TheStreet.com, the investment news site headlined by famously loud-mouthed CNBC host Jim Cramer, said today that it’s making a strategic investment of its own in Framingham, MA-based Geezeo, the personal-finance website we profiled last August. TheStreet.com is putting $1.2 million into Geezeo in return for a 13 percent stake in the company, and has the option to buy the entire company for $12 million anytime in the next year.
Geezeo provides what I called “personal finance tracking for people who don’t buy personal finance software”—meaning 18-to-34-year-olds who need some way to manage their checking, credit, and retirement accounts but aren’t likely to buy Intuit’s Quicken, Microsoft Money, or the other boxed software packages for money management. But Geezeo is more than just a Web-based software service—it also provides social networking opportunities so that users can encourage each other along toward their financial goals, such as paying off credit cards or saving up for a big vacation. The site also provides tools for checking on account balances from mobile phones.
TheStreet.com—which was founded in 1996 and was one of the few financial-media websites to survive the dot-com crash—has been on an expansion kick designed to make it into a one-stop destination for consumer-level investment and financial information. In 2007 it acquired both StockPickr, a popular social networking site devoted to investing, and Bankers Financial Products Corp., the parent company of BankingMyWay and RateWatch.
“Geezeo is a natural place for visitors to the individual Web sites within TheStreet.com network to connect,” Thomas Clarke, TheStreet.com’s chairman and CEO, said in a press release about the investment—which, given recent history, seems likely to lead to a full acquisition. “Whether they are visiting TheStreet.com for market analysis, Stockpickr.com for stock ideas, BankingMyWay.com for the best online bank rates for CDs, savings accounts, interest checking, money markets etc., or MainStreet.com for personal finance information, Geezeo brings our audience together in an interactive arena that facilitates educated financial decision making.”
The guys at Geezeo are understandably elated about the investment. “Having TheStreet.com as a strategic partner/investor is hands down the best next step in Geezeo’s evolution,” Geezeo co-founder Peter Glyman wrote to me today (cribbing from a blog post). “Along with the capital needed to take Geezeo to the next level, our relationship with TheStreet.com will also help us reach millions of new potential users and expand our content offerings in the areas of personal finance and investing.”
