Mint Team Spotlight - Damon Billian
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- Name:
- Damon Billian
- Title:
- Director, Customer Evangelism
- Education:
- School of hard knocks.
- Current Financial Strategy:
- None… working on it. As I recently got married, keeping a simple budget going is a little more difficult than I would like (I am also quite lazy).
- Worst Financial Move:
- Too many to list here. Some bad moves: buying a car with cash, not being patient with stocks and getting married (just kidding).
- Best Financial Advice:
- To be honest, I would tell all young kids to finish college. I would tell parents to teach their kids about how saving money can make you money down the road. I would also advise folks in their twenties to be careful with credit.
- How Do You Keep Spending in Check?
- Try not to go out on weekends. That doesn’t always happen, though!
- Who Taught You About Finance?
- Hmmmm… not a single soul. I still have work to do in this arena. Some of the blogs on the Internet have solid information and I have read a few books about investing that made me understand the basics much better.
- How Many Credit Cards Do You Have?
- Three. My favorite is the American Express Starwood Preferred Guest Card. I am going to pay one off and move to two. I also have several department store cards that I don’t use and will be getting rid of them.
- Where Did You Work Before Mint?
- SimplyHired.com, PayPal/eBay.
- What Difference Do You See Going From A Large Company to a Start-up?
- Getting things changed in a larger company is more difficult and there’s definitely a lot more political issues in a larger organization.
- What Drew You to Mint?
- I think Mint has a great product. The people here are extra spiffy as well.
- How Will You Help Mint Grow?
- Identifying key product requests and other issues that cause customers problems. As we’re still very much in beta, I don’t think many customers realize that we’re still testing things out & making as many improvements as rapidly as we can.
- What are Your Typical Hours?
- Generally 50-60 hours per week — I often work at home after office hours. My role also requires that I generally work 6-7 days per week.
- What’s your Favorite Things About Mint?
- Besides the product and people? Working in downtown Mountain View again—good food around here. I also think the product will help folks save money.
- What Has Been the Funniest Moment at Mint?
- Probably not fit for a public blog. Let’s just say that one of our employees got called a bad word by a competitor.
- What Has Been the Weirdest Moment at Mint?
- Actually having them hire me. Do they know what they got into?
Why is it bad to pay cash for a car?
Ahh, so thats what Damon looks like. Good to put a face to a name.
Hi Red,
Long story.
[...] posts from the Mint staff seem to be slowing down. Daemon Billian the Director & Customer Evangelismand was last seen on the forum 1/21/2008 and made one post, before that he had posted almost daily [...]