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Expensify S-1

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Re: Expensify S-1

#41

Post by rexreed »

tomlor wrote: post #25

I singlehandledly forced the replacement of Expensify at my company after some dodgy billing practices. They incrementally, yet substantially, raised our bill over a period of eight months with no notification to us whatsover. It was hard to detect because our bills were already variable values per month (based on active users). When I discovered the higher rates we were paying I reached out to support and they said…

Not to mention their shady and undisclosed practices of using humans to read receipts when they pretend it's AI / OCR / NLP doing that.

"Expensify has admitted that its declared AI product SmartScan, which is assumed to scan the expense receipts and categorize the details into corresponding expense pool through a machine process, was actually assisted by humans. Breaching privacy of users, the receipts were posted on freelancing websites where freelancers used to take out extracts of information from receipts and send it to Expensify team."

[0] https://mantra.ai/blogs/pseudo-ai-when-humans-do-bots-work/

Re: Expensify S-1

#42

Post by epistasis »

ygjb wrote: post #36
bgorman wrote: post #6

Expensify’s CEO sent a letter to every single person Expensify had an email for, even simple ground floor employees who just use the software to submit expenses an email prior to the 2020 presidential election. The CEO sent a long diatribe about how the election of Donald Trump would be the end of democracy as we know it, and it is imperative that Joe Biden is elected. I will never give this company a single cent aft…

Why? Is it because you disagree with the political leanings of the CEO? Is it because you don't think that corporations should express political biases? If so, do you maintain a list of companies that you won't do business with based on corporate donations? Is it because you disagree with a founder or CEO using the platform that their company provides them to amplify their voice? Your comment is a condemnation of the…

If the email had been in support of Trump, I would feel similarly about not wanting to do business with Expensify, so I can sort of see where OP is coming from. I would feel much less strongly, but also have a distaste in my mouth, if the CEO emailed in support of Romney or McCain during those elections.

Political advocacy can complicate business relations, and its best for everybody to realize that. Which isn't to say that one should avoid political advocacy, just that the costs should be evaluated before deciding to do it or to not do it.

Re: Expensify S-1

#43

Post by dpeck »

curiousgal wrote: post #39
dpeck wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary this is exactly what I want to see from executives regardless of their political leanings. If they believe that something is a clear and direct threat to the business that they’re charged with running, they should have a fiduciary duty to speak up on it in whatever means they have available. Following that those receiving the message can decide to continue to support the business or not. But I’d rathe…

Well imagine if it were the other way around, a white supremacist is president and a CEO sends out letters praising that...

That’d be great, it would inform my decision to cease doing business with that CEO/company as quickly as possible.

Re: Expensify S-1

#44

Post by cityzen »

bgorman wrote: post #6

Expensify’s CEO sent a letter to every single person Expensify had an email for, even simple ground floor employees who just use the software to submit expenses an email prior to the 2020 presidential election. The CEO sent a long diatribe about how the election of Donald Trump would be the end of democracy as we know it, and it is imperative that Joe Biden is elected. I will never give this company a single cent aft…

i mean... was he wrong?

Re: Expensify S-1

#45

Post by missedthecue »

ygjb wrote: post #36
bgorman wrote: post #6

Expensify’s CEO sent a letter to every single person Expensify had an email for, even simple ground floor employees who just use the software to submit expenses an email prior to the 2020 presidential election. The CEO sent a long diatribe about how the election of Donald Trump would be the end of democracy as we know it, and it is imperative that Joe Biden is elected. I will never give this company a single cent aft…

Why? Is it because you disagree with the political leanings of the CEO? Is it because you don't think that corporations should express political biases? If so, do you maintain a list of companies that you won't do business with based on corporate donations? Is it because you disagree with a founder or CEO using the platform that their company provides them to amplify their voice? Your comment is a condemnation of the…

If I give an organisation my personal data (contact information), and they use it to tell me their personal political opinions, no matter how valid, I would not appreciate that.

Re: Expensify S-1

#46

Post by epistasis »

Having to fill in many forms this morning, I was just marveling at how unnecessarily painful data entry is with Expensify. If I want to select the current autocomplete for the vendor, do I press Enter? Nope, that saves the whole expense and exits back to the list. If I want to autocomplete other fields, do I press enter? Yes, that works! What's the difference? Who knows? Who cares? Clearly not anybody on the web dev team.

It doesn't take amazing software in this field to do way way better than everybody else, apparently.

With the amount of data entry that happens on the web, rhe lack of best practices, or really any standardized practices at all, is a damn shame.

Re: Expensify S-1

#47

Post by missedthecue »

bastardoperator wrote: post #28
bgorman wrote: post #6

Expensify’s CEO sent a letter to every single person Expensify had an email for, even simple ground floor employees who just use the software to submit expenses an email prior to the 2020 presidential election. The CEO sent a long diatribe about how the election of Donald Trump would be the end of democracy as we know it, and it is imperative that Joe Biden is elected. I will never give this company a single cent aft…

Considering Trump supporters at the Capitol tried and failed to end democracy on Jan 6th, was it a really a stunt or was he 100% correct in his assessment?

Being correct doesn't retroactively make misuse of customer's personal data OK

Re: Expensify S-1

#48

Post by paxys »

jiveturkey wrote: post #26
bmiller2 wrote: post #16

When my startup was acquired, we had to migrate from using Expensify to some god-awful corporate nonsense (SAP Concur). Lord, how I miss Expensify. It was the epitome of intuitive. It makes me sad that Expensify was not a first-mover in this space. Once SAP or whatever garbage-ware gets baked into corporate enterprise architecture, it takes an act of God (or equivalently the CTO's dedicated focus) to replace it.

wrong POV. for each individual user, the increased aggravation is tolerable. For the corporate controller, at megacorps you [apparently] need to use concur and the like. at the level of megacorp, financials must be correctly stated, auditable, and so forth. kind of like security. why can't you just _trust_ your users to set a strong password and have a screen saver iff they are in an environment where it's helpful? i…

It's almost always a case of "no one got fired for buying IBM". Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, Cisco and the like are all entrenched in the business world because no one wants to be the guy to move the company over to a smaller, better, cheaper alternative just because there is a chance it could fail and their jobs would be on the line.

Re: Expensify S-1

#49

Post by mynameishere »

bastardoperator wrote: post #28
bgorman wrote: post #6

Expensify’s CEO sent a letter to every single person Expensify had an email for, even simple ground floor employees who just use the software to submit expenses an email prior to the 2020 presidential election. The CEO sent a long diatribe about how the election of Donald Trump would be the end of democracy as we know it, and it is imperative that Joe Biden is elected. I will never give this company a single cent aft…

Considering Trump supporters at the Capitol tried and failed to end democracy on Jan 6th, was it a really a stunt or was he 100% correct in his assessment?

They were actually protesting what they thought was a stolen election, ie, the "end of democracy". See how we're all on the same side rhetorically? We all want democracy.

Re: Expensify S-1

#50

Post by xcambar »

itsoktocry wrote: post #27
dpeck wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary this is exactly what I want to see from executives regardless of their political leanings. If they believe that something is a clear and direct threat to the business that they’re charged with running, they should have a fiduciary duty to speak up on it in whatever means they have available. Following that those receiving the message can decide to continue to support the business or not. But I’d rathe…

> But I’d rather have that than the weasel word non answers approach that many execs take. They are free to do whatever they want, but the CEO is a representative of the company, not the company itself. I don't care one wink about what the guy handling my business expenses thinks of the POTUS. His opinion on such matters has zero value to me. It was an odd thing to do for any company which is storing sensitive data o…

I agree that the CEO is not the company and should not use the company as an amplifier of their own personal beliefs or views.

That being said, I don't buy that you (or anyone, I am not pointing fingers) _don't care one wink_. Maybe you don't care on this very topic because you disagree or simply have no interest in politics. But I'm willing to bet that on another topic closer to your heart (pick your favourite), that could reflect on your views and relationship with the company.

And actually, because the voice of a CEO is globally impactful on the brand of the company, CEOs tend to be publicly rather quiet. Exceptions apply.

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