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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I’m not sure I agree with this really.
This might be more a critique on crowdfunding in general, but I think there’s a bit of a conflict between using crowdfunding as a marketing tool (which I think was probably what Monzo did) and the expectations of investors (many of whom came at it with the reasonable expectation that they were investing in a start-up and expected to be treated as an investor rather than a customer or a marketing tool).
There is a bunch of folk who have invested from a few quid through to thousands in Monzo through crowdfunding. Right now they’re on track for a great payday, but that’s never guaranteed. But companies taking money, of whatever value, and not treating investors properly doesn’t sit well with me.
More a comment on crowdfunding as a thing I think, rather than Monzo particularly.
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Wow, great summary and appreciate you taking the time to write and share it. My posts were mostly emotional ranting rather than a more objective look at their journey so appreciate your perspective.
Also, my views are probably wrong and I suppose my main aim of posting was to create discussion and hopefully to learn something which I have done from posts like this, so thank you.
The background on why I started the thread is that my business account was threatened with closure 4 weeks ago because apparently my PSC register has a company on it, not real people. It has only 2 real people, no companies. I’ve chased with support a number of times and get bounced around to different people and then get no response, so I chase again.
Then today I got told our joint account is going to be closed unless I stop using it for business. I don’t use it for business so I’ve asked for clarification and am yet to receive any. 2 threatened account closures with no responses from support leave me struggling to trust and it seems to be quite different to the support of a few years ago - but appreciate that could also be a natural aspect of growth, though perhaps it doesn’t have to be.
However, ultimately it’s all about expectations. I felt super bought into the values I assumed they had when I joined and I was really passionate about it. Revolut on the other hand I see as fast and loose and your account is always a little bit at risk of being closed so if this happened to me on Revolut I probably wouldn’t complain about it. Perhaps just need to be more realistic and understand that these things happen and hopefully I’ll get a resolution soon.
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Thanks for starting the topic. It’s a useful conversation to have from time to time, I think.
This does sound frustrating. I didn’t go into the whole support thing in my post, but I do think that Monzo has further to go in sorting out their inconsistent support performance.
Some advice: if you haven’t already, write to them in chat and be very specific that you’re making a complaint, then list everything that you think they’ve got wrong as bullet points. It might help to type that up as a letter then upload it. Hopefully by setting it out very clearly someone will pick it up and fix it.
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What do you consider ‘treating investors properly’, out of interest?
I agree they should update investors, I don’t think there’s any need to give them a special voice - that wasn’t the terms of the investment (which if people read the terms they’d know).
The biggest and most important thing they can do of course is return investors a profit. Monzo actually started well on this front, allowing crowdfunding investors to buy in at the same prices as VCs, at reasonable valuations. They’ve focused on profitability which limits our dilution - the share price now looks good. Now their job is to float. If they’ve done all that, I think it’s fair to say investors have been treated well.
A few more emails would be a nicety, but as they do put a lot of info out there on how they are doing, for me it’s not a big issue.
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This is a terrible customer experience, and chimes with my experience of support recently too. I agree it is worth a complaint for this.
Threatening to close a bank account is a massive deal for customers and really erodes trust, it should only happen after a fraud team has carefully reviewed evidence in person and come to a decision with pretty clear evidence. Instead it sounds like they have some automated processes run amok here. Having that happen then being ignored about it when you try to sort it out is just the nadir of customer service. They can and should do better than this.
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Broader, non-Monzo, perspective: companies that don’t provide financials (even at the initial funding stages) and seek investment from their customers create mixed incentives. Then, quite often after funding, there will be no reporting of note: no financial/strategic performance, no current valuation, no update on plans for exit etc. It can be quite cynical: charm the crowd for money then go quiet / turn inwards.
Different companies are better at doing this, of course. But I think that there needs to be some regulation or similar about the mixed incentives of asking people you’re hoping to have as your customer base (ie the ones you want to make a margin from) for funding to keep the business going. It makes it difficult to be honest for a company to be honest about financial performance etc to their shareholders if those shareholders are also the customers.
For Monzo, I’d like a bit more than what they provide. I understand why they don’t, but I kinda think that the power dynamic is a bit off. By a bit more, I’m talking a side of A4, their strategic priorities for the year, update on the financial situation, runway, any plans for exit. My view is that there should probably be a minimum standard on what is required. Firms can then work out if they want to crowdfund or not by balancing how much disclosure they want to offer in the future.
Does that make sense?
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It does, although I feel like most of that is covered in the annual report and what they post publicly. Their strategic priority is profitability, the financial situation is generally positive, runway looks indefinite as they plan to hit profitability this year, and there’s no immediate plan to exit.
I definitely agree on crowdfunding in general. I think it’s a good way for people to support small businesses, but many of the things on there are just sharks - ludicrous valuations, very little info on what you are investing in, and then after you invest they go silent, possibly because there was no chance of returning a positive investment anyway.
But Monzo, I feel like I know very well where it is, what it’s short and long term goals are, what it’s values still are, and importantly, that I’m going to get some money back 
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A good point and a standard would be great but I really think that’s a bit much for the average joe who put a little money in.
Why expose yourself to a wide audience and out of potential meaningful investment from venture capitalists/show your cards to other companies.
I appreciate this is going slightly off topic so I’ll leave it with I see your side but respectfully consider a different opinion.
Monzo to me are from what I can see doing the right things.
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Ties in a lot with my earlier reply, and I would note that in some cases, this lack of sharing of details is deliberate. Whether it’s not releasing a pitch deck until after a campaign launches - while also hyping it to make you think if you don’t get in quick you’ll miss out (so you ‘invest’ before doing your due diligence - or not keeping investors updated, it’s all part and parcel of the company knowing their numbers aren’t convincing and deliberately keeping that information hidden as much as possible.
It’s from hoping the best will happen so you can hide the news until you can report good; it’s inexperience and not knowing better; and it some cases, it’s grift a d deliberately hoodwinking people to take their money.
Personally I think it’s a lot down to Crowdcube and similar platforms not doing enough to create an environment where better is expected. They have the power to say “we won’t host your campaign” if conditions aren’t met. But, unsurprisingly, the fact they get a cut of the money must have an effect on their decision making.
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Can I just say on TS and the submarine stuff, he doesn’t have to be out and public as Tom, as he’s not the founder or the face of the brand. He’s a hired employee doing a job, very different in my eyes
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6874 - I do love the Monzo user number game 
Was the current account event in July? (Or was it September?) - I know I went to the office a number of years ago and set up my account there, I’m sure it was the at the current account launch event.
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Number 26 here.
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Not quite sure why you didn’t create the topic about that issue instead
We are in the middle of the seemingly annual wave of “whatever happened to Monzo?” topics, so it has ended up with some eye rolling (including from myself) on reading the first comment, whereas the other issue is certainly worthy of discussion
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Woah for real?
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Otherwise known as January. Where everyone interrogates every aspect of their lives to look for something they can improve for the new year. For a lot of folks that’ll be their bank.
I almost made a start on my budget yesterday, I’ve done it every January, but then quickly realised, this year, of all years, I’m probably best waiting til April before going through all that and making some changes, decisions, and assimilating my approach as I look to streamline and simplify it. Maybe Monzo will be on my chopping block come April, as opposed to being apart of the January crew? Probably not, they’re still my favourites despite the issues I’ve personally faced with them. But you never know. Maybe Chase flips the game on its head again tomorrow.
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