African or European swallow?
2 Likes
I LOVE CATS. I don’t currently have one but when I move to a bigger place we’ll definitely have a furry feline friend. Had both cats and dogs growing up, and love 'em both, but cats suit my lifestyle better because they are low maintenance. Our downstairs neighbour has an adorable cat and every time we exit the house it comes to the window to say hi 
Pineapple on pizza - DEFINITELY. But there has to be chillies too, ideally jalapenos. The spicy/sweet combination is amazing. Side note - Dominos in the UK is now trialling vegan pizza with vegan cheese and I can’t wait to try it.
Android VS iPhone. If I had to pick, I’d pick Android. I’ve been an Android user since the very first Android phone, the G1, came out 10 years ago and I currently use a Pixel 2 XL. I also have an iPhone 6S (will upgrade soon to an XR) and an iPad though. The Pixel 2 XL has the best camera I’ve ever used - in fact, reviews of the new iPhone XS / Max point out that it doesn’t have a better camera than the year-old 2XL, which Apple should be worried about with the Pixel 3 dropping soon. I also find Android better for multi-tasking, social media, as a connector for smart home stuff, and for general day-to-day stuff. iOS has historically lagged pretty far behind in terms of proper multi-tasking, file management, and their notification system.
With that said, there’s one area where iOS has a very clear advantage and that’s pro audio. I mainly use the iPad with Traktor software for DJing (I’m primarily a vocalist/songwriter but I do maybe half a dozen paid DJ gigs a year as well) and I’ve got some cool software synths on there from Roland and other pro audio brands. Android really doesn’t have anything like this, due to years of mediocre audio drivers that were fine for most software but not good enough for pro audio, and due to Apple’s focus on the iPad as a creative tool with a larger screen. A lot of the pro audio software was originally designed for the iPad, but as the iPhone screens have grown larger, they work well there too.
From my perspective, the future of tech is going to be centred around machine learning and AI, and Google is undeniably in a stronger position here. The Pixel 2 XL with one camera sensor outdoes the XS Max which has newer hardware and two sensors and that’s all down to the software. Same reason Google Assistant runs rings around Siri and Alexa. Frankly if anyone isn’t using Google Assistant right now I’d say they’re missing out on a front row seat to the future of technology, and I’d strongly urge them to pick up a £30 Google Home Mini and put it through it’s paces.
I’d definitely say one of the biggest strengths of Android is the huge amount of hardware choice and the aggressive pricing points that some companies will choose to place their products at. I mean, to get a flagship Snapdragon processor and 6+ GB of RAM on something like the Pocophone F1 for around £300 is absolutely insane. It may lack some of the software optimisations of a Pixel, or the “gloss” factor of an iPhone XS, but the reality is you’re getting 80-90% of the performance and feature set for literally 25% of the price.
5 Likes
WARNING - LONG PRINCE ESSAY AHEAD, SKIP AHEAD IF YOU AREN’T INTERESTED
This question needs a bit of reframing.
Prince, unlike most artists didn’t record in a block of time where he thought “OK, I’m making an album, I’ll write some songs, record them, put out an album, do a tour”.
Prince recorded all the time. Damn near every day, for most of his adult life. At any given time there would be several projects in his mind, and the configurations would change all the time, even up until the last minute. One famous example is that “When Doves Cry” was recorded when the rest of the Purple Rain album was done and the movie was basically all filmed already. The director told him he needed one more song for a montage scene and the song should be something that “summed up” the movie. Prince went to the studio the next day and smashed out that song in one day, and it went on to be the first single, a #1 song, one of his best known songs, and basically as synonymous with the movie as it’s title track if not more so.
So with that said, we generally historically look at Prince in terms of years, rather than projects.
So, I’ll pick 1986 as the year and explain why.
1986 is a year of great highs and low lows which contribute to making it arguably the most creative year of his entire career. The aftermath of 1984’s insanely successful “Purple Rain” lasted throughout 1985 and into early 1986. He swept all the awards shows, he was everywhere, the “Purple Rain” tour was ongoing, etc. It was one of the biggest albums of the decade along with “Thriller” and everywhere you looked, people dressed like Prince, sounded like Prince, and the record industry cliche was that all you needed to do to get a record deal was to move to Minneapolis and wear eyeliner 
So, early 1986. Prince wraps up the recording of his album “Parade”, the soundtrack to his movie “Under The Cherry Moon” which he’d written and directed himself.
Most people reading this probably won’t have seen it. Unlike the gritty rock-opera of “Purple Rain”, set in Minneapolis and mostly based on Prince’s own life and career, “Under The Cherry Moon” is a black-and-white comedy set in the South of France where Prince plays an American gigolo who falls in love with a millionaire socialite. The shirt I’m wearing in the top image that says “Wrecka Stow” is a reference to a famous scene in this movie, where the fun-loving streetwise rogue that Prince plays, makes fun of the uptight socialite played by future Oscar-winner Kristin Scott Thomas in her first onscreen role, when she doesn’t know what a “Wrecka Stow” is.
I won’t ruin the joke, but here’s the scene:
Anyway… Although the movie is now somewhat of a cult classic, it was a critical and commercial flop. This is somewhat tempered by the fact that the accompanying album, “Parade” was still a huge success, and contained “Kiss”, one of Prince’s biggest hits and best known songs, but the fact remained that the flop of the movie meant that Prince was no longer infallible.
Musically, around this time, Prince continued to record all the time, and was absolutely on fire. At the beginning of the year, and around the time Parade was released, he was working on an album called “Dream Factory” with his band The Revolution. This was to be the follow up to “Parade” and was arguably the most band-driven record he’s done to date, with many contributions from The Revolution’s guitarist and pianist, Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman. He was also engaged to Wendy’s twin sister, Susannah, at the time.
Three configurations of “Dream Factory” happened between April and July of 1986, with around 20 songs being considered for the project, including some of his greatest ever songs like Sign O’ The Times, The Ballad of Dorothy Parker and I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man.
However, the failure of “Under The Cherry Moon” and increasing tension within The Revolution led to Prince breaking up The Revolution in September 1986 and ending his relationship with Susannah.
His first reaction is to step away from all of the “Dream Factory” material and across September and October of 1986 he records an entirely new album called “Camille” where he used a studio trick to electronically pitch up his voice and credit it to the character of Camille : the most well known songs done as “Camille” include Housequake and If I Was Your Girlfriend. He also recorded in that same month an entire instrumental jazz-funk album called Madhouse 8.
In early November 1986, Camille was presented to Warner Bros as an album, given a catalog number and scheduled for release in January of 1987.
However by late November (the same month!) Prince changed his mind, and decided to combine the “Camille” material and the “Dream Factory” material and presented to Warner Bros a three album set called “Crystal Ball”.
Warner Bros understandably balked. This was the 80’s and three-album sets weren’t a thing, especially not from major pop stars. They declined to release it, various reasons were cited but the most logical one I’ve heard (and I was told this by the vice-president of Warners) was that they didn’t feel the economy was strong enough to where your average music punter would cough up $50+ for a three-album set.
So, Warners Bros insisted that Prince pair it down to a two album set.
The result is my favourite Prince album and in my opinion the greatest album ever made.
1987’s Sign O’ The Times.
Here’s where it gets crazy.
It would be a logical assumption to think that Warners forcing Prince to strip down the album is the reason why it’s such a phenomenal album. All killer, no filler, etc.
Nope. Every track that got removed got released elsewhere or bootlegged, and everything that didn’t make the cut is as stellar as everything that did. Not only that, there are many more songs recorded in that year that weren’t considered for any of the three projects, and they are also all just as good. If you also include extended 12" mixes of some of the songs, some of which are markedly different to the regular edits, you could feasibly make a 5, 6 or even 7 album set of Dream Factory/Camille/Sign O The Times and it is all top shelf material. In my opinion that is absolutely unprecedented in the entire history of pop music.
It does not end there.
Between September and October 1986 Prince ALSO recorded more than half of an album called “The Black Album”, also known as “The Funk Bible”.
This album is infamous in music history, as in 1987 it had literally been manufactured and was in shipping trucks on the way to stores when Prince, allegedly after a bad Ecstasy trip, had “a vision from God” telling him the album was evil and it must not be released. He called the President of Warner Bros and ordered all copies of the album destroyed as it was on it’s way to stores, replacing it with the “Lovesexy” album and slipping a hidden message into the “Alphabet St” music video that said “Don’t buy The Black Album - I’m sorry”.
Of course, some copies slipped out and it became the most bootlegged album in music history.
Recently, an original pressing of The Black Album became the highest sold item on Discogs.com, selling for $27,500.
We have evidence to show that Prince completed 96-100 songs in 1986. Completed. None of them are unfinished. To date, around 50 of them have been released. Almost everything we’ve heard is among the best work he ever created.
So, in just 12 months you have : the release of “Parade” and “Under The Cherry Moon”, the breakup of The Revolution, the recordings of the “Dream Factory”, “Camille”, “Crystal Ball”, “Sign O’ The Times” and “Madhouse - 8” albums plus more than half of “The Black Album”.
Give me a time machine and I’m there.
Fun Fact : a VHS copy of the “Sign O’ The Times” concert movie is the first thing I ever bought on eBay almost 15 years ago.
5 Likes
It’s a little bit hard for me to say because although I do have an account with them, I don’t use it much.
I thought their “Goals” section and UI was pretty good. I was a bit bemused by the change into “Spaces” which I thought muddied the waters a little bit.
There appears to be some interesting things happening in the Marketplace section in terms of the population of companies in there, but having not integrated any of them I am not sure how seamless they are.
One thing that I prefer about our app (and have felt this way since the start) is that you are instantly presented with the transaction history. I don’t really understand how their Circle graph thing works, and although I’m sure the aim is similar to our Pulse, the main draw for me when I open the Monzo app is the instant visibility of the latest transactions in order, rather than having to click to find it.
I do like the granularity of their card controls - I would be interested to see some stats on how much people use each one but I guess that’s unlikely.
9 Likes
I would have to say late 80’s onwards Depeche, because my favorite album is Violator and I also love Ultra (I bought It’s No Good as a CD single when it came out before I even really knew who they were, I was pretty young but heard the song on TV and loved it.)
With that said I’m also a HUGE Vince Clarke fan - he’s a synth genius. It’s a shame he left the band after the first album, and I sometimes wonder what a second Depeche album with Vince would have sounded like. That said, I also love Yaz/Yazoo, and I think the two Yazoo albums probably have my favorite Vince work on them.
The Depeche Mode album run of Music For The Masses, Violator, Songs of Faith & Devotion and Ultra is absolutely killer though.
I think Metallica’s peak was probably 86-91 : Master of Puppets, And Justice For All, and the self-titled release (I refuse to call it The Black Album, that belongs to Prince 
)
3 Likes
There probably isn’t one in the UK. I don’t really have an interest in anything SME or business focused, so I’d only enjoy working with a product for the consumer, or potentially for freelancers (I think Coconut are doing great things in this space and are a great team!)
I could imagine working in other agile startups that are focused on solving problems for individuals, and have always had an interest in social networks. I’d definitely love to see a UK startup position itself somewhere with the right attack vectors to take on Facebook. Something very sticky, and genuinely helpful, that encourages creativity whilst still having a low barrier to entry, and which doesn’t fall into the “fake news” trap. Obviously easier said than done. I am interested in what Kevin Systrom does now that he’s left Instagram, and I’m following what Dom Hofmann (creator of Vine and Peach) is up to. I believe in people, products don’t exist without the people, and I think it’s quite telling that you often see people go where their CEO goes. So if Tom ever left us and decided to do something brand new, maybe I’d go (if he’d have me!!!). I don’t think that’s gonna happen though 
I’m proud that the UK is leading the way in fintech (not least because it enables me to work in the startup environment!!!) and I’m even more proud that Monzo is leading the way in terms of what works for an individual consumer. We hadn’t yet gone through the epic growth phase when I first started, and it wasn’t at all a guarantee that we would, but I had a gut feeling that we would, and I try to trust my instincts.
It is very rare that a company has what we have - an amazing culture, a propositional product that makes sense to your everyday person and an environment led by an amazing CEO and C-Suite that really and truly looks after it’s employees. I try not to take it for granted.
The only other company that blows me away with their culture is Google, but I am also a bit biased there as one of my cousins and one of my best friends both work there at the Googleplex in Mountain View and I have spent quite a bit of time there. I’m not sure I could make a meaningful difference at such a huge company, though.
3 Likes
This is a tough one. I like to think I have a wide knowledge of what everyone in the company does, but it’s not a deep knowledge of any individual role other than the ones I am closest to. So in that sense, every Q&A is just as enlightening to me as I get to learn more about that individual both as a person and with the work that they do.
I think @DillonV has a really unique experience living in LA and working for us, and for a long time being the only person not in the UK, so his Q&A was super interesting.
I also think we often take for granted the fact that @Tom stands up every week in our All-Hands and that we can all ask him questions, so to see the level of activity and buzz on here when he did the Q&A was really awesome.
Also @GeorgieParmenter is such a wonderful person and I could literally hear her voice in my head as I read her answers so I think her one was super fun.
The truth is that they are all super fun to read and I really enjoy getting to facilitate them. Quite a few people in the office have told me they look forward to them every week as well so I know that they are appreciated both inside and outside of the company 
I think they really sum up what Monzo is about. Back when I started (anyone who was here in 2016 and early 2017 will remember) we had a thread where a person in the company would post about what they were working on and then “pass the baton” to another staff member. I really loved reading those when I started, but with nobody to facilitate them, people often forgot to do them and it fell apart. So this idea sprang out of that, and I have to give a massive shoutout to @Chrsm for being the guinea pig for the first ever one.
5 Likes
So I think a big part of being productive is figuring out when you work best. I am not a morning person. If I’m forced to work at 9am I’m not gonna be productive in any meaningful way until the afternoon anyway.
For my first 18 months or so here I worked from 7pm-4am. Then, as my responsibilities changed, I moved to midday to 9pm. Tried that for a couple of months and it really didn’t work for me. So now I do 3pm-midnight and it feels right. I get enough crossover with the people who work in the daytime to catch up on things, I get to watch the All-Hands live on Wednesdays, and then I get the “quiet time” in the early evening to just power through a ton of different stuff, and I’m free to help with frontline support and social media support in the late evenings.
I’m not much of a planner, but that means I can be quite ad-hoc as/when required and juggle several different things in terms of priority as appropriate. I know other folks in the company whose calendar is planned out down to every minute, and that’s great if that works for them, but it’s not what works for me. I think the forum works really well in that regard - ultimately we don’t know when things might get heated, or all of a sudden in the space of an hour, there’s 20+ flags and things are getting a bit testy. It’s not something you can really plan for, and that’s been a struggle in getting people constantly involved on here - if a COp is scheduled for support that means they’ve got targets to hit and they can’t always jump on here to help out with something without it affecting that.
If I couldn’t work in fintech I’d almost certainly still work in tech in an agile startup environment that is solving real human problems. I’ve been at big companies before (probably the biggest being the BBC) and while that has perks, there’s way too much red tape and middle management and projects take a very long time to get off the ground. I love tech and I love people.
I’ve been in the music business my whole life (I come from a family of very well known artists and musicians within our scene/genre, signed my first major record deal at 16 and have released records on Sony, Virgin/EMI and Universal) but I think the music/tech intersection is possibly the toughest nut to crack and hard to do without dealing with endless legacy dinosaur label stuff.
I’m not sure there’s been a really disruptive force in the music industry from a startup since Napster. iTunes came from a company that was already huge, and Spotify has been in bed with the majors since Day 1. So I like the idea of there being a space within musictech that I could be helpful in, but I have yet to see much in the space that I like and I think can really make a disruptive change in the industry and change everything. Typically if that happens, the majors will come in and shut it down. I think Turntable.fm could have been a gamechanger, but it got choked to death by the majors and licensing deals etc etc.
I don’t feel out of the loop working remotely - in fact I think all of us remote workers build our own rapport to make up for not being an office. This is where something like Slack is so great. It’s our default communication method, even within the office, so projects usually get discussed on Slack more so than face-to-face, and anyone can dial into any meeting if they want to. I guess I’m lucky being in Birmingham as if I really want to go to the office (either Cardiff or London) I can be there in 2 hours, and I’ve spent a fair amount of time working in both (but also huge stretches where I don’t go at all). I sort of see us remote workers as being the glue between all the offices. Being one of the few people that’s spent time in all three of them, I have people in all of the offices that I am close to…probably an office BFF in each one (not saying who 
)
3 Likes
The pineapple goes on the pizza and the cat is called Dave. Easy
2 Likes
Konami code for free money 
Just kidding.
If I could magic it into existence I’d love for our service to be available in the US right now. I think there’s such a huge market there and we are potentially in the best position to make that happen.
When we were training the Vegas team initially, the amount of times we’d talk about something and they’d tell us that nothing even remotely similar to it existed within US banking systems was pretty mindblowing. Given that contactless has only recently become a thing there, I think there’s an even bigger gap to plug than there is here.
It’s obviously easier said than done and there’s a million considerations that I wouldn’t even be aware of that our international team are looking into right now, and all the regulation and all that stuff, but for me, I can’t wait for that day when we can launch there, and I’ll go out of my way to book a flight and be there in the US on launch. I do miss that early stage startup stuff from back when I started, and even last year with the current account preview events we held at 230 City Road when there was a separate app from prepaid and we were only giving out those cards in the office. That’s the closest we’ve felt to the whole early stage startup thing since we actually were an early stage startup. Obviously that’s relative - some might still consider us an early stage startup!
6 Likes
I don’t think I was attracted to banking. If you asked my friends and family they’d probably say I was the last person they expected to end up in any kind of finance-related role.
It was a very quick process, whereby I discovered and starting using the app, was blown away by it, saw the huge potential, and then discovered it was possible to work remotely, applied, and got the job. This all happened over less than 3 months in 2016.
So it wasn’t about banking for me, it was about people and software solving needs for individuals. One of the earliest things I read someone say about us was about how their ADD made them struggle with money and how we were the first app that gave them the tools to stay on top of it. When I hear or read the stories about how we’ve helped people pay off long standing debts or helped people with compulsive spending problems or something like @Dannytc’s post about how our Gambling Block helped him, that’s the stuff that really motivates me.
I know that a lot of people in the company feel the same way and I think that’s part of why our customers love us. We designed our app to help people and provide a service, and over time we’ll generate revenue from those services in a fair and transparent way that allows us to be a sustainable business. We aren’t trying to cross sell a million products, squeeze money out of customers through fees, and we haven’t built our app with any pre-existing assumptions about how the banking industry works. We aren’t interested in how it’s worked in the past as much as we’re interested in how it could work in an ideal world and how we think it should work and what a company looks like when it’s building something with only as much regard for the historical weight of the industry as is absolutely necessary, and no more than that.
I am not sure it is helpful when trying to build a disruptive company, if your knowledge and assumptions come from the historical ways of the industry you are trying to disrupt.
As for Vegas - right now it’s purely a Customer Operations base. If it makes sense for us to have other roles there, then I don’t see why not! That said, as and when we open a US office as base for US expansion, I’m not sure if it would be in Vegas. Engineering talent is in SF but it’s extortionately expensive to build a base there these days… maybe LA, NYC, Portland, Seattle? No matter where it is you can bet I’ll be visiting
5 Likes
I don’t think I could have received a better answer. Thank you so much.
3 Likes
Feature wise : Maybe something we haven’t thought of yet
I would love custom usernames and a simple entry box for them. Like, if your username was the same as on here, then in the app I could just enter your username and send you money that way. I know we discussed doing this but I don’t know if we actually will or what the logistics of it are.
Conspiracy theory : I believe the government had a hand in the death of Tupac. At the end of the day he was a Shakur, and the Shakur family from Mutulu to Assata to Tupac’s mother Afeni and more, are among the most well known families of the Black Panther movement. If you look at the history of how the government has tried to silence the Panthers, and things like COINTELPRO… the Shakurs have always been a target. When you put that into play, Tupac was essentially a young, rich, famous and beloved Malcolm X and was actually the leader of the New Afrikan Panthers which was a Panther spin off for young black people even before he was a famous artist. Yes, I think gang related things were also involved but I think that’s somewhat of a mask of what was really going on underneath that.
The most challenging aspect of a community forum… Hmmm, well there’s actually a few. The first one boils down to sincerity. A lot of people online are afraid to say their real thoughts and feelings and really wear their heart on their sleeve or give their opinion for fear that it might be shut down or maybe somebody knows more than they do, and it means they might not be as forthcoming as they want to be or afraid to express what they truly feel. Over time that leads to an effect where the people who shout the loudest might disproportionately sway the sentiment. The way you combat that is by moderation, and making the judgment calls to make somewhere a safe space where people are free to express themselves. You have to be intolerant of intolerance and draw a line in the sand over what behaviours are acceptable and what aren’t and you aren’t always going to be super popular for enforcing them and you have to encourage the quieter voices sometimes to speak up.
Another challenging aspect comes down to both time and timing. Time in the sense of time spent - you have to be active and basically omnipresent. That builds trust amongst users and deters trolling. Folks can flag something or tag us and they know we’ll be around sooner rather than later to address anything, and would-be trolls know that anything that goes against our code of conduct isn’t going to be around for very long.
Timing in the sense of knowing when it is and when it isn’t appropriate to step in or what to address and prioritise. If there’s clearly a huge issue going on and loads of people are upset, it’s not going to look good if we’re ignoring it and posting tons of memes. A good forum has a balance of lighthearted discussion, topical debate, and product discussion, but you need to always be aware of the overall atmosphere of what’s happening. I wouldn’t necessarily say this are innate skills that you either have or you don’t have, but equally it’s not something you can pick up a book and learn how to do. It comes down to experience and knowing the community and the members of it.
I really love this community too and I hope that shows
6 Likes
Bit more context - the series was called “25” and it was exploring albums that turned 25 in the year that we made the series. We did one album a month for 11 months and then a 12 month “best of”. So all the albums were albums from 1986. I didn’t get to pick them, and since it was for XFM who had more of a rock audience, aside from Prince’s “Parade” and Run DMC’s “Raising Hell” it was mostly white rock acts.
So under those parameters, if I could have added another album from 1986 I would have picked “Control” by Janet Jackson. I think that album has a fascinating story, and it weaves in and around Prince, Michael Jackson and Madonna (often considered the “Holy Trinity” of 80’s pop) and what they were all doing for Janet to carve out her own unique place.
Outside of 1986, there are tons of albums I’d like to make documentaries on. “In Utero” by Nirvana, “The Fragile” by Nine Inch Nails, “Hejira” by Joni Mitchell, “Mechanical Animals” by Marilyn Manson, the self titled debut by Zapp, and “HIStory” by Michael Jackson are a few that spring to mind. Generally I’d like to explore the albums that aren’t the artists biggest successes. So for example, I’d have less interest in covering “Nevermind” by Nirvana or “Thriller” by MJ because they are well covered ground - it’d be difficult to address those records in a way that hasn’t been done extensively already.
3 Likes
Thanks Simon! Why did you leave the music business though?
1 Like
That’s really not something I spend a huge amount of time thinking about. I just do what I feel I’m good at and help out where I feel I can and I see where that takes me. Some people have very clear progression paths and ladders and are laser focused at incrementally increasing their responsibility in a very vertical way to continually move upwards and that’s totally cool but that’s not me.
As for a “Corporate” role… I’m not sure we have any of those There’s really nothing corporate about anyone’s role as far as I can see, that’s what’s cool about working in a startup
4 Likes
Same day Monzo - where you get access to the app to play around with it and figure stuff out before receiving/activating your card. It’d be great to be able to activate Apple/Google Pay right away and pay for stuff before you even have a card. I’d like to see us go even further and for people to have a low set of limits to access certain things perhaps even before doing any kind of ID verification, this would massively help people who for various reasons may not be otherwise able to get any kind of account.
Features not in the pipeline… I think it’d be amazing if you could tap on an Amazon transaction and see the full information about what you’ve bought right there in the app. I am not sure if this is possible via their API or anything like that but as far as I know it’s not something we’re exploring (although some of our developers could well be looking at this and I haven’t seen it).
6 Likes
I think startup life can be pretty all encompassing. It’s just part and parcel of it. If I didn’t love the product and the people so much then I wouldn’t do it. But it is definitely important to get downtime and I try my best.
Most of my downtime recently has been playing PS4. I love the Uncharted series, The Last of Us, and the Yakuza series, and I’m playing the remaster of Shenmue 1 & 2 (my favourite games of all time) at the moment.
3 Likes
I happened to be in the London office (two offices ago, Epworth St) the week we got the full banking license. I also believe that I was tasked with manning our Instagram account that very day, and I remember making celebratory Instagram stories around the office with people like Dillon! That video is still floating around somewhere, I think Dillon uses it in a presentation on the history of our Night team. That was an exciting time.
The other would be the month I spent in Vegas earlier this year helping set that up from scratch. It’s nice to be part of something so early on and it was exciting to be able to set the culture standard there to ensure that they have the same understanding and passion for what we’re doing despite being so far away from the UK and not themselves having access to the product just yet.
2 Likes
TEN BILLION POUNDS.
I’m not interested in legacy banks to be honest. You can’t put a price on great company culture and disrupting an industry, it’s very exciting and it’s something we all believe in so much. And, like I mentioned in a previous answer, the “bank” part isn’t really why I’m here so much as the tech part. If our entire staff up and left and we made a new tech company that wasn’t to do with banking I’m sure I’d go if it was something I believed in!
Being a bank isn’t really the aim or the goal or the endgame or whatever as far I’m concerned. It’s just something that we need to be in order to provide the human service and solve the problems that we want to solve, if that make sense.
I think we’re an app that provides a delightful service in helping solve problems, and I think our approach in many ways is probably the polar opposite to a lot of legacy banks. So they might well want to pivot to mimic some of our successes, but they’d have to rotate pretty far
Second question - yes I would.
5 Likes