Zoom AMA #2: Freetrade Co-founder & CMO Viktor Nebehaj :freetrade:

Can you also remove the link from the public :eye: Just to be :safety_pin:.

Done. I think/hope? Iā€™m not a tech/chat board person so donā€™t really understand whatā€™s happened. Anyway, sorted I hopeā€¦

2 Likes

I mentioned transferwise last year, I know some of the team that did their banking integrations, and Freetrade were all like ā€œNah, we gonna do everything ourselves. Invest platform baby!ā€

@deathwaltzā€™s related note is quite clear, but to emphasise: weā€™re not doing any partnerships with them. What I said on the meeting, it was fantastic to meet and have a casual chat with my counterpart at that company. Always awesome to meet people that walked the same path before you.

Itā€™s still Invest by Freetrade all the way, that wonā€™t change. :man_shrugging:

5 Likes

I completely missed the meetup - the one day I decided to work late. haha!

Sounds like some useful information has come from it. All sounds positive.

1 Like

Donā€™t worry, weā€™ll do more AMAs over the next few weeks.

Hope you can join us next time.

2 Likes

Thank very much for the summary, sorry I couldnā€™t be there.

Definitely!

2020 is going to be a massive year for the FT Community.

1 Like

Ah cool. I couldnā€™t join the call. Do you have any more details?

It makes a lot of sense, DriveWealth have been doing fractional shares for a long time. They even filed for a patent. Understandably there is a lot to consider when selling fractional shares.

1 Like

Adding to the above, it took FT 18 months to get to 1miliion trades on the platform and over the last two months theyā€™ve done another million, so insane growth. Well done FT team

17 Likes

Things kicked off for me last week work-wise so I couldnā€™t attend which was disappointing, I hope the event was useful for all concerned.

I had a couple of questions I wanted to ask - if its ok Iā€™d like to post them to see if anyone at Freetrade is happy to answer?

  1. What have Freetrade done in response to the media investigation that found a ā€œculture of fearā€ and a 50% turnover in staff? Has the culture and high turnover been partly responsible for the lack of updates and stocks recently?

  2. Why is drivewealth being used to deliver fractional shares? I was under the impression that Freetrades mission was to use their own infrastructure and this was part of the reason for shifting customers to a new platform recently - is this not a step back?

7 Likes

Hi Jim,

Pity you didnā€™t get around to ask your questions on the AMA. Hope you make the next one.

As we said at the time, we disagree with the entire premise.

The writers chose to paint a picture and took comments only from a select handful of people.

The one-sided ā€œinvestigationā€ featured a total lack of commentary from and respect for the overwhelming majority of people that work here, are focused on the mission to get everyone investing, and have fantastic achievements under their belt such as Invest by Freetrade - as well as many other accomplishments across the various diverse teams from talent to product to growth to operations that are too many to count. As startups grow, they typically encounter negative commentary. All we can do is keep being transparent and setting the record straight.

Turnover has not impacted our ability to ship.

As a financial services company, we have a number of partners that perform various functions, DriveWealth is one of them. The level of integration into Invest is very deep, which was the right way for us as we build a sustainable business. Itā€™s something you could ask Ian and the eng team, which I think will be the next topical AMA / meetup.

21 Likes

Havnā€™t been on here for a few weeks and missed this! Is there a way to watch it back?

Hi Victor,

Thank you for the detailed response, and for your email. I wasnā€™t a customer at the time of the original publication so was unaware of Ftā€™s response, very grateful to have it now. Re-reading the article I can see what you state about the one sided nature of it. Glad to know its not true.

Thank you also for your response on Drivewealth, that helps paint a picture for me to understand and it makes sense that integrations will be needed and used to build a sustainable business taking advantage of pre-existing expertise where appropriate.

The topical AMA sounds interesting, Iā€™ll try to make that one.

8 Likes

As iā€™m weighing whether to invest in the upcoming crowdfunding round, the negative PR is a major concern for me:My feeling is that it will/has impact(ed) how fast FT hires talent (engineers being of utmost importance in a tech company) - whether itā€™s true or not sadly- which directly affects the platformā€™s pace of development. There are a number of roles @ FT that have been vacant for monthsā€¦ but ofcourse there is a known undersupply.

As an example, I have a friend in software engineering who was put off applying for FT by the numerous (Very detailed) negative glassdoor reviews. I think an open public response Ć  la Revolut would have gone a very long way. Anyway, The economic effects of COVID might mean that engineers are easier to come by in the near term though, so hopefully it all balances outā€¦ Also reassuring to see FT havenā€™t implemented a hiring freeze.

2 Likes

This is old news and shown to be very one sided. If you donā€™t invest that leaves more room for me! :slight_smile: thanks!

5 Likes

A lot of those glassdoor reviews read like they came from the same madlad.

2 Likes

Haha the competitors (one in particular from Bulgaria) are doing all they can to try and slow the rise of Freetrade, first they copy them and now they try the dirty tactics. Just wait till we get closer to the crowd funding round, they will try anything! Watch out.

2 Likes

Iā€™m not going to lie - that particular competitor (T212) does make me nervous. Theyā€™re amassing 100k users/week, and Ā£100m+ in AUA/month. For me the saddest thing about it is that throngs of first time investors might be seduced into using a leveraged product (CFDs) - Stocks and CFDs should be in two separate apps, at the very least.

Investing should be a positive experience, about building wealth in the long term. Itā€™ll have been a damn shame and missed opportunity if T212 dominate the space, no doubt perpetuating - if not exacerbating - the gambling stigma around the stock market.

1 Like