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London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

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Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

#51

Post by throwawaytwise »

Throwaway for obvious reasons.

I applied for a position as a software dev there a few years ago through a friend. I hated every single moment of it.

It was like they exported the very worse from Silicon Valley's bullshit start-ups attitude. They just couldn't shut the fuck up about how they were really changing the world (yeah right), how awesome it was to work 60 hours a week for such a great Vision, how sick their (mandatory) team-holidays were, how everything and everyone was so siiiick here, mate.

I did all the rounds up to the one with the VP of Engineering who asked me to code FizzBuzz on a whiteboard (no kidding) and then spent the rest of the hour bragging about how last week he had turned down an "amazing engineer" (his words) because he wasn't "cool enough" to be one of them. You know, he was a bit of a loser, mate.

It really felt like a cult of ego-obsessed people with some narcissistic disorder; even worse, it felt like everyone was lying.

That said I'm sure there are a lot of nice people who work there, this is just my experience so take it with a grain of salt. The product is also good, I used it a few times myself.

Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

#52

Post by swang »

It would be nice if this could be applied to places where I don't have a bank account and just need say, $500USD converted into another country's currency. My bank here allows me to withdraw twice from foreign bank ATMs but I have a feeling they are messing with exchange rates and I'm still stuck with a bad deal. I won't even bother with real exchanges in the States or in the other country. Everything just feels like highway robbery.

Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

#53

Post by ccozan »

nikon wrote: post #49
mingabunga wrote: post #27

I've been using this for the past 6 months. It works really nicely and removes a lot of friction - it's just like sending money to another local account. I've paid people in Netherlands, Australia, Germany and they recently started allowing US$ paid to Ukraine, so I've been able to pay software developers there.

Forgive my off-topicness - do you have any advice on sourcing developers in the Ukraine specifically?

Generally LinkedIn. Just say your what are you looking for, and they will find you.

I am getting at least 2-3 of them ( meaning, companies in Ukraine ) per month.

Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

#54

Post by Lordarminius »

Bombthecat wrote: post #31
CamMacFarlane wrote: post #4

This is great, as someone who frequently transfers money from the US to Canada I wish I had known about this sooner. Hopefully they can actually make some money.

They are bleeding a ton of money. For there idea to work they need to get money transferred into all directions... They had Nigeria as a supported country. But they removed it (sadly) But money was probably transferred only one direction. So they lost money.

> They had Nigeria as a supported country. But they removed it ...

I am a Nigerian and I consider this an unpardonable failure of basic market research. If they had spent a quality hour of their time investigating the Nigerian market, they would have found out that inflow overwhelmingly dwarfs outflow.

Makes you wonder what their decision making methodology is

Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

#55

Post by mjw1007 »

smnscu wrote: post #46
ucaetano wrote: post #29

If you're poor, you're an immigrant. If you're rich, you're an expat.

Reminds me of the recent The Grand Tour episode, when they mention how if you're famous for something positive you're called British, otherwise you're Scottish/Welsh.

Do they give any reason to believe that what they're mentioning is true?

I've looked informally for this phenomenon and I haven't been able to find it.

The only concrete piece of research I know on a specific case came up negative: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-349098...

Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

#57

Post by averagewall »

throwawaytwise wrote: post #51

Throwaway for obvious reasons. I applied for a position as a software dev there a few years ago through a friend. I hated every single moment of it. It was like they exported the very worse from Silicon Valley's bullshit start-ups attitude. They just couldn't shut the fuck up about how they were really changing the world (yeah right), how awesome it was to work 60 hours a week for such a great Vision, how sick their…

It sounds like a culture that's not objectively bad, just different from what you respect. People use slang words and bragging everywhere. They're just different words and different ways of expressing their brags.

But to be honest, they do have a very noble goal and they have reason to be proud of it. Poor people all over the world are constantly pouring money into Western Union and banks for this seemingly trivial service.

Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

#58

Post by KevinBongart »

throwawaytwise wrote: post #51

Throwaway for obvious reasons. I applied for a position as a software dev there a few years ago through a friend. I hated every single moment of it. It was like they exported the very worse from Silicon Valley's bullshit start-ups attitude. They just couldn't shut the fuck up about how they were really changing the world (yeah right), how awesome it was to work 60 hours a week for such a great Vision, how sick their…

Their marketing material in NYC was incredibly douchey, like "stick it to the big banks".

I was using Xoom (https://www.xoom.com) at the time, which had a brand image of a trustworthy and cut-the-bullshit kind of financial company.

TransferWise's subway ads focused on a people's revolution: http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/Rjm3dY.BU5FmdQmId3yj1w--/Y... or http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03525/TransferWi... are two examples.

Another thing that threw me off is how needlessly technologically-heavy their website was at the time: Javascript front-end app with big animations and the unavoidable browser-incompatibility bugs it created back then (you refresh the page and it redirects to the root page for instance).

Anyway, I tried it once and had slightly better rates than Xoom, enough to convince me to go through their bullshit to save some money on large transfers, but I almost kept using Xoom because of how much I didn't like Transferwise's image.

All that to say: I'm not surprised by your interview experience, it perfectly matches what I assumed from their team.

Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

#59

Post by Someone1234 »

kore wrote: post #50
CamMacFarlane wrote: post #4

This is great, as someone who frequently transfers money from the US to Canada I wish I had known about this sooner. Hopefully they can actually make some money.

If you have a need to transfer large amounts of USD-to-CAD or vice versa, have a look into Norbert's Gambit. It'll effectively let you perform the transfer for 0.2%. Probably not worthwhile for small amounts, but if you're converting ~$10k, might be worth the effort. This site seems to break it down: https://norbertsgambit.com/

That's all kinds of sketchy, least of all because of the taxes, but also because you're playings games with public stock that they or anyone else could manipulate.

I've used TransferWise for over $8K and think the service is fantastic. I wouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole and my git is screaming "scam!"

Re: London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

#60

Post by averagewall »

Lordarminius wrote: post #54
Bombthecat wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are bleeding a ton of money. For there idea to work they need to get money transferred into all directions... They had Nigeria as a supported country. But they removed it (sadly) But money was probably transferred only one direction. So they lost money.

> They had Nigeria as a supported country. But they removed it ... I am a Nigerian and I consider this an unpardonable failure of basic market research. If they had spent a quality hour of their time investigating the Nigerian market, they would have found out that inflow overwhelmingly dwarfs outflow. Makes you wonder what their decision making methodology is

When there's a consistent imbalance, I wonder if instead of trading it themselves, they could queue up requests. People who really wanted the cheap rate would wait days or weeks or whatever it took to reach the head of the queue, while others would drop out so it keeps moving.
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