I appreciate the sentiment, and I agree, but this really matters. There have been so many stories of fintechs collapsing recently, where people were really just trying to make an extra few percentage points of yield, and then people lost all of their savings.
I also like to root for the little guy, but the trust barrier will be the largest hurdle I think that this company needs to overcome, and so it's fair to discuss it.
Every possible angle is "fair" when it's your money. To look the other way because it's being discussed on HN is madness. For folks that aren't aware of the fintech failures the point being reiterated makes a statement and if the OP / founder doesn't address the issues in the thread then it doesn't seem like I should have a ton of faith in their service.
It's absolutely fair when you're evaluating a potential fiduciary. I personally don't consider small regional banks secure beyond the FDIC limits for the same reason. But one of the "big guys" is fine as they're too big to fail.
> As part of the agreements with the United States Attorney’s Offices for the Central District of California and the Western District of North Carolina, the Commercial Litigation Branch of the Civil Division, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, Wells Fargo admitted that it collected millions of dollars in fees and interest to which the Company was not entitled, harmed the credit ratings of certain customers, and unlawfully misused customers’ sensitive personal information, including customers’ means of identification.
> As a result of HSBC Bank USA’s AML failures, at least $881 million in drug trafficking proceeds – including proceeds of drug trafficking by the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico and the Norte del Valle Cartel in Colombia – were laundered through HSBC Bank USA. HSBC Group admitted it did not inform HSBC Bank USA of significant AML deficiencies at HSBC Mexico, despite knowing of these problems and their effect on the potential flow of illicit funds through HSBC Bank USA.
You're misunderstanding what the benefit of being large is, and what the risk of being small is.
I totally accept and understand that large businesses do all sorts of shady and nefarious things. What I don't expect them to do is lose all my money with no recourse. And that's not just the case because they're big, but the regulatory regimes are set up to deal with these known entities. The reason I've personally become wary of fintechs recently is because many of them want to "move fast and break things", and think they can offload all of the regulatory responsibilities to partner institutions. Like, if you're such a great fintech, why not open as an actual bank or as an actual broker dealer (note, I'm not saying that's the case here, as they are an RIA, but I don't know the protection that is entailed by that designation).
When you say "Madoff had $65B AUM", he also had like 10 employees, which is why he was able to hide the fraud for so long.
RIA doesn’t have a guarantee as such — it’s a license to sell you securities and, also, give you advice on which securities to buy. Such a person or company doesn’t even necessarily keep an account: it’s a financial advisor certification. But this is the “actual broker-dealer” certification you’re asking for.
They keep your account at Apex Clearing, which is a very very large company that is not going anywhere anytime soon.
So, the key bit here is: do you trust them on that? They’ve got SEC filings and it’s as above-board as any other fintech.
And next, are you prepared to argue with Apex for your money when/if they fail? And is this worth it to you for the product offered?
More importantly, though, that's not what I'm saying. Getting over the consumer fear about their financial security absolutely has to be a primary priority of this company, and if they don't address it, then they have a shitty business plan.
why should anyone "give them a break"? Aint running a charity here - if they provide sufficient value for the risk, then they will get customers without having them to "give breaks".
I am going to give zero break to anyone who proposes to manage people's money. This is not the area where "move fast and break things" is an acceptable approach. You have to be on top of your game from day one, otherwise you need to stay away from people's life savings.
I think you misunderstand me. I’m not telling them to give up or expressing hope that they don’t succeed. I’m identifying what I see as a major barrier to adoption. I’d be interested in a response that addresses those points.
I mean, no. For many people the investments being handled may represent their life savings. It represents potentially decades of work. This isn't some SaaS where poor reliability means wasted time and maybe some money - the stakes are considerably higher.
I doubt they are expecting their customers to withdraw their life savings from Fidelity and hand it to them. I sure wouldn't. I could see maybe trying them out with, say, $20K of one's $2M savings. But, then at that level of investment, $1/mo becomes a significant fee. Not sure I understand who the market is.
Very cool product, please keep at it. Feedback: scrolling feels tedious. Please allow holding space key + mouse click and drag to move around the board (similar to how most design tools handle this).
We did this at Loom (W12) and it was one of the most powerful things we could have done as a team. Internal comms became much more streamlined as a result and it was usually apparent to everyone what we needed to work on next.
A quote from an article on the Verge says "Musk declined to comment on the exact cost of the trip, but said it was “comparable” or a little more than the cost of a crewed mission to the International Space Station."
Does anyone have a rough estimate how much a manned mission to the ISS currently costs?
For perspective, it cost about $200 million to get your name on an America's Cup trophy. So as billionaire vanity projects go, this is pretty reasonable.
At least from NASA's standpoint, looks like they budget single-digit $Billions for human spaceflight, out of a yearly budget in the range of $18B. I'm not sure how cleanly that can be broken down per-mission, since stays aboard the ISS can now exceed 12 months. https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/02/02/nasa-outlines-fy-2016-...
If I remember correctly, the price of a Soyuz seat is around $20,000,000USD for tourists, with NASA's price to fly on Soyuz being much higher per seat.
Good start! I just wish this change would be happening for the right reasons, e.g. that privately held prisons are creating a false incentive, an incentive to be more profitable by having more prisoners and thus the creation of a lobby for such thing.
If you look, I think you'll find very little evidence of that actually happening. Further, state-run prisons create as much if not more incentive, in the form of public sector unions.
It is curious how overlooked the money unions dump into lobbying is. They are spending massive amounts of money lobbying DC, but nobody seems to talk about it. The people that complain about companies who run private prisons lobbying congress never have a thought for say, the corrections officers' union, doing the same. Why?
Unions generally represent a large collection of human beings who all donate a small fixed amount as dues, and are usually quasi-democratic. That is, unions closer resemble the expression of the will of actual people, whereas non-union corporate lobbying represents the interests of a single corporate leader choosing to spend a huge amount of money to obtain influence in the democratic process wildly out of proportion to his actual vote.
A teacher's union lobbying is acting in the interest of millions of American teachers. An oil company lobbying is acting in the interest of the CEO of the oil company.
> A teacher's union lobbying is acting in the interest of millions of American teachers. An oil company lobbying is acting in the interest of the CEO of the oil company.
Both are incorrect characterizations. In theory, the actions of a union represent the interests of its members and the actions of a corporation represent the actions of its shareholders. In practice, the actions of both represent their boards' interpretation of what their members/shareholders want and what they think is in the best interests of their corporations[1]. Neither represents either the collective will of all its members or the whims of a single person.
[1] Unions in the US are 501(c) corporations and so have similar governing structures.
Not true; they are quite correct characterizations.
In theory, union officials are elected by the members of the union. In practice, union officials are elected by the members of the union. In theory, the head of a corporation is the head of a corporation and may do whatever he likes so long as he and a small cabal of directors wish. In practice, the very few executives at the top of a large corporation run it like a dictatorship, and they primarily serve their own interests -- not the interests of the employees or the shareholders. And even when they do act in the interest of shareholders, that's simply a code word for "a tiny group of wealthy elites" -- shareholders are wealth holders, so invariably even the most honest and earnest CEO will be acting in the interest of large amounts of wealth (oligarchy), not large amounts of people (democracy).
The CEO of an oil company represents all of the people that work for that company, and the many people who are investors in that company (often including pension funds, which are beholden to those same teachers in the union). It's disingenuous to act like the CEO's interests are the only ones involved in a corporation's lobbying. Indeed, CEOs are often voted out of companies by the board.
Are businesses less democratic that unions? Almost certainly. Does that change whether or not their actions are moral? I would argue not. My step-father was a in a union for a long time, and spent time as an officer for the union. He didn't have much great to say about it.
Sorry, I meant it to mean that the CEO represents the interests of the employees in that the employees do well as the company does well. Yeah, they get less of the yield than those at the top, but if the company isn't doing well it puts downward pressure on all of their careers. Presumably the employees are there because they support, or are at least neutral, to the goals of the company, and thus share an interest. If they oppose the goals of the business, while I can understand why they might take a job there, I would still argue it's an ethical lapse.
Not the case that the employees do well as the company does well. The company does great when factories are closed and replaced with slave labor overseas. The employees, not so much. The company does great when its employees are forced to train their H1B replacements who are held hostage by their visas for no wages and then fired. The employees?
The company does great when it pays its employees the smallest amount possible, gives them the least benefits, since every cent of extraneous labor cost is, by definition, extraneous lost profit.
The cheap way out for me is to say those people are no longer employees :)
Being honest though, yeah businesses will do shitty thing to employees when their interests don't align with the employees. That said, I've worked for healthy companies and sick companies, and I promise there's a world of difference there. Layoffs, outsourcing and training replacements are usually signs of sickness. The brand of medicine practiced by businesses is triage.
This argument sounds a lot like blackberry vs iPhone to me tbh. I frequently use tablets and yet setting brush size was never great, hot keys being the blackberry. I am very excited about this device, which feels like the right next step, the iPhone.
