While it would have been nice for pledge amounts to be the maximum you can invest it would surely need to be limited on Crowdcube’s side on a person by person basis and I can’t see Crowdcube being willing to do that.
I can’t understand why Crowdcube couldn’t cap the amount to that pledged? Surely it’s just a case of sending a unique investment link to each pledger selected which had the limit codified in some way in the URL.
Anyway, too late now but perhaps a lesson for the future. I’m surprised some form of overfunding wasn’t being offered, at least to regular users (e.g. Monzo cardholders who have been using the card for more than x months or spent more than £x being guaranteed the right to invest). Perhaps an idea for the future?
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People pledging more could, partly, be compensate for by the fact some people are going to invest less (or not investing) than they actually pledged.
If you look at something like Kickstarter, the highest number of drop outs/pledge reductions come in the last day or so of any campaign when people get closer to actually having to part with hard cash and realise they’ve over committed.
On a related note, I’d have rather Crowdcube took the cash there and then at point of investment as it could leave a situation where someone doesn’t have the cash to pay for their investment when the campaign closes, meaning they’ve taken a spot someone else could have had. Wonder what the contingency is for this.
I got my email yesterday anyway and have invested what I pledged, money is now ringfenced in my Monzo account waiting to be taken 
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Many thanks for the feedback all 
There are lots of takeaways from this crowdfunding round which we can do to improve next time! I’m really sorry if you feel that we haven’t been as clear as we should have been throughout the process.
We tried to covered a lot of top line questions in the accompanying blog posts and subsequent forum discussions. It’s hard to cover every base so we’ve done our best to be pro active in answering queries via Twitter, on the forum and via the in-app chat promptly.
In future a pinned an regularly updated version of this would be a great place to condense all the FAQ’s in one place.
There isn’t an automated way to limit peoples investment to the amount they pledge on the Crowdcube website. This isn’t an ideal situation, we’ve discussed it with Crowdcube at length and from the beginning we’ve encouraged anyone who has asked, to stick to investing what they pledged to keep things fair.
Just to reiterate, its effect on your probability of being selected in the random ballot is very small, but nevertheless I appreciate this is more about how unfair it feels, rather than a matter of numbers.
As Alex mentioned, the main reason we asked for the pledge amount at the registration stage was to help us get an idea of how much people wanted to invest.
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Thanks, @Naji for detailed response.
Can I use this opportunity to suggest ‘am I the chosen one’ mechanic? Since emails are being set out, I’ve seen many “omg, what if I don’t get an email?!” and generally worrying about missing out. 
Tool:
- Create a form where someone can enter their email address and press ‘Check’ button.
- Send link with guid to this email address. We need guid so I won’t be able to check other users than myself
- User clicks this guid link, to see if they are chosen so far (or not).
And/or - feed item in the app would be absolutely fabulous (@anon4562461’ idea from slack). .
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@Avishai This is a really good idea! I’ll feed this back to the team and see if it’s something we have the bandwidth to put in place for this round. A feed item won’t be possible on this occasion.
Just to follow up on my previous post, we do reserve the right to cancel any investments which exceed the amount pledged. The below is taken from our ballot terms and conditions which you can read in full here.
“All Priority Pledgors and Successful Pledgors will be notified by email that they are entitled to access the Crowdcube Pitch to invest an amount equivalent to their Pledge on the terms as set out in the Crowdcube Pitch.”
We’ve put measures in place to avoid this specific situation, the pledges made by the final batch of investors who we contact will not reach a total of 2.5 million exactly (even if they were all to invest the maximum £1000). Total investments will stop short of the final figure rather than risk overshooting the mark.
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So if I don’t get an email I can be squeezed in at the end
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All this discussion about increasing or decreasing your investment, and here I am still waiting and praying for an email to give me the option!! 
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forcing them to invest what they pledged or less.
I thought about that but it wouldn’t work because everyone could just pledge £1k (or whatever the maximum is) & then invest less later…
but the issue everyone is complaining about is Monzo letting them increase pledges after the date…so may as well all pledge 10 knowing they can increase to 1000 later
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This is quickly becoming the “I wasn’t picked and i’m angry / it’s not fair” thread that could easily be Predicted before they even opened for pledges. It could have been the “woo everyone owns a bit of monzo let’s bring everyone in the UK on board” thread but monzo were too ignorant about the whole thing and taking the view that you should consider yourself very lucky if you get a chance to invest rather than we want to get as many of these 100k early adopters to join our brand militia.
There will be a lot more moaning over the next few days as people realise they are in the ignored majority. 
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Between this -
& the EU’s cap on the amount that can be raised through crowdfunding without a prospectus, I’m confident that Monzo tried hard to make this process as inclusive as possible.
I thought Tom’s post on the process was spot on -
I’d hope that rather than this thread being a place for people to complain about how the process worked this time - which is quite literally pointless, as there’s nothing we can do to change that now - users will continue to offer constructive feedback on how this process could be improved for next time.
Let’s all stay positive about this. The funding isn’t over yet and people still need to actually pay after the cooling off period. Let’s also not forget that Monzo is still being built and there are going to be a few more upsets along the way. It can’t be easy to build a bank and it’s definitely not easy to please everyone. But the popularity of Monzo is getting bigger and more people may want to have a share of success in the future. Yes, I will be disappointed if I don’t manage to invest in this round. But there probably be other chances and the Monzo team will be taking a lot away from this fund raising exercise to improve future funding opportunities. Whether I manage to invest or not I shall still be supporting Monzo by opening an account and promoting its future plans to create a modern forward thinking bank.
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everything Paul has just said
I didn’t think the thread had derailled, it was always “I’ve been picked, and I can invest more than I said I could… should I?”
In the simplest sense, if you do then you are removing someone else’s chance to invest; but someone else might’ve backed the max amount anyway. Or they might’ve backed out.
So honestly, I think there should be less enforcement of the T&C, but make it more defined that (a) you opt in to the ballot then (b) you pledge this amount - rather than the 1 click top-up interface. If the random selection isn’t going to take amount as a factor, what does it matter? If, however, selection was based on pools of ranges (say 200 people pledging £100 or less) then doubling is obviously going to have more of an effect.
More exciting might’ve been a lottery - your ticket is 62635, these numbers were picked for round one, round two etc. Instead it’s just silence for an untold number of rounds while not being able to see the percent rise without the hidden link that @investor provided: https://www.crowdcube.com/companies/monzo/pitches/qDm4El/pre-register
I have to get this off my chest; overall I’m pretty disappointed in the way that Monzo have handled the whole Crowdcube round. I think it honestly sounds if Monzo haven’t a clue with issues arising from Croudcube on the daily. What with being able to pledge more than promised and how no-one knows whether there going to be selected or not.
I know that there is zero point complaining now although Monzo are a great company who listen to their customers so I’m hoping everyone’s feedback is heard. I see a lot of unhappy people here and as this is a public forum, it’s not the best thing to be currently happening. 
I fail to see the point wasting time creating a whole way of being able to prove that the ballot was fair if people can cheat the system so easily afterwards. All that time creating a fair solution simply for show could have been used working on the product itself.
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IMHO we had a period to pledge by and during that time we could increase our pledge if we liked. But after that no increases should have been permitted (just decreased pledges if people can no longer afford as much). By letting people increase pledges while the ballot is going on it reflects poorly on Monzo and leaves a bad feeling.
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We are discussing if this condition was broken, as you gleefully pointed out that you can invest any amount (and doubled). But it’s more feedback pointed towards Monzo rather than yourself, so don’t take it personally 
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I’m curious as to how perks will be allocated to accounts? I didn’t pledge in app, I instead pledged on the Crowdcube website during the pre-registration period. The email address of my Crowdcube account [now] matches the one of my Monzo account (I’ve just changed them both).
When the time comes for the investor cards to be allocated, will I get one allocated even though I didn’t pledge in app?
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