Your opinions are interesting on the changes over the years, but the extracts above are just all wrong I’m afraid. Monzo are doing well now, and certainly haven’t been taken over by anyone.
I disagree they were lost. They were just a high growth, high spend startup. The one biggest challenge for any startup is to get the numbers and the brand recognition - look at all the neobanks that come and go or are floundering, and you can see the issue. Monzo played the early startup game well.
They did struggle in the early days to monetise, sure (Monzo Plus V1 looking at you) and it’s taken them longer than it should have done to do this successfully. Still, overall the fact they are here now being called ‘another big bank’ on this thread shows they navigated the early stages successfully.
There’s still a lot of things to do, they are far from where they need to be financially and the next stages will be tougher still. So plenty to watch, I do have faith though.
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Monzo is dead if you want it to be.
I said in another thread that I think Monzo from a banking perspective are the best they’ve ever been. But if you use support a lot, cheques a lot, want cash paying in, maybe they aren’t the best for you. Well then it’s a good job there’s 20+ competitors to choose from.
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I’d say the opposite really - that using the Forum, in the way it is now, is a purposeful, strategic choice.
And I think you have to look at that through the right lense really. And that is of a marketing tool combined with a highly engaged, and free, research sample data set.
I don’t think they come here being like “hey Community, our roadmap of plans is empty, what do?!” - but more of a “we’ve researched this concept well enough to have a defined project, how would real world users interact with it?”
Take it as a place to test and challenge hypothesis, not generate the ideas pipeline for them.
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Really great to hear counter arguments. This is actually a very cool community. No mud slinging, just considered responses from everyone 
Perhaps I was painting too bleak a picture, but Starling have announced they’re making a profit, so they have overtaken Monzo. (Although Monzo has promised the same for this year.)
This article about Monzo’s CEO is worth a read…
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Each to their own, but I wouldn’t say Starling posting a profit is indicative of them ‘taking over’.
They used a grant in order to post that profit, and are only making a load of cash now because of risk free lending from Covid and a swollen balance sheet benefiting from rate rises.
Starling and Monzo are not the same.
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Any product should die and be re-born many times, it’s how it keeps going. So I’d expect things to go down this route a few times over
Agreed!
See, I don’t think this is what’s happening here. @simonb is the expert here, but I think there’s something really powerful about cultivating a community. That community doesn’t necessary (and probably shouldn’t just) mean this place, but somewhere to test ideas and to discuss, inform and debate is important. I say that as a user who values having an insight to product development and who benefits a lot from the wit and wisdom of fellow users, and as an investor who values the brand loyalty that it brings.
On the old Monzo vs new Monzo argument, I set out my position in the other thread, but suffice to say I don’t think it’s binary.
Tom and co were excellent and visionary. But, in my view, the bank lost its way just before the pandemic and suffered from an existential crisis as lockdown bit.
I used the word “submarine” to describe the current CEO, which I think some folk took as a criticism. It was actually in the context of turning around Monzo: we have a steady pipeline of new products (Flex being the first) that work well and bring in revenue. Finances are shored up and the bank looks like it’ll turn a profit. Its future seems more secure. If the trade-off is between a public-facing chief exec and one who is quiet but gets the job done, then my bias is to the latter.
On the product, I’ve said elsewhere that Monzo’s mojo is definitely back. They’re finally doing what was always promised: launch and iterate (Flex is a good example). And I’m very much here for early access to Overview via Labs. For the first time in a while I’ve confidence that they’ll actually see this through and we’ll have a much improved product at the end of it. Monzo has, for me, and without a doubt, the best product on the market.
Life, though, is all about balance. And the biggest negative at the moment is the performance of support. And I hate to say that as it seems like the support folk in Monzo are, relatively speaking, the poor cousins in terms of working conditions and pay - and aren’t actually in a position to change things. If I were in charge, I’d take a long, hard and fundamental look at how that side of things works once the place is profitable. I’m totally up for self service, but it needs to work better. And there does, I’m afraid, need to be an easily accessible button to talk to someone. I still don’t think its absence can be reasonably defended.
But let me end on a high. All companies have highs and lows. That’s naturally part of the cycle of things. And I think the various management teams have been what Monzo needed at the time. But we’re in an excellent place. Onwards!
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I largely agree with everything you say here, actually. (I just don’t agree with the rose-tinted, idealised view of online communities… Yes, test your product against your customers, but not your community. There’s a very important distinction there that often gets missed, because there’s so much overlap, but I addressed that in my original post already.)
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Don’t get me wrong, I think they can be powerful but we shouldn’t confuse this forum for community, and a topic or poll on here for proper user research. I do think it has its place though, and Monzo would be poorer without it.
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Wait, you think polls have a place in the Monzo community??? I didn’t see that one coming 
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Can we do polls on here? Someone ought to do some polls.
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I think we all Poll’d out.
I put out a poll to see if anyone out there was interested in insect based burgers.
All I’m hearing is crickets!
Don’t give up your day job.
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