Intuit is killing off its Mint budgeting app this week, and that’s good news for the competitor Copilot. Mint’s demise represents both the end of an era and proof that consumers want more from their financial app, founder Andres Ugarte told TechCrunch.
The New York-based CEO launched the subscription-based personal finance tracker in January 2020 to offer an alternative to Mint. Today, Copilot has over 100,000 subscribers with the majority coming to the app at least once a day. Others log into the app several times a week, with 20% of users being what Ugarte considers “heavy users,” using Copilot between five and 10 times a day.
“That’s good for an app that’s not a social network,” Ugarte said.
Users also save an average of 5% after launching the app, Copilot estimates. While that may not seem like much, Ugarte notes that for someone making $100,000, for example, that’s $5,000 a year. It has grown to 100,000 users and the app is putting half a billion back into consumers’ wallets, he said.
Beyond the mint
Like millions of others, Ugarte tried a number of personal finance apps, including Mint, but found them lacking. For example, Ugarte paid a rent each month and Mint flagged it and notified him each month that a large purchase had been made. Except it didn’t actually tell him what the market was, it just gave him a notification to log in and find out what was going on.
“When it launched, Mint was groundbreaking, but the app ended up being asleep at the wheel,” Ugarte said. “Other startups offered alternatives, but when they launched, they looked like Mint, but with a new coat of paint.”
Testing these apps also gave Ugarte perspective on how cumbersome it was to link accounts — Copilot users link an average of 10 individual accounts. Therefore, he wanted to create an app that would reward users by taking all that data and making sense of it for them.
Other personal finance apps show where you’re spending, even in categories that might not be relevant, he said. Copilot analyzes activity, including recurring payments, and displays the five to 10 budget score categories the user wants so they can see where they stand in terms of spending and saving.
Mint User Registration
After Intuit announced on Nov. 2 that Mint would shut down on March 23, Ugarte was among several finance app founders, including Monarch Money co-founder Ozzie Osman, who told me that Mint’s loss was their gain. In Copilot’s case, that November announcement day turned out to be the “biggest day ever,” Ugarte said.
That growth hasn’t stopped, he says. The company grew more in the last four months than in the previous four years. Copilot was able to take this growth to a $6M Series A funding round led by Nico Wittenborn’s Adjacent. Wittenborn has previously invested in companies including Revolut, Calm, Niantic, PhotoRoom and BeReal.
TechCrunch reported on Copilot when it first launched with $250,000 in angel funding and then again when it added support for Apple Card. The new investment gives Copilot $10.5 million in total venture capital.
The company reached profitability in 2023, however, more customers were asking for an Android app so they could share it with their family and friends. Copilot has been an iOS app since launch. Ugarte decided to look for a new capital to be able to take advantage of this opportunity.
In addition to hiring to build Android and web capabilities, Copilot will accelerate AI and product development efforts.
“We’ve been doing a lot of machine learning over the years, but now we have users saying they’re exporting their data from Copilot to ChatGPT and discussing their finances,” Ugarte said. “It makes sense to provide that experience so they have accurate information.”
Ugarte did not give an exact date for when the new features will be released, however, the goal is by the end of the year.
