The crowdfunding is locked in to start at 1pm on Wednesday (16th May). No delay!
In terms of enabling free Alpha, it won’t make a difference in terms of onboarding customers. 
Ah no I wasn’t implying the crowdfund was delayed, only that maybe crowdfunding was the top priority and thus slowing down account opening.
But just idle conjecture to fill space on my part.
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Ah, got it now! 
Our focus is on crowdfunding for the next few weeks indeed, but the product development is progressing behind the scenes.
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We’ve done the first live trade today! Adam bought the FTSE 100 tracker VUKE.
This is how the process looked like. The backend looks quite unassuming, doesn’t it?
This is how the order appeared on the website of the London Stock Exchange. Adam went all in.
That’s the story of our first live trade!
Let’s see how long it takes for @rob_h to chime in with more technical details. 
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Congratulations @adam and the entire @freetrade_team!
I bet it’s all feeling very real now?
Bring on 1pm tomorrow! 
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Technical details? Nah, they’re boring! It’s done. Crest messages en-route. Account(s) updated. Settlement T+2. Historic moment. If you want more technical details then ask @Viktor to publish my latest blog post/rant concerning trade and settlement - it’s insightful. OK, no it’s not, it’s weird.
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The one with the magic helper elfs buying and selling sprouts at a local street market? 
That’s a masterpiece. It will go out soon!
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@Viktor How many people are on the Beta testing version? Ans when do you expect to start rolling out the app? Feels there is a good opportunity to get free marketing to have the app go live and raise £3m… and tripple that wait list.
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Hi, are atere any updates on rollout?
What is left to do?
What month are you going to start rolling out iOS app?
Thanks,
Adam
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Slow and steady for the early app rollout, then we’ll ramp things up quickly when we are comfortable that all systems are working as intended.
Last week: The first funding of an account (mine) and first trade being executed and then settled. 
This week: Onboarding other Freetrade team members, doing our first batch trade and buying securities that will have corporate actions to test those processes amongst other things.
Next week+: Hooking up the front end app to the brokerage platform to test trades using the shiny buy and sell buttons.
Key point is that we are a financial institution that is the custodian of our clients’ cash and securities. We need to make sure all the back-end systems and controls are working perfectly before onboarding external customers. We also need to make sure the front-end app experience is integrating flawlessly with the other systems before pushing it out to customers in significant numbers.
As they say, only one chance to make a first impression!
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Will you be issuing a beta for people to test, maybe using TestFlight? Happy to do this if so.
Not sure if it is still relevant but it is the most we have from the insiders in regards to testing:
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this gets probably closest, @J2ono. It will be testing individual screens, interactions though, so not the full app. Our beta testing is the staggered roll-out.
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@adam’s customer account is ready, and he bought £VUKE. As he said, more team members are getting accounts soon, and engineering will hook up the front end app to the brokerage platform, so we can leave the backend to the hmm… backend, and use only the app to buy and sell.
When the above is done as well as penetration testing. We are dying to give you an exact date, and we will soon.
Good thinking. 
Crowdcube rounds provide visibility. We have record signups these days, but are a little bit more focused on getting the first non-team member customer accounts going, which is the right thing to do for growth. I’m personally very bullish on our 100,000 customer accounts in 12 months target!
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I see AJ Bell are floating for £500,000,000 with 172,000 customers. Does this give guidance to what we could be valued at with similar numbers?
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Probably not the best example to benchmark against. All their customers raise direct revenue in some shape or form (on the top of FX fees and cash balance interest), whereas certainly not all of Freetrade’s customers will bring the same value.
Makes more sense to compare against Robinhood, their valuation is based on $2,000 per user.
It’s such positive news, I’m just happy to wait for it.
Glad you take risk seriously and that you do the necessary testing, maybe beta uat, and then release when you are satisfied it’s secure and efficient.
Keep up the good work.
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Hi all - a bit of an update on what we’ve been up to this week:
https://freetrade.io/blog/updates-on-live-trading-we-may-25th/
(Side note - I was made to wear the sunglasses under duress, apparently it makes me look more “fintech”)
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