I agree with your second statement: to the uninformed observer (me and everyone else in this thread) something does seem off. Bank and credit card leads pay from $50-$200 per pop let alone the riches that mortgage leads bring in.

I was in fits of laughter during the initial Mint acquisition HN thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=821615) when people accused Mint of being unable to make money. To some, advertising and subscription payments are the only way to monetize.

Perhaps between the crappy economy and whatever Yodlee is charging for their data, Mint may not be anywhere near profitable. They may have acquired a lot of users, but they have to pay Yodlee for all those users' data, and cover the costs by the fraction of those users who go for the bank/credit card stuff suggested.

During the time I used Mint, none of the financial offers presented were better than my current ones, so I never bit.

http://spyfu.com/Domain.aspx?d=-3624320565025573542

http://www.onecubicle.com/page/jobs/job/4581

"We didn’t have money for writers, so most of our original blog content then was guest posts from other personal finance blogs, plus a couple of columns on people’s worst financial disasters. To build demand, we started asking for email addresses for our alpha 9 months in advance of launch. Then when we had too many people sign up, we asked people to put a little badge that said “I want Mint” on their blogs to get priority access. We got free advertising and 600 link backs which raised our SEO juice."

Instead, we relied on press. It’s where I spent 20% of my time. I’m spending it right now while writing this."

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/14/the-value-of-techcrunch...

Having an awesome product certainly helped but it was in conjunction with their other efforts.

Doesn't always work that way (NeXT, Apple).

Also, it is likely that nothing was going terribly wrong. The exit was only small for the later-round investors, who also made a killing on their investment, though not as extreme as the earliest investors.

A company should always have a sell price. Intuit met Mint's.

Honorable, but basically flawed.

Your relationship with your friends will change because of something like that, it is very very nice of you to want to share the wealth, but someone that has a sense of honour themselves will either have to refuse your offer or they will accept and it will hurt their sense about themselves.

Should you ever find such wealth be very careful how you approach your friends with such plans. If someone in my circle of friends would make me an offer like that I'd see that as an intrusion, even if it was meant well. Just that you got into some money does not mean that you have the right to 'fix' others lives, they may get a lot more satisfaction out of fixing it themselves.

Giving money away is a very tricky thing to do if you do not wish to change your relationship with people.

But kudos for looking after others, I really appreciate that that would be one of the first things you'd think of.

After a few mistakes, here's the tack I've learned to take.

Treat everything you give as a gift. Don't expect _anything_ in return, and say so very clearly. This keeps you from giving more than you would like to, and prevents the recipient from asking for more.

Any kind of loan leaves the door open to additional requests; after all, they're going to pay it all back, so what's a little more? Which leads to resentment if you decline.

Considering it as gift prevents you from going overboard - if a gift is inappropriate (paying off a friend's debts falls here), then don't do it.

In my experience, the best way to give money to your friends isn't for the necessities, but for the luxuries. When I go to a party, I bring plenty of really good booze and/or beer. If we go out to eat, we go to nice places, and I pick up the tab. On trips, I pay the difference between the Motel 6 and the Sheraton (or whatever).

Part of it is couching it all in the right terms. You aren't doing this for them, you're doing it for yourself. I don't like cheap vodka, I like the good stuff. I don't like Motel 6. Then don't bring it up again.

The tone you want to set is that you don't want to share your money, you want to share your experiences. After all, that's how we all became friends to begin with.

ADDENDUM: it is also important to leave openings for your friends to help you, in whatever way they can. Right now, I'm prepping my house for sale, and I've had a stream of friends come over to help me clean and fix things. I could just pay someone, but this way is much more fun.

That may be, but it depends on the people. There are people that could resent this and see it as you rubbing your money in their face.

It's just easier to say, "it works for me." By saying 'it works, at least for me,' you're claiming that it will always work everywhere 100% of the time... then saying "but I could be wrong." This is just anecdotal evidence. It's possible that none of your friends are the kind of people that would react that way, or that you have a personality that causes people to quickly forgive you for such things.

It's just easier to say, "it works for me." By saying 'it works, at least for me,' you're claiming that it will always work everywhere 100% of the time... then saying "but I could be wrong." This is just anecdotal evidence. It's possible that none of your friends are the kind of people that would react that way, or that you have a personality that causes people to quickly forgive you for such things.

I also can't imagine taking a heartfelt offer from a close friend as an "intrusion," but then I'm sure it depends on the relationship and the personalities involved.

I'd like to think that this wouldn't change our relationship, but you never know.

It would be okay to loan money to your parents or your children- there's a clear power relationship in both of these, of obligation both ways. It would be less okay to loan money to a sibling, where equal footing is a necessity for a healthy relationship.

That depends very much on the way you bring it. Indeed, if you offer to pay off their debts, of course it will hurt their ego.

But if you bring it like "here's 50 grand, i don't need it, i care about you, do with it what you want", well, most people will have a hard time rejecting it. Since they don't associate it with their debt, but rather as part of sharing in your success.

By giving that money you are denying someone the chance of achieving that on their own and keeping parity with you. Especially if you say 'here's 50 grand, I don't need it', as though 50 grand should be peanuts to them too.

The asymmetry of the situation is what causes these problems.

The reverse also happens, plenty of people may assume that because you go back a long time they have an automatic right to whatever is yours. This is also not a healthy point of view.

There is nothing more poisonous to a friendship than to have one party suddenly come in to a lot of money. It takes a lot of tact (on both sides!) to get through that without getting peoples feelings hurt.

The best way to avoid this problem is to earn the money together with your friends.

> By giving that money you are denying someone the chance of achieving that on their own and keeping parity with you.

I don't refute the fact that it's a tricky situation, but I think you and the OP might be talking about different situations.

There is a big difference between a fairly well payed programmer that needs to pay $20k of student loans and might take a while to do so but still live comfortably, and someone who is unemployed, the bank just repossessed his car and his family is about to be thrown out of their house due to unpaid mortgage.

There were a few years when I was growing up when my parents' business was going under (and bleeding money like nobody's business) and things looked very bad.

They managed to get out of that by their own eventually (at a significant cost, not just financially), but a lot of people don't.

That's the best kind of thing a friend could do.

Honor is preserved on both sides and when it is all done the friendship has only strengthened, not become lopsided.

I think it would be a better idea to loan them money to pay off their debts. Of course, your loan should be interest free, shouldn't have any strings attached, should give your friends very long time to repay - otherwise there wouldn't be any difference between your loan and the 'other' loans in the first place.

The borrower is slave to the lender; why would you want that dynamic in your friendship?

It becomes a business when

1) you charge interest

2) you have some terms and conditions or attach some "strings"

3) you require collateral

4) you make your friend sign papers, and you leave "legal" options open

When I loan a friend, all I say is "dude, this is just to help you, I know you are going through tough times. No way this is to insult or patronize you. you can return the money when you can, even if it takes you 5-10 years"

That is trust and friendship, one friend helping the other, nothing more nothing less and definitely not a business.

You are putting a dollar amount on the friendship

Nope, I am not. All I am saying is, if I am in a better position than my friend, and he needs help, I am willing to help. He has to borrow money from someone anyway, why not from me, interest free and trouble free? He can sleep peacefully at night, knowing that I wont foreclose his house or something, if he is going to be late in repaying, or even if he is not able to repay at all.

If they don't pay you back, will you still be friends?

Yes. We are talking of FU money here, and also assuming that I am in a situation like Mint founders. I am in a position to loan money, without affecting my own lifestyle. Obviously, if I am myself living paycheck to paycheck, this won't apply.

why not just give them the money?

because, I don't want to patronize them, and don't want to insult them.

Frankly, I don't understand why you call this bullshit. Loaning money to friends happens all the time. I've done it many times, and have always been repaid.

It's often a bad idea to mix friends and business/money. That doesn't mean it is always a bad idea.