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Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save

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Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save

#151

Post by adammoelis »

nsl73 wrote: post #52
fsewe20 wrote: post #45

Your FAQ says you use a third party that draws the random numbers. Is this number drawing verifiable somewhere? Can you say anything about their techniques?

I’m highly skeptical of jackpot generation, as there has been multiple high profile examples of corruption in this process. Yotta would have to insure me this is fair before I consider saving with them, but to be fair I’m probably not their target market as high earner that already has established savings practices.

Thanks for this feedback. What could we do that would give you comfort in the number drawing process? We definitely want to address this concern, so your feedback here would be great.

Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save

#152

Post by adammoelis »

adjkant wrote: post #128
onnnon wrote: post #22

The grand prize will be paid as a one-time, lump sum payment of $5,800,000. This is the current present cash value of a $10,000,00, 40 year annuity. The odds of winning this amount are 1 in 3,277,899,625.

For anyone that's curious, if you put enough money in to buy every single possible ticket (81B), you would get about an APY of 0.00125% per week for an annual APY of 0.06% Not very useful but I guess if you have 81B in cash laying around, it makes sense to put your money in Yotta over some large banks! Of course that should probably not be in cash but hey, I'm not going to tell you what to do with your 81B dollars.

We need to tell Jeff Bezos about this strategy

Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save

#153

Post by GrinningFool »

bingdig wrote: post #137

Why are you letting people without deposits get in on the drawings? Seems like I could just spam you with mail and get a bunch of entries without depositing savings, at the cost of users who are depositing. From the website: > Mailing In. You can receive one (1) Ticket by sending a handwritten sheet of paper with your name, address, e-mail, and phone number to: 45 East 22nd St. #26B New York, NY 10010. For each compl…

There are prohibitive restrictions on lotteries. This is the same reason when you see "buy now win a chance at _" advertising, there's small print somewhere that explains no purchase is required, and provides a[n inconvenient] alternative to getting chances in the giveaway.

More detail here, a quick scan showed it to be reasonably in line with my outdated knowledge on the topic, at least... https://gleam.io/guides/no-purchase-necessary

Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save

#155

Post by sherlock_h »

shawnMer wrote: post #149

Interesting you use Plaid as your only onboarding ramp. I am personally on Morgan Stanley and am completely locked out of Plaid and have to do manual entry. Have you thought about other "easy" money transfers such as Venmo, Cash App, etc

Venmo or cc cards would be great but I guess the fees could be tough

Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save

#156

Post by onion2k »

over 23M people save through Premium Bonds (33% of the population) with over $100B deposited.

Here in the UK it used to be common for children to receive premium bonds as birthday gifts from grandparents who have no idea what children actually want.

Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save

#157

Post by fchu »

adammoelis wrote: post #34
unwoundmouse wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I buy into a 100m dollar powerball, I'm actually getting the net present value of 100m in 40 years? I'm amazed this is standard practice

Yeah exactly. Almost any grand prize you see is really the sum of the annuity value. We kind of have to use the same practice in order to be competitive, and we think a lot of people assume it's the annuity value sum as well. ( https://www.magnifymoney.com/blog/banking/powerball-annuity/ )

I think you could flip the status quo on its head, by promoting a full 10M (or 5M...), and making it clear it is NOT the annuity value sum like you do for lesser prizes, since I would argue that your competitivity/differentiation comes from the fact that you don't lose money to play.

Also describing the lottery mechanism without any gotcha is the right thing to do for consumers, and being in the unique position you are, you have the opportunity to lead that change.

Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save

#158

Post by davidclark22 »

adammoelis wrote: post #139
bingdig wrote: post #137

Why are you letting people without deposits get in on the drawings? Seems like I could just spam you with mail and get a bunch of entries without depositing savings, at the cost of users who are depositing. From the website: > Mailing In. You can receive one (1) Ticket by sending a handwritten sheet of paper with your name, address, e-mail, and phone number to: 45 East 22nd St. #26B New York, NY 10010. For each compl…

For legal reasons, we need to have a mail-in option. It's called an AMOE ("Alternate Method of Entry"). We prohibit automated entries though and each mail-in entry needs to be handwritten sent in its own envelope. The postage costs more than the EV of one entry, so we don't expect this to be an issue.

First off, very cool idea. I'm a fintech PM and had the idea to build something similar. Glad to see someone doing it!

From my research, it sounds like, because prize linked savings accounts are so new in the US, it's unclear whether requiring someone to have an account would count as consideration. By offering an AMOE are you taking a conservative position on this until it's more clear? Or, has a judge/court ruled on this?

I was involved in a sweepstakes at a bank a couple years ago and we took a similar route as you, offering a mail in AMOE, requiring handwritten entries. Without any marketing, we received several thousand entries, mostly from people who mail in entries to every sweepstakes they find.

Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save

#159

Post by sherlock_h »

weego wrote: post #75
adammoelis wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fair point for sure. The rationale is the $10 million headline is the annuity value of the jackpot, and it's standard practice for sweepstakes or the PowerBall/MegaMillions contests to use the annuity value for promotion in marketing materials and on the website.

The irony of using the promotional approach of an awful poverty tax by a startup focused on promoting saving.

It‘s pretty darn smart. A lot of people I know play the lottery instead of putting a couple of bucks to the side. Seems like a win-win

Re: Launch HN: Yotta Savings (YC S20) – Behavioral psychology to help people save

#160

Post by danbolt »

onion2k wrote: post #156

over 23M people save through Premium Bonds (33% of the population) with over $100B deposited. Here in the UK it used to be common for children to receive premium bonds as birthday gifts from grandparents who have no idea what children actually want.

I was told by a high school teacher that he'd subsequently spend said bonds on beer when he was in university.
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