Itās all kicking off, weāve got our first real customers, the team is growing, and monzo US is now a thing! Iām aiming to post a weekly update of the things weāve been up to. Let me know if you find this stuff interesting and if thereās any topics youād like me to cover next or questions you have. Or if you couldnāt care less, just ālikeā the post and move alongā¦
We hosted our first launch event.
We hosted our first launch event in Los Angeles this week. This is the first of many launch events where we invite people to meet the team, hear a bit about monzo and walk out with a hot coral debit card and a spring in their step. We had around 80 people attend (more than we expected!) and got plenty of love on twitter.
Our next event will be in San Francisco on Wednesday. Sign up here if youād like to come. It should be much bigger and potentially even better 
We rented a flat (apartment) in Los Angeles.
With a growing team in LA and lots of monzo staff flying out on a regular basis we needed a convenient place to store them at night. Weāve rented a furnished 2 bed apartment which is a ten minute drive away from our current WeWork office.
We have two new team members.
Two new team members have joined us. They will fill the position of US People Lead and US Payment Ops Analyst. Weāll likely be doing a bit of a āmeet the teamā style post in the near future so Iāll let them introduce themselves and their roles when the time comes.
We ran our strategy by the board.
Our priority this year is to build a core group of highly engaged users, a real monzo community like we have in the UK, who we can work together with to get an understanding of customer expectations and the best ways we can make peopleās financial lives easier in this new market. As opposed to purely trying to scale as quickly as possible. We ran this strategy by the board at a recent board meeting and they agreed.
We submitted our contactless cards for testing.
The cards weāre currently giving out at launch events are not contactless (tap to pay?). Weāre working furiously in the background with our card suppliers to get contactless cards out as quick as we can. Card suppliers in the US are a little less experienced with contactless cards so this hasnāt been as quick as we would have liked but weāre hoping these will be ready in the coming weeks.
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