Patzer claimed on the Mint blog ( http://www.mint.com/blog/updates/why-mint-com-plus-intuit-is... ) that one reason to sell to Intuit was to speed up the adoption of his personal finance ideas in the market place. Seems like a legitimate non-problem reason.

"In addition, by joining Intuit, we can accelerate our ability to add more fantastic new product functionality into both Quicken and Mint.com. This means more people will find it easy and affordable to stay on top of their money issues. Bottom line? I see this as a chance to take a big leap forward toward our ultimate goal of improving the national savings rate."

They could have possibly done the same thing by continuing to disrupt, raising a lot more money, and building a billion dollar competitor to Intuit.

Not saying that selling to Intuit was a bad idea, and I completely agree with what Josh is saying, a $100MM+ acquisition is life-changing after all.

My ex-partner used to say nobody died making a profit. Selling at $100++ is certainly not small change.

Call me a cynic, but I don't necessarily believe that Patzer's comments about why he sold to Intuit reflect his true feelings. After someone has just given you $170 million, the least you can do is say a lot of nice things about the deal, what great synergy there is between the two companies, etc. That's just how business is done.

Thought this was a solved problem. Why did they not just buy a portion of Patzer's stock?

This is an awesome take on the VC game. I imagine it's not the only opinion, however. The metaphor he sets up with regards to customers and shareholders could also be twisted (and I'm sure is, by some VCs) to a more hierarchical idea in which the VC needs to answer to the shareholders. Some VCs may even want to stretch that notion further and say that the startup is answerable to the VC.

I think this is a less accurate analogy, but I could certainly see it giving rise to the idea of "the Patzer" as something less like a business decision and something more like a sin against the VC.

Didn't he sells because he is providing financial advice to people and the best financial advice for people is to be cautious and he applied the same advice to himself?

What is funny, that judging from the headline I first thought of chess not Mint.com

Patzer(I believe term originates from Yiddish) is a common slang term for a poor chessplayer.

Do not be a P(p)atzer takes on a double meaning..