Adobe team was not comfortable when Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion 3 years ago. YouTube, was an attractive front end to Adobe’s web video technology called Flash.  Intuit bought Mint recently for $170 million, which is Yodlee’s  YouTube. Similar to YouTube, Mint’s core technology behind was not developed by them. This technology was licensed from Yodlee for a little amount.

Yodlee raised around $116 million over its ten year lifespan. Yodlee tops the list in providing account aggregation for banking institutions. While we enter into the bank’s website, they will provide us the facility to aggregate accounts in other banks or financial institutions. Yodlee powers this facility. Mint signed an agreement with Yodlee to give their back end technology. Mint did a fantastic project for the front end user experience. Mint paid around $2 million per year to Yodlee over the last years. Yodlee never asked for equity in Mint.

Situation worsened when Mint gave some amount of series A stock to Hite capital. This stock was worth a few million dollars. Yodlee cannot collect small fees from Mint now. Intuit will not use Yodlee anymore. They will use their own back-end aggregation service. The circumstances of Yodlee are not same as Adobe/Youtube. Any company is free to build OFX, the specifications to transfer account information between financial institutions. Yodlee introduced OFX in 1990.

Though Yodlee has competitors, they dominate the market at present. Mint focused on design and sold for $170 million since its launch. Yodlee sold around $116 million or more and is still looking for an exit. The rumors say that Aaron Patzer, the founder of Mint turned down an offer of $130 million from Intuit. Patzer has nerves of steel so he might have made a right decision by rejecting this offer.