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> It became a "top-of-the-funnel" lead generation tool for other products

If I recall correctly, the original pitch deck for Mint stated that this was the plan. Weird to say it morphed into something that was just the original vision.

Edit: found the deck https://www.slideshare.net/hnshah/mintcom-prelaunch-pitch-de...

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That's not their pitch deck. That's a class or competition project.

Source: was attending Berkeley with the people listed on the first slide when this was published.

Totally. But, and I'm speaking more generically than Mint here, in the early days of a company, a team (esp the founder) can more easily navigate the tension between revenue generation and building a great product. That's a lot harder to do as part of a larger (and especially publicly-traded) company.

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