Coconut do have their own current account however now with open banking they can connect all of the major UK banks to the app. So people can use the app with their usual bank account and benefit from the accountancy features within coconut.
That’s where I think the key value is - having a current account isn’t revolutionary but having the tools to make VAT and accounting as simple as possible is.
But Monzo and Starling have those same tools for tax and accounting and they’re actually banks? I’m not sure what the unique proposition is for customers or where the value is for investors.
Most of the 5m self-employed will disappear because of the crisis and IR35 next April. Coconut offering is just a feature that all neobanks will soon offer + Ember have better features/services than Coconut.
Mixed views. Do you know what the minimum you can put in is?
£10 I think
Interested in everybody’s views on Coconut.
My main area of uncertainty is around sustainable USP - it seems they’re in a good spot with a good product offering and I think their main USP is their lazos focus on the self employed space with many of their competitors seemingly drifting into Neo-Bank territory rather than 21st century software provider.
The valuation is SUPER reasonable to me too…
Well thanks to this post it raised my awareness of Coconut (as I am not a freelancer and one day hope to be) I signed up to their early crowdfund news and since it launched 40mins ago their private fund - I invested just like I have with Freetrade - I judge more on the clean UX and UI since I am in that industry, I did the research on their website/product features and I get it and see a gap in the market for it 
Anyone remember share price for the last round?
0.0154
Valuation was £8.5m
I’ve invested in them. The app market for banking and investment tools is quickly getting saturated with multiple new companies coming onto the scene including some not so well thought out ones (look at you Muniy) but the accounting element is much less serviced and they seem to have thought out the direction the market is going well. Share price of 0.02 is reasonable too.
Is anyone able to opt into the tax relief option?
This was their previous crowdfund page I found during my research - Coconut successfully raised £500,000 - Nov 2018.
Was gutted to see their reward perks are way higher now compared to last time.
Valuation seems very very clever to me. Low enough to entice a reinvestment from existing investors (I invested in CC 2018 round) and new investors as valuation hasn’t exploded too far over past couple of years, avoiding the “missed the boat” feeling. Already £500K of £750K target reached after day 1 in private mode. I personally have high hopes for these guys…
A £200K lump sum has been invested in the private round by a family office based in LA and London which is interesting.
I like the team, product and business model. But this investment will rely on a trade sale to exit (likely selling out to a large incumbent competitor such as Intuit / Xero).
The big question is can Coconut become threatening enough to become an attractive acquisition or will the Intuit / Xero continue to refine their sole trader offering and blow coconut out of the water?
There will always be lots of self-employed and small businesses which could benefit from accounting packaged with a bank account, IR35 targets those who have one employer and are pretty much employed, not the self-employed. The spend on accounting services is massively higher than the spend on bank accounts, so I think they’ve hit on a lucrative area.
There’s also no sign of neo-banks catching up any time soon. Monzo in particular has completely dropped the ball on this, they don’t even have proper business categories yet. The original coconut plan was to sell to accounting firms as you say @toms but I think they could do well with one of the neo-banks instead - if those banks are looking to expand into business banking there is a lot of money in providing integrated accounting services to small businesses.
I’ve been using this service for the last year or so to track spending on a small ltd and am very happy with it.
Most of the self-employed have 1 client/employer. Monzo are going down while Revolut are skyrocketing, so Monzo are not the exemple to mention. Revolut are already providing integrated services and it’s not with Coconut. Moreover, we all know how Revolut operate: buy then build.
How does everyone feel that it compares to Starling? Sole trader bank account | No monthly fees - Starling Bank
This is what I use for my self employment/freelancing though I notice they’re not taking new applications at the moment.
