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

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171–180 of 192 posts

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

#171
post #68
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

List of famious Scottish People often include J.K.Rowling as Scottish, but Wikipedia lists her as English. So, it probably only applies to people that can claim both as she was born in England, but wrote the books in Scotland.

Scots have a saying: if you live here, you're Scottish.

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

#172
post #55
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Andy Murray is a highly-visible recent example [0].

[0]: https://stv.tv/news/stirling-central/1360095-andy-murray-mor...

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

#173

Transferwise is a great service, I use it myself. They even give you a volume discount if you ask for it. But what really surprises me is that it got to where it is at all. If you look at it, their business model is not revolutionary. Their prices are not cheaper than for example UKForex (OzForex), who provide the exact same service, and were around years before. The business is simply a click interface for exchangin…

> They even give you a volume discount if you ask for it. Just contact support? How much volume do they look for? I'm struggling moving USD -> GBP, hitting the daily ACH limits & frustrated that the creaky US banking system doesn't have a better interbank transfer system than wiring funds for tens of dollars a pop (and presenting a physical form).

Yeah just go on the chat and tell them you've sold a house.

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

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Only for large amounts of money. I'm sending roughly $2000 in each transaction.

This is an important point - there is a point where TransferWise becomes more expensive than WorldFirst or a bank, but it is for much higher volumes than most people will be sending on a regular basis.

On average I send between 500-1000 GBP to USD per month on Transferwise and pay 2.50 - 5 GBP in fees. Compared to a wire at a bank that charges 30 GBP fixed + a % on a sliding scale depending on the amount, it's not really competitive until you get over 10k per transaction. But then at that point you can contact TransferWise customer service to negotiate a better rate.

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

#175
Transferwise was great, at first. I was an early adopter of Transferwise. Some years ago, my brother (and I, sort of) started filming documentaries and I handled a lot of the money and payments to some of the people involved in his documentaries overseas. At one point without warning, Transferwise left my brother stranded in Europe without a way to get money. Transferwise held onto a few thousand dollars for a few weeks without any contact or update or anything. Every time I would email or call, I would get some customer support who would ignore my replies or transfer me around with increasing wait times between transfers until they hung up, sort of typical phone hell. When we finally got a hold of someone at Transferwise, it turns out they decided that what we were doing was a cover for illicit activities (which is pretty bizarre, if you knew the people involved, and despite his published documentaries, footage, and even the receipts we kept for tax purposes).

Having family stranded overseas by this billion-dollar unicorn left a really bad taste in my mouth. The worst part was being left with absolutely zero recourse for the thousands of dollars that they were just holding on to for weeks without any contact with us. If you don't want to serve us because of some bizarre, hallucinatory conspiracy, fine, but don't hold onto the money for weeks in the interim without an explanation.

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

#176
post #44

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…

As far as I remember, you're in SF right now? Mind sharing what kind of Visa you're on? Croatian here, so wondering what kind of Visa I could get to work in US except a H-1B.

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

#177

Hello all. I used transferwise in November to move money to Japan. The exchange rate applied was the actual fucking exchange rate. I paid Transferwsise a couple of quid. Worth every fucking penny. Worth swearing. Use Transferwise.

What's the foremost authority for realtime ForEx rates?

there isn't one, because that's not how the market works

it's like asking what's the world price for a tuna sandwich, there's a few million places you could buy one, and they all have a different price

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

#178
post #72

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…

Banks run all kinds of stuff - never seen AS400 mainframe at the bank (but some for example in Renault), but plenty of 15-20 year old systems. I consider SAP a legacy system that should be avoided/pushed out at all costs, but that's personal opinion.

And guess what - in many cases those old systems work extremely well. if you can integrate with it via Java or similar, then there is no good enough reason to upgrade. I've seen plenty of projects pitched as salvation to customers, when at the end the customer needed 3x the amount of people to support it, wasted ton if time and money putting new 'cool' tech in, which just brought its own set of problems. True added long-term value for customer was minimal.

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

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If you think the victim mentality is limited to the left, you've obviously not being paying attention to the alt right or Christian conservatives.

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

#180
post #9
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…

Or, in the case of international money transfer: They see through the existing system and just openly do what most banks have been doing all the time behind the scenes, passing most of the savings to the customer. The only problem I see with this specific business model: As soon as enough people use it, this method of transfer will be the norm and all the big banks will offer it too, thereby invalidating the justific…

I don't think it's possible without significant restructuring (for banks). They have huge costs that TransferWise is avoiding.
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