Mint.com Case Study
Startup Topgrades to Success
No. of Employees: 40
Industry: Personal Finance Applications
Highlights:
- 90% of hires turned out to be A Players
- Business was sold for $166 million after 2 years
The Company
At age 25, Aaron Patzer was working 75 hours per week, and frustrated with the additional hours necessary to manage his personal finances using Money or Quicken. So he created and launched Mint.com. He doubted himself occasionally - after all, he was attacking Microsoft and Intuit with no business experience, no leadership experience, and no money.
Patzer was scared. He'd seen most startups fail, many with the same excuse: "I didn't have the right talent." Patzer had never hired anyone before, and Topgrading gave him the roadmap to follow.
“If I hadn’t achieved 90%, if I mis-hired even one more person, Mint.com would have failed, gone out of business.”
- Aaron Patzer, Founder and Owner
Solutions
Patzer attended a Public Topgrading Workshop to get introduced to the methodology. He stayed in touch with President Chris Mursau and CEO Brad Smart, who answered Patzer’s questions and gave advice regarding Job Scorecards, who his Topgrading Interview Partners might be, and arranging calls with candidates' managers.
Despite the crunch to hire right away, Patzer did not compromise on talent. He was encouraged to press on, mostly using his networks to recruit A Players.
The Results
- Of the 40 hires, 90% turned out to be A Players
- Mint.com was sold to Intuit for $166M
- Patzer was hired by Intuit to head all financial services products
"With Topgrading I sold the company to Intuit for $166 million."
- Aaron Patzer, Founder and Owner
Ready to begin hiring almost all high performers? Contact us.
The Topgrading tools and processes together are a proven hiring methodology for recruiting, hiring and developing high performing teams. Hire more A players and decrease the number of mis-hires with Topgrading. Contact us to learn more about the Topgrading hiring process and start achieving better hiring results now!