For a long time now I have been really wanting Mint.com and their personal finance application to get setup within the UK. Unfortunately Mint was acquired last month by Intuit and it doesnt look like I will be getting Mint in the UK any time soon.
There are a couple sites who are looking to become the Mint of the UK, Kublax and Money Dashboard. Money Dashboard is the newest startup which is in Alpha testing and today they have announced they have secured £1 million in funding. These are from the public and private sector and include Par Syndicate, Money Dashboard’s management team and a number of other individuals.
Money Dashboard’s board is quite heavyweight, made up of some of Scotland’s successful businessmen, including chairman Stuart Sinclair, former CEO of Tesco Personal Finance and GE Capital in the UK and China and David Robinson, founder and former CEO of Bright Grey.
It is good to see that Money Dashboard has entered the market and that they have solid backing behind them. However, I was hoping to see a lot more information on their site, plus their site doesnt seem to portray top level security for some reason. Im really looking forward to seeing how they develop in the future.
Silicon Alley Insider has reporting that Mint.com has raised another $14 million in Series C funding.
DAG Ventures led the round; Founder’s Fund and existing investors Benchmark Capital, Shasta Ventures, First Round Capital, and Sherpalo also participated.
Mint founder and CEO Aaron Patzer declined to disclose Mint’s valuation, but says, “it is a decidedly up round.”
He adds: Mint.com is the leading online personal finance tool, now with 1.4m registered users. Mint is tracking over $175 billion in transactions, $47 billion in assets and has identified $300 million in potential savings for its users. Revenues are undisclosed, but are up 8x year over year.
Now that we have a sampling of about 2% of online US households, we’ve also been seeing some interesting economic trends. This data, particularly at the merchant level, has attracted considerable press interest as of late.
Other sites such as Venturebeat, Paidcontent and Techcrunch also reported the news. However, since Mint is already in Series C funding will they ever be in any other market apart from the USA? Currently here in the UK we have a few Mint competitors, but no one has really grabbed the marketshare.
Michael Yavonditte who was previously an executive at IAC, AltaVista, Ziff Davis, Juno and the CEO of Quigo when AOL bought it for $340M, has launched a new site called RakedIn. RakedIn is a wiki like that provides stock related information on companies and individuals from all over the world.
RakedIn is very similar to WikInvest but has a much cleaner design. RakedIn already have over 5 million pages of statistical data and they are hoping to have 20 million by the end of the year. RakedIn provides information about people, public companies and even private companies. RakedIn aggregates new sources from all over the web, up to the minute stock quotes, financial performance, SEC filings, top executives and even latest trades.
I think this product has a lot of legs but they are competing with any people trying to gain market share in this environment.
There are so many financial applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch already, but how do you know which ones are actually worth using? Mint has put together a great list of the top 10 Financial applications everyone should use, so I thought I would post our top 5 and then let you head over to Mint to see the rest.
Bloomberg Mobile (Free)
Bloomberg
Wall Street Traders swear by the Bloomberg Terminal to analyze real-time financial market data, place trades, and get news and price quotes. Bloomberg Mobile isn’t quite the same thing but it is a beautifully designed app that provides up-to-the-minute news, stock quotes, company descriptions, and price chart and market trend analysis. The My Stocks feature is a more detailed replacement for Apple’s stock Stocks app. And Bloomberg Mobile takes full advantage of the iPhone’s position sensor by providing larger charts when you rotate the phone to a horizontal position.
Mobile Banking (Free)
Bank of America
Bank of America’s iPhone app, Mobile Banking is little more than a wrapper around its existing mobile site (which isn’t optimized for the iPhone) but if this is your bank you’ll still find it useful. You can use it to check available balances, pay bills, and transfer funds on-the-go 24/7. Its best feature is its ability to find the nearest ATM and Banking Center locations using the GPS in the iPhone, something that isn’t possible with the mobile site. BofA’s Online Banking Guarantee is its assurance that you won’t be responsible for any unauthorized transactions and it uses advanced encryption technology to prevent unauthorized access to your accounts and to protect your online identity.
PayPal (Free)
PayPal
In Japan many have thrown away their wallets in favor of paying for everything from train tickets to beer from a vending machine with their mobile phones. We’re not quite there yet but the PayPal app provides a tantalizing glimpse at this future. It provides complete access to your PayPal account allowing you to check your balances and send money to your friends and family, all from your iPhone. It supports 16 currencies and is secured by your existing PIN or password. It’s a good start but I’d like to see it go further. Missing is any way of displaying your transaction history and I’d also like to see it use the notification indicator on the app icon to show when money has arrived in your account.
Loan Shark ($4.99)
FoggyNoggin Software
Designed to help you navigate the often treacherous waters of financial lending, Loan Shark provides a number of features that let you calculate and compare loans from different vendors. You can calculate any component of a loan, including payment, interest rate or loan amount, see the full Amortization Table for the loan’s lifespan and play with “what-if” scenarios that let you determine the effect of making extra, higher, or lower payments. Loan Shark can help you determine how long it will take to pay off that credit card, determine how close you are to paying off your mortgage, and compare the cost of different loans, among many other uses. Kudos to FoggyNoggin Software for an easy-to-use and good looking interface that works well on a mobile device.
Bonus feature: Lets you locate nearby banks using the iPhone’s location-awareness
Tipulator (99 cents)
Tap Tap Tap
Tipulator stands out in a crowded field of tip calculators (it’s often said that the true test of how successful a new platform will be is how quickly a tip calculator appears for it) by marrying cute graphics with easy-to-use number dials. You can probably split the check without it but you won’t have as much fun doing it. And for 1/3 the price of your last latte, you owe it to yourself to at least try it.
Here at Crenk we have been a part of the Forbes Business and Finance Blog Network from the very beginning. Crenk has reported about this blog network a couple of time when announcing the addition of Nick Ricci and also the initial launch of the network.
At the very beginning some journalists were discussing the possibilities of Forbes paying CPM rates of anywhere between $10 – $20. Initially I thought these CPM rates were very optimistic and now I can report that this hasnt been the case here on Crenk. CPM rates has been a bit lower, but overall I think the network is definitely moving in the right direction. The advertisers that are currently involved are of a very high standard and im sure this will only grow.
I would also like to hear confirmation about whether the network blogs will have any of their content syndicated across the Forbes network of sites. There has been a lot of rumours about this and it would be great for some smaller blogs to actually get their voices heard for a change.
