One word:… compounding.
User numbers were 54k as of a few days ago, this is up from around 25k around the end of April, at their 4th crowdfunding campaign; doubling in around four months.
If you crunch the numbers the above growth equates to a 20% compound monthly growth rate. If you assume this same growth rate going forward (Bare in mind an enhanced Referral scheme is due to launch soon), Freetrade will hit 103k users by January. So growth is pretty much bang on track, I’d say.
Finances, AUM, active users, etc are completely different metrics, but I remembered around £1m revenue forecasted for 2019 in the crowdfund, albeit made at a loss; Free-trade is growth focused atm in any case to make a strong case for VC investment at a series A in a few months (Growth is all VCs tend to care about).