MEGATHREAD: Free Share updates and feedback 🎟

We’ll start rolling out Free Share links that give you & the person who you refer to Freetrade a free stock once they top up their account, very :soon:

There are more details about how these work here. The most important points:

  • You’ll get a referral pass dropped in your app. :tickets: ‍

  • You refer a friend, and as soon as they complete their signup checklist and fill out their W-8BEN form, you both get a free share from Freetrade. :dancing_women:

  • The stocks will be randomly selected from a list of interesting companies, ETFs, and trusts, with a price up to ÂŁ200. This is a bit like a lottery, except you always win something and we think it’s better than cash!

  • You can get both UK and US stocks.

  • The stock will drop into your Basic Account. We can’t put it in your ISA.

  • Both you and your friend must have a funded account and have completed the W-8BEN form that lets you invest in US stocks


7th September 2019 update:

  • We’re reviewing the data to establish the ideal floor and ceiling price of the reward shares.
  • Ongoing weekly process to reveal your free shares. We’re targeting every Wednesday 4 PM to reveal your free shares. :tickets:
  • If you’ve used all your free share invites, please ping us via the in-app chat to get more! :+1:
  • We’re really thankful for all your referrals. Keep them coming! :pray:
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Soon™ just kidding, I’m looking forward to it and have a few friends to share referrals with

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Whats the status on android referrals? I understand it’ll be iOS first, but can I as an android user invite someone on iOS or does both referer and referee have to be iOS?

Not yet, but we’re working on it, and it should be ready for Android within weeks.

The invited friend can have either iOS or Android, both will work. :+1: Right now, the person that refers has to be on iOS, but we’ll close this gap within weeks!

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Has the referral scheme gone live in IOS for R4 crowdfunding investors?

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Not yet!

We will start distributing the first free share invites to R1 investors and Founding Members from the other rounds on Monday 24th June.

If the feedback is good (it’s still early version) R4 investors could get it as soon as the end of the week. :crossed_fingers: We’re excited to finally roll it out!

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Might not be right place to put this… but I personally think it could be a bit too soon to launch paid referrals (sorry investor community I know you want those free stocks, but increasing company value is more important). Once you open that door, you can’t shut it. I don’t think the product is good enough yet to scream and shout about it. Paid referrals should be launched once your product is at a stage where you’re pretty damn happy with it. I love what you’ve done to date, but the product is still basic at best. There’s plenty of things to be completed… investment platform, adding tons of stocks, watchlists, better graphs/stats. Your growth rate of 12% per week has significantly tailed off, but that’s ok, I imagine you’re focusing on the investment platform. Until you’ve got your A game product, I wouldn’t burn cash getting downloads. I wouldn’t share this with my Dad who’s a sophisticated investor even with paid referrals as I know he wouldn’t use it. But in 6 months time if you’ve ticked off a lot of your “WIP”, I would be much more inclined to do so. Appreciate a lot of work will have gone into testing this and I still think it should be launched, eventually, but IMO it’s just too soon.

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I’m not sure where you’ve got that from. We’ll share more details about how we’re doing in the Crowdcube forum when the round goes live.

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If you had 20k users on 20th April, with a weekly compound growth rate of 12% (the rate you announced in R4 raise), after 9 weeks you should have >55k users.

You recently announced that you have 30k users, which is a weekly growth rate closer to 5%. That’s what I meany by tailing off. Not at all meant to be an attack, more of an observation.

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I agree with some of this. But I think many of the people joining through referrals wont find the product lacking. I suspect many of them will be first time investors or inexperienced investors and the free share will serve as an intro to investing for them. The worst case scenario for freetrade is they give a user a free share and he or she forgets about it for a few years but comes back to the app when they start to appreciate the importance of investing later in career. I think the community serves as business development and turns those who do not feel competent enough to invest but are inclined to into customers, so an introduction to the freetrade universe through a free share may be all that is needed to start someone on a journey of learning and building their confidence. I think the fact that it’s a quickly evolving product taking feedback from users can also be a positive for some people who view it as shaping a product they use rather than the product being incomplete.

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I agree re devaluing the brand. In the same way that I don’t believe integrating tightly with other fintechs would be smart at this point.

We announced that we had surpassed 30k users there. To add some more context, like every company, our growth rate fluctuates over time but most companies struggle to reach a reasonable growth rate. According to Y Combinator founder Paul Graham, for YC companies (such as Airbnb, Stripe, Dropbox, Reddit), a good growth rate is 5 to 7 percent per week, while an exceptional growth rate is 10 percent per week.

Getting back to incentivised referrals, our growth so far has mainly been driven by word of mouth referrals & now we’re aiming to amplify that by incentivising the referrals.

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I know and I think it’s great, I am not attacking Freetrade’s growth rate! I was just making the point that things have slowed. My personal opinion is growth should continue to be driven by word of mouth at this stage, by building a better product. Not paying for customers to join a still basic app. I don’t have the stats but I am pretty sure Revolut, Robinhood, Monzo etc did not introduce paid referrals until their customers were in the 100,000’s if not millions… Just my two pennies that I think you are jumping the gun.

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I know where you are coming from on this and i have thought about it as an investor (I, too, wondered if it might be better to wait for the “miracle” trading platform) but on balance I think I am supportive of moving now. Momentum is important. Yes, the app is a little unsophisticated as yet - frankly it is not yet at a point when I will use it in anger - but I am enjoying watching it improve over time and expect to see some step changes coming. For newer investors it is never too early to start and for more sophisticated investors getting them onboard and watching it develop, seeing the community, getting a feel for the brand and the ethics/ approach has great value. This sort of product needs a relationship and requires trust. Victor and Adam are doing a nice job of this I think. It is one thing doing a bit of FX on a card. This can be one off if the experience is bad or ongoing use if its good. It is a much bigger development of trust to move a bank account (particularly your main one) or commit more seriously to an investing app. (You are not tied in but it will be a hassle to move out). A larger more experienced investor is never going to just download the app and pile in. Is it ever too early to start building that trust and bring them along with the story?

(Just don’t burn too much cash :slight_smile: )

edited: trading app edited to investing app!

p.s when I have introduced people (I am sadly in the old folks home of people on here) I have also managed expectations and said it is not there yet but its developing at pace. Watch it evolve. None have turned away yet. We, as supporters, can also choose when is the right point in the evolution to introduce different people. There are some I have not done so yet for these sorts of reasons…

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Got my referral ticket and shared it today. Now my partner and I are expecting mysterious shares at some point :yum:

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In a few weeks at most!

EDIT: A few weeks for the free share to be revealed. The mystery share should appear as soon as your partner funds their account. :+1:

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Wait is not an issue at all :slight_smile:
Can confirm, the mystery share is already here:

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Just used mine as well, awesome! Assuming that the referral links are unique, when will the Freepass refresh and be ready for the next user? Do I need to wait for my previous referral to receive their share?

Will we at any point have multiple passes so that we don’t need to wait?

Looks sleek so far, tried iOS to Android and works perfectly!

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You don’t have to wait for that To get a new free share invite - but your referee had to fund their account to receive the related free share! Right now, the process is manual, but feel free to ping the team on live chat to get a new free share invite while we’re testing it.

Yes.

For now, it’s a manual process that we’re looking to automate, once we’ve optimised it. Ping us on live chat to get more while we’re testing it!

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Any ETA on when it will be available for non-investors?