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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

#91

Post by rattray »

jpollock wrote: post #78
rattray wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what sort of (non-personality) mistakes did you see?

I've seen: 1) Incorrect ordering of output "Buzz Fizz" 2) Printing only Fizz or Buzz for 15. 3) Starting at a number different to 1 (say 0) 4) Off by one error at the end (going to 99, instead of 100) 5) Forgetting to print out the number when neither Fizz nor Buzz is output (first output is Fizz for 3) 6) Always printing out the number. (3 Fizz) and that's the people who can code at all. Then you get people who can'…

Wow! Thanks, that's illustrative.

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

#92

Post by stevanl »

no1youknowz wrote: post #20
briandear wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WorldFirst does. There are plenty of competitors in the space that do a great job at this.

Can you elaborate on the other competitors? Thanks

Direct competitors would be the likes of Azimo and WorldRemit.

For larger transfers (ie above £5k/$6k) you have a slew of them; Global Reach Partners, Moneycorp, World First, and Rational FX to name a few.

Disclaimer: I am a co-founder of CurrencyTransfer.com, an aggregator of some of the above larger transfer companies.

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

#93

Post by late2part »

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…

Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?

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

#94

Post by jldugger »

stronglikedan wrote: post #61
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…

> VP of Engineering who asked me to code FizzBuzz on a whiteboard (no kidding) I agree that a VP in a late stage interview should not be asking this of the candidate, but I will say that I recently had to hire a new team member, and FizzBuzz helped me to immediately weed out the candidates during the initial interview. I'm talking like 50% of the candidates, and one guy even asked if he could take it home and send me…

> I'm talking like 50% of the candidates, and one guy even asked if he could take it home and send me the code.

I'm still trying to reconcile this with my own experience at work. I work for a university department, and hire student employees. Zero people have ever failed our fizzbuzz question on the interview, while it was on there.

You would think that post graduation there would be a _lower_ number of degree holders who can't code.

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

#95

Post by Trundle »

petra wrote: post #88
KevinBongart wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/TransferW…

Is it really their fault, or is i just how marketing works in this day an age ? Heck, they even got you, and you hated their marketing!

I'm the least 'get excited about the company vision' person there is and if I was starting a service that competed against banks I'd be very tempted to play that up in marketing, both to prospective clients and employees.

There are an awful lot of people that really loath banks.

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

#96

Post by NoMyGodIsThis »

Swizec wrote: post #44
ucaetano wrote: post #29

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

While this sounds true and everyone likes to harp on it, there's another consideration. An immigrant is somebody who intends to stay forever, an expat is someone who plans to go back home eventually. There are also legal considerations. My US visa for example specifically says it's a non-immigrant visitor's work visa. Legally speaking, I'm an expat. Culturally ... I like to call myself a dirty immigrant. Riles people…

" I come from the border between Central and Eastern Europe. Some say Slovenia is one, some say another."

Compulsory link, shirley? https://youtu.be/bwDrHqNZ9lo

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

#97

Post by namenotrequired »

Dwolb wrote: post #7
namenotrequired wrote: post #2

I live in Brazil and earn in Euros. Very happy with TransferWise, they save me a lot of money on fees - and they even warn me when the exchange rate is favorable. You can get a first transfer free with an invitation link, here's mine: https://transferwise.com/u/5d78

Do you by chance know what your company's tax obligations are? We'd love to open up for international remote work, but we also don't want to run afoul of any international tax obligations (i.e. local payroll taxes) due to remote employees.

Sorry, I can't help you.

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

#98

Post by CptJamesCook »

idiot_stick wrote: post #32
maverick_iceman wrote: post #30

Interesting that they use the word expat instead of immigrant. I don't think if these two were from Asia/Africa they would have been called expats.

> I don't think if these two were from Asia/Africa they would have been called expats. And you base that on....? Why do people search for injustice?

The left has been teaching people to believe they are victims for more than a decade now. That's why they search for injustice.

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

#99

Post by throwaway5752 »

"The company says it is always improving the software that automates the matching process, including complicated solutions that cover, say, a pound-to-dollar transaction with multiple dollar-to-euro and euro-to-pound swaps. If TransferWise can’t find a match, it becomes a market maker, using its own money to complete the deal in the hope that another customer who wants to send at least as much money the opposite way comes along later. In doing so, it is essentially acting just like a traditional foreign exchange broker."

And this is how it spectacularly imploded 5 years from now.

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

#100

Post by omarchowdhury »

throwaway_374 wrote: post #71
brilliantcode wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much is the salary and what's the skill level like? I'm very interested in Eastern European developers, they seem to get shit done and rarely complain.

This kind of commoditization attitude of developers really fucks me off. "Shut up and code and don't complain". Nah, you can fuck right off mate.

My algorithm detects a Trump voter. Bring back those jobs!

It's not a tenent of capitalism that you can allocate your money as you wish! Oh... wait. Yes, it is.

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