Tom and TS kind of sound like Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. One a visionary and innovator (but probably not going to know the margin of a product), and the other a an expert at keeping a business stable, maximising profit, and managing through consensus and finding the right people for a job.
It sounds like Tom probably left at the right time, and TS has been able to stabilise the business.
Tom was tremendously unlucky to be at the helm during Covid, presented with critical issues he had little power to remedy. TS has done a great job, but the narrative shouldn’t be Tom had in any way done a bad job prior to TS taking over, far from it. Monzo is where it is because of both of them and for very different reasons.
Yes, this seems like a highly revisionist take to me, too. The team, the tech, the product process - all those existed already.
yep, the processes were there, and if say Covid had landed in May not March, there is a good chance the funding round that Tom was doing would have been in the bank, and Monzo would have weathered the storm.
What I will say, is that Monzo seems now to be a business with sharper edges, which I don’t think Tom could have done, and I think Tom (I might rewatch) said on Diary of a CEO, that he was knackered and it needed a different skill set at that point, which is why TS came in and moved the business on
edit - Just to add, I think the discussions about Tom moving from CEO, to a ‘President’ type role had been on going for a while hadn’t they?
I just got this as well. Must have gone out to millions of people.
Interesting they’re going with “credit card”.
So you can get a Flex credit card without having a current account?
I seem to have cut off the bit about existing monzo customers only.
Absolutely. The hardest part of any startup’s journey is getting it off the ground. That’s where the vast majority of startups fail.
Monzo in the early days was extremely product focused. They built a great product and built a huge base of ‘raving fans’. Customer numbers grew exponentially with very little marketing cost. What’s more the product was built in a way that could scale. They also secured high quality investment to grow the business, which is not easy. In the first years of a startup, you face and have to navigate potential failure points constantly. Not that this was just Tom, but the founder and CEO deserves a huge amount of credit for all of this; from the hires made, the vision and drive, the personal risks taken and all the rest of it.
As it became a larger business, I think it hit more against the reality of being a regulated bank and not just an app or a tech product, as well as hitting the troubles of being a corporation which is very different to being a small start up team. But the second stage would never have happened if the first stage hadn’t been nailed. As a startup it’s not a failure to suddenly find yourself a huge company with a host of new troubles.
Also, massive heads up to Tom for making the one decision that was probably the hardest but also the most important - handing over. Very few successful business leaders and founders have the wisdom to realise their own limitations and put the future of the company above their own ambitions and self-belief.
Absolutely, and I also think a lot of credit should go to Anne Boden. Without her, we probably wouldn’t have Monzo. Tom did the right thinking stepping down, and TS has arguably saved Monzo from administration.
Awkward - I am not saying other banks don’t do this, but this is a terrible look for Monzo and I must say very surprising if it’s true. The screenshots seem to suggest that it is. I have always thought Monzo was doing well. This suggests otherwise 
However, it has now been discovered that Monzo staff have been making derogatory and disparaging remarks on their internal communication channels about people who have concerns with gender ideology, including senior members of staff using the term ‘TERF’ (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist) - a derogatory term often used to describe those with gender critical beliefs, particularly women.
Blockquote
This first came to light earlier in the year after Anders (not his real name) decided to publicly challenge Monzo’s LinkedIn posts during ‘Transgender Awareness Week’. Monzo’s posts celebrated the implementation of ‘gender neutral toilets’ and ‘preferred pronouns’, as well as changing the name of maternity leave to ‘primary caregiver leave’. Monzo are known generally for being extremely vocal about their support for ‘LGBTQ+’.
Anders responded to these posts on LinkedIn, raising his concerns about the impact such policies would have on staff and customers, particularly women.
However, he noticed in the following weeks that Monzo staff were repeatedly looking at his LinkedIn profile. Sensing something strange, Anders submitted a Subject Access Request to Monzo for his personal data. It revealed a number of shocking things.
Monzo employees were taking his information from LinkedIn without his knowledge and posting it on their internal staff forums, open for all to see, and then gossiping about him, including calling him a “horrible Terf” They also accused him of using the “old ‘women’s rights are under threat’ chestnut”.
However, new evidence has emerged demonstrating the extent of Monzo’s hostility towards members of the public with gender critical views, particularly women.
I have received screenshots from past and present employees of Monzo, revealing highly derogatory comments being made on internal communication channels at the bank. The staff members who have provided me with these screenshots have asked to remain anonymous. They told me that they are too scared to challenge the culture internally, for fear of repercussions.
A screenshot which has been identified as coming from a Vice President in Monzo reads: “we should anticipate responses from terfs”.
It’s not fabulous, but James is a bit of a culture warrior and comes from his perspective, he’s a writer for the Spectator and Spiked to boot.
His SubStack explains his world view
This is the issue of our time.
Society has been taken over by divisive identity politics, grounded in dangerous ideology. Far from progressively striving for equality, we have entered a regressive era in which the immutable characteristics of a person matter more than anything else.
People are obsessed with self-identity. Groups are pitted against each other. Victim hierarchies reign supreme. We are told that men can become women. We are told that all white people are racist. Our sense of reality is being diluted. Free speech is under attack.
I should know - I was expelled from my Masters’ degree in psychotherapy for daring to speak out.
This Substack aims to offer a cathartic antidote to the chaos we are living through.
There might be something in it, but I as ever await fuller facts to emerge
We’ve heard this sort of thing before about Monzo. There is almost certainly something in it.
Can’t nitpick all of the ‘article’ because am at work, but it appears, shall I say, not unbiased. There’s at least one instance of a deliberate misrepresentation of a quote - either that or they don’t understand how semicolons work.
as I said, there might be, but also the author isn’t exactly coming at it from a balanced place
I would agree, but that isn’t a reason to essentially dismiss what is being said. However, this sort of reaction happens with most of the Monzo discussions here.
Someone posts a negative story so everyone must find a way to discredit the author or site it is from.
This is old news resurfacing because he wants even more attention for his backwards views.
I completely get this, and I did note that I could only go off the evidence (screenshots) and that I couldn’t verify this was truly the case. As you note, it’s coming very much from one angle as are the rest of their posts, so as you and others know “don’t believe everything you read”.
Folk reference it as “old news” but it’s the first time I’ve seen it, and it seems that this has re-surged again since the initial time. Who knows.
Regardless of the date and time, or whether you agree with it or not, it’s a terrrible look for any bank. I hope this is old news and they’ve taken steps to address this,
It went around on this thread a few months ago and the same people that had the “down with Monzo” attitude are already on it again. Shocked I am!
