I've had one brief interaction with Gary a long time ago, and he's been a role model ever since
I had a difference in opinion with my cofounder and wanted to leave the startup we'd founded, even if it meant leaving the YC program (which I adored), and would likely lose my visa to stay in the US. Seeing how distressed I was, Gary took me aside somehow simultaneously made me feel heard, but also told me that it's up to me to come back stronger from this moment.
It made all the difference to me, and I've thought back to that moment many times in the years to come.
we're currently making money from interest charged on loans that we make to our customers, from interest that the central bank pays us on our deposits, as well as from interchange that we earn when our cards are used. this is what most banks do (except they also make lots of money from fees that we don't have)
there are several other ways we'll make money and we just started experimenting with a few of them. we launched a premium account that charges a monthly fee [1], we operate a savings marketplace in which we earn a commission [2] and we help people switch their bills to a cheaper provider if they are currently overpaying [3]
we release our financial statements every year and new ones are coming out soon. feel free to have a dig then :)
Any plans to be able to hold money in a different currency like the Forex features of revolut?
On another note, I love monzo and do use it, and don't want to offend but I just had a look at the monzo plus offering and it's a bit crap. A different colour card and (later this year, and not specified) interest on your account?
I imagine they are doing a sort of soft launch. It sounds like Monzo has lots of features lined upcoming in the future. The die-hard Monzo fans will all sign up (and will give good feedback).
A soft launch is a better idea compared to other companies launching new premium products, like the CityMapper Travel Pass, which is more like an Alpha than anything, and there have been lots of issues from the get-go.
I have been reading HN regularly for 10 years. It has taught me everything I needed to know to get started. I applied to YC 4 times, got rejected 3 times, crashed one startup and ultimately found my current cofounder through the YC community.
HN is not perfect, but I am incredibly grateful for everything it has given me. Like so many here, I couldn’t have done it without Hacker News :)
To this day, the advice I give anyone who wants to get into technology or starting a company is to read everything on HN for 3 months and to look up all the things you don’t understand.
CTO at Monzo here. We are really sorry about that.
One of the things we have learned from this incident is to proactively reach out to all customers as early as possible, even if it means alarming a large number of people.
We did tweet about the incident and updated our statuspage the moment we discovered it, but we didn't proactively message all customers until a few hours later.
