I think the reason why is because it's a pretty large integration undertaking. To compete with Mint at this point, you'd have to offer similar levels of integration with banks, credit card companies, investment companies etc...
The problem is that there are literally tens of thousands of these companies, each exposing their own APIs and each with their own unique caveats as to data they require, throttling limits, back-room deals for access, hesitation to even let people access their systems etc.
For an anecdotal end-user example, I have an account with one provider who refuses to cooperate with Mint in integrating - ECSI. This is a small lending company for student loans, one of thousands of such companies. They decided for reasons that are not publicly available to not even allow Mint to integrate with them anymore, after having let them do so for the first couple of years. What sorts of negotiations were occurring in the back end between these companies, and what caused it to fall apart? The public doesn't know, but needless to say there was some level of custom integration effort for them, some level of business negotiation, and then finally something fell apart and made customers mad as a result. Now, all of this integration work and business negotiation had to happen between Mint and ECSI - and that is just one of the tens of thousands of companies out there. It is a very tall order to ask a new company to come forward and make that much upfront work in order to get on par with Mint so that it can start competing.
The real fight that would make more innovation in the field would probably have to start with getting companies to standardize and expose their APIs without (or with common and well understood) strings attached. If this happened - as has been struggling but slowly improving in the Healthcare field - it'll become more feasible for a company to realistically compete with Mint. And then you can get to those enhanced features that Mint suffers for want of. (however, at that point Mint's significant engineering force could be redirected from integration efforts to these same features, and then you'll find yourself fighting against a much larger machine now bent on feature improvement)
I'd be interested to see what partnership companies like IGG, who builds the popular iBank for Mac, have pulled off to do this (http://www.iggsoftware.com/ibankforipad/direct_access.php).
The only way for people to regain any semblance of control (and transparency) of their financial situation, there has to be an FOSS initiative to build these tools openly, and to keep them on a license that prevents huge financial institutions from coopting public commons software. The fact that Mint can't seem to tally a month is indicative of deeply failed architecture, probably governed by business instead of engineers. If that doesn't scare you, well, perhaps you are already in debt up to your eyeballs, and as they say, if I owe you $1,000 it's my problem, if I owe you $1,000,000 it's your problem.
There is NO WAY for a startup to tackle the problem and make meaningful advancements in any metric except maybe a nice zero-sum race with Mint. At least not that I can see. No one is going to fund a startup deving under GPL2 and no startup staying private with their technology will be able to out-compete Mint's headstart, because any advancement you have with the banks is Mint's for free. With a open technology is everyone's (including mints) and any advancement they make is also yours. You've effectively changed the game from managing information logistics/frameworks to customer support.
You are playing a high-level game when you write financial software for profit. The only way to win the game this old, is to not play inside its rules. FOSS. The quickest and most assured way to guarantee your failure would be to accept startup funds with any strings attached, because as soon as you do, you're now subject to the rules of the game.
I think a mix of both would be best, though both are also wrought with many more difficulties than we have gone into here. For example, just a couple that come up off the top of my head:
* API Standardization issues
- Many of these companies likely have custom sets of data that they expect, validation rules, their own auth procedures that they'd be hesitant to let go of etc... - Smaller companies (such as in my ECSI example) would likely shy away from the costs of creating such an API for their own services, thus still resulting in the need for custom solutions - Larger companies would also hesitate to change - either due to their own org/system complexity, or just a desire to not spend money on something that doesn't feel core to their business. Healthcare integration standardization is severely hampered by this, for example. - Many of these companies may actually be charging for access to their data backend, which would still thwart the use of standardized APIs even after they were adopted.
* FOSS System Issues
- To create the integrations, companies would have to actually both expose it to you and allow you access. The creators of the FOSS system would have to somehow convince these companies to essentially open up their systems to the world. That would be fantastic I think, but it would be very tough to convince companies. - You'd need a large number of dedicated people to the cause - and not just developers to create and maintain the integrations, but also people with the skills needed to negotiate with the businesses for whatever kinds of back-end deals have to occur to keep the integration online and functional on the financial institution's side. So far, we've been good at finding an army of excellent developers to drive FOSS - for this kind of integration pursuit, the FOSS movement would also need to be good at finding an army of excellent businessmen, lawyers, etc... that would be as dedicated and available as the software development force (I'd be all for such an expansion of scope in the Open Source movement) - The "charging for access" issue above would still be a problem here.
Now, none of these are reasons not to do it - merely a statement of risks and a peek into the scope and effort needed for such an approach. It's not something I'd ever have the time or energy to lead the charge on personally, but kudos to whoever could rally the army (and the political will) needed to make it happen.
It's even more helpful with my grandmother's finances. My grandfather had handled their finances all his life. After his death, I set up a Mint account for her and it has been invaluable in both its convenience and in helping me contain various crises: overdrafts, missed bills, fraud, bad spending habits. Unfortunately, when it comes to money, seniors are sitting targets.
Not to say there aren't things that could be improved. But it's a long way from suck.
It is really invaluable to figure out where I'm wasting money and can improve my spending habits.
Simple on the other hand is pretty useless to me. The rates are awful and it's just a nice looking app - really don't get it. But suppose I don't fit the use case they pivoted to before launch since I don't set budgets and more just keep tabs on when money comes in or out. Will probably end up closing my account there but your idea of becoming more like Mint (linking accounts) could make it useful.
Level - https://levelmoney.com/
22seven - https://www.22seven.com/
There are likely others, but I just rarely hear about money management apps.
Not to mention both are not on Android.
The other stuff that the author talks about are simple website changes that the Mint team could make if he just send them suggestions and ideas for improvement. I don't think they're anything serious that would warrant the claim that Mint 'sucks'.
I can say the same for YNAB, which I've bought and since stopped using. I simply don't need it, but it's nice to know that I have it if I ever do. I actually think YNAB's model where you don't get to automatically sync your accounts works better at its goal. These days I have an excellent mental model of my finances at any given time. Eliminating debt plays a huge part in that.
Mint got me to think about my cashflow in a way that motivated me to eliminate the burden of debt from my life. YNAB got me to think about my cashflow in a way that motivated me to control unnecessary spending and use short-term debt where appropriate. It probably could have done what Mint did too, but I was already at that point when I started using it.
It's actually as mentioned in Wesabe's postmortem (http://blog.precipice.org/why-wesabe-lost-to-mint/); for most people Mint doesn't actually get you to change your behavior. It just provides twentysomethings with some feeling that they're managing their finances, in return for getting pitched credit cards.
Harder and more worthwhile than UI or functionality fixes are changing twentysomethings' behavior, or doing something interesting for older people with more complicated financial situations. [Mint's useless for my parents, with multiple bank accounts, investments, retirement, education and health savings accounts, etc.]
One problem (and barrier to good competitors) are that aggregating finance data sucks. Mint started with Yodlee, which is nothing but a scraper for bank sites, and now runs on something Intuit built internally. It's hard to imagine many startups meaningfully tackling the problem.
Bingo! If you're spending more money than you should, it does you no good to see colorful graphs indicating you spent too much. If you get budget alerts but still blow through your budget, it really does you no good. Maybe it even makes you more resolute in your careless spending.
YNAB doesn't connect to any of your accounts. You have to enter in transactions manually. That limits its audience and makes it not really a direct competitor to Mint. But I find manually entering your past transactions really, really forces you to think about how you're spending money.
I have personally convinced several other people to start using it, and happily evangelize the product whenever the topic of personal finance or budgeting comes up.
Also, with all the focus on web apps, it is interesting to see (and use) software that is sold as a proper download.
It's a hard thing to do. Intuit should had never bought mint and kept working on its online offering of quicken. Now the only thing that's any good is the desktop version of quicken.
I'm looking forward to seeing what companies like Standard Treasury (http://standardtreasury.com/) can do to modernize this area.
