Mint is free online personal finance software. The company was recently acquired by Quicken creator Intuit for $170M, only two years after launching.

I think it’s public knowledge that Microsoft Money and Quicken suck… I’ve used them before and they are just inconvenient (my mom’s friend even took a class to be certified in Quicken… here’s a tip: if your software needs to certify people to use it, that means it’s too hard to use and you need to fix it). I find it odd no one has made something better, that’s automated and easy to use, until Mint.

So whenever I think about startups or other companies, I always want to know about the founder. I want to know about their motivation, inspiration, and obstacles. Here are some points I liked from this awesome interview with Mint founder Aaron Patzer.

• He spent a lot of $$$ on the domain Mint.com and on professional graphic design to get customers to trust him with their financial information.
• Winning the TechCrunch40 in 2007 was a key factor in Mint’s success (especially from a morale standpoint).
• Aaron’s mindset when he started the company, “If I give it 100% and fail, I can live with that.  But I can’t live with going half-way, part-time.”
• Aaron worked his butt off with little web development knowledge or business experience. No time management hacks, just will power.

Things to think about: Did Aaron sell too early? Will Mint fail within a few years now that it’s in the hands of the Quicken creators?

This morning I came across Fred Wilson’s Areas of Interest for 2010, which I recommend you give a read.

Fred is a partner at Union Square Ventures here in NYC (they are early investors in both Twitter and Zynga).

Fred’s key areas to watch:

• Mobile Applications (especially Adroid because of it’s open platform similar to the web). The mobile internet market is expected to be multiple times bigger than the desktop internet market.
• Augmented Reality Gaming
• New Applications of E-commerce
• Cloud Platforms and Open APIs that enable developers to create innovative new applications

What are your predictions for 2010?

Over the past 8-9 years I’ve paid careful attention to domain naming conventions and purchased close to 100 domains. I plan to buy many more in the future. This is my definitive resource for domain hunting.

3 Rules for Choosing and Valuing Domain Names

1. Must be easy to spell and pronounce.
   • Phonetic/creative spellings are ok if short or memorable and change a maximum of 3 letters.
2. Shorter is always better.
   • Never more than three words. Read the rest of this entry »