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Aaron Patzer —
American
Businessman
Aaron Patzer is an internet entrepreneur and the founder of Mint.com, the financial management tool which was acquired by Intuit and has over 10 million users... (wikipedia)
Kevin Systrom of Instagram used to work for us as a consultant in the early days of Mint. I knew him a long time ago. Maybe I could have gotten in there. But with photo sharing, I don't know if there's an obvious business model. I don't think there's a competitive, sustainable advantage.
I always knew I wanted to be a technologist, so I went to Duke and got a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. Really, I thought my goal in life was to be an inventor, a problem solver, so I thought I needed a Ph.D. to be good at inventions, but it turns out that you don't.
If you think about photo sharing sites, the mobile photo sharing and social, there's no competitive advantage, there's no obvious business model, so I never play with anything like that. I avoid it like the plague.
I consider myself an inventor first and an entrepreneur second. In real life, my hero is Thomas Edison. He was a great inventor, but also an outstanding entrepreneur who was able to sell his inventions to the masses. He didn't just develop the light bulb; he invented the entire electric grid and power distribution system.
If you look on Amazon - if you do a search for personal finance, there are literally 20,000 books written on personal finance, and there's no real reason for it. I mean, personal finance is pretty simple.