Announcing Our £22m Investment Round and Crowdfunding!

I didn’t realise it was open to non card holders at all.
A bit annoying if investors selected weren’t customers - seems against the whole point?

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Finally it is over. The last stretch was taking forever! Can’t wait to see what happens next. :heart: :monzo:

So impressed with Monzo’s communications, good work!!

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I love that they decidet to give early access to everyone who wanted to invest :slight_smile:

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I won’t lie this whole thing is annoying for those on the receiving end of that email, not only did non-card holders get in, but various people who pledged a smaller amount then went ahead and gave more (and some even openly posting on the forum about it) stealing spots from people at the end of the ballot.

Would have been nicer if Monzo actually took the time to pause at the end, find those people and adjust their pledges (or cancel them outright for not keeping in the spirit) then re-open the ballot for the remainder still left. But sadly it seems chasing the goal of money went ahead of keeping fairness to those who wanted a chance.

Been with Monzo over a year; User ID is ridiculously low and got 14 friends in (who a load of them got to invest - going to be awkward conversations when they are Investors after I sold them the idea and am not); had many chats with Tom directly back in the day; meanwhile I’m sitting here a year later with nothing.

Honestly sucks and while I do get a ballot and winners and losers - I’d sooner fairness went before goal achieving. Maybe future ballots can have first dibs to those who missed out - or use a different metric than just ‘luck’ like User ID Age, or Number of Friends Referred or Contributions to Community etc.
Something that actually rewards loyalty and contributions over pot luck.

But to those who did play fair and got in, good on you :slight_smile: If Monzo plays out and finds a way to make money and eventually floats - it should be a very good return.

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yep. I think Monzo should have limited people to a maximum of the amount they pledged

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I’m also someone who lost out on the ballot, got my email this afternoon.

I can’t say I’m not disappointed that I didn’t get the chance to invest, but TBH I understand that it’s random, so what can I do? I can bitch and moan about something I had no control over, or I can move on and look to the future. Perhaps I’ll get a chance to invest in a 3rd round, if there is one, perhaps not. I certainly won’t lose any sleep over it.

What makes me laugh are the people on Twitter who are having such a mardy strop about not being chosen to invest that they have asked to close their account. Madness.

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I wish those people hadn’t pledged.

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@tbutz Hit the nail on the head mate :thumbsup:!

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Positive alternative: maybe they’re now future customers, they’ll spread the news to new people etc

There was more than one point.

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+1 for investors to get current account before pledgers. Winners deserve their prize in whole.

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How are Monzo “chasing the goal of money”? They would have been fully funded regardless of what policy they chose. Yes, balloting is unfair but it’s the inevitable consequence of having less of something than people want.

Changing pledged amounts doesn’t “steal” spots… if Monzo hadn’t made clear from the start the pledge wasn’t binding then those people would have just upped their pledge before pledging ended (or put a higher amount in the first place). What you’re saying is that it would have been nice if Monzo had gone back and changed the rules after to give you more chance of getting selected. How is that for fairness?

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I wanted to invest and didn’t get picked. That’s life, can’t we just let it be now?

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How does it not make sense to you?
Say I pledged £100 and got selected in the ballot then went and put £600 down; thats £500 taken out of the pot which should have been allocated to others in the ballet further down.

They very specifically said the pledge will match the final; but it was a technicality with the Crowdcube platform which meant this wasn’t enforced. If you scroll up, Monzo staff even asked people to stick to the pledge amount while others tried to justify why they deserved to change there mind and take more.

It’s only a small number sure; I think the bigger problem was the non-card holders but it would be interesting to see if Monzo ever crunched the numbers and used the learnings for next ballot.

I find the fact that in this community even voicing views which go against the great mighty Monzo get’s shot down like its immune from feedback or suggestions for future ballots. We learn from mistakes, and I think fair discussion is good and means a healthier ballot next time.

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See The Pledges & Investing
TL;DR - no single priority would select a fair number
I like the idea of weighted raffle (extra chances if joined earlier, invited friends, active in community etc). But that is rather technical, random raffle is simple.

I think this thread should be locked once the new info blog entry is out. The lottery is over and it draws the line.

Also I’ve seen Monzo take on feedback elsewhere, but it’s too soon to react to this without having all the information. There was a poll beforehand about how investments should be run, it was 50/50.

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I would be very surprised if they ever do crowdfunding again after going through this trauma twice. Not much point talking about what they can do better in the next ballot because they are never going to touch that again with a bargepole, especially not a lottery format which they thought was the fairest method but only served to create tens of thousands of ‘losers’. No human being likes to be a loser.

It seems they’ve missed a dimension to their diversity strategy as they appear to have too many philosophers and not enough psychologists on the team. Whilst it was extremely ‘fair’ to make it random, 90% of the applicants are really upset about it and think it should be them who wins because they use the forum or they recommended lots of friends or they are an alpha or whatever they feel justifies them to be a winner. With a normal lottery (e.g. national lottery) losers still have hope because they can play again in a few days, but with this that’s it. The million pound ticket is gone.

It could have been every user can buy 50 shares then if there are any left it can go to ballot- then everyone would be a winner, but hey not everything can be a PR win and sometimes they backfire and you inadvertently crush the enthusiasm of half your userbase. :frowning:

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I understand what you’re saying but it doesn’t mean it makes sense. If you want to pick on flaws in the process then pick on valid ones. Allowing investment of £1000 is a valid flaw to pick on as it was the single biggest factor that excluded people. Asking for a pledge amount when it was totally meaningless (and only designed so they could do a live ticker for PR purposes) is also a valid flaw to pick on.

If we’re going to get annoyed at people not sticking to their pledges then I assume you’ll reserve equal ire for those who pledged £1000 and then only invested £100 or those who ended up not investing at all? I assume not, it’s just the entire concept of getting mad at someone for changing their mind when they were told they were allowed to change their mind is wholly irrational. This is especially true when you consider that the pledged amount was editable right up until the end.

I mean, why is it more annoying for someone to change their £100 to £600 on day 13 (when you could still modify your pledge) than on day 15 (when you come to invest)? Either way it’s detrimented the changes of others getting picked but one is someone ethically valid but the other isn’t? It’s not like some people found a loophole that allowed them to invest more than £1000, we’re talking about people opting to invest an amount they were allowed to invest. If the rules had been different and people had had to stick to their pledges then people would have just changed their pledged amount (on day 13 as above) leading to a near identical net result.

This community is open and receptive to feedback and suggestions (and even heavy criticism). To see that you only have to look around a little. However, if you use combative terms like “stealing” and make accusations about money-chasing then you can’t be overly surprised if one or two people vocally disagree with you, especially when the material case you’re presenting is patchy at best.

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I reckon there are quite a lot of happy people and quite a lot of people that will simply accept that it was a ballot, I reckon crowdfunding possibly when international expansion takes place may be a good idea. Always good to have a user base who are invested.

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Totally agreed on this. I don’t really see why they’d put themselves through it a third time. It’s not like they actually need the crowdfunded money per se. I imagine any future rounds will be limited to existing investors purely so they can avoid dilution.

Again agreed that they should look at a different approach to share purchases in the future, so everyone can have a small chunk, rather than giving large money-making opportunities to a few. Perhaps some sort of scheme where a Monzo user can buy up to £50 worth of shares per year for the next few years or something similar.

It’s advertising, and generating nice statistics to use for marketing.

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