adammoelis

9 ms·

61.
by adammoelis 6y ago
Makes sense. We will look into making this option clearer to the user so they have to explicitly choose which option they want.
62.
by adammoelis 6y ago
The EV on an annualized basis is around 3% right now because we are subsidizing some of the prizes currently. In the long run we will aim to match Marcus and Ally, which right now are at around ~1% but go up or down depending on market cycl
63.
by adammoelis 6y ago
There's some confusion we probably need to clear up on what our "rate" is. Our base rate if you win no prizes ever is 0.20%. Including the expected value of prizes it's above Marcus today.
64.
by adammoelis 6y ago
For sure. These are all really interesting topics. We have thought about a lot of this, but would love to chat in more depth. Shoot me an email at adam@withyotta.com and let's connect to talk live.
65.
by adammoelis 6y ago
Thanks for this feedback. Did you know that this is only to show your first name on a leaderboard if you win prizes above a certain threshold or did you take this to mean something else? Wondering if it's an issue of it not being clear
66.
by adammoelis 6y ago
Only two people at the insurance co. know the numbers, so the knowledge is limited. This helps because less chance of a bad actor being involved if the info is limited to a very small circle. We would be able to spot anomalies over time in
67.
by adammoelis 6y ago
That's really interesting. Something basic we could do is allow users to toggle between getting a guaranteed return or more tickets. It wouldn't change the payouts, but it would change your own variance. It's not as flexible
68.
by adammoelis 6y ago
This excludes any value from prizes, which is the bulk of the value of Yotta. 0.2% is what you get if you never win a prize, ever.
69.
by adammoelis 6y ago
Yup. Any sweepstakes or prize giveaway you see that is a game of chance will have a "no purchase necessary" clause
70.
by adammoelis 6y ago
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
71.
by adammoelis 6y ago
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 th
72.
by adammoelis 6y ago
Can you spend Premium Bonds?
73.
by adammoelis 6y ago
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 t
74.
by adammoelis 6y ago
We need to tell Jeff Bezos about this strategy
75.
by adammoelis 6y ago
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.
76.
by adammoelis 6y ago
Yeah maybe there is something like that we can do. Hadn't thought of providing some sort of hard evidence. I will look into this now though!
77.
by adammoelis 6y ago
Thanks for this. 1. We don't really think of it as being closer to one vs the other. From a front-end perspective, it's closer to a lottery/sweepstakes. But from a back-end perspective it's more of a savings account with
78.
by adammoelis 6y ago
Exactly. People try to maximize expected utility in life, not expected value.
79.
by adammoelis 6y ago
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
80.
by adammoelis 6y ago
Thanks for the feedback. We chose 9pm thinking it would be a time when people are less busy. HQ Trivia picked it and we thought it worked for them in terms of getting engagement. But to be fair, we didn't think too deeply about the exa
81.
by adammoelis 6y ago
On the privacy policy front, this is somewhat boilerplate language that is just there to allow us to have partnerships with other companies to attract deposits, which we haven't explored yet. But we didn't mean for it to be anythi
82.
by adammoelis 6y ago
Interesting I'd never seen this. We will look into this for sure. Thanks for sharing
83.
by adammoelis 6y ago
Yeah the lower the dollars saved per ticket, the less valuable the free entries. You're 100% right on that point
84.
by adammoelis 6y ago
Thanks this is a helpful reference point for us
85.
by adammoelis 6y ago
I see what you mean. This is a reality in a regular savings account too, though. Accounts with higher balances earn more interest. With us, you earn more tickets. Hopefully the incentive to get more tickets helps people start building savin
86.
by adammoelis 6y ago
Yeah we actually studied the FNB program when we were setting out to develop Yotta. Basically, it got shut down because it got so popular in its ~2 years of operation and was taking away from the National Lottery. The difference in the U.S
87.
by adammoelis 6y ago
We pay premiums to an insurance co. and in the event someone wins the jackpot, the prize payment would come from them, not from Yotta.
88.
by adammoelis 6y ago
Oh cool I did not know that. Thanks for bringing this up
89.
by adammoelis 6y ago
Using bots to write and send in mail-in entries is prohibited
90.
by adammoelis 6y ago
I think we would be the better option on an EV basis than going that route. The lottery takes an absurd cut since they are a monopoly. It's pretty much the worst EV gamble you can make. If you factor in taxes, annuity present values, o

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