While itās disheartening a bit, they are probably taking the right steps. For those that are unfortunately getting laid off, vesting period is waived.
Itās not the same strong mission as that of FT, but Iām bullish on Monzo after corona.
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I see corona as further accelerating the shift away from branch banking to fintechs. I didnāt think corona would harm fintechs much, itās not like they have many lending products that are harmed by falling interest rates.
The article suggests itās due to falling consumer spending and the subsequent reduction in interchange fees. Is that correct?
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I think interchange is one aspect, but Iād expect impaired loans to also factor, though to what extent remains to be seen. Then thereās higher provisioning and reduced appetite to lend, reducing interest income even further. This really is a perfect storm for any bank right now, especially for a bank like Monzo, where they have remained someway off profitability.
But I agree, thereās resilience in the mobile platform, and costs are going to be a lot lower than those banks with an extensive bricks and mortar presence which will help over the longer term.
My feeling is investors forced a down valuation because they spotted an opportunity and did what youād expect, which is to drive value. No one wants to overpay for any asset. And by opportunity, I mean recognising and leveraging a constellation of factors - the pandemic and ensuing economic crisis, the lacklustre progress and performance and overall timing and requirement for funding.
The news on redundancy, whilst tough for those losing their jobs, actually inspires some confidence - theyāre doing what it takes to stabilise in a very difficult environment for what is essentially new bank with a so far unproven model. But Iām long on Monzo, and think the new management will be good for the bank as they work towards profitability and long term viability.
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My confidence in Revolut over Monzo comes down to three things: Revenue, growth and opportunity. Revolut are riding waves and going from strength to strength. I think itās hard to deny that, while itās hard to say Monzo is doing well recently. They fired 165 members of staff, furlough lots more, premium accounts failed twice, theyāre only in two markets and havenāt released much recently.
As someone with multiple friends in Revolut Iād say itās somewhat similar to Tesla ā it got strengths but it has one point of failure which is their CEO, who is working 24/7, expects others to work same hours, is exceptionally controlling and fires people on a whim. And while he has brilliant ideas those ideas usually take 180*s every month or so.
So Iād say - high risk, high potential.
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Someone thinks it has harmed Monzo about 40%
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I wish there was a way I could shovel my money into Monzo as an investment. Somehow I donāt expect them to pop up on Crowdcube or Seedrs any time soon.
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^ sounds about right.
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There have been rumours they will be doing a crowdfunding round very soon. Itāll probably be done through Crowdcube via the Monzo app (like last time)
Iāve got (had? Lol) a large investment in Monzo and, while disappointed about the down round, think theyāll be fine longer term. New chief executive maybe making decisions that the founder was too uncomfortable to make. I doubt the jobs that are going are developers, more likely the softer roles which unfortunately are always more expendable at times like this.
Very worst case is they get bought for a large amount of money. Theyāre still piling on 25k users a weekā¦
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From what Iāve seen on Twitter, there are quite a few engineers, including more senior ones, at Monzo that believe they are at risk. Scroll down Eileenās (early investor in Monzo) likes to yesterday as sheās liked most of them https://twitter.com/eileentso/likes?lang=en
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Thanks for posting this source
Just wow.
I scrolled through that expecting it to be an exaggeration, perhaps one or two outliers having a moan about the difficult situation.
However, it is much worse than I expected and there are numerous employees (including some of who I would call the founders of the original product) who are absolutely begging for any chance to work somewhere else.
It shows that the knives are well and truly out and they are no longer a āpet the dogs and have a beer while you workā organisation anymore. Time ran out on that and now they need to be profitable or die.
If there is one pinch of salt the fanboy in me can throw at it, itās that all of the posts have a templatey feel to them, as though theyāve all agreed on slack or whatever that they are going to each appeal to their followers for vacancies to make sure no one ends up in the bin in this frozen job market. Also, the fact that Eilean who is hundreds of millions of pounds long on Monzo is liking these posts hints that it is a concerted effort to parachute staff.
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These are really talented engineers, designers, etc goingā¦
Really great opportunity for Freetrade to poach some talent 
@Ian Time to slide into some DMs? 
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Do you have to be a monzo customer to invest in them then?
I thought exactly this too
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Sticking to my continuous comment that Monzo are the MySpace of banking. Monzo are awesome and creative but Facebook is lurking for the sheep to flock.
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Running with your hypothesis, letās just hope thereās a NewsCorp waiting around the corner willing to wildly overpay to give existing investors a decent exit.
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I genuinely love Monzo and use it daily. Just like MySpace. The resemblance is uncanny.
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Who are Facebook in this scenario?
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Monzo created an enjoyment in finances which legacy banks majorly failed at (or failed to implement on purposeā¦)
Right now I personally have no idea or thoughts on who āthe facebookā creeping up could be, I will comment that this will most likely be highly obvious within the next 3 years. These movements happen so hard and so fast.
Even the timing of Monzo and a recession is so similar to that of MySpace. Both also had trouble monetising their incredible growth of customers in time.