Monzo Crowdfunding 2018

No such thing as bad publicity!

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Iā€™d also be interested in seeing how many ended up buying shares with their overdraft after all the fussā€¦

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I imagine theyā€™ll come out with a favourable statistic of how low the use of overdrafts was for the raise :+1:t3:

I think there were adequate warnings for investors in the questionnaire before investing.

Iā€™m also interested but Iā€™m not starting that up again over on Monzoā€™s forum. Kept getting @ mentions from some users, then no replies to my basic questions. In my view whatever approach Monzo would have used would be circumvented if the investor wanted to use overdrafts. The Times also changed how they reported it afterwards.

Iā€™ll ask the same basic question here.

How would you block the overdraft being used for investing?

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After this Monzo raise Iā€™m curious as to what Freetrade might now be valued at 6 months later.

Where we are now compared to May 2018:

  • We have a live app
  • We have 1,000ā€™s of active customers
  • We have many 1,000ā€™s more on the waiting list
  • We have ISAā€™s
  • A growing stock universe
  • Revenue generation (donā€™t know Ā£ size though)
  • We have assets under management (again donā€™t know Ā£ size)

Do we think we are valued at +50% or more (or less?)

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Adam said last week that they were planning another round of funding in Q1, so we shouldnā€™t have to wait long to find out :+1:

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They could have disallowed a purchase of shares which would directly take the account below 0. I think thatā€™d be reasonable gesture, of course it would not stop people who are determined to use debt to buy shares, but thatā€™s fine. In retrospect they should not have had that line in the prospectus, and should just have disallowed directly using the overdraft for share purchases, but itā€™s not that important and itā€™s a shame the Times chose to run such a misleading story.

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Interesting ā€¦

I hope back end of Q1 because iā€™ve blown all my money on Monzo, FTSE 100 and Global stocks

Oh and Christmas!

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I know you said it would be a gesture and still open to workarounds.

But imagine I transfer all my funds into a new pot ( if this is allowed ) then proceed in using a overdraft on all spending until the investment goes live. Isnā€™t this then circumventing it?

There is also a development cost when designing or implementing these features.

The line in the prospectus was a bit strange, unsure if they had a legal obligation to include that.

Of course I am not saying investing via debt is good.

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In other news a prominent crowdfunding platform still lets you invest using Credit Cards :man_facepalming:

again donā€™t go into debt to finance investments

p.s. Iā€™m meant to be biased and evangelical about all my investments, or so the theory goes :open_mouth:

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Indeed. And the Financial Times stating that Monzo is more of a price-comparison website than a bank. I mean, where to even start with that statement.

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Meh Iā€™m a hypnotised member of the Monzo cult :grin:

I took all emotion out of my decision to invest, it was purely on their future potential

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I liked the way they have done it through app.
And the questions you have to answer before investing, nice touch, may be Crowdcube would steal that for themselves.

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Itā€™s interesting that you thought the FTā€™s story was negative, I thought it was pretty positive, especially by Alphavilleā€™s standards -

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Positive but a bit over the top. Someone who doesnā€™t understand forums

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I only saw negative when I read it, Iā€™ll give it another go with more open-minded eyes. Iā€™ve found recent articles about crowdfunding and Monzo so negative that I think I may have been triggered by the wording I mentioned above.

Itā€™s an odd one, Iā€™d like to think that the financial press would be supportive of a UK startup like Monzo but their reaction to the annual report and the crowdfunding is anything but.

One of the reasons I bring it up is because the overdraft situation was presented as protecting vulnerable people, ahem credit cards can be worse.

There is a long list of issues with crowdfunding platforms, for example they use game mechanics to create a fear of missing out, or to sway the crowd with progress bars, or the way the 100% target is fake like a easy win.

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Obviously Monzo could have easily blocked users from using their overdrafts in this crowdfunding round. They could also stop them from investing using other services to a certain extent, using a similar approach to the one that they use for their gambling block.

The question for me is: should they stop people from using their overdraft to invest in general? (Maybe thatā€™s what you meant). And if anyone thinks that the answerā€™s ā€œyesā€, what other bad habits should they block & do you want your bank to be the judge of how you use your money?

I have a feeling that The Times wouldnā€™t have been so keen to publish the story if theyā€™d thought that all the way through &/or thought that their readers would too..

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Most methods make it harder to use a overdraft for this purpose rather than blocking it completely.

The only real way to stop Monzoā€™s overdraft being used is to turn it off but this has itā€™s own issues.

I donā€™t think your Bank should police overdraft usage.

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Shows some more stats including ā€˜amount investedā€™. The Ā£0-100 is the largest group

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