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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

#161

Post by adammoelis »

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

Yeah we have thought about other ways to transfer and are constantly looking into them. We want it to be as frictionless as possible.

We are considering rolling out the ability to fund accounts with debit cards in the near future, but the transaction fees are quite high. That's the drawback.

We would love to find a way to hook into Venmo or Cash App, but we've yet to find a feasible way to make it work seamlessly. If anyone has ideas on how we could do that, e-mail me at adam@withyotta.com as I would love to chat on this topic.

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

#162

Post by davidclark22 »

adammoelis wrote: post #47
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?

The insurance company we work with that is responsible for paying out the jackpot prize draws the winning numbers. They have no access to the numbers users have selected, so it's completely blind.

I'm curious what kind of controls you have in place to ensure that the company choosing the numbers doesn't have an employee go rogue like what happened with the McDonald's Monopoly game. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald%27s_Monopoly#Fraud

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

#163

Post by magicnubs »

adammoelis wrote: post #47
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?

The insurance company we work with that is responsible for paying out the jackpot prize draws the winning numbers. They have no access to the numbers users have selected, so it's completely blind.

How can the customer confirm that the numbers are truly random and drawn live so you can't coordinate with them? It's to both your benefit and the insurance company's to not have high dollar prizes pay out. The insurance company would be on the hook for the prize, and it would cause your premium to go up.

Companies wrongfully fight unemployment claims all the time to keep their insurance rates down. It would be awful tempting for the insurance agency to send you the drawn numbers even ever so slightly early and let you alert them so they can redraw if the jackpot was ever awarded.

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

#164

Post by nsl73 »

adammoelis wrote: post #151
nsl73 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Anything that either

A. Improves the transparency of the process

B. Improves the entertainment proposition of the gamble aspect of hitting the jackpot.

Maybe with a live event you can do both at once.

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

#165

Post by adammoelis »

danbolt wrote: post #160
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.

Can you spend Premium Bonds?

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

#166

Post by adammoelis »

davidclark22 wrote: post #158
adammoelis wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Yes you're spot on. We are taking the conservative approach for now by operating as a sweepstakes. We haven't had any issues with mail-in entries. I suspect because in our case the EV of a single entry for a single week is less than the postage cost.

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

#167

Post by adammoelis »

magicnubs wrote: post #163
adammoelis wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The insurance company we work with that is responsible for paying out the jackpot prize draws the winning numbers. They have no access to the numbers users have selected, so it's completely blind.

How can the customer confirm that the numbers are truly random and drawn live so you can't coordinate with them? It's to both your benefit and the insurance company's to not have high dollar prizes pay out. The insurance company would be on the hook for the prize, and it would cause your premium to go up. Companies wrongfully fight unemployment claims all the time to keep their insurance rates down. It would be awful…

We want to show the customer that the number draws are truly random. We may do live drawings at some point, which could help. Would love any ideas on how we can hammer home that the number drawings are random and totally kosher.

It actually would be beneficial for us for someone to win the jackpot, and not beneficial for the insurer. The marketing benefit of a $10 million payout that an insurance company pays for would be huge for us. That's why the number drawing process is double blind. They choose the winning numbers and they can't see the picks. We can't see the winning numbers but we can see the picks.

Also since this type of insurance is purely mathematical, the risk doesn't change for an insurer if someone wins, so the price wouldn't change either. Unlike, say pet insurance, where if Bulldogs get sick more often than you thought, the insurer simply mispriced the risk.

This type of insurance is impossible to misprice. It's almost like a casino for the insurers. There is risk but no uncertainty of what the risk is and the odds are in your favor when you write more premium.

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

#168

Post by adammoelis »

GrinningFool wrote: post #153
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…

Yup. Any sweepstakes or prize giveaway you see that is a game of chance will have a "no purchase necessary" clause

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

#169

Post by abalaji »

Copying and pasting a note I wrote when I cam across this on Twitter [1]

  For the sweepstakes aspect, not considering the splits for larger prize money, the expected value is ~ $0.02 for every $25 you put in.

  The APY here seems to be 0.2% which seems to be lower than Ally which offers 1.1%.

  Though, the aim seems to be to “gamify” baking.
[1] https://twitter.com/adithya_balaji/status/127593565571819521...
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