Thrive Response

I got a response from some of the guys at Thrive (hey Matt & Colin- thanks for listening to your users!)

I've got to be honest, I've used the site maybe once since Tree.com acquired you guys. I looked at the new changes you implemented over the last couple days - solely b/c of your comments. I've never used your site for my sole financial planning site, purely because it just doesn't have the right features. It's always been my MacBook Air of financial budgeting sites, a bit superfluous but pretty and nice.

I feel like I'm one of those that you say you are targeting - a group of people who didn't have access to financial advice and is taking their first steps. I have the same thing most mid-twenties people have - the phone and the web, and I get the vast majority of my content off the web. I am taking my first financial steps. Saving for a condo, saving for retirement, I bought my first car and got my first subsequent car loan about a year ago. Am I not your target demographic?

In this long awaited update to JustThrive.com there are a lot of updates to the UI. There are a lot more categories to put stuff in (almost to the point of "why don't I just define my own tags like wasabe does?"...) It’s also annoying b/c it takes up a lot more screen real estate and I have to scroll up and down on the page to position it correctly so that the entire menu pops up on my computer, otherwise I end up not being able to see half of the new and updated categories.

There are also some more ways to compare your budget from month to month - as in just look at the numbers in each category. I don't know what to think because it doesn't seem like in terms of functionality there's a lot of updates. Maybe I'm missing something, but something simple like: when the information was pulled from my bank was pulled something happened and it registered it twice. Where's the button to get rid of the repeat transaction? When I drop down the pretty new icons (they are pretty) - I still don't see a "duplicate" action that gets rid of the repeat transaction. I can't exclude work expenses that are getting re-imbursed. Once something is categorized by the algorithm or because I put it there I can't put it back in uncategorized. I still can't budget for each category each month and even though I can look at the total budget numbers for each month I can't do anything with those numbers. I just end up with a "Great I have numbers! Now what?" But I would like a software/web app/SaaS that can include your functionality of being able to set up savings goals and see how to achieve them, along with Mint's functionality of being able to set up monthly budgets. You've done a really good job on some parts of overall financial planning - the mid term savings goals in particular, but forgot about the short term planning - the monthly budget goals, and the long term - investments and retirement savings.

With the bank interest rate thing, I know you've been working on it, and for a long while. When I emailed support, I got a response from a Marketing Intern back in early November of 08 saying that you were working on it. It's the end of March - that's like 5 months, maybe more. The updates seem to take a very very long time to be completed and rolled out, at least for similar web app updates. I've been expecting them to roll out about twice as fast to keep up with the pace of the quickly changing financial web SaaS type programs. Five months is a long time for one aspect of your code. What is the expected timeline for completion?

I'm still not happy at all with the algorithm you are using for "health" either. I've been using JustThrive.com for what? like Sept/Oct 08. Still, from March 31st to April 1st the switch of 1 day - my overall 'health" swung downwards 3.4 points. 34% difference in one day seems a little crazy - even for the Dow Jones. Just because the month rolled over doesn't mean I'm in dire straights, it just means I haven't gotten paid yet this month. Super annoying, and it makes me distrust other aspects of the site in terms of their accuracy. I think you need to do a weighed average it over a running 30 day period instead of at the start of each month. Then, the variation should be significantly less and always encompass a one month period. But instead of March 1 - March 31, today it would just shift to March2-April1. etc etc. you get the point. Maybe the point of the highly varying financial 'health' is to get us used to a rocky stock market? If that's the point of it - then it just might be genius.

I hate when it tells me that my savings health is 0/10 because I can't input in the interest rate correctly. While I may know that in reality I should have a 10/10, the program gives me a 0/10. It's like telling a 6 year old that you don't like their picture because it was painted with blue, and blue was the only color you gave them to paint with. Don't grade me on something I can't control (IE I can't control how your program grabs interest rates, nor do I have a way to manual input them.) It's just annoying. What could be a fun little tool to compare myself to the world - turns into something I'm annoyed with. (I get annoyed easily - especially with traffic, it's not an uncommon occurrence.) Let's be honest, everyone wants a gold star on any rating system, just so that you can prove that you are better than your peers (ever read those studies saying that in order to be happy you should buy the biggest house in the poor neighborhood b/c you will feel better than your peers b/c you have the best car & the best vacations?) I can take it when I'm really at fault for not getting a gold star, but I'm too petty to be okay with not getting a cookie when I didn't do anything wrong.

As for your questions about the interest rate, I know it's not simple. If it was simple, I would have made my own company/written my own code to the same thing and solved it already. As my college advisor told me "If it was easy, everyone would have done it already. It's the hard that makes it worth doing."

Ideally interest rates should update automatically, but I know that’s now always possible b/c there are so many different banks and there’s all that security bullshit. The only reason I want to input it in manually is because it's not getting updated, ever. It's always been at zero. I want it to revert from my manual input to the automatic as soon as you can figure out how to update automatically. I don't care about exact percentage points or even the exact date change (I might be crazy, but not that crazy.) I just want a way for me to have the correct information in one spot. It's that kind of the point of sites like JustThrive, to have all your information, correct, in one spot all at the same time? By only having partial information it makes the site partially not useful.

I don't expect your information to be more exact than what my bank provides. You're pulling the data from the bank, if they don't have it, you can't get it. What I do expect is to have the same info on the same day banks have it, which wasn't happening before. 2-5 days behind the bank is a lot. With your new update button - maybe this fixes it. When I logged in tonight it seemed more accurate as to yesterday (as accurate as the banks had last night). It used to be about two-five days behind the online bank records depending on how PMSy it was. Closer. I still like the auto update when you log into Mint better. It's then not behind the bank at all. I'd rather wait the five minutes for it to update rather than be the additional 1 day behind in bank records.

Less than a week after that post in Jan, Mint did the same thing and switched the log on to https on a separate page. I figured it had to be a security thing. It doesn't change the fact that I wish I could log on from the home-page. Half a check on this one. I guess you could call that a V, but not for Victory, because I never concede defeat.

I completely disagree with the investment thing. I think investments both in the traditional and retirement accounts are key to an overall financial picture and is a HUGE first major financial step. Learning about how important accounts, especially retirement accounts and their tax advantages while you are young, and have time for the many years of compounding ahead is a critical building block to long term financial success. I'm not saying that you should recommend certain stocks or whatever, or even a RothIRA vs a traditional IRA, I think that's probably got too many liabilities. But in terms of educating those who have not had previous access - Long term is the way to go.

Maybe your demographic is not me and my peers, I'm a mid-twenties professional living in Boston, and slowly but surely figuring out my financial life & I'm trying to save for a condo. Are you trying to hit a younger demographic that investments don't apply to yet? I've got to be honest, I'm not really sure what cash-earning demographic where investments, especially retirement accounts, don't apply. If it's not a key differentiator for your product, that's fine, I can understand. But if your goal is to educate and provide resources to people who didn't have it before - I think this is a key component of that education.

I understand that by focusing your energy on key market differentiators such as the savings trackers/calculators brings you market share because of the differentiation. I'm thinking bigger though, instead of being the MacBook Air, be the next iPhone & change the game. What I'm saying is that in order to catapult yourselves to the top of the food chain that you need to not only provide market differentiators like the savings calculators, but you also have to include critical monthly budgeting ability along with overall financial tracking including investments (can't it just pull the stocks symbols from my accounts?) Maybe you don't have the cash/people resources internally to achieve this yet.

Maybe Thrive is okay with where they are in the business world, and that's fine with me - doesn't affect my daily life (unless I'm bored and need something to blog bitch about - God I love web log bitching.) But if it's not the right tool for me, and other sites are more useful, I'm going to use those other sites. I guess what I'm saying is that your key differentiators aren't enough for me to visit your site on a regular basis and make me not visit other sites, which means I’m giving them more money than I’m giving you. I’ve even signed up new bank accounts on Mint based on their recommendations, I've never done that for JustThrive. While the savings plans are nice, after a while I just forget about them, and figure out how to put it in as a part of my monthly budget which seems more immediate in Mint rather than see my progress – I just have to ‘know’ it’s there. I need it to be so useful that I can't give up a week without viewing the site.

I really want to use your site regularly (I do love that orange color - it just draws me in like a moth to a streetlight), some major progress has been completed in terms of getting things pulled more quickly from bank websites, I think that product marketing did some weird definitions of the re-categorization thing b/c they were a little to literally when they took consumers advice to better categorize their purchases (more /= better especially when it’s so big you can’t even see all the categories on your screen); but there's a lot that needs to be done to keep up with everyone else, much less gain market traction to increase your unique users faster than your competitors. Maybe the Tree.com acquisition gave you a cash influx to hire more people so that you cold roll out stuff faster? Acquisitions can be awesome or a bitch, especially if you aren't given your freedom to be doing the same thing you were, and all of a sudden have to follow other rules that don't necessarily apply to you.

On another note you asked about Mint transparency. I mean, in the fact that they provided any substantiated information at all to a direct competitor - just because the competitor asked. Why in God's name would you give out any information about your company to a direct competitor that you weren't required to unless you were being transparent? Just about all websites count users the same way - a person who signs up for a user name and password, a user is different than a regular user, but they still used the product. All they quoted was users, and did not provide information about how often users repeat or use the site regularly. I think Intuit is being a bit pedantic to send a letter out to a direct competitor in order to make an "apples to apples" comparison. Why wouldn't they just assume the status-quo and follow the SOP? It’s marketing information, assume that the numbers are the largest ones that they could find and verify to their investors.

In the way Mint classifies users - the same thing goes for purchases of more "standard" products like the Nintendo Wii games. Marketing doesn't quote the number of people who bought a Wii game and play it every night. They quote the total number that bought a Wii game no matter how much they played the game, of course, that number does include those people who were really excited for the first few days then threw it in the back of the closet and never used it again. That's another stat all together.

Interestingly enough, with all the marketing bullshit that Intuit put out after Mint's response, I don't believe that I ever saw Intuit themselves did not define what they considered a user. They only do an "apples to apples" with Mint. Which just leads me to believe that internally they are using the same f***ing thing that everyone else, including Mint, does. Overall I think the argument is pretty pedantic on the part of Intuit, and makes Intuit look naive and uninformed in terms of how the SaaS type services like Mint operate. Go read some blogs to figure out how web start-ups work; don't send a letter through your corporate lawyer. It's all marketing BS anyways, why try to substantiate anything? I've got to be honest, it's really none of Intuits business one way or the other how well Mint is doing, they don't have a vested interested in the company, they don't own stock, Mint's not public. Intuit was really just curious, I don't satisfy curiosity in my life, but Aaron Patzer is okay with it apparently. He was willing to disclose information that Intuit really doesn't need if they actually knew how to do business. IE The mantra of web2.0 is making a better product (with free content) and they will come.

I think a more measurable statistic, and much harder to extract from a competitor, would be revenue per user. Assuming that each received the same amount for each ad view. This would tease out the differences between having a lot of "users" who just sign up and never use the site again, and more heavy users who utilize the site and its advertising supporters. Now try getting that piece of information using a lawyer.

I don't mean to compare you to Mint all the time - but they're my current personal finance SaaS type app of choice at the moment, and the market leader in terms of functionality and useful features in my mind. They've done really well in terms of the short term planning, and done just basic tracking for the long term investments and retirement savings, with no focus on mid term or real long term planning.

I look foward to the next updates to see what you guys can pull off. You've got 1/3 in terms of short, mid and long term financial planning. I hope that you can get a second one down in the next major update.

As for the visit - maybe - I've got a trade show at Jarvits in May I need to go to.

P.S. I did get a digital weight key piano - it really does help the practicing.