But anyone who follows Chadās Twitter, this tone of voice is nothing out of the ordinary. He had a few āinterestingā tweets when I published The myth of spending āzeroā on marketing.
I genuinely wish him and the team success. I admire their velocity. And as many above me said, itās potentially not a winner takes all market. We remain focused on what we want to excel at and welcome them to this space.
Regarding buying a legacy stockbroker, Iām not sure why that would be a good idea for anyone? Iām not talking Revolut, but as a startup, any startup, you have a leg up by just using cutting-edge tech.
I was just speculating that you might buy it for authorisation purposes hence the Tandem/Harrods mention. Also the plans might have changed if heās saying donāt assume, or maybe heās just applying his unique approach to communication that weāve all come to enjoy:
I wasnāt aware of Revolutās old claim of zero spend on marketingā¦very intriguingā¦a 5min glance at their company filing back in Dec 2016 tells me they had about 8m in Cost of Sale (not incl. the 1.5m on staff compensation)ā¦if it wasnāt paid online marketingā¦I couldnāt fathom how they could succeed in spending that much money.
Marketing is not classified as Cost of Sales, it is an additional expense incurred after Gross Profit is established (which is Revenue less Cost of Sales).
Not usually for internet business itās not the case though I believe, esp measureble marketing expense such as paid search etc. If that was what they did then not sure they did it right.
Free and greater press coverage (the infamous zero-cost marketing )
Faster user growth
If the total number of EU users who see the news about the app in the press and sign up is X
There will be a certain % of X who will always stay with the first platform (assuming that both platforms are similar with no product providing the customer with significant advantage).
Think of people who continue to use Uber even if there are some alternatives which are better in some way. In France it would be Taxify offering cheaper prices or LeCab which guarantees you a certain car model and a driver wearing a suit, etc. Some people just donāt care if the second offer is 3% better they stick with what first worked for them.
In the worst-case scenario, Revolut launching in october in EU (from the FT article) and Freetrade in march 2019 (see the graph above). The EU users of Revolut which has a similar target audience will be using a mobile trading platform for half a year alreadyā¦
Is it feasible to move the EU expansion before the Crypto launch ? To my mind it, is more important than crypto and maybe there are other members of the forum that support this idea.
One of the arguments for using Freetrade against Revolut if you have a Revolut account (or any other challenger bank) will be not to put all the eggs in one basket.
To clarify this point. If Freetrade goes into bankruptcy what happens to the stocks that users own in the app?
Do EU users will have to make a double currency conversion to buy US stock (euro >> pound >> usd)?
Since Revolut users donāt have to spend time on bank transfers (they can use the money available on their current account) will it be possible to do an instant trade on Freetrade with a credit/debit card top-up when the app launches?
Greatly articulated opinion. Fully support the EU being more important than Crypto.
However, there could be a number of reasons:
Not the same staff are involved in both activities. Only hypothetically, but probably you would not expect a coder to be involved in the expansion negotiations and other relevant arrangements, whereas they could be dealing with the introduction of Crypto within the core App (back end and other technical stuff)
Crypto may generally be 100 times quicker so may simply not be efficient to delay a little project.
You have Ā£50,000 protection if Freetrade goes bankrupt in the UK and you lose your equity (NOT when the company you invested goes bankrupt as you would lose your money in that case).
Not sure whether FSCS will apply if Freetrade operates in the EU, could be the case that local protection scheme would kick in. As far as I am concerned, in Netherlands you would be covered for up to ā¬30,000 but that may not be the exact truth.
I donāt find the above points emotional, but even if they are, emotional doesnāt equal irrational.
The lack of a customer-centric culture, which inspired the above comments, is primarily a business issue, not an emotional one. I hope it comes across we think being customer-focused is extremely important. Not just for us, but for any company. And itās also the right thing if you provide any product or service. Other companies might think about this differently, which is fine - but this is how we think about it.
It indeed might happen before crypto!
In the next few weeks, youāll see a number of updates from us, and we are evolving the roadmap, adding more details.
Focusing on the EU expansion is not new though, we had started preparing it some time ago and we think itās overall a great focus for our customers. We received our passporting rights a week ago, so this is something weāve been actively working on.
Of course not! Why do you think that would make sense?
On the roadmap.
In general, we are less interested in what other companies are doing and extremely focused on building the best stockbroker in the world.
Thank you for your answer. Great to learn that your are moving faster than the roadmap!
Does it mean that users have 2 accounts in the app (euro and pound)?
I am asking to understand the following:
If a EU user buys UK stock, for example. Does he have to pay a 0,5% conversion commission? Should the FX revenue projection include the EU users buying UK stocks as well?
Itās a good question, and one we are thinking about at the moment. Under our current model customers would only be able to hold accounts in their local currency, and so would have to convert to buy UK stocks.
In terms of any revenue, the projections we produced for CrowdCube didnāt include EU expansion numbers. So that will be additive, but I do want to stress that we are not charging a 0.5% commission on FX - we provide an FX rate of interbank +0.5%. I can assure you weāre not getting interbank rate ourselves (as much as weād like to!).
This is probably a question for the rollout thread but will ask it here quicklyā¦ will Freetrade have external Beta testers or is the app going to be launched as a Beta product for all if this makes sense?
It involves buying a Android and switching over to the dark Just kidding. Think itās going to be a informal BETA consisting of the first users to onboard.
But really ALPHA/BETA etc are just forms of release tagging. Early access is early access.
Thatās what I thought initially, however in reality there appears to be differences. I imagined that access would come on a first come first serve basis in line with the waiting list. By the looks of it, it appears that those who sign up to testing will have access before those on the waiting list. So there are different types of early access.
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