This conversation got started when Christopher posted this -
Major additions are expected once the platform is live, and this is currently their key consideration. Maybe the time spent on āglossy gimmicksā is so insignificant that it does not substantially delay the release of the platform? 
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Dozens, not a dozen. If you want to count them theyāre in this thread
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Fair point, Iām a cynical so-and-so! So we keep hearing: Iām just frustrated by the snail-like pace of change, especially given that Freetradeās a start-up. Perhaps time spent on this sort of gimmicky guff adds up?
I stand corrected. Still, I think itās a poor showing.
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Suppose it depends what you want, half a dozen each week or thousands in a few months
The gimmicky guff will help users find stocks easier which will be really important when all the new ones are added
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In the past few months weāve launched:
- The Android app, which is very close to parity with the iOS app now, despite being delivered in about half the time that some other FinTech companies took to build theirs
- Apple Pay topups
- Filters in Discover
- Portfolio graph timeframes
so in my biased opinion, I think weāre doing pretty well for a startup that has an engineering team of less than 20 developers.
Weāre also midway through building:
- Collections
- Incentivised referrals
- In-app education
- Updating the Portfolio Graph to use a better rate of return calculation
- A whole new tab in the app, to help you manage your portfolio better
- An investment platform, which will enable us to add thousands more stocks, among other things
so we have plenty to keep us busy!
Not everything that we launch is going to make a huge difference for every customer. Weāll build some things to improve customerās on boarding experience & others to help first time investors, for example. But weāre doing our best to continually improve the app for everyone, while laying the groundwork thatāll enable us to provide a wider range of services.
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Any info on how the referrals will work?
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Not quite yet but I know that Viktorās crafting a post at the moment, to share when we get closer to launching them.
Edit - hereās the post - We'll start testing incentivised referrals (free shares!) within weeks šÆ
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Did you think you could sneak that in without questions? 
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Apologies for somewhat hijacking tāother thread and for being the resident argumentative tit! Iām one of those people who can hardly resist making a counter argument!
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No worries
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Haha hopefully weāll have a sneak peek of that ready to share with you next week. We want to get your feedback early so that you can help shape the first version of the features.
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See ā there is a method to my madness: get 'em riled up enough to reveal forthcoming new features to slap down my argument! 
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If youād like to rile up the national lottery next I would be grateful. Might get this weekendās numbers 
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Iāll see what I can do! 
On a more serious note, I do think playing devilās advocate gets a good conversation going. Half the time, Iāll just take up an argument because nobody else has done so.
In fairness to Freetrade, the companyās not done half bad getting to this stage in the time that is has and the ābreak stuffā approach should be used with caution in the financial services industry!
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Are you able to provide more info on what constitutes the new investment platform and how it will improve things both from perspective of users and Freetrade ie why it will allow you to greatly expand investment universe and reduce cost.
I feel like right now Iām overly optimistic about an intangible magic platform since its put forward as the barrier to many requested ideas and it would be useful to reconcile this with whatās actually coming up.
This is not at all a criticism I like what youāve done this far
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Sure, so Ian shared a brief summary of the sorts of thing the platform will enable here -
& we explained in more detail here -
We will grow our engineering team and enhance our platform.
This will allow us to speed up important features like fractional shares, a stock universe in the thousands and new account types. Itāll support our upcoming analytics, which will give our customers unique ways to understand their portfolios and improve their performance all from the app.
If youāve looked at our roadmap recently, youāll also have noticed one prominent item is our own investment platform. This is a unique technological and operational project. It will bring a huge amount of the intricate, decentralised processes and data streams of stock market investing into one modern, in-house platform.
As well as aiding many of the features above, this will dramatically drive down our costs and give us way more adaptability and freedom as a business.
quote from the Freetrade is back on Crowdcube: 25th April blog post
The platform wonāt enable us to deliver absolutely everything that we want to as soon as itās launched, after all itās only a platform - we need to build on top of it. But it will enable us to do lots of things that would be far harder / take a lot longer, using the setup that we have now.
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Indeed, youāll have all the info by end of next week, @samlan. 
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There is an easy way to take the sting out of a conversation like this. Since most roads lead back to the investment platform, why not give a detailed update on what it is, what it does (more in-depth than above), and when we can roughly expect it?
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I agree with the argument advanced by @Marsares and @astonelesschip. The investment platform comes across as a mystical āmagic bulletā answer to everything (letās hope it is:) and I donāt see the harm in providing further details to placate impatient sods like me! 
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