Coder. Speaker. Writer.

The launch date for Mint still had not been set, and it had slipped first from March 2007 to tax time, and then again to the summer.  The slip was fortuitous.  Prior to launch Mint’s primary concern was security, handling user’s financial data is a sensitive matter, the secondary concern was distribution.  Unlike social network startups Mint did not have the built in virality.  Spreading it by word of month was the best it could do given the size of the team and its budget.  Letting the launch date slip made Mint eligible to demo at TechCrunch 40, the first ever TechCrunch conference where 40 pre-launch startups would demo their product for a grand prize of $50,000.  Launching at TechCrunch would help spread the word at least first to the tech community.

July 2007 – At the beginning of the summer, once everyone has settled in Aaron starts to look for a VP of product to help with usability and grow the product team.  He’s introduced to Aaron Forth by one of his First Round Capital investors, Josh Kopelman.  Josh knows Aaron from half.com.   Aaron Forth, aka A4, joins the team and quickly starts cranking out formal specs.  He also focuses on the add flow of user accounts, because that is the initial user experience.

August 2007 – The engineering team, always resourceful, still felt shorthanded and started to look around for another seasoned engineer.  They came across Daryl Puryear.  The team knew he was one of the best candidates they had interviewed, but wanted to invite him back for dinner to see if he would be a culture fit at Mint.  They all went out to Pasta? on Castro.  A few people ordered chicken parmesan… then Daryl ordered salmon, then a few other engineers ordered chickern parmesan… then Jason Putorti showed up 30 minutes later and ordered chicken parmesan!  The team had found another individual who wasn’t afraid of the norm.

Aaron wanted a full fledged marketing campaign with lots of PR to start a buzz going around its private beta and prior to its launch at TechCrunch.  He hires Donna Wells, thats the right the CMO from Mint’s rival Intuit.  Donna joins and the whole team keeps her identity a secret until post launch.

September 2007 – Weeks before the launch the team is cranking full speed ahead.  On the day of the launch the team heads over to hotel it is being held at in SF, and watches the demo.  Everyone waits in anticipation as Aaron demo, he incorrectly types his password – gasp!  But, after that minor hiccup the demo is a huge success, and there is definitely a buzz floating around about Mint.

The night of September 18th TechCrunch announces that Mint has won TC40.  There are 10,817 RU’s the second biggest in Mint.com history.  While the team celebrates in the room next door Atish and David work late into the night rewriting the data provider to make it more scalable for the freshly minted users!

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This year at Code Camp, I will be presenting the topic “When to Build and When to Buy”, which will explore the trade-offs associated with either buying software as a service or building an internal tool to meet your business’ needs.  This is especially important for cash strapped startups that are trying to keep their burn rate down, or even for larger companies that are trying to cut costs during a recession.

Here are some of the key areas I will focus on:

1. Understand what business problem it is you are trying to solve and what your requirements are both from a feature standpoint and price, before getting sucked into a sales pitch that offers you very cool bells and whistles that you either don’t need or that are too sophisticated for the simple problem you are trying to solve.

2. The hidden costs associated with buying software as a service.

3. The hidden costs associated with building an internal tool and supporting it.

4. Some key questions to ask service providers before buying, and when and which services it makes sense to buy.

5.  When it makes sense to build and how to speed up development to reduce the hidden costs.

I’ll also spend a little time talking about bringing in consultants and how you can benefit from their expertise.

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2006 was a year of firsts for Mint.com aka myMint.com.  It was the year Mint Software Inc. was officially incorporated, it received its seed round of funding, and formed the initial members of the Mint family.  And it was the year I officially joined Mint as “#2″.

January 2006 – Aaron starts meeting with people who have VC contacts to discuss his business plan and see if they can connect him.  He hopes that he can get funded with a concept, but most likely he will need to build a prototype.

March 2006 – Aaron soon finds that pursuing Mint and his day job are too much.  He also realizes that if he wants to impress investors and prove that he has a vested interest in his company he should be pursuing it full time.  So he quits his day job, incorporates Mint Software Inc., and begins coding daily in his apartment.

April 2006 – By this point Aaron is in full speed with development, and focused on solving difficult engineering problems such as categorizing transactions and figuring out how to automate the account sign up process.

Summer 2006 – Aaron continues to talk to people about his business plan, and also to discuss the most challenging problems they have with their finances.

August 2006 – Aaron meets Matt Snider, a front engineer and JavaScript guru.   They  go hiking, and Aaron tries to pitch Mint to Matt.  Matt declines because he is currently working at startup.  A few weeks later, looking for a place to live, Matt moves in with Aaron.

Bowling 2.0 begins, a league that brings together startups to talk shop over beers and bowling.  Aaron signs up and invites Matt and Poornima to come along to mix and mingle with other startups.

Aaron starts aggressively fund raising.  He meets with Sequoia Capital, who suggests that he join YouTube and head the engineering division.  Aaron doesn’t bite.  Other VCs are impressed by Aaron and want to hire him to come on board instead of invest in his company.  Aaron kindly declines, and continues to pursue his own idea.

In a stroke of fate, Poornima gets laid off from Synopsys.  Unsure of her future, she contemplates working for Mint, but Aaron hesitates to hire her, because she has no web development, web services, database, or startup experience!

Matt is growing increasingly frustrated with his current startup.  He decides to take Aaron up on his offer.

September 2006 – Willing to give her a chance, Aaron hires Poornima as a contractor, and Matt joins Mint full time.  Working out of Aaron and Matt’s apartment the team Mint team grows.  At this point, Aaron is bootstrapping the startup, but realizes he needs funding to attract more employees.  He starts talking to several VC firms.

October 2006 – After a few weeks of fundraising, Mint closes its seed round of funding with First Round Capital.  The team goes out to dinner with their new VCs in Palo Alto.

Unable to spend time coding, developing the product, hiring, and formulating the business plan, Aaron starts to look for an engineering lead.  He meets David Michaels, who is referred to him by another Mint interview candidate Mike Mettler.  The Mint team interviews David and is pretty impressed.  He is quickly hired as their VP of Engineering, and the first adult of the Mint family

Much to Poornima and Matt’s dismay Aaron finds office space in downtown Mountain View.  The team moves out of Aaron and Matt’s apartment, and into the second floor of an old build one block off of Castro, only being able to afford the rent for 6 cubes.

By mid-October Poornima signs on as the third employee, but is affectionately called “#2″ because engineers start counting from 0.

November 2006 - One month before the Mint Alpha is scheduled to release a competitor Wesabe launches, which is coincidentally the date that David joins Mint.  Wesabe enters the market as the first Web 2.0 personal finance startup.  The team nervously all log in to see what Wesabe is all about.  Relieved that Wesabe’s product is more about socializing personal finance, they keep chugging along.

December 2006 - Mint releases its alpha version with about 100 users, mostly investors, friends, and family.  A successful launch, focused primarily on a user being able to add accounts successfully, and see their transaction history.

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I spent the last two weeks traveling to Italy, and when I got back there was a fervor amongst my friends and co-workers to know more about my trip, see pictures, and even start a travel blog!  I’ve decided to do a series of posts to satisfy every one’s curiosity

Over three years ago I had dream to travel to Italy, stroll through the warm Tuscan countryside, visit the grandiose monuments in Rome, eat copious amounts of pasta and Italian pastries, and learn about the culture.  Alas, my dream was put on hold for coding, and not until the beginning of this year did I revisit it.  In March I started playing with the idea of living in Italy for a week.  I wasn’t sure where I wanted to stay, but I knew that I wanted it to be close to the water.  After listening to Beyonce & Jay-Z’s song “Upgrade U” and watching Diane Lane’s movie “Under the Tuscan Sun” I had a stroke of inspiration, and decided that I wanted to rent a villa on the Amalfi Coast in the town of Positano.  

I sent out a mass emails to my closest friends, attaching breathtaking views of the coast line, and listing all the fun things to do there such as sailing, swimming in caves and taking Italian cooking classes.  I was hoping that someone would want to join me, but with the recession looming, housing prices sinking, and the Euro gaining in value against the dollar my friends were worried about taking a vacation.  Having no real financial obligations, and having a you only-live-once and its-easier-to travel-when-you’re-young philosophy, I scoffed at the recession, and even convinced my boyfriend, Jason, who hates long international coach-class flights, to come with me. 

The first phase of planning was to find a place to stay.  Booking a hotel was going to be too expensive, and we wanted to have a more authentic experience. I figured a villa would meet our needs, and starting looking for a reliable rental company.  I figured we would be spending most of our time exploring the area or on the beach, so I tried to look for medium priced places that were comfortable, but also located close to restaurants and within walking distance of the beach.  There were good reviews on the Summer in Italy site, but I couldn’t find any that I liked, I switched to using Ville in Italia.  The place we ended up booking was a small loft apartment that was underneath a larger house, and located right across the street from an Italian market called Casa Miulo.  Unfortunately, we didn’t bother to notice that there was no air conditioning, and unlike most Septembers in Positano this year’s was pretty hot.  But we figured worse case we’d cool off in the Tyrrhenian Sea!

As I was making my plans and talking to people about my travels, everyone was surprised that I was only going for one week, and only to the beach.  I started toying with the idea of spending another week in Rome and Florence.  One friend even went as far as saying that I would be missing out on the entire Italian experience if I did not see Florence!  I was still concerned about costs, hotels in Europe aren’t cheap, plus train fare to get to each of these cities.  Jason had stayed with a family in Florence 5 years ago, and after a couple quick Facebook messages, they were more than happy to host us for a few days, we’d only need a hotel in Rome.

The next step was figuring out what to do in each location, and how to get around.  First, I searched on TripAdvisor for how to get from Rome Fiumicino to Positano.  Some people suggested taking the train from Rome to Naples, and then renting a car, but others were opposed to it because of the narrow windy roads.  I figured we’d be sleep deprived, and wouldn’t do well on narrow windy roads.  I had also read that Positano was pretty walkable, so there was no point in renting a car for our entire trip.  Others suggested getting a car company to drive you from Naples to Positano; I looked up the rates and it was equivalent to my flight to Rome, nix that!  The only other options were to take another train to Sorrento, the Circumvenusia, and then the SITA bus to Positano or a hydrofoil from Naples to Positano but they were unreliable.  I picked the train and bus option; it would be more stops, but at least we could afford it.  However, Jason discovered that we could book a car with our villa rental agency for a reasonable amount, we ultimately went with that option thinking it would be more relaxing after an already long flight and train ride.

Jason took care of booking our flights and the villa.  Booking the villa took a little back and forth, but went pretty smoothly.  There were no good deals on flights to Rome that didn’t take forever to get there, so Jason cashed in some miles and booked us two coach tickets on US Airways, not the greatest carrier, but it would do.

I didn’t have a lot of time to plan activities day by day, and I knew Jason would want to be more spontaneous, so I picked up copy of Frommer’s Amalfi Coast guidebook, and read a few chapters in it to figure out the best places to eat, how to various islands, and what the main attractions on the coast were.  Wanting to make sure I didn’t get ripped off anywhere and to put together a budget ahead of time, I checked prices for boat rentals and sailing tours.  And being a foodie femgineer, I made a list of all the restaurants I wanted to try in the area, with price ranges, and the days what day of the week they would be open.

I also  wanted an Italian’s honest opinion so I contacted a friend of mine, who lives in Italy, and she gave me some great advice on things to do in Rome and Florence, and what to prepare for when traveling to Italy.  For example, she recommended taking comfortable sandals to Positano, because the town is built into the cliff and there stairs to climb everywhere.  And that Rome can be overwhelming, picking a few spots is the best option, and Romans enjoy summers al fresco. 

Jason signed up for the iPhone international calling plan to keep up with his family, but I decided to wing it.  Texting was only 50 cents; a quick and cheap way to communicate with friends back home.  I knew my parents would be happy with a one minute call, and a page long email about my travels.

I was adamant about us only taking carry-ons because I hate losing luggage, and schlepping large suitcases on trains.  I figured we could find a laundromat or hand wash our clothes.  We packed lightly, only the essentials such as my new Kindle 2, which would undoubtedly come in handy on our various train rides.  I had already read Eat, Pray, Love, and couldn’t find another Italian travel book so I settled for  Julia Child’s My Life in France (research for my next trip) and Clean Code by Robert C. Martin (just in case I starting to miss coding ).

Off to Roma, Firenze e Positano!

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For the past three years I’ve been trying to emphasize and build unit tests at Mint.com.  I’ve tried TDD and some other approaches but nothing has kept up pace with an agile-like speed of development.  The article  Is Unit Testing Doomed? talks about the issues that developers have today with all the different philosophies of unit testing, and why so many opt out of doing it.  Instead of forsaking unit testing because I couldn’t find the right methodology to suite my needs, I decided to come up with my own home grown version of it.

My approach is to design the entire project’s front and back-end’s set of interactions, then the data model to represent the back-end.  I then break the design apart into components that I plan on implementing.  After implementing each piece I write some unit tests for the apis I have developed.  I do this for each component or logical unit I am developing.  I use stubs to avoid class dependencies and focus on the class I am testing.

Since I’m operating in an agile-like environment the design is sure to change, in the event that it does I haven’t wasted a whole lot of time by writing test cases up front using TDD.  I can go in and quickly modify a few test cases that are impacted by the new design, and add additional test cases to handle the new design.  They key is that I’m not writing unit tests to fit my design or testing at the very end when I have very little to no time, and there is too much to test.  I’m writing test cases as I’m developing.  This has a couple benefits: first, its faster to spot bugs that new code might be causing in older code because I have test cases for my older code, hence I’m not breaking old functionality.  Second, when I unit test right after I’ve written a new component I’m forced to think about corner cases that might happen in the beginning of the development cycle rather than the end.  This also improves the overall design of my code and the feature.  If I have time prior to a release, I will add test cases as I fix bugs.  This is how I’ve incrementally built up a regressions suite.

I think developers should face the responsibility of unit testing their code, instead of offloading all testing to QA.  While you might not be able to think of 100% of the cases, flushing out simple error cases and thinking through a few corner cases at least handle some of the bugs that will come your way.  Unit testing is not a substitute for integration testing, but given the time for system setup and tear down unit testing at least keeps pace with daily development.  You can focus on integration testing once you’ve got the feature set completed, or also do it as part of your unit testing.  The point is to consider the philosophies of testing, and try to adapt them to meet your needs.  If writing test cases is the primary battle, focus more on meeting your teams developmental needs and less on being dogmatic about the current testing trends.

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