Can you also remove the link from the public Just to be .
Done. I think/hope? Iām not a tech/chat board person so donāt really understand whatās happened. Anyway, sorted I hopeā¦
I mentioned transferwise last year, I know some of the team that did their banking integrations, and Freetrade were all like āNah, we gonna do everything ourselves. Invest platform baby!ā
@deathwaltzās related note is quite clear, but to emphasise: weāre 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.
Itās still Invest by Freetrade all the way, that wonāt change.
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.
Donāt worry, weāll do more AMAs over the next few weeks.
Hope you can join us next time.
Thank very much for the summary, sorry I couldnāt be there.
Definitely!
2020 is going to be a massive year for the FT Community.
Ah cool. I couldnāt 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.
Adding to the above, it took FT 18 months to get to 1miliion trades on the platform and over the last two months theyāve done another million, so insane growth. Well done FT team
Things kicked off for me last week work-wise so I couldnāt 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 Iād like to post them to see if anyone at Freetrade is happy to answer?
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What have Freetrade done in response to the media investigation that found a āculture 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?
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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?
Hi Jim,
Pity you didnāt 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 āinvestigationā 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. Itās something you could ask Ian and the eng team, which I think will be the next topical AMA / meetup.
Havnāt 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 wasnāt a customer at the time of the original publication so was unaware of Ftās 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, Iāll try to make that one.
As iām 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 itās true or not sadly- which directly affects the platformās 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 havenāt implemented a hiring freeze.
This is old news and shown to be very one sided. If you donāt invest that leaves more room for me! thanks!
A lot of those glassdoor reviews read like they came from the same madlad.
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.
Iām not going to lie - that particular competitor (T212) does make me nervous. Theyāre 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. Itāll 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.