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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

#131

Post by KevinBongart »

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!

Their marketing got my attention, and their rates were so much better than the competition that it outweighed the terrible brand image.

They could have gone straight to the point: "Better international transfer rates than your bank" and I'd have been very happy with it. The service is good!

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

#132

Post by grzm »

dageshi wrote: post #130
pdimitar wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

off-topic I remember a post made not long ago by the HN admins themselves where they said they'll try to reduce the political posts. So far, it's not working out.

They gave up when it was concluded that everything is in some way political.

I don't think that's a fair representation of what the mods concluded.

'dang summarized the results of the detox week and has made some recent comments on it as well. Here are some, with some identifiable snippets only so it's not a list of links. I encourage you to read the comments themselves. They don't all directly address this, but I think they all shed some light on the topic.

---

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13516969

There's no satisfying anybody about this: not the readers who want more politics, not the readers who want less, and certainly not the partisans on an issue.

---

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13522433

There's a lot more politics on HN right now than there usually is, which is appropriate since it reflects what's going on right now.

---

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13516969

When there's a deluge of political stories, as in the last couple days, users heavily flag most of them. But there have still been plenty of major threads spending plenty of time on the front page. That's the status quo for HN: most politics are off topic, but not all. It's a delicate balance and an important one. Letting politics overrun this site would kill it.

---

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13463480

On downsides of the Political Detox Week experiment: there are two comments in the thread.

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

#133

Post by pdimitar »

grzm wrote: post #132
dageshi wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They gave up when it was concluded that everything is in some way political.

I don't think that's a fair representation of what the mods concluded. 'dang summarized the results of the detox week and has made some recent comments on it as well. Here are some, with some identifiable snippets only so it's not a list of links. I encourage you to read the comments themselves. They don't all directly address this, but I think they all shed some light on the topic. --- https://news.ycombinator.com/i…

Thanks a lot. I'll definitely do my best to read most (or all) of these. I am seriously interested in HN's official position on political posts.

I am not in an extreme position -- namely to deny that political posts don't have any relevance. That's not true. But I feel those discussions have either rarely been productive, or have way too many comments for somebody to extract a useful gist, or both.

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

#134

Post by bloopalert »

jlg23 wrote: post #72
RangerScience wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And almost certainly better tech. You ever check out the OS your bank is running?

Honestly, I don't care whether I am driven over by a Porsche Cayenne or a Willys MB. And while I have not worked in the banking sector myself, lots of my friends did - and it was not cobol. They are catching up and they all know that their mainframe sw is dated and act upon it. I don't think the "quality" of the tech is of any relevance here. EDIT: Well, I actually know some guys who bit the bullet and learned cobol…

It's cobol.

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

#135

Post by yellowbeard »

nostalgiac wrote: post #128
phil21 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Ideas are utterly worthless. >I freely give every single idea (some actually valuable!) A solid contradiction ;) But I understand your intentions.

I guess value and worth can have subtlety different meanings

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

#136

Post by [deleted] »

nostalgiac wrote: post #128
phil21 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Ideas are utterly worthless. >I freely give every single idea (some actually valuable!) A solid contradiction ;) But I understand your intentions.

[deleted]

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

#138

Post by stefantalpalaru »

acchow wrote: post #56
ucaetano wrote: post #29

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

It's about color, not wealth.

Not in Europe. White people coming from Eastern Europe are immigrants while white people coming from Western Europe are expats.

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

#140

Post by kbenson »

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.

I guess if you only value ideas by the money that ends up in your pocket in the end, then sure, ideas a worthless and execution is the only thing that matters.
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