So… in case you missed it… We just did a fundraising round of £85 million and are now valued at an eye-watering £1 billion
Although it is definitely a milestone (and one the media like to talk about), it’s important to remember that it isn’t, itself, an achievement. The real achievement is when we no longer need to fundraise and are a self sustaining and profitable business! But this investment will certainly help us get there!
So it’s business as usual here at Monzo, and we’re knuckling down to bring you more awesome features, squash bugs, and continue on our mission of Making Money Work For Everyone
Before we get into this week’s Q&A… it’s catch up time!
Have you ever stuck little Lego men on those Lego earrings (which look amazing! )?
Also, what tools do your team use for designing?
Lastly, with the new iPad seemingly encroaching on the professional space (with the full version of Photoshop launching on it), do you think it’ll be used by more designers in future?
I’m based in Chile and Banks are trying to catch up the value experience that is now offered by fresh fintech players like you and non-financial ones such as Netflix. However, their product roadmaps look more like agile tactics or release plans rather than meaningful artifacts that help them achieve their vision and articulate/manage their product strategies.
So, how do you guys manage your product roadmap? What are the key things that you do to bring Monzo’s vision and strategy to your teams? How do you measure the intersection between user experience and business results?
Hey Vuokko . From Simon’s intro it sounds like your role is primarily people management and culture related. Is that right?
If so, how much actual design, if any, do you do? How important (or otherwise) is it for a good leader to have an appreciation, or a talent for, the discipline?
Finally, can you give us an indication of how big the team is and who does what? Some of us will know of Hugo and Zander from the Community - how do you all fit in these days?
I’ve lived in the US, Finland, Australia, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, France and the UK… and I speak English, Finnish, Swedish, French, Spanish and German. The ones I use regularly are , , and .
Hey, thanks! I’ve tried sticking every possible kind of Lego piece on there, but everything looks too messy! I prefer the clean and minimal look
About our tooling: we use Sketch for product design, Illustrator for iconography and visual design, After Effects and Lottie for animations, Principle for prototyping micro interactions, Marvel for prototyping user flows etc. We also document as much as we can in a tool called Notion.
We store our design files on GitHub, and we actually have some really cool systems and tools we’ve built around that. Our Sketch files have a particular naming system, our artboards are meticulously named and organised into grids, and we have tools for exporting flows so non-designers can easily see our work. We’ll be sharing our processes and tooling soon, so watch this space!
Also, funny you should ask about the iPad! I just bought one for myself after enviously watching all my illustrator friends switch their workflow over there. The new iPad Pro is a powerful computer, and it can be attached to external displays. It’s no joke. Sketch obviously isn’t available for the iPad yet, but it’s a great tool for illustration. I do think we’ll see more professional design tools for the iPad soon. I can’t wait.
I’m Finnish, and I’m a big fan of our very own Alvar Aalto. I think I’d love to have one of the famous Aalto lounge chairs for relaxing and reading in style. The tank chair, or maybe the Paimio.
Hmm … gotta say Instagram. Their attention to detail is unparalleled. I’ll share a few examples: when watching a video and adjusting the volume , the indicator bar sits at the top of the screen, not covering the video like the clunky iOS system one. Also, on the tab bar if you hold the search icon, it’ll open the tab with the search field already active and the keyboard up. I love that. Instagram is also just a very fun app to use. I’d say that even though they lifted the stories concept from Snapchat, they’ve perfected it. It’s a really fluid experience
But this investment will certainly help us get there! 
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. From Simon’s intro it sounds like your role is primarily people management and culture related. Is that right?
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I’ve tried sticking every possible kind of Lego piece on there, but everything looks too messy! I prefer the clean and minimal look 
… gotta say Instagram. Their attention to detail is unparalleled. I’ll share a few examples: when watching a video and adjusting the volume 
, the indicator bar sits at the top of the screen, not covering the video like the clunky iOS system one. Also, on the tab bar if you hold the search 
icon, it’ll open the tab with the search field already active and the keyboard up. I love that. Instagram is also just a very fun app to use. I’d say that even though they lifted the stories concept from Snapchat, they’ve perfected it. It’s a really fluid experience 