I feel itās important they donāt rush to get things done just because of the competition. I think the insight section was rushed and only a optimal product (which I think itās not yet) should have been marketed to the public. They just need to be hyper focus on what the current target market needs and execute. A better product means clients have a better chance of growing their portfolio. That way subscription fee can be charged (if a user has a 20K + account Iām sure he donāt
mind paying a higher premium + with a extras) Freetrade has to be a trendsetter in how they execute features or ideas. They need to be intuitive for the user capability now but also in their development for what the user will want in the future. Turning beginners into competent investors (moving them along the journey). They have to create for every stage of the user process. Not just add a feature cause thatās what everyone else is doing.
I completely agree they shouldnāt rush, and never intended to suggest otherwise. I see Freetrade as the innovators too - they could be on track to be the first broker to offer European fractionals. I do, however, think there is a fair balance between speed to market and product quality. Iād be dissapointed if Freetrade failed due to labouring over the product and therefore neglecting market share. I agree with the insights comments, I hope their intention is that itās an MVP theyāll iterate.
Although a boon, I donāt think innovation/product quality is what will be FTās saving grace (Robinhood have a damnably high quality product,) though - more the brand theyāre building. It has a strong customer-focussed/ethical sentiment that I believe no other competitor is even pursuing. After all, why use a broker that doesnāt have your best interests in mind?
p.s. day off, hence why iām up so late 
At any given time, we have an array of engineering roles published, which is a function of, being able to employ and keep busy a virtually infinite number of engineers. We are a tech company.
We have 50 people at Freetrade now (
), with engineering being the biggest team.
I agree itās an early-stage feature! Would love if you shared more about what you specifically mean! 
Based on the screenshots Iām getting from community members, our features, design, and copy have been taken as inspiration by other apps diligently, so I hope we can be a trendsetter. 
Adding more coders to a project doesnāt necessarily get it done faster
I like that thereās a insight section. I feel even though itās in beta stage the pie chart wasnāt need at this particular time. Especially if it was going to be showed as a new feature to potentially new customers. It would be better if the pie chart was interactive before it was broadcasted I.w with News of current stock, on overall sector performance (I can go onā¦) more closer to a full working feature.i know itās still early days in its development so thereās probably a lot of changes and added function down the line. So iāll reserve some judgement for the moment till itās pass the beta stage.
Thereās definitely diminishing returns, especially in a single team. That said we could move faster with more people. One of the things weāve done is create cross functional teams focused on a particular business/user problem. This along with strong encapsulation on the engineering side, has reduced crossfire. Much to improve but Iām happy with the efficiency we have at this stage.
So Robinhood just post this 16min ago after I was trying to explain how I envision the insight section.
No You had over 40 in May - for a company as well funded as youā¦ thatās honestly appallingly slow growth. I think you really need to take another look at the compensation of your engineering roles. Pay market rates or more to get what you need done. I know you all stressed that hiring people was your biggest worry in the last crowdfund, but it doesnāt seem like youāve addressed it that well. Burn faster and get where you need to to secure the next funding round. The reason you wonāt get funded will not be on account of burning too fast, it will be because youāve failed to deliver a quality multi feature product quickly and grab market share. I am a huge fan of what youāre trying to achieve but as a professional who works in VC and an investor in FT - I am getting increasingly nervous about the speed of your progress. Iām sure the team is working super hard. You need to spend money to increase your fire power.
Edit: Adam said he expected the team to be over 100 by the end of the yearā¦ at this rate it looks like youāll be closer to 65.
I donāt know where the idea of us not paying market rates comes from, but itās a categoric lie. We pay market rates and give stock options on top of that.
Hiring is hard not because we imposed some limitation on ourselves. Itās a tough market, and itās the same tough for everyone. Our edge is that a lot of Freetrade engineers come from the community, and there is nothing like working with people who want the product to exist and solve the bigger, meaningful problems we are looking to solve. And weāre going fast.
There is a lot in the pipeline, and we sometimes choose to wait with certain announcements, but that doesnāt mean some chunky news are not going to drop soon. 
But to be specific to hiring, weāve built a team of four internal recruiters. We went our own path with building our recruitment engine, and itās already started paying dividends (pun intended 
).
While I somewhat agree with you statement, hiring engineers is complicated. Given your background you should know that there is a massive engineering shortage. I can see it in my workplace as well. One wants to hire, but canāt. And this is not going to get better after Brexit.
Being in London just compounds the problem as well, a good engineer will be literally counter offered on the street 
and the costs of engineers in London are just stupid.
I think that area has our highest attrition rate compared to elsewhere in the country.
I wonder if Freetrade has ever considered remote working for suitable employees and potential employees? Itās fairly common these days and expands your pool of potential employees.
Looks like there are 30 vacancies on the careers page, so if you assume they get filled in 3 months or so then 50+30 isnāt too far off the ballpark 100. If they can hit their 100k customer target with fewer staff then thatās not a bad thing
It seems the new platform is the enabler of many of the new big hitting features (like fractionals), so there should (hopefully!) be a flurry of new features and faster progress following its completion
Agree with this 
Stressing out about how fast Freetrade are releasing features is not going to help anyone. One key thing Freetrade can compete on is a good quality product, great customer service and a strong community. As long as this ethos is kept up iām sure Freetrade will be fine. At the end of the day a customer doesnāt want to be using a buggy app. People love Monzo and rave about their amazing customer service and product on social media, which is free marketing for them and spreads through word of mouth. This is a lot more sustainable compared to rushing features out of the day and being the first to everything.
Ah, gotta love everyone becoming an expert on hiring speed and running a company
Have Freetrade thought about the engineering team working 25 hours a day, 8 days a week ?
Viktor could be watching armed with a taser in case anyone attempts to leave their seat
And then everybody is burned out and nothing is coming out the pipe at all.
If you are having a hard time filling your engineering roles why not look to getting the roles filled with remote engineers?
Have you tried using skynet? 
and I never even got a response to my application earlier this year :f but now Iāve joined Microsoft and Iām enjoying itā¦please buy Microsoft shares to bump up my RSU value 
Revolutās or Freetradeās? If FT near term then thatās less than 3 months. In 6 months it makes both of them quite similar although nobody knows how many ETFs/euro stocks Revolut will release in 20q2. SIPP will be a good advantage from FT but it seems at the same time FT will be expanding outside of the UK Revolut will be adding ETFs so FT will be entering without first mover advantage and they wonāt have it at all with the >6 months option potentially. e.g. in Czech Republic I have quite a few I could recommend FT to; all of them use Revolut for either selling RSUs or daily spendingā¦once Revolut launches ETFs in Q2, if the list is acceptable for them, I guess they will just use them for ETFs as well as currency conversion/daily spending
Almost sounds like youāre an SXX investor
It is correct. No reason at all to use Monzo or Revolut for travelling abroad as a British person if you have Starling. I just use Revolut for currency conversions (not travelling)
Do you offer current employees a referral bonus? In my opinion recruiters are pretty obsolete if you have a culture of recommendingā¦at least for the main IT roles. Iām probably looking at poaching 4 former colleagues and referring 2 others from decent companies (e.g. Uber) because Iām incentivised to do so. They just search job titles on LinkedIn and spam everyone; one of our recruiters recently contacted a former colleague who will instead let me refer him
Looking at the salaries I think theyāre ok. Theyāre no Palantir but theyāre within the usual ranges. You donāt need some amazing devs; average is OK to get products moving along. I think the problem is more likely that people arenāt seeing the ads. I donāt know how LinkedIn works but I assume you can pay more to have vacancies appear at the top of the āSoftware Engineer - Londonā search resultsā¦this would be much better than hiring 4 recruiters which is a crazy amount of people given the size.
Another option would be to look at creating either a team in another country or 100% remote options. e.g. those salaries in Russia or Eastern Europe will attract top talent