Note : All Monzo Q&As to date can be found here 
Forum family, what the heck is up? I request the highest of fives! 
Another week has passed in Earth Time. Here on this planet, that means 7 days. Since all of us here are native to this planet, with the notable exception of @TheWatcher, we felt it was appropriate to use that system. Still - for extra growth weād be open to supporting different planets with Monzo, as and when that time comes 
To the stars!
Still, as much as weād like to expand across the universe, itās important to first take baby steps as per the needs of the business and what-not. All that funk and all that jazz.
And take steps we have. You all found out last week that weāve opened our Vegas office!
And, weāre super amped about the progress. Itās been a wild ride. Back in April, a small group of us flew out to Sin City to turn an empty office space into a happy, vibrant, Hot Coral space for our first group of American Monzonauts. But, NONE of this would have been possible without our very FIRST American Monzonaut.
The man. The legend. In the Hot Coral Hot Seatā¢ļø this week, I am super proud to presentā¦ Dillon Van Auken!
Hereās a sneaky one I took in the Vegas Office. Yes! Your first look at the Vegas office, although in the backgroundā¦ Maybe if you ask nicely, Dillon will share some more
Before we get into it, catch up on all the previous Q&Aās here!
Click here to see all previous Q&As
Week 1 : Chris MacLean, Customer Operations & Vulnerable Customers 
Week 2 : James Nicholson, iOS Engineer 
Week 3 : Tara Mansfield, People Operations Manager 
Week 4 : James Routley, Backend Engineer 
Week 5 : Hugh Wells, Customer Operations 
Week 6 : Naz Malik, Technical Specialist 
Week 7 : Fred Morgan, COps Squad Captain (Calls & Social Media) 
Week 8 : Emma Northcott, COps Scaling Team 
Week 9 : Jarno Wolf, COps Financial Crime Specialist & Squad Captain 
Week 10 : Maria Campbell, Head of People 
Week 11 : Jim Amey, Night COps Captain 
Week 12 : Richard Cook, Online Community Manager 
Week 13 : Beatrice Borbon, Content & Press Manager 
Week 15 : Ella Johanny, COps/Hiring 
Week 16 : Harry Ashbridge, Writer 
Week 17 : Beth Scott, Overnight COps 
Week 18 : Georgie Parmenter, Executive Assistant to the Founders 
Week 19 : Vulnerable Customers Team 
Week 20 : Leah Templeman, Interim VP People 
Week 21 : Daniel Chatfield, Backend Engineer, Fincrime & Security 
Week 22 : Valerio Magliulo, Product Manager - Revenue Team 
Week 23 : Sam Watkin, Operations Analyst 
Week 24 : Kieran McHugh, Backend Engineer 
Week 25 : Jonas Huckestein, Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer 
Week 26 : Annual Report Edition with Tristan Thomas and Julie Oey 
Week 27 : Zander Brade, Lead Product Designer 
Week 28 : Richard Dingwall, Payments Engineer 
Week 29 : Oliver Beattie, Head of Engineering (Reliability Report Special) 
All done? Sorted!
So, let me tell you a lil bit about Dillon.
He was our first ever remote worker, joining in May 2016 to lead a team of mostly UK based Remote Workers (including me - for my first 18 months or so at Monzo, I worked 7pm-4am). We were a small but very effective team. As we grew, we hired lots more night workers, and so we separated into several Night Squads! Each squad has itās own Squad Captain who look after the people in it, and then Dillon became the Squad Captain Manager - so he looks after the Squad Captains and therefore has a huge responsibility over the Night team overall.
As if that wasnāt enough work on itās own, back in 2017 we began to discuss the idea of opening a US office for operations. We found that we struggled to hire for Night hours compared to Day - quite a few of our night team hires ended up moving to earlier shifts, as itās not easy to maintain for many folks. Having an operational office 8 hours behind the UK would solve that problem, and so at the beginning of this year we ramped up the speed and moved forward with Project Elvis, as it was then known! Dillon was the obvious person to lead this project from the start since heās based in LA, only a few hours drive away.
Itās no exaggeration to say the project couldnāt have happened without him. The amount of work it takes to lead a team to start a new project in a country that youāve never operated in before is absolutely insane. And heās done a truly stellar job!
Fun Fact About Dillon :
āI played drums on stage with Green Day in front of 20,000 people when I was 12ā
His fave thing about working at Monzo?
āThe people - an amazing mix of brilliance and compassionā
You know the score!
Get your questions in and Dillon will be here later in the week to answer them (and maybe share some more pics of the Vegas office)
?
)
Both as an answer doesnāt count. You must like one more than the other! 
