Like any start-up, Mint.com’s big challenge was to establish credibility in the marketplace. To get folks to trust them enough to do business with a totally new company, and in Mint’s case, to enter their guarded financial information. How did they do it? Jason mentions two key things:

* Great Design. “Design has given us the credibility we need to overcome the downsides of being the new kid on the block. It isn’t easy to convince people to give their credit card numbers to a company with a dot.com in its name, let alone all of their online banking passwords. Design matters.”
* Get the Media to Tell Your Story. “We abandoned all paid search and concentrated 100% on PR and organic search.”

These are great lessons for anyone launching an online start-up, and I couldn’t agree more with Mint’s approach. In fact, we’ve applied the exact tactics in our start-ups, and it really starts with hiring a great graphic designer to make your product or service come to life. Without good design, you create a huge (and unnecessary) risk that your initial customer prospects, media, etc., will question whether you’ve got what it takes to succeed. If you look like the shaky new kid on the block, you’re probably never going to get anyone to take you seriously and you’ll have a very difficult time building the momentum needed to succeed. Bad design is the kiss of death for an online start-up.

Building Credibility in Your Start-up—Lessons from Mint.com