establishing credibility).
I think Patzer’s experience has implications for managing “learning” in and out of schools.
Patzer’s description of what Gen Yers want for personal finance appears consistent with my observations about what they want from schools: a tool for people who don’t want to be scholars, something to set up in 10 minutes and spend less time a week with it, that reports work completed and still due, progress toward meeting course curricula and state minimum academic performance standards along with alerts …
Sounds like aLEAP’s direction, even though none of us working on it are Gen Yers. I wonder if any Gen Yers will join us?
Great interview, Jessica. A great read about determined optimism. Thank you.
Nice blog!Thanks for sharing.