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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

#111

Post by da02 »

orthoganol wrote: post #67
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…

Ah that definitely explains the vibe I got from their "naked march" where they got what looks like a sea of frat boys and sorority girls (I assumed largely their employees/ friends, in reality) to strip down to their underwear and scream and shout and walk around for a "viral" stunt. I know I'm just piling on here, but the vibe certainly had some doucheyness and it made me think their founders were the party bro type…

I remember Nerve.com doing the same thing back in the mid-90s. (Correction: 2000 Maybe you see some more similarities: https://vimeo.com/2413616 )

Were you impressed by anything at TranferWise? Their security and stability? Maybe their confidence comes from top-notch engineering skills?

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

#112

Post by beachy »

striking wrote: post #105
throwaway_374 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is there anything wrong with looking for developers that don't complain? Total aside: As an Eastern European emigrant, I don't really mind being characterized as hard-working and rarely-complaining. I like to think it's true.

Depends what you're complaining about.

If you don't complain when you see something wrong, e.g. a bad design choice - then you're basically a yes man (or yes woman), and you're only useful to companies who are either already perfect, or who don't want your help to do better. The first does not exist and the second would be a crap place to work.

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

#113

Post by striking »

beachy wrote: post #112
striking wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there anything wrong with looking for developers that don't complain? Total aside: As an Eastern European emigrant, I don't really mind being characterized as hard-working and rarely-complaining. I like to think it's true.

Depends what you're complaining about. If you don't complain when you see something wrong, e.g. a bad design choice - then you're basically a yes man (or yes woman), and you're only useful to companies who are either already perfect, or who don't want your help to do better. The first does not exist and the second would be a crap place to work.

Right, yeah. I definitely complain when there's something egregiously wrong. But as much as I like to hear myself speak, I try not to overdo it.

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

#114

Post by mingabunga »

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?

Not really sorry, I've been using the same devs there for the past 9 years. They've been great

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

#115

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

jldugger wrote: post #94
stronglikedan wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 holder…

There are a lot of "HTML programmer" types out there who piece together snippets without ever having to think about how best to solve a problem, deal with the fundamentals of computer arithmetic, or data structures. These people can't do fizzbuzz or something simple like construct a linked list (good one for the managed code generation used to containers).

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

#117

Post by jzwinck »

briandear wrote: post #16
hackerboos wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use them every two weeks to move Canadian dollars to British pounds. Nobody else comes close in terms of exchange rates and level of service.

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

I tried WorldFirst after Oanda stopped participating in this business and referred their customers to WF.

The two turned out to be nothing alike. Oanda used to let little people convert currency on the same platform as proper FX traders (speculators). This meant you could pay a tiny fee and get some of the most competitive rates in the world because you were trading directly in their two-sided market.

WorldFirst is different. They make you declare the amount you want to exchange and then they synthesize a rate that expires soon after. There is no way to put in an order at a specific price and they do not show you a two-sided quote which would make it plain how much they're taking.

From what I saw, WorldFirst aims to take about 1.5% of each side of each trade at the when they are large, and even more on small trades.

If you're exchanging $500 you may as well use a bank. If you're exchanging $50000 you may as well use a true trading platform.

When exchanging currency at any online or physical marketplace, look at their two-sided quote to see the spread they charge. If they try to show you only one side (buy or sell but not both), go elsewhere.

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

#118

Post by _m8fo »

umeshunni wrote: post #104
_m8fo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty well known that (relatively affluent) white immigrants are called expats instead of immigrants. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals... http://www.forbes.com/sites/jnylander/2015/04/03/in-china-wh...

Eh - no. I was a 'brown' person living in the middle east and called an expat. Expat implies an intent to return or a temporary worker and is a frequently used term in the middle east/asia. E.g https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-25/expat-fee... Not everything has to be viewed from an SJW angle

I never said brown people can't be called expats. Your defensiveness regarding that is more SJW than my original post, which just cited a few articles.

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

#119

Post by elastic_church »

kbenson wrote: post #3

As the embedded video alludes, it's not that revolutionary an idea to pool transactions and use local resources to fulfill more cheaply if possible. That said, the world is full of wildly successful companies that just executed well on not very revolutionary ideas, and they provide real value that was largely absent before they grew to prominence. Sometimes it's not about doing something new, it's about doing it well…

sometimes you say? it is always about execution

being passionate about things that nobody wants, and disrupting things nobody cares about will get you nowhere. a low margin grocery store fulfills a need and thats why they are everywhere.

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

#120

Post by phil21 »

elastic_church wrote: post #119
kbenson wrote: post #3

As the embedded video alludes, it's not that revolutionary an idea to pool transactions and use local resources to fulfill more cheaply if possible. That said, the world is full of wildly successful companies that just executed well on not very revolutionary ideas, and they provide real value that was largely absent before they grew to prominence. Sometimes it's not about doing something new, it's about doing it well…

sometimes you say? it is always about execution being passionate about things that nobody wants, and disrupting things nobody cares about will get you nowhere. a low margin grocery store fulfills a need and thats why they are everywhere.

Ideas are utterly worthless. Execution is everything.

I freely give every single idea (some actually valuable!) I've ever had away for free. Because I know if someone is better at implementing it than I am, they are the ones who provided the world value. Not me for dreaming it up and then doing nothing about it - there are millions of me's, and ideas without execution are not interesting.

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