I don’t think that is fair. All they’ve done is give their opinion and it is hardly a rant. You might not agree with it, but people are perfectly entitled to give negative feedback.
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If I remember correctly the user number is not when you first signed up, but when you transitioned from prepaid to current account.
Obviously if you signed up after we closed the prepaid program then it is your signup - but I think you get what I mean.
(Also, I’ve written that and posted it but it’s just something I was told by somebody who actually worked at Monzo at the time. We can’t see user numbers on our internal software, so actually have no idea myself 
)
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I think… that’s not right?
My user number is low, but not super low because I had to wait for Android to be thing. I’m pretty sure it didn’t change when I migrated to the the current account (where I think I was one of the first migratees/migrators/movers/transitioner etc etc).
Or is my memory playing tricks on me again?
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I don’t know whether it’s right or not - but I do seem to remember that you couldn’t see your user number until you were on the current account.
No idea - it was a long time ago, and three years before I’d become an employee!
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Strange how memories work! I was pretty sure you could on pre-paid.
What we need is a proper Monzo historian to research and keep some proper archives…
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Luckily I think the community provides a pretty decent source for that sort of thing - at least in the early days!
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My favourite user number is Freetrade. I was lucky enough to be a double digit user. 
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Okay, I’ve searched…
User numbers were a thing under Mondo in July 2016. That was before the banking licence and migration, right?
Now we just need @jonas or @anon77247897 to confirm their user numbers (they were #11 and #1 respectively) and we’ll know for sure!
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Yes pretty sure I had one before the migration. Also remember a few old timers with numbers lower than me, was hoping some might chime in!
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I think some of the OP’s thoughts are fair. Isn’t a community like this meant to be about people putting forward their opinions? I think there are probably a fair few people that avoid posting on this forum as they know they will be jumped upon and criticised by a handful of frequent posters as though they’ve said something outrageous.
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Yes, but this includes responses too. We are free to criticise what is said if we disagree with it. I agree some of the tone & responses did not really contribute to the discussion though, or focused on ad-hominem attacks as opposed to the topic.
Then again that’s the internet I guess 
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Regrettably I’ve just had to put some consistently snarky/negative people on ignore - it works very well, as you don’t have to read their reflexive defence of the status quo and personal attacks on every post. Better to just ignore the posts as any response leads to threads degenerating into drama and flamewars.
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I can categorically confirm that the user number didn’t reset at the launch of current accounts. I was user #3217 when I joined Mondo Beta in March 2016. I was at the First 100 Current Accounts event when the licence was obtained, upgraded that night in the Monzo office, and retained #3217.
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This place is full of their opinion, positive and negative. Some people only use this forum (every single day) to be negative about Monzo.
But…
“I’m so important because I invested. Listen to why Monzo is ruined”
No helpful, constructive or going to lead to any change whatsoever.
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Although no one said either of those things.
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Did you not read the opening post?
I just summarised it in two sentences.
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You summarised incorrectly. They explained why they included their Monzo number and it wasn’t because of that.
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They also never said Monzo was ruined, just that their personal feelings to it had changed and the thing they originally liked is ‘dead’. Which is a commonly felt thing, and the context that they had been an early investor was important for establishing that.
Their main point was clearly that Monzo is no longer focused on what customers want. I disagree with that, but it is a fair opinion to put forward nonetheless
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User 49xxx checking in here!
I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff in your post, some of which I agree with and some of which I don’t think I do.
Personally, I think there’s been four Monzos:
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Mondo the Prepaid (v1). The plucky start-up. 2015 to 2017 or thereabouts. Passion, energy, disruption. An ambition to reinvent banking. Strategic vision was flawless: financial control centre, financial marketplace and an API-driven, programmable, approach to banking. A bias towards openness, transparency and community. On the flip side, though, aiming for hockey-stick growth led to marketing and engagement sometimes taking priority over automated and genuinely useful functionality. And while a high-level vision was impeccable, there was a bit of a disconnect with the banking world and without the right mid-level structures to effectively translate strategy to product and to execute effectively on priorities like the financial marketplace. And, heretical as this might sound, a bit too much focus on Tom, too, perhaps.
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Monzo the Bank (v2). The bank account era. 2017 to 2020 or thereabouts. Lots of unstructured work going on in parallel and a lack of focus. Some excellent work but, with hindsight, a little fat off of easily available VC funding. The problems of scaling come to the fore - support suffers, there’s no clear short term path to profitability despite a relentless focus on unit economics. Lack of iteration and follow-through - original Plus fails because of a lack of proper community engagement and lack of focus, drive and iteration, rather than too much of either. Lots of focus on infrastructure and the backend - bringing in connections to faster payments, making sure that tooling worked properly etc. But a disconnect about how to explain that to customers who had grown used to having a pipeline of new and exciting user-facing releases. The bank struggles to translate its early commitment to transparency and community with scale.
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Pandemiczo (v3). 2020 to mid 2022 or thereabouts. The pandemic hits and Monzo faces an existential threat. Needing to gain revenue and quickly, Monzo finally focuses and launches Plus V2. It learns the wrong lessons from the (largely performative) community engagement from Plus v1 and develops in private. Despite this, the team pulls together an excellent product pulling together random developments that were nearly ready (like Google Sheets export) and those that were originally meant to be free (like the credit score and connected accounts) and add some gloss. It’s a winner. Fortunately for us all.
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Post-pandemic Monzo. (v4). Despite my occasional griping of the new CEO as having a submarine approach to community and engagement, it very much feels like he’s spent his time fixing the fundamentals, aligning the business around strategic goals and building a clear path to profitability. That’s to be congratulated. And Monzo finally seems to have sorted its product roadmap - its recent releases have been excellent and Monzo feels much more strongly managed.
So what do I take away from this? There’s never really been a golden-age of Monzo. But I really believe they have the mojo again and the UK and the US are theirs to lose. Which will be good for investors!
Where I would course correct slightly is on two fronts:
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On transparency and community. I don’t just mean this place. I mean more working in the open and more commitment to transparency. I think we’re seeing a lot more of that with things like app evolution. But more to go. Companies that close in on themselves and don’t open themselves to uncomfortable or constructive feedback tend to be the most fragile, I think. I don’t think we should go back to community polls over ATM charges, but I do think that things like a Community/Crowdfunder Non-Exec Director (I say this completely self-interestedly), an open roadmap (the US one has loads of global stuff and had gone down well), more events (online now maybe) would be excellent.
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On Programmable Banking. Granted there are regulations around open banking etc, but there’s still a massive market for a programmable bank account. The open API has wilted - it needs to be embraced, with community extensions embraced. The idea of Monzo as an app store for finance is still something that could be worth billions imo.
You’ll note that I’m not particularly worried about values. I don’t think that the old idealism is gone. I do think that Monzo is a bit less performative and a bit more focused on fundamentals which I think is a good thing. And I’m not sure where the notion that Monzo isn’t fighting for the little guy (and girl) has come from. And the comparison with Starling feels v odd to me. From where I’m sitting, Starling feels very big bank reinvented (which they’re doing pretty well - my hat is off) - but that’s probably a different conversation!
But all in all, I think we’re in an excellent place. There are things to take from every era. But I’m pretty chuffed at where we’ve got to.
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@kennygrant still winning the usership numbers then!
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