Live data from Hacker News

Column – a chartered bank for developers

column.com

211–220 of 299 posts

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#211
post #207
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

IBM... Oracle... Palantir much more so, I mean Tesla figured out how to sell EV credits (that were intended for the Big 3), but SpaceX only recently got government funding after crushing all the competition by their bootstraps. It seems like Elon got his early money from parents and Paypal not the government.

I do however notice a general trend of seeing Libertarians on the dole.

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#212
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Super interesting - what would you like to see? Like USD/USDC swappable accounts or something?

Right now I have an account now where I can deposit USDC and spend via tap to pay/debit card. Basically just a debit card linked crypto account, rewards are $$$ (4%) and adjusting balances is fast and easy. Also programmable so I can replace what is spent without having to manually transfer. This helps tremendously with managing the families access/budgeting of funds. Would also be nice to have an account where legac…

4% - where does that come from? Sounds too good.

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#213
post #25
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!

How would you describe your business to a five year old?

The most direct connection possible to the federal reserve with as little overhead as possible, accessible entirely over battle tested modern network API technology

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#214
post #211
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "rich people" self funding [...] Elon Musk Who took ~$5 billion and counting from the government...

IBM... Oracle... Palantir much more so, I mean Tesla figured out how to sell EV credits (that were intended for the Big 3), but SpaceX only recently got government funding after crushing all the competition by their bootstraps. It seems like Elon got his early money from parents and Paypal not the government. I do however notice a general trend of seeing Libertarians on the dole.

SpaceX got a couple million dollars in direct subsidies over the years [1], the really interesting question is if one also counts the various government-bought services and other incentives (particularly for F9):

- Falcon 1 development was privately funded, but would it have succeeded without DoD/DARPA funding the first three launches of it? [2]

- Falcon 9 development was aided by hundreds of millions of dollars in seed money, not to mention the billions of dollars worth of launch contracts [3]

[1] https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-tech/2021/12/13...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1#Launches

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9#Conception_and_fundin...

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#215
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see a link on your website to Column N.A.'s legal disclosures. I'm trying to determine whether you have your own direct connection to FedWire/FedACH, are going through a 3rd party service provider like Fiserv/FIS, or are going through another bank.

We connect directly to the Federal Reserve. No middleware (i.e Fiserv/FIS), no other banks.

Oh, that’s good to hear. You should be in a good position to add support for FedNow having your own in-house connectivity solution. How are you feeling about being ready for that?

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#216
post #211
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "rich people" self funding [...] Elon Musk Who took ~$5 billion and counting from the government...

IBM... Oracle... Palantir much more so, I mean Tesla figured out how to sell EV credits (that were intended for the Big 3), but SpaceX only recently got government funding after crushing all the competition by their bootstraps. It seems like Elon got his early money from parents and Paypal not the government. I do however notice a general trend of seeing Libertarians on the dole.

> IBM... Oracle... Palantir much more so

Sure. But the discussion was about "rich people self funding", with him as an example.

I have a couple ideas I would happily self-fund with the state's mid-10 digit assistance.

> I do however notice a general trend of seeing Libertarians on the dole.

If nothing else, it must help with finding the time to write freedom screeds.

More seriously, just about every rich person will tell you all about their bootstraps. I just wish fewer were crass enough to whine so loudly about others getting similar, ah, bootstrap assistance, to theirs.

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I've been making heavy use of that over the years, from Amex's early offering through Privacy.com and now Capital One's anemic offering There's still quite a few merchants which give it the evil eye since evidently one can distinguish them from "real" credit cards if the processor chooses to look, but it's better than nothing Column is the first I've ever heard of a bank offering this level of financial firewall…

Yeah, I use Privacy extensively and on rare occasions have been rejected by merchants because of their no gift cards allowed policy. So apparently that is the category Privacy virtual cards come under.

That changed recently. As part of the migration, they had to reissue all cards, but they’re now charge cards instead of prepaid debit. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29432683

Re: Column – a chartered bank for developers

#218
post #18

> Create account numbers that point to a single bank account and create specific permissions and limits for each one. I love that; there are so many places that give a 6% discount for using ACH but I don't want to give out my bank account details willy-nilly --- If you have influence over it, I wouldn't recommend having https://status.column.com/uptime default to "Sandbox" since I doubt seriously that's what anyone w…

Some context: Patio11 wrote a bit about how businesses can use virtual account numbers this week: > This is generally done via a mechanism called Virtual Bank Accounts (VBAs), which are a product available from the banking industry in Japan, the U.S., Mexico, Brazil, and many other countries. You contract with your financial institution of choice to reserve a block of bank account numbers corresponding to a far small…

Wow that was depressing. Even back in the era before online banking and e-billing, in Finland an invoice would include a barcode you could scan that would auto-fill a reference number on the payment (with a checksum to minimize corrupt input).
Post reply on HN