Crush of the Week: Aaron Patzer
I’ve been an occasional user of mint.com for the past year but when they recently announced a bunch of new features I decided to re-visit the site. In learning about these new features I came across this fellow, Founder and CEO of mint.com Aaron Patzer:
Why, hello there
As I read more about Mr. Patzer I realized he would be perfect for Crush of the Week. Even without that face this man is nerd heaven. He’s been messing about with computers since he was 6 years old and has been in business for himself since he was 16. He got his three bachelor’s degrees from Duke University in computer science, electrical engineering, and computer engineering. Let’s all take a minute to cool off because it gets hotter. Next up was Princeton where he started out in a Ph.d. program but later switched to a Master’s program in electrical engineering. After helping build the Cell microprocessor he figured what the hell, I’ll start my own personal finance website to take on Microsoft Money and Quicken. Because why not? So he spent months chugging along with that project, building the site and company on his own. How did he make it work? By being sexy: “I knew nothing about Java web services, little about databases, little about management, and only some on recruiting and building a company. But I was really good at one thing: algorithms.” Algorithms. (Note to self: update match.com profile to include being really good at algorithms as a pre-req).
Mint.com was launched in mid-2007 at the TechCrunch40 conference, where it of course won. Today over 1 million people use the site and they are adding three-thousand new users every day. As the site’s success grows so too does Mr. Patzer’s hotness. Still need convincing? Consider these fun facts:
1. He likes long walks on the beach:
2. He’s done time in prison:
(JOKE)
3. He’s deep:
In fiction, my hero’s are Howard Roark in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead – he’s actually the person I most identify with – along with the characters in Atlas Shrugged, and Henry Bannon in Calumet K.
5. He’s friends with Suze Orman:
OK, this is getting a bit stalker-y so I’ll end here. What do you think though? Isn’t he a catch?
