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Column – a chartered bank for developers

column.com

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Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#201

Post by yowlingcat »

whockey wrote: post #8

Hey founder (and OP) here. This has been a labor of love for the past few years and I'm super stoked on what we shipped. Would love any and all feedback, thoughts and questions!

Excited to kick the tires on this. Assuming it's correct to think of Column as a very special BaaS vendor (which owns its own bank and thus AVOIDS the double program manager problem), how would you compare and contrast your your unique value prop compared to other BaaS vendors like a Unit, Synapse, Treasury Prime?

Would it be fair to assume better economics because your supply chain is more vertically integrated, or is there more to it than that which I'm missing?

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#202

Post by paisawalla »

SgtBastard wrote: post #199
Asafp wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I am an engineer at Unit.co, a company that also builds Banking as a Service. We use PostgreSQL as database, and currently thinking about adding ElasticSearch to allow our users to do text search.

Friend, its in poor taste to hijack a question about a competitors product to spruik your own - I would be less likely to consider Unit.co as a result of what you're doing here.

Friend, it's bad form to impute negative motives where (over)exuberance is a sufficient explanation. This guy cares a lot about the product he or she works on, simply move on if their comment is not for you.

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#204

Post by _praf »

drogus wrote: post #3
strzalek wrote: post #2

Hey, I’m an ex-Square that is part of founding engineering team at Column. My team will be monitoring this thread and we’ll be happy to answer any questions! Especially those about ACH, I’m sure you have plenty and we know it through-out!

Looks interesting! Do you plan to create an SDK? Or is interfacing with the HTTP API will be the best way to use the app for now?

Engineer at Column here - we have definitely considered creating SDK's but most of our customers prefer the HTTP API's, which will likely remain the best way to use Column for a while.

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#206

Post by _praf »

yowlingcat wrote: post #201
whockey wrote: post #8

Hey founder (and OP) here. This has been a labor of love for the past few years and I'm super stoked on what we shipped. Would love any and all feedback, thoughts and questions!

Excited to kick the tires on this. Assuming it's correct to think of Column as a very special BaaS vendor (which owns its own bank and thus AVOIDS the double program manager problem), how would you compare and contrast your your unique value prop compared to other BaaS vendors like a Unit, Synapse, Treasury Prime? Would it be fair to assume better economics because your supply chain is more vertically integrated, or…

Eng @ Column here. Unlike the other BaaS providers, we ARE the bank. So the buck stops with us so to speak. You won't have to deal with middleware or a bunch of other partner banks, which we like to think is a much better experience.

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#207

Post by _lqaf »

abirch wrote: post #154
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #84

Congratulations on the launch! I wonder if this kind of business model, where it looks like there is basically "one really rich guy self-funding" for a couple of years, is going to be more common. That is, just looking at the site, my guess is that building everything from the ground up (core banking stack, acquiring the chartered bank, then all the APIs and tech on top of that) must have taken many years and many, m…

I think many starts ups are "rich people" self funding (or are parental funded). For instance Microsoft and Bill Gate's and Paul Allen's helped them out a lot. Ditto with Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk's Tesla & Space X, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. You'll notice everyone aforementioned attended an Ivy League university.

> "rich people" self funding [...] Elon Musk

Who took ~$5 billion and counting from the government...

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#208

Post by SgtBastard »

paisawalla wrote: post #202
SgtBastard wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friend, its in poor taste to hijack a question about a competitors product to spruik your own - I would be less likely to consider Unit.co as a result of what you're doing here.

Friend, it's bad form to impute negative motives where (over)exuberance is a sufficient explanation. This guy cares a lot about the product he or she works on, simply move on if their comment is not for you.

>Just move on if their comment is not for you.

Ironic.

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#209

Post by manesioz »

Clearly the team has a lot of experience in fintech but I was wondering what the major regulatory hoops someone would have to jump through to build something like this -- especially if someone wanted to make a similar product in Canada/LatAm/Europe/etc. Any insights?
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