18 ms·

London’s Lonely Unicorn: Two Frugal Expats and Their Billion-Dollar Startup

276 points by tokenadult 10y ago

jerf 10y ago
(Tone: Genuine question I'm curious about because I don't know fintech.) How does this model end up interacting with wire transfer laws?
- rfrey 10y ago
  From (way down in) the article: "In April, after New Hampshire’s banking department cited TransferWise for operating in the state for a year without meeting money-transmitter regulations, the company agreed to pay a penalty equivalent to the fees it had earned during that time. (The startup has since begun offering its services in the U.S. through a partnership with a fully licensed bank, New York-based Community Federal Savings Bank, and has obtained its own money-transmitter licenses in many states.)"
namenotrequired 10y ago
I live in Brazil and earn in Euros. Very happy with TransferWise, they save me a lot of money on fees - and they even warn me when the exchange rate is favorable. You can get a first transfer free with an invitation link, here's mine: https://transferwise.com/u/5d78 https://transferwise.com/u/5d78
- Dwolb 10y ago
  Do you by chance know what your company's tax obligations are? We'd love to open up for international remote work, but we also don't want to run afoul of any international tax obligations (i.e. local payroll taxes) due to remote employees.
  - AlaskaCasey 10y ago
    Depending on what kind of workers you are looking for could you use international contractors? There are additional laws to take into consideration, but (using software engineers as an example) if they have multiple clients and have a business registered in their respective country then you would not be obligated to pay local payroll tax.
    - Kexoth 10y ago
      @AlaskaCasey is right. I'm a software engineer & my company is registered in my country. When I negotiate with clients I'm representing the gross amount & I deal with my taxes etc. in my country.
  - namenotrequired 10y ago
    Sorry, I can't help you.
kbenson 10y ago
As the embedded video alludes, it's not that revolutionary an idea to pool transactions and use local resources to fulfill more cheaply if possible. That said, the world is full of wildly successful companies that just executed well on not very revolutionary ideas, and they provide real value that was largely absent before they grew to prominence. Sometimes it's not about doing something new, it's about doing it well, or doing it in a way that allows more people access.
- jlg23 10y ago
  Or, in the case of international money transfer: They see through the existing system and just openly do what most banks have been doing all the time behind the scenes, passing most of the savings to the customer. The only problem I see with this specific business model: As soon as enough people use it, this method of transfer will be the norm and all the big banks will offer it too, thereby invalidating the justification for the existence of the new players. (Mind you, still a great win for the customer!)
  - lumberjack 10y ago
    >The only problem I see with this specific business model: As soon as enough people use it, this method of transfer will be the norm and all the big banks will offer it too, thereby invalidating the justification for the existence of the new players. Yes exactly what I was thinking. But by that time Transferwise could be a reputable brand with lots of customers so they could pivot to offer other financial services.
    - RangerScience 10y ago
      And almost certainly better tech. You ever check out the OS your bank is running?
      - jlg23 10y ago
        Honestly, I don't care whether I am driven over by a Porsche Cayenne or a Willys MB. And while I have not worked in the banking sector myself, lots of my friends did - and it was not cobol. They are catching up and they all know that their mainframe sw is dated and act upon it. I don't think the "quality" of the tech is of any relevance here. EDIT: Well, I actually know some guys who bit the bullet and learned cobol when they were just turning 20. By the time they turned 30, they did not have to work anymore.
CamMacFarlane 10y ago
This is great, as someone who frequently transfers money from the US to Canada I wish I had known about this sooner. Hopefully they can actually make some money.
- petra 10y ago
  >> I wish I had known about this sooner. A common occurence these days, with the rapid rate of innovation. It's like we're missing some efficient product discovery tool.
  - deathhand 10y ago
    If there was only a news aggregation site based upon the startup culture where these sorts of things can be promoted.
    - ethbro 10y ago
      You mean like some sort of place where you could hunt new products?
      - Jaruzel 10y ago
        I see what you did there. Types 'https://www.producthunt.com' https://www.producthunt.com' into a browser. However, you could have just answered the question. Unless there's a /s i didn't see somewhere on the parent posts...
        true_religion 10y ago
        Also: Q Television Channel - Informercials 24/7
      - petra 10y ago
        I don't think product hunt solved this. I'm not really that impressed with their results. It's more like popularity based marketing channel(what's with all those videos ? ), because of the lack of good search and deep metadata. Heck many products don't even have a rich, textual description. It's almost like aggregating product reviews from relatively unbiased sources(unlike the cesspool that Amazon has become), and filtering by depth and building a decent search around them and a good community would work better. Than after all this, a video would be very useful. Ah, and one more thing - try to filter out the bullshit apps, the ones without much value on product hunt. "A dating app where you can only date 1 guy"? and other stuff like that. Sorry but i have much better ways of wasting time. But let's think about an ideal service. Such a service would have 2 forms: 1. It gathers in some form, all the "jobs" i need to do, and how well they are done today, and how much i pay for them - and than from time to time offers me concrete recommendations how to improve my life: "you could save $X each month , if you'll use this new money transfer startup". Or "you could use this recipe book, to save a lot of time and get similar level of food you're making now". etc. Amazon does that to some extent, but it has still has some ways to go. 2. Another successful mechanism is create a RICH and DEEP tagging system for each product and search/browse through those tags - jinni.com once did it for movies - and it was a phenomenal movie discovery tool. Far better than anything we have today. Of course, ideally such tool should also include a price comparison mechanism, and maybe "performance levels" per each relevant performance dimension, kinda like the one you get in digikey, the electronic component store, where you can select chips by speed, power,etc. The question is, how to get there, and how close it's possible to get?
inopinatus 10y ago
Is this basically electronic Hawala?
- jlg23 10y ago
  Yes, though without the negative connotations the term "hawala" carries in the West because all transactions are still fully documented and the broker gets a much lower share (for pure monetary international transfers in the hawala system, fees can go as high as 60% with 25% already being considered a "good deal"). And one does not have to pass high/drunk armed guards and is not paid from a huge pile of cash that just sits on the floor in a corner of the room. PS: Sorry, no source for the numbers but my own experience in Northwestern Africa.
  - true_religion 10y ago
    At 60% fees and drunk/armed guards, Hawala sounds like money laundering except... even worse rates.
    - jacobush 10y ago
      There is no laundry or laundering there. It's like washing your clothes in a puddle of mud. It's not black exactly but it ain't white money either.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
uladzislau 10y ago
Read about some challenges they are facing as many other money transfer startups. It's actually a very hot niche at the moment. http://uladzislau.com/online-money-transfer-startups/ http://uladzislau.com/online-money-transfer-startups/
aaronbrethorst 10y ago
Value creation > 'innovation'
mingabunga 10y ago
I've been using this for the past 6 months. It works really nicely and removes a lot of friction - it's just like sending money to another local account. I've paid people in Netherlands, Australia, Germany and they recently started allowing US$ paid to Ukraine, so I've been able to pay software developers there.
- nikon 10y ago
  Forgive my off-topicness - do you have any advice on sourcing developers in the Ukraine specifically?
  - ccozan 10y ago
    Generally LinkedIn. Just say your what are you looking for, and they will find you. I am getting at least 2-3 of them ( meaning, companies in Ukraine ) per month.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - brilliantcode 10y ago
      How much is the salary and what's the skill level like? I'm very interested in Eastern European developers, they seem to get shit done and rarely complain.
      - throwaway_374 10y ago
        This kind of commoditization attitude of developers really fucks me off. "Shut up and code and don't complain". Nah, you can fuck right off mate.
        omarchowdhury 10y ago
        My algorithm detects a Trump voter. Bring back those jobs! It's not a tenent of capitalism that you can allocate your money as you wish! Oh... wait. Yes, it is.
ucaetano 10y ago
If you're poor, you're an immigrant. If you're rich, you're an expat.
- twic 10y ago
  If you're rich and old you're an émigré.
  - robjan 10y ago
    They are an émigré from their country of birth or an immigrant into their new country.
- blowski 10y ago
  Reminds me of the Einstein quote: > If I am proved correct,” he said, “the Germans will call me a German, the Swiss will call me a Swiss citizen, and the French will call me a great scientist. If relativity is proved wrong, the French will call me a Swiss, the Swiss will call me a German, and the Germans will call me a Jew.
- WildUtah 10y ago
  ^rich^white
- CptJamesCook 10y ago
  There have been dozens of articles written about rich "immigrant founders" the past few weeks. https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/02/01/study-immigrant-startup-founders-create-159-new-jobs-average/ https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/02/01/study-immigrant-st... http://fortune.com/2017/01/30/tech-immigrant-founders/ http://fortune.com/2017/01/30/tech-immigrant-founders/ https://hardavenue.com/immigrant-founders-trump-muslim-ban/ https://hardavenue.com/immigrant-founders-trump-muslim-ban/ etc
- Swizec 10y ago
  While this sounds true and everyone likes to harp on it, there's another consideration. An immigrant is somebody who intends to stay forever, an expat is someone who plans to go back home eventually. There are also legal considerations. My US visa for example specifically says it's a non-immigrant visitor's work visa. Legally speaking, I'm an expat. Culturally ... I like to call myself a dirty immigrant. Riles people up a bit :P edit for background: I come from the border between Central and Eastern Europe. Some say Slovenia is one, some say another. In the UK I would most definitely be an evil evil immigrant. In the US nobody really cares as long as I'm not brown.
maverick_iceman 10y ago
Interesting that they use the word expat instead of immigrant. I don't think if these two were from Asia/Africa they would have been called expats.
- idiot_stick 10y ago
  >I don't think if these two were from Asia/Africa they would have been called expats. And you base that on....? Why do people search for injustice?
  - alistproducer2 10y ago
    Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.[0] -MLK [0]: https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - CptJamesCook 10y ago
    The left has been teaching people to believe they are victims for more than a decade now. That's why they search for injustice.
    - Veen 10y ago
      If you think the victim mentality is limited to the left, you've obviously not being paying attention to the alt right or Christian conservatives.
      - CptJamesCook 10y ago
        The true alt-right is tiny. Well, since alt-right has been defined to include white supremacy, anyway. The left is huge.
  - Kexoth 10y ago
throwawaytwise 10y ago
Throwaway for obvious reasons. I applied for a position as a software dev there a few years ago through a friend. I hated every single moment of it. It was like they exported the very worse from Silicon Valley's bullshit start-ups attitude. They just couldn't shut the fuck up about how they were really changing the world (yeah right), how awesome it was to work 60 hours a week for such a great Vision, how sick their (mandatory) team-holidays were, how everything and everyone was so siiiick here, mate. I did all the rounds up to the one with the VP of Engineering who asked me to code FizzBuzz on a whiteboard (no kidding) and then spent the rest of the hour bragging about how last week he had turned down an "amazing engineer" (his words) because he wasn't "cool enough" to be one of them. You know, he was a bit of a loser, mate. It really felt like a cult of ego-obsessed people with some narcissistic disorder; even worse, it felt like everyone was lying. That said I'm sure there are a lot of nice people who work there, this is just my experience so take it with a grain of salt. The product is also good, I used it a few times myself.
- averagewall 10y ago
  It sounds like a culture that's not objectively bad, just different from what you respect. People use slang words and bragging everywhere. They're just different words and different ways of expressing their brags. But to be honest, they do have a very noble goal and they have reason to be proud of it. Poor people all over the world are constantly pouring money into Western Union and banks for this seemingly trivial service.
  - throwawaytwise 10y ago
    > they do have a very noble goal LOL they ain't no charity, their goal is to make $$$, period. Incidentally they do so in a way that is also good for their customers, but that's nothing more than a nice coincidence. We're all grown ups, I don't need to be sugar coated with all the "we're making the world a better place" nonsense. But no, these people want you to believe in their damn dream, as if working 5 days a week to make them rich wasn't enough already. That's true for many companies out there, not just TransferWise. Also, mocking former candidates because they aren't cool enough is objectively a shit culture in my book, eh.
swang 10y ago
It would be nice if this could be applied to places where I don't have a bank account and just need say, $500USD converted into another country's currency. My bank here allows me to withdraw twice from foreign bank ATMs but I have a feeling they are messing with exchange rates and I'm still stuck with a bad deal. I won't even bother with real exchanges in the States or in the other country. Everything just feels like highway robbery.
chx 10y ago
I am just a very satisfied customer. They managed to be cheaper than using even a dedicated FX company for international transfers (I do Canada-Austria, Austria-Canada, Canada-Hungary) and the process is pretty seamless and it doesn't take longer than a SWIFT transfer usually.
CalRobert 10y ago
I will say, their product is excellent and I've used it to transfer quite a bit of cash over the last few years. I tried a competitor of theirs (currencyfair) and the UI wasn't as nice a few years ago, which was about the only differentiator. Hope they can turn a profit soon.
throwaway5752 10y ago
"The company says it is always improving the software that automates the matching process, including complicated solutions that cover, say, a pound-to-dollar transaction with multiple dollar-to-euro and euro-to-pound swaps. If TransferWise can’t find a match, it becomes a market maker, using its own money to complete the deal in the hope that another customer who wants to send at least as much money the opposite way comes along later. In doing so, it is essentially acting just like a traditional foreign exchange broker." And this is how it spectacularly imploded 5 years from now.
- pdeuchler 10y ago
  Yeah this caught my eye as well... seems like an extraordinary increase in risk for a relatively small gain, not to mention the other costs of changing your business model from a glorified escrow service to an investment bank. I hope for their sake they have someone who knows what they're doing running that department and hedging appropriately...
- theoh 10y ago
  Heh, that reminds me of Yaron Minsky's talk about Caml, in which he stresses the need for absolute correctness of software when you are a market maker or arbitrageur, at risk of your high-throughput trading engine going off the rails...
schintan 10y ago
USD to INR rate is less competitive than an Indian bank. Probably because not many adopters in India.
phillc73 10y ago
Transferwise is by far the best international money transfer service I have ever used. I regularly move money between Euros and Pounds Sterling, sometimes into Australian dollars too. These are typically not large monetary amounts, maybe up to a few thousand Euros, but often just a couple of hundred. I haven't specifically counted, but I gueas I've made around 25 transfers with Transferwise. Compared to using banks directly, and even other "traditional" Forex services over the last 16 years, Transferwise is fast and very low friction. I did have to verify my identity once my transfered totals had exceeded £15k, but that has been the only delay. They just do a very, very good job.
kriro 10y ago
I wonder how much of their valuation the Brexit vote cost them. It might eradicate a good chunk of their customer base. How would one go about modeling this, how are VCs modeling this? Imagine a company built around some service for expatriates in Britain closed their series A and their series B was happening sometime around/after Brexit. I guess that would be down round territory?
EliRivers 10y ago
Hello all. I used transferwise in November to move money to Japan. The exchange rate applied was the actual fucking exchange rate. I paid Transferwsise a couple of quid. Worth every fucking penny. Worth swearing. Use Transferwise.
- DarthMader 10y ago
  What's the foremost authority for realtime ForEx rates?
  - isolli 10y ago
    There is no foremost authority in foreign exchange, it's mostly an unregulated market.
  - phillc73 10y ago
    Don't know about foremost, but I always use xe.com
    - socialist_coder 10y ago
      Yeah, I was investigating transferwise because supposedly it was cheaper than xe.com but it seems like they are pretty competitive with each other. I've already been using xe.com and see no reason to switch. I transfer my entire salary from USD to EUR every year so I definitely want to get the best rate.
      - phillc73 10y ago
        I only use xe.com as my go to website for looking up current exchange spot rates. I didn't even really know they had a transfer service. I am a very happy Transferwise user. I used to always check the exchange rate on xe.com, then switch to Transferwise to compare before transferring. Now I don't bother, because Transferwise has always been very close to the spot rate.
  - blibble 10y ago
keeptrying 10y ago
Hmmm I heard these guys make less than $10million a year in revenue. Possibly the lowest revenue to valuation ever?
- jkaljundi 10y ago
  Their revenue in the year ending March 2016 was 28 million pounds, transaction volume 800 million pounds per month. Last September they already did 5 million pounds a month, growing ~2x / year.
  - to3m 10y ago
    In case anybody else is wondering - these details are public. Any time you see a story about a UK company, and this one is no exception, you can get some information about it from the company registry at Companies House: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/ https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/ 1. type in company name or part thereof 2. select it from the list 3. click the "people" tab and see if you recognise any names from the article or whatever (this can be helpful if there were several likely-looking results) 4. click "filing history" and download the accounts and annual return (with list of shareholders) Most of the time this isn't actually very interesting, but if you're being nosey, there's no reason not to. (The reduced accounts you have for small companies (turnover < £15m, something like that...) are usually particularly unilluminating, though some of the figures can be suggestive and the shareholders list may be interesting.)
    - Kexoth 10y ago
      I just tried your link & it's a very interesting option to be honest :) In my country (Macedonia) these reports on private held companies can be given after 2 fiscal years & you have to pay for them per company searched. I'm very curious to see what's the case in other countries on this topic :)
kristianp 10y ago
How does this compare to xe.com, which I have used in the past? They're a canadian company, been doing this for a long time, low cost.
rohi 10y ago
I think https://www.instarem.com/ https://www.instarem.com/ does something similar.
dboreham 10y ago
Surprised to not see any mention here of legal and regulatory risk. One of the reasons moving money between countries is hard and expensive is that it is often done by people either trying to avoid tax liabilities, and/or by people involved in illegal activities and as a result governments are understandably keen to tie transfer agents up in rules regulations and liabilities. Ask HSBC...
- Symbiote 10y ago
  They're compliant with British regulations. I was given extra checks to make before my first transfer, since I was paying into an unusual type of account.
  - phillc73 10y ago
    Once my total transfers had exceeded £15k, I was required to undergo further identity verification checks. Pretty standard KYC procedures I thought.
tejasd 10y ago
While I haven't used TranferWise yet, I think it's a brilliant idea (and yes, their exchange rates look phenomenal)! There's also a service called PeerTransfer for foreign tuition payments that essentially aggregates outgoing payments, and buys forex in bulk. Another cool development in the area is Visa (The Card issuer) opening up their APIs to allow direct Card-Card transfers like with Square Cash when they just started out. Barring regulatory hurdles, this method (Card-Card transaction using the Visa/MasterCard/Amex network) is probably the most efficient way of sending money across currencies.
lordnacho 10y ago
Transferwise is a great service, I use it myself. They even give you a volume discount if you ask for it. But what really surprises me is that it got to where it is at all. If you look at it, their business model is not revolutionary. Their prices are not cheaper than for example UKForex (OzForex), who provide the exact same service, and were around years before. The business is simply a click interface for exchanging money; you send in your currency, and they send in the agreed amount to the other side. The price difference between these shops is minimal. It could not be simpler. I've traded currencies as a professional, there's not a whole lot of other steps behind the scenes. But I doubt most people have heard of UKForex. Transferwise however are on billboards everywhere, acting as though they invented the idea of swapping one currency for another. And acting as though you are cutting out the middle man, which you are not. You still need a bank. Well played to them though, it seems they've used some of that startup hype attitude to get themselves a nice little business.
- orf 10y ago
  The TV adverts and billboards where also particularly good, involving people spitting out their cup of tea in surprise when they realised they could save money with transfer wise. Very English, very effective.
- gabemart 10y ago
  The first-run experience of Transferwise blows UKForex out of the water. If I want to convert 1000 EUR to USD, the number one thing I care about is how many USD I will get for my EUR. The front page of Transferwise has a giant input right at the top of the page that tells me exactly how many USD I will get, and tells me that rate is guaranteed for 48 hours. The front page of UKForex has a much smaller input, and it's "market rate" - if I want to find out how many USD I will actually get, I have to register and create an account. This is just one example, but it speaks to my whole experience of Transferwise vs. other foreign exchange providers. The user experience is best-in-class.
- falsedan 10y ago
  > They even give you a volume discount if you ask for it. Just contact support? How much volume do they look for? I'm struggling moving USD -> GBP, hitting the daily ACH limits & frustrated that the creaky US banking system doesn't have a better interbank transfer system than wiring funds for tens of dollars a pop (and presenting a physical form).
fapjacks 10y ago
Transferwise was great, at first. I was an early adopter of Transferwise. Some years ago, my brother (and I, sort of) started filming documentaries and I handled a lot of the money and payments to some of the people involved in his documentaries overseas. At one point without warning, Transferwise left my brother stranded in Europe without a way to get money. Transferwise held onto a few thousand dollars for a few weeks without any contact or update or anything. Every time I would email or call, I would get some customer support who would ignore my replies or transfer me around with increasing wait times between transfers until they hung up, sort of typical phone hell. When we finally got a hold of someone at Transferwise, it turns out they decided that what we were doing was a cover for illicit activities (which is pretty bizarre, if you knew the people involved, and despite his published documentaries, footage, and even the receipts we kept for tax purposes). Having family stranded overseas by this billion-dollar unicorn left a really bad taste in my mouth. The worst part was being left with absolutely zero recourse for the thousands of dollars that they were just holding on to for weeks without any contact with us. If you don't want to serve us because of some bizarre, hallucinatory conspiracy, fine, but don't hold onto the money for weeks in the interim without an explanation.

276 points by tokenadult 10y ago

jerf 10y ago

(Tone: Genuine question I'm curious about because I don't know fintech.) How does this model end up interacting with wire transfer laws?

rfrey 10y ago
From (way down in) the article: "In April, after New Hampshire’s banking department cited TransferWise for operating in the state for a year without meeting money-transmitter regulations, the company agreed to pay a penalty equivalent to the fees it had earned during that time. (The startup has since begun offering its services in the U.S. through a partnership with a fully licensed bank, New York-based Community Federal Savings Bank, and has obtained its own money-transmitter licenses in many states.)"

namenotrequired 10y ago

I live in Brazil and earn in Euros. Very happy with TransferWise, they save me a lot of money on fees - and they even warn me when the exchange rate is favorable. You can get a first transfer free with an invitation link, here's mine: https://transferwise.com/u/5d78 https://transferwise.com/u/5d78

Dwolb 10y ago
Do you by chance know what your company's tax obligations are? We'd love to open up for international remote work, but we also don't want to run afoul of any international tax obligations (i.e. local payroll taxes) due to remote employees.
- AlaskaCasey 10y ago
  Depending on what kind of workers you are looking for could you use international contractors? There are additional laws to take into consideration, but (using software engineers as an example) if they have multiple clients and have a business registered in their respective country then you would not be obligated to pay local payroll tax.
  - Kexoth 10y ago
    @AlaskaCasey is right. I'm a software engineer & my company is registered in my country. When I negotiate with clients I'm representing the gross amount & I deal with my taxes etc. in my country.
- namenotrequired 10y ago
  Sorry, I can't help you.

kbenson 10y ago

As the embedded video alludes, it's not that revolutionary an idea to pool transactions and use local resources to fulfill more cheaply if possible. That said, the world is full of wildly successful companies that just executed well on not very revolutionary ideas, and they provide real value that was largely absent before they grew to prominence. Sometimes it's not about doing something new, it's about doing it well, or doing it in a way that allows more people access.

jlg23 10y ago
Or, in the case of international money transfer: They see through the existing system and just openly do what most banks have been doing all the time behind the scenes, passing most of the savings to the customer. The only problem I see with this specific business model: As soon as enough people use it, this method of transfer will be the norm and all the big banks will offer it too, thereby invalidating the justification for the existence of the new players. (Mind you, still a great win for the customer!)
- lumberjack 10y ago
  >The only problem I see with this specific business model: As soon as enough people use it, this method of transfer will be the norm and all the big banks will offer it too, thereby invalidating the justification for the existence of the new players. Yes exactly what I was thinking. But by that time Transferwise could be a reputable brand with lots of customers so they could pivot to offer other financial services.
  - RangerScience 10y ago
    And almost certainly better tech. You ever check out the OS your bank is running?
    - jlg23 10y ago
      Honestly, I don't care whether I am driven over by a Porsche Cayenne or a Willys MB. And while I have not worked in the banking sector myself, lots of my friends did - and it was not cobol. They are catching up and they all know that their mainframe sw is dated and act upon it. I don't think the "quality" of the tech is of any relevance here. EDIT: Well, I actually know some guys who bit the bullet and learned cobol when they were just turning 20. By the time they turned 30, they did not have to work anymore.

CamMacFarlane 10y ago

This is great, as someone who frequently transfers money from the US to Canada I wish I had known about this sooner. Hopefully they can actually make some money.

petra 10y ago
>> I wish I had known about this sooner. A common occurence these days, with the rapid rate of innovation. It's like we're missing some efficient product discovery tool.
- deathhand 10y ago
  If there was only a news aggregation site based upon the startup culture where these sorts of things can be promoted.
  - ethbro 10y ago
    You mean like some sort of place where you could hunt new products?
    - Jaruzel 10y ago
      I see what you did there. Types 'https://www.producthunt.com' https://www.producthunt.com' into a browser. However, you could have just answered the question. Unless there's a /s i didn't see somewhere on the parent posts...
      - true_religion 10y ago
        Also: Q Television Channel - Informercials 24/7
    - petra 10y ago
      I don't think product hunt solved this. I'm not really that impressed with their results. It's more like popularity based marketing channel(what's with all those videos ? ), because of the lack of good search and deep metadata. Heck many products don't even have a rich, textual description. It's almost like aggregating product reviews from relatively unbiased sources(unlike the cesspool that Amazon has become), and filtering by depth and building a decent search around them and a good community would work better. Than after all this, a video would be very useful. Ah, and one more thing - try to filter out the bullshit apps, the ones without much value on product hunt. "A dating app where you can only date 1 guy"? and other stuff like that. Sorry but i have much better ways of wasting time. But let's think about an ideal service. Such a service would have 2 forms: 1. It gathers in some form, all the "jobs" i need to do, and how well they are done today, and how much i pay for them - and than from time to time offers me concrete recommendations how to improve my life: "you could save $X each month , if you'll use this new money transfer startup". Or "you could use this recipe book, to save a lot of time and get similar level of food you're making now". etc. Amazon does that to some extent, but it has still has some ways to go. 2. Another successful mechanism is create a RICH and DEEP tagging system for each product and search/browse through those tags - jinni.com once did it for movies - and it was a phenomenal movie discovery tool. Far better than anything we have today. Of course, ideally such tool should also include a price comparison mechanism, and maybe "performance levels" per each relevant performance dimension, kinda like the one you get in digikey, the electronic component store, where you can select chips by speed, power,etc. The question is, how to get there, and how close it's possible to get?

inopinatus 10y ago

Is this basically electronic Hawala?

jlg23 10y ago
Yes, though without the negative connotations the term "hawala" carries in the West because all transactions are still fully documented and the broker gets a much lower share (for pure monetary international transfers in the hawala system, fees can go as high as 60% with 25% already being considered a "good deal"). And one does not have to pass high/drunk armed guards and is not paid from a huge pile of cash that just sits on the floor in a corner of the room. PS: Sorry, no source for the numbers but my own experience in Northwestern Africa.
- true_religion 10y ago
  At 60% fees and drunk/armed guards, Hawala sounds like money laundering except... even worse rates.
  - jacobush 10y ago
    There is no laundry or laundering there. It's like washing your clothes in a puddle of mud. It's not black exactly but it ain't white money either.

deleted 10y ago

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uladzislau 10y ago

Read about some challenges they are facing as many other money transfer startups. It's actually a very hot niche at the moment. http://uladzislau.com/online-money-transfer-startups/ http://uladzislau.com/online-money-transfer-startups/

aaronbrethorst 10y ago

Value creation > 'innovation'

mingabunga 10y ago

I've been using this for the past 6 months. It works really nicely and removes a lot of friction - it's just like sending money to another local account. I've paid people in Netherlands, Australia, Germany and they recently started allowing US$ paid to Ukraine, so I've been able to pay software developers there.

nikon 10y ago
Forgive my off-topicness - do you have any advice on sourcing developers in the Ukraine specifically?
- ccozan 10y ago
  Generally LinkedIn. Just say your what are you looking for, and they will find you. I am getting at least 2-3 of them ( meaning, companies in Ukraine ) per month.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - brilliantcode 10y ago
    How much is the salary and what's the skill level like? I'm very interested in Eastern European developers, they seem to get shit done and rarely complain.
    - throwaway_374 10y ago
      This kind of commoditization attitude of developers really fucks me off. "Shut up and code and don't complain". Nah, you can fuck right off mate.
      - omarchowdhury 10y ago
        My algorithm detects a Trump voter. Bring back those jobs! It's not a tenent of capitalism that you can allocate your money as you wish! Oh... wait. Yes, it is.

ucaetano 10y ago

If you're poor, you're an immigrant. If you're rich, you're an expat.

twic 10y ago
If you're rich and old you're an émigré.
- robjan 10y ago
  They are an émigré from their country of birth or an immigrant into their new country.
blowski 10y ago
Reminds me of the Einstein quote: > If I am proved correct,” he said, “the Germans will call me a German, the Swiss will call me a Swiss citizen, and the French will call me a great scientist. If relativity is proved wrong, the French will call me a Swiss, the Swiss will call me a German, and the Germans will call me a Jew.
WildUtah 10y ago
^rich^white
CptJamesCook 10y ago
There have been dozens of articles written about rich "immigrant founders" the past few weeks. https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/02/01/study-immigrant-startup-founders-create-159-new-jobs-average/ https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/02/01/study-immigrant-st... http://fortune.com/2017/01/30/tech-immigrant-founders/ http://fortune.com/2017/01/30/tech-immigrant-founders/ https://hardavenue.com/immigrant-founders-trump-muslim-ban/ https://hardavenue.com/immigrant-founders-trump-muslim-ban/ etc
Swizec 10y ago
While this sounds true and everyone likes to harp on it, there's another consideration. An immigrant is somebody who intends to stay forever, an expat is someone who plans to go back home eventually. There are also legal considerations. My US visa for example specifically says it's a non-immigrant visitor's work visa. Legally speaking, I'm an expat. Culturally ... I like to call myself a dirty immigrant. Riles people up a bit :P edit for background: I come from the border between Central and Eastern Europe. Some say Slovenia is one, some say another. In the UK I would most definitely be an evil evil immigrant. In the US nobody really cares as long as I'm not brown.

maverick_iceman 10y ago

Interesting that they use the word expat instead of immigrant. I don't think if these two were from Asia/Africa they would have been called expats.

idiot_stick 10y ago
>I don't think if these two were from Asia/Africa they would have been called expats. And you base that on....? Why do people search for injustice?
- alistproducer2 10y ago
  Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.[0] -MLK [0]: https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham....
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- CptJamesCook 10y ago
  The left has been teaching people to believe they are victims for more than a decade now. That's why they search for injustice.
  - Veen 10y ago
    If you think the victim mentality is limited to the left, you've obviously not being paying attention to the alt right or Christian conservatives.
    - CptJamesCook 10y ago
      The true alt-right is tiny. Well, since alt-right has been defined to include white supremacy, anyway. The left is huge.
- Kexoth 10y ago

throwawaytwise 10y ago

Throwaway for obvious reasons. I applied for a position as a software dev there a few years ago through a friend. I hated every single moment of it. It was like they exported the very worse from Silicon Valley's bullshit start-ups attitude. They just couldn't shut the fuck up about how they were really changing the world (yeah right), how awesome it was to work 60 hours a week for such a great Vision, how sick their (mandatory) team-holidays were, how everything and everyone was so siiiick here, mate. I did all the rounds up to the one with the VP of Engineering who asked me to code FizzBuzz on a whiteboard (no kidding) and then spent the rest of the hour bragging about how last week he had turned down an "amazing engineer" (his words) because he wasn't "cool enough" to be one of them. You know, he was a bit of a loser, mate. It really felt like a cult of ego-obsessed people with some narcissistic disorder; even worse, it felt like everyone was lying. That said I'm sure there are a lot of nice people who work there, this is just my experience so take it with a grain of salt. The product is also good, I used it a few times myself.

averagewall 10y ago
It sounds like a culture that's not objectively bad, just different from what you respect. People use slang words and bragging everywhere. They're just different words and different ways of expressing their brags. But to be honest, they do have a very noble goal and they have reason to be proud of it. Poor people all over the world are constantly pouring money into Western Union and banks for this seemingly trivial service.
- throwawaytwise 10y ago
  > they do have a very noble goal LOL they ain't no charity, their goal is to make $$$, period. Incidentally they do so in a way that is also good for their customers, but that's nothing more than a nice coincidence. We're all grown ups, I don't need to be sugar coated with all the "we're making the world a better place" nonsense. But no, these people want you to believe in their damn dream, as if working 5 days a week to make them rich wasn't enough already. That's true for many companies out there, not just TransferWise. Also, mocking former candidates because they aren't cool enough is objectively a shit culture in my book, eh.

swang 10y ago

It would be nice if this could be applied to places where I don't have a bank account and just need say, $500USD converted into another country's currency. My bank here allows me to withdraw twice from foreign bank ATMs but I have a feeling they are messing with exchange rates and I'm still stuck with a bad deal. I won't even bother with real exchanges in the States or in the other country. Everything just feels like highway robbery.

chx 10y ago

I am just a very satisfied customer. They managed to be cheaper than using even a dedicated FX company for international transfers (I do Canada-Austria, Austria-Canada, Canada-Hungary) and the process is pretty seamless and it doesn't take longer than a SWIFT transfer usually.

CalRobert 10y ago

I will say, their product is excellent and I've used it to transfer quite a bit of cash over the last few years. I tried a competitor of theirs (currencyfair) and the UI wasn't as nice a few years ago, which was about the only differentiator. Hope they can turn a profit soon.

throwaway5752 10y ago

"The company says it is always improving the software that automates the matching process, including complicated solutions that cover, say, a pound-to-dollar transaction with multiple dollar-to-euro and euro-to-pound swaps. If TransferWise can’t find a match, it becomes a market maker, using its own money to complete the deal in the hope that another customer who wants to send at least as much money the opposite way comes along later. In doing so, it is essentially acting just like a traditional foreign exchange broker." And this is how it spectacularly imploded 5 years from now.

pdeuchler 10y ago
Yeah this caught my eye as well... seems like an extraordinary increase in risk for a relatively small gain, not to mention the other costs of changing your business model from a glorified escrow service to an investment bank. I hope for their sake they have someone who knows what they're doing running that department and hedging appropriately...
theoh 10y ago
Heh, that reminds me of Yaron Minsky's talk about Caml, in which he stresses the need for absolute correctness of software when you are a market maker or arbitrageur, at risk of your high-throughput trading engine going off the rails...

schintan 10y ago

USD to INR rate is less competitive than an Indian bank. Probably because not many adopters in India.

phillc73 10y ago

Transferwise is by far the best international money transfer service I have ever used. I regularly move money between Euros and Pounds Sterling, sometimes into Australian dollars too. These are typically not large monetary amounts, maybe up to a few thousand Euros, but often just a couple of hundred. I haven't specifically counted, but I gueas I've made around 25 transfers with Transferwise. Compared to using banks directly, and even other "traditional" Forex services over the last 16 years, Transferwise is fast and very low friction. I did have to verify my identity once my transfered totals had exceeded £15k, but that has been the only delay. They just do a very, very good job.

kriro 10y ago

I wonder how much of their valuation the Brexit vote cost them. It might eradicate a good chunk of their customer base. How would one go about modeling this, how are VCs modeling this? Imagine a company built around some service for expatriates in Britain closed their series A and their series B was happening sometime around/after Brexit. I guess that would be down round territory?

EliRivers 10y ago

Hello all. I used transferwise in November to move money to Japan. The exchange rate applied was the actual fucking exchange rate. I paid Transferwsise a couple of quid. Worth every fucking penny. Worth swearing. Use Transferwise.

DarthMader 10y ago
What's the foremost authority for realtime ForEx rates?
- isolli 10y ago
  There is no foremost authority in foreign exchange, it's mostly an unregulated market.
- phillc73 10y ago
  Don't know about foremost, but I always use xe.com
  - socialist_coder 10y ago
    Yeah, I was investigating transferwise because supposedly it was cheaper than xe.com but it seems like they are pretty competitive with each other. I've already been using xe.com and see no reason to switch. I transfer my entire salary from USD to EUR every year so I definitely want to get the best rate.
    - phillc73 10y ago
      I only use xe.com as my go to website for looking up current exchange spot rates. I didn't even really know they had a transfer service. I am a very happy Transferwise user. I used to always check the exchange rate on xe.com, then switch to Transferwise to compare before transferring. Now I don't bother, because Transferwise has always been very close to the spot rate.
- blibble 10y ago

keeptrying 10y ago

Hmmm I heard these guys make less than $10million a year in revenue. Possibly the lowest revenue to valuation ever?

jkaljundi 10y ago
Their revenue in the year ending March 2016 was 28 million pounds, transaction volume 800 million pounds per month. Last September they already did 5 million pounds a month, growing ~2x / year.
- to3m 10y ago
  In case anybody else is wondering - these details are public. Any time you see a story about a UK company, and this one is no exception, you can get some information about it from the company registry at Companies House: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/ https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/ 1. type in company name or part thereof 2. select it from the list 3. click the "people" tab and see if you recognise any names from the article or whatever (this can be helpful if there were several likely-looking results) 4. click "filing history" and download the accounts and annual return (with list of shareholders) Most of the time this isn't actually very interesting, but if you're being nosey, there's no reason not to. (The reduced accounts you have for small companies (turnover < £15m, something like that...) are usually particularly unilluminating, though some of the figures can be suggestive and the shareholders list may be interesting.)
  - Kexoth 10y ago
    I just tried your link & it's a very interesting option to be honest :) In my country (Macedonia) these reports on private held companies can be given after 2 fiscal years & you have to pay for them per company searched. I'm very curious to see what's the case in other countries on this topic :)

kristianp 10y ago

How does this compare to xe.com, which I have used in the past? They're a canadian company, been doing this for a long time, low cost.

rohi 10y ago

I think https://www.instarem.com/ https://www.instarem.com/ does something similar.

dboreham 10y ago

Surprised to not see any mention here of legal and regulatory risk. One of the reasons moving money between countries is hard and expensive is that it is often done by people either trying to avoid tax liabilities, and/or by people involved in illegal activities and as a result governments are understandably keen to tie transfer agents up in rules regulations and liabilities. Ask HSBC...

Symbiote 10y ago
They're compliant with British regulations. I was given extra checks to make before my first transfer, since I was paying into an unusual type of account.
- phillc73 10y ago
  Once my total transfers had exceeded £15k, I was required to undergo further identity verification checks. Pretty standard KYC procedures I thought.

tejasd 10y ago

While I haven't used TranferWise yet, I think it's a brilliant idea (and yes, their exchange rates look phenomenal)! There's also a service called PeerTransfer for foreign tuition payments that essentially aggregates outgoing payments, and buys forex in bulk. Another cool development in the area is Visa (The Card issuer) opening up their APIs to allow direct Card-Card transfers like with Square Cash when they just started out. Barring regulatory hurdles, this method (Card-Card transaction using the Visa/MasterCard/Amex network) is probably the most efficient way of sending money across currencies.

lordnacho 10y ago

Transferwise is a great service, I use it myself. They even give you a volume discount if you ask for it. But what really surprises me is that it got to where it is at all. If you look at it, their business model is not revolutionary. Their prices are not cheaper than for example UKForex (OzForex), who provide the exact same service, and were around years before. The business is simply a click interface for exchanging money; you send in your currency, and they send in the agreed amount to the other side. The price difference between these shops is minimal. It could not be simpler. I've traded currencies as a professional, there's not a whole lot of other steps behind the scenes. But I doubt most people have heard of UKForex. Transferwise however are on billboards everywhere, acting as though they invented the idea of swapping one currency for another. And acting as though you are cutting out the middle man, which you are not. You still need a bank. Well played to them though, it seems they've used some of that startup hype attitude to get themselves a nice little business.

orf 10y ago
The TV adverts and billboards where also particularly good, involving people spitting out their cup of tea in surprise when they realised they could save money with transfer wise. Very English, very effective.
gabemart 10y ago
The first-run experience of Transferwise blows UKForex out of the water. If I want to convert 1000 EUR to USD, the number one thing I care about is how many USD I will get for my EUR. The front page of Transferwise has a giant input right at the top of the page that tells me exactly how many USD I will get, and tells me that rate is guaranteed for 48 hours. The front page of UKForex has a much smaller input, and it's "market rate" - if I want to find out how many USD I will actually get, I have to register and create an account. This is just one example, but it speaks to my whole experience of Transferwise vs. other foreign exchange providers. The user experience is best-in-class.
falsedan 10y ago
> They even give you a volume discount if you ask for it. Just contact support? How much volume do they look for? I'm struggling moving USD -> GBP, hitting the daily ACH limits & frustrated that the creaky US banking system doesn't have a better interbank transfer system than wiring funds for tens of dollars a pop (and presenting a physical form).

fapjacks 10y ago

Transferwise was great, at first. I was an early adopter of Transferwise. Some years ago, my brother (and I, sort of) started filming documentaries and I handled a lot of the money and payments to some of the people involved in his documentaries overseas. At one point without warning, Transferwise left my brother stranded in Europe without a way to get money. Transferwise held onto a few thousand dollars for a few weeks without any contact or update or anything. Every time I would email or call, I would get some customer support who would ignore my replies or transfer me around with increasing wait times between transfers until they hung up, sort of typical phone hell. When we finally got a hold of someone at Transferwise, it turns out they decided that what we were doing was a cover for illicit activities (which is pretty bizarre, if you knew the people involved, and despite his published documentaries, footage, and even the receipts we kept for tax purposes). Having family stranded overseas by this billion-dollar unicorn left a really bad taste in my mouth. The worst part was being left with absolutely zero recourse for the thousands of dollars that they were just holding on to for weeks without any contact with us. If you don't want to serve us because of some bizarre, hallucinatory conspiracy, fine, but don't hold onto the money for weeks in the interim without an explanation.