DISQUS

Hey, Mike,

You write, "[Wesabe will] need to become far more aggressive at rolling out innovative new features than they have in the past if they are to win the war." Huh? There are definitely things we need to do, but being more innovative isn't our problem.

- We launched the first of any of the sites in our space in November, 2006. That initial launch included goal planning tools such as those you like in SimpliFi and our own data aggregation tools such as those you like in Green Sherpa.

- We created the only aggregation system that allows people to keep their financial institution credentials on their own machines, which continues to win us users every day.

- We launched the first Firefox extension, Vista sidebar gadget, Mac dashboard widget, and so on.

- We launched the first public web services API, which has allowed us to build a network effect for the value of our service, and has led directly to our Springboard model (announced at Finovate).

- We created our Tips tab, which though I think needs a 2.0 version to really take off, nonetheless created a whole new area of personal finance recommendation systems.

- We launched Wesabe Cutback, which automatically identifies budget expenses people can cut back on, and which American Banker called "brilliant in its simplicity."

And on and on and on. I don't think your criticism is on point. There are certainly other knocks on Wesabe I would have to acknowledge, but we are pretty clearly on record as leading a huge amount of innovation in our space.

By the way, I believe we're one of only six companies to win two Online Banking Report (OBR) awards -- the awards Jim Breune, chair of Finovate, gives out in his newsletter for innovation. (The other five were Bank of America, Citibank, E*Trade, Everbank, and Wells Fargo.) I'm biased, certainly, but I'm not the only one who thinks we're innovative.

Best,
Marc Hedlund, CEO, Wesabe

Great story. Thanks much for sharing it. In my work I hear a lot of people at their wits end about things like groceries; hearing this outcome is a wonderful counterbalance.

This is a little beside the point, but I have to say that I thought the line from Claire's article, "The exit drought 'is one of the greatest tragedies of our time,' said David Weild IV," was embarrassing even to see in print. I wanted nothing to do with our industry when I saw that.

I do think that getting away from the current model -- where founders are driven to create an exit rather than patiently building the value of their companies -- is a very good thing. (For the record, Wesabe's backers, which include Union Square, are not pushing us in this way.) But let's not overstate the case.

Fantastic post, Andrew.

Heh. As we said in the blog post and in the docs for the feature, "Note, Twitter is not a banking site and may not be as secure as Wesabe for tracking transactions. We strongly recommend that you do not use Twitter for any transactions with high privacy requirements (doctor's visits, posting bail, etc.). Our Twitter support is meant to be useful, for tracking cash spending from your phone, and fun, for sharing your interesting expenses with your friends, but you should only use it for low-privacy purposes."

When you're only tracking cash transactions, as we are in this case, the chance for privacy concerns is lower. All of the docs show examples of coffee and restaurant purchases -- places where people lose a lot of money but have no convenient way to track the cost. Having a quick, easy, mobile way to capture what you're spending in those areas can definitely be a big help. That said, I agree that there's a possibility for accidental revelations. We'll see how it goes.

Aside from that concern, I'll say that this has already been a huge success. A ton of people are using it, and we've gotten a lot of great feedback.

Thanks for the post.

Hi, Zach,

Certainly there are other companies out there, but I don't think we're lacking for press at all:

http://www.wesabe.com/page/news

Of course we always want more coverage -- can you help with that? I'm always interested to hear what people can suggest in that area.

Matt,

I agree with Fred's response. I haven't seen a site that does what we do, ever. Server-side Uploader has been done before, certainly. But to what end? Yodlee's customers are banks and businesses, not consumers -- they view consumers as a 'testbed' for the products they sell to enterprises. We view consumers as our market. I don't think the two businesses have anything to do with each other, really.

Michael, here are some of the example I mention above:

https://www.wesabe.com/merchants/31094-at-and-t...

https://www.wesabe.com/merchants/3520-comcast-i...

https://www.wesabe.com/merchants/16062-andronic...

Note, again, that all of this data is available for free, and you don't have to register to get it. The reason to register for tips is that we can do a far better job of offering you tips if we know where you're spending, and on what categories. (Of course, there are plenty of other reasons to register, too -- we believe we're the best way for you to get the most out of your money, and everything on the site is about that.)

Michael,

We do definitely cover the first two examples you request -- not which car has a better resale value, at least not yet. If you click through to my blog post on the feature, you'll see that when I started testing the system, I got a recommendation for a local grocer that is cheaper and much better-liked than the one where I had been shopping. I already knew that place existed, but I didn't realize how much less expensive it was, and seeing that customers were really satisfied with it helped, too.

I had an earlier test case, too, where I saw an independent auto shop with much lower prices -- about *half*, on average (~$600 vs. ~$1300) -- and much higher ratings (92 vs 17, on a scale of 100), than the dealership where I had been taking my car. This was a while ago, in the first test version of this feature, but I started taking my car to the independent, and I've been going there ever since. I think that one tip saves me about $500 a year at least.

You're right that we don't cover specific products (which Consumer Reports does). We cover merchants, and which ones are going to give you great value for the money you spend there. I think that can be hugely valuable, in the two cases I mention above, and many others.

Peter: you don't have to be a member. You can have all the data without even registering.

https://www.wesabe.com/merchants/3014-amazon-com

We have some more data cleanup issues with Amazon particularly (there are lots of variations of their name, we're consolidating them), but the data up now is close to our overall average for them. Also, we're breaking out more tag averages over time -- you can see that purchases tagged 'books' are a lot lower than the overall average, for instance.

Have fun.

Fantastic post, Fred. Best blog post I've read in a long time.

Congrats, guys! Looks fantastic.

Wesabeans! I want some. :)

Hi, Dan,

We've added this. You can now export any date range from the accounts index page, into any of our supported export formats, including Excel. Hope this helps.

Marc

Hey, Dan,

Absolutely. We'll add it now.

Hey, dan,

We do already allow you to do this, although it's not obvious how to do so. Our API allows you to get data in any date range you want. You can, for instance, get an Excel spreadsheet containing all of your transactions for the year by putting this at the end of the URL for one of your accounts:

.xls?start_date=20070101&end_date=20071231

As an example, if your American Express card is account number 1 on your Wesabe list, this is the full URL to use:

https://www.wesabe.com/accounts/1.xls?start_dat...

We'll make this a lot easier to find.

Hi, digiSal,

I'm one of the founders of Wesabe. We support any bank or credit card that provides a data export in one of the formats we support (currently OFX, QFX, QIF, and OFC). If your bank isn't listed we'll add it immediately. You can always drop me a line at marc@wesabe.com if you need a bank or credit card added right away.

Hope this helps.

Here's what we did at Wesabe -- and we have a very fast-growing email feature that we've received no complaints about to date.

In our Groups tab, we added email alerts, so that you get an email if one of your groups has some activity. By default, if you join a group, you will receive an email each time a new thread is created in that group. By default, if you participate in a thread, you will receive an email each time someone else posts in that thread. If you do not participate in a thread in a group you belong to, you get only one email about it -- when the thread starts. Also, for any existing group or thread, we did not automatically subscribe you to emails -- we decided that those people hadn't gotten a clear opt-out opportunity so they would feel like they were being spammed if we did sign them up.

We added opt-out mechanisms all over the place. First, when you join a group, you see a confirmation message that tells you you'll be getting one email per thread, and you can opt out with one click right there. Second, when you post to a thread, you can uncheck the "send me email when new comments are added" box before you even post. Third, every email contains a one-click link to stop receiving that kind of email.

What's surprising and gratifying to me about this setup is that people definitely do opt out at a significant rate, but we don't get any complaints about the need to opt out. I think that we did the two things people like: we made the process completely *explicit*, and we made opting out completely *painless*. You'll probably realize before you even get an email that email will be coming, so that's good -- surprises are bad. If you don't want that, you will not have to hunt all over the place to figure out how to prevent that, since the mechanism is right there where your mouse is already resting -- control is great. And if for some reason those two mechanisms don't work, getting rid of the subscription is just one click, no login needed.

So I think what people should look for is: (1) clarity/no surprises, (2) obvious control mechanisms, and (3) painless recovery.

I don't think you should hope none of them fail. Not failing on your dime is a reasonable hope. :)

I closed down a company in 2001 and learned far more from that process than I did from some of my other companies that succeeded. Failure can be a great instructor, as long as: (1) you don't give up because of it, and (2) you don't obsess over it and "fight the last war."

Brad Feld had a good post on this topic last year: http://www.feld.com/blog/archives/2006/06/talki...

The failure rates and reasons posts were great. Of course everyone should try not to fail. But I do think there's something to be said about the lessons you get from failing if that happens for some reason.

Hey, Oren,

We heard about the peanuts and thought they were totally hilarious. Of course, they also served mojitos, which are made with crushed, muddled Mint..... ;)

The Wesabe Firefox extension does this. "Browser Snapshot" takes a JPG or PNG or the full browser page. You can then upload it to Wesabe (which lets you save receipts and confirmation pages, and link them to your transactions), or save it to your hard drive.

Give it a shot. :)

So, this shoot-out needs two parts to it:

(1) Text a message made up entirely of dictionary words -- no proper nouns; and

(2) Text a proper-noun- and acronym-heavy message.

The iPhone's typing correction will make (1) a lot different from (2) for its score, I'd bet.

Hey, David,

We've added a crop function to Browser Snapshot. Just drag a region in the snapshot before saving. Make sure you've upgraded to Firefox Uploader 1.0.5 to get the cropping feature.

And, Jeff is off getting married! But, I'm sure he'll like seeing this when he gets back.

Thanks again for all the great feedback and suggestions -- not to mention talking to the press about us!

-Marc

Hi, Zoli,

Thanks much for the kind words about Wesabe. What functionality are we missing that you need? We try to be very responsive to user requests, and we'll add anything needed as quickly as possible.

Thanks much!

Marc Hedlund, Wesabe

Thanks, Andrew! We've gotten a great response to the site, and are seeing a lot of happiness with the decision not to run ads.

I agree, though, that coupons would be a good possibility. We're into anything that helps our members save money. We wouldn't do it as anything required, though.

Let us know if you have any suggestions for how to improve the site.

Thanks,

Marc Hedlund, co-founder, Wesabe