> Now, with only my consumer brain, does what they say actually make sense? Do merchants actually want to get rid of the 2-3% transaction fees?
Except that you are now at the mercy of MasterCard/Visa. Sure it might not be a problem now, but things can change quickly. 14 years ago they turned off Wikileaks donations because it violated their "moral standard" while still allowing donations on the Klu Klux Klan home site. They often impose arbitrary rules on adult sites to the point where many small vendors can't keep up, and that is ignoring the 20% fee that they charge for being at high risk of chargebacks.
> who is going to pay the rewards (and loyalty program) modern CC carry?
These loyalty programs are simply offsetting some of the existing costs. If you remove the transaction fees entirely, more money would be saved than leaving them in combination with a rewards program. Maybe that is a hard sell from a Product PoV, but it is not like the rewards are coming from nowhere.
> but isn't this just going back to the age when financial systems weren't developed enough to help merchants acquire and maintain customers ?
Like when the card companies used aggressive tactics and lobbying to prevent vendors from upcharging card payments to offset the costs of transaction fees?
It sounds like you are institutionalized in the sense that you are familiar with all the existing institutions and can't imagine any changes.
edit: Everything I said is more generally in line with cryptocurrencies however. The biggest advantage of stablecoins is for the minter / maintainers. It is a relatively low cost product that can generate a boat load of interest if you can garner enough interest like USDT and USDC have. The only advantage to users is that the prices are (ideally) pegged and less impacted by wild speculation that has been rampant in the cryptocurrency space.
you are absolutely correct about the centralized risks about modern systems, but this is not really something you can use to convince consumers to change their behaviors at scale, besides, cryptos have its own risks.
I am all for changes but they can't take vigors out of markets!
What would convince you as a consumer? If everyday products were 3% cheaper, would that impact you at all? 5% cheaper? At what point do you think people would care? What about cash only businesses? As a consumer would you prefer if you could use your phone instead of pulling out and handling cash?
If adoptions ever takes hold, I think it is unlikely to start with the replacement of payment cards. It is more likely to take hold is specific niches that currently suffer under the MasterCard/Visa duopoly as well as in emerging markets. In the adult industry, I'm sure products being 20% cheaper would sway consumers. Also not to mention the omission of purchases from your credit history which may be judged harshly by others. Low margin businesses could support online and international sales while offering competitive prices. Some markets aren't serviced well by the duopoly. Some consumers value pseudonimity/anonymity in their financial transactions. These can develop into niches where crypto has potential to take hold, and then from there it might expand and compete with the larger markets (and their vigor) if it grows into a competitive product based on fees and usability.
If it ever hits critical mass, vendors will surely either drop card support or strongly encourage cryptocurrency usage. Albeit that is a big "if" that likely comes down to solving a lot of scalability and usability issues right now. There is also a need for regulatory clarity. I think we are a long way away, but I wouldn't write it off simply because I personally find Visa/MasterCard to be convenient in my own life.
Skills will more or less be the same. Communication skills may be slightly more important depending on people's understanding of whatever language is used.
The biggest issue will be cultural. Don't be a workaholic. Don't live to work. Don't bring that culture here. It is fine if you like to work, but don't project that as expectations on others.
Source: I'm US person who moved to Europe. I've worked for US companies as well as global and European companies.
Be prepared to work your ass off; live the mentality that you must work and be available as much as possible. It's going to get worse in the next few years as Trump starts gutting more and more worker protections.
So in the the US you will be salaried and expected to be available for 40 hours a week. This does not mean you will be actively working 40 hours a week any given week. Especially if you are experienced. Work is mostly delivery based with very little regard to how long work actually takes to complete. This means that depending on your skill for advocating for reasonable delivery timelines and the culture of the company, you might be actively working anywhere from 20 hours to 60 hours in a given week. As long as you deliver your work on time and as expected, managers generally do not care how many hours you work whether below or above 40, but again they do expect you to be available for 40 hours a week. There is some expectation that you will check work communication channels outside of work hours, but there is no expectation for you act on the information you receive unless it is actually and truly important (this should be extremely rare.)
The reason you see people talking about terrible work hours is that when you are inexperienced you will definitely be working far more than 40 hours because you will not be able to hit your deadlines otherwise. Getting promoted within a company often requires worked extra hours, however working extra hours is not necessary for good reviews in a healthy company.
If you are a SWE and work for a tech company, you will find that taking European amounts of vacation is okay, again as long as you hit your deadlines. No one has ever cared that I take 6 weeks a year in vacation. But I also make sure to give plenty of notice on my vacations so the company can plan around my absence and I am generally considered to be a productive employee. I have never been laid off from a company. In fact I have survived 2 lay offs.
While US work culture is bad (I will self admit that I do like to work and sometimes work because I want to.), it is not as horrific as people like to claim as long as you advocate for yourself and ask the right questions in interviews to make sure that the team you will be placed on doesn't have ridiculous standards for performance.
I think you're looking at this from a very privileged lens.
I have experience in the IT sector as a manager and while many openly say that the expectations are 40 hours a week wink wink but be expected to answer the phone 24/7 whenever we need you. Oh, 60 hours already this week? Too bad.
Taking time off? Oh, if you even have time. In the companies I have worked, taking 10 days off a year was considered a perk.
I will not deny that. I'm not say that all companies are like this, but I am saying that it is not mandatory to live like this. I never have worked a crazy amount of hours even working for a WITCH and it was not an issue. The US does not give you balance by default, but I am saying that it is perfectly viable to avoid those kinds of companies. No one has to work 60 hours all the time. It won't cost you your career. It might cost you money. I will be the first to admit that I'm not a super high earner, but I have never struggled to pay my bills.
60 hours a week, probably. Compensation will be geared towards 40h a week, but you might be on the hook for more. Add in the commute, if you don't live next to the office.
I think "Main Street" is referring to small businesses, which are usually outside of ordinary people's reach when it comes to investing, since most business investing is limited to "accredited investors".
Small business lending is an interesting space. Small business often fail and thus small business loans tend to have garbage rates. I'm assuming the idea is to hit people on an emotional level, allowing 'investment' into someone that you can relate with as opposed to some large corporation.
>Small business often fail and thus small business loans tend to have garbage rates. I'm assuming the idea is to hit people on an emotional level, allowing 'investment' into someone that you can relate with as opposed to some large corporation.
So the article wants people to make a worse investment (lower ROI and/or higher risk), and hopes that they will be okay with it because small businesses are more relatable? Am I understanding this right?
It's not an article and I was making an assumption. I worked at a similar company (with one the the founders of this place) and the idea was that "affinity based" loans have a lower chance of defaulting. I have no idea if the numbers back that up though. It's like a rough mix of social media and small business lending. It's not necessarily the most financially prudent, but I don't think it is trying to be.
I used to work with your co-founder Felix. The idea isn't bad, but this feels like a direct copy of the company where we worked, StreetShares. They had the exact same "Main Street" theme an overused it a bit. The "About" page used to list the employees' favourite main street in their synopses. Even the homepage is surprising similar. The main difference seems to be the stock photos.
So are there any differences in your product and SS? I assume the tech stack is much better. SS made me want to vomit. I guess this is an SS clone without the military focus? SS wasn't an original idea either, but at least they tried to put a spin on it. This just feels like blatant rip off
There's a fine line between trying to improve an idea and cheap knock-offs and stealing an ideas and identities.
Uber and Lyft are very similar, but at least they could be differentiated. Lyft had tips at the start. The apps, sites, UX, colour scheme, etc... were still noticeably different despite offering the same product.
Also it's a little different when you work at one company, leave, and then a year later you copy their same product with little change and 0 attempt to establish your own brand.
Are you asserting that he copied code or graphics, or took existing customers with him? If not, then there's still nothing wrong. It's competition, it's how it works.
It is still worth pointing out as it is a little shady, even if it isn't illegal.
In some ways it is similar to SlideBelt and how MissionBelt essentially stole their product. Except in that case I believe it was a family relation and not a professional relation.
In this case, we have businesses asking for money. What if the founders decide they like one of the bids? They could hide/remove the bid and then steal the business idea and use their connections, which the struggling business likely doesn't have, to steal the idea.
> That you would call them shady says more about you than them.
You may be right there. I was pretty miserable when I worked for SS and see most things from that period in a negative light. I don't mean to sound adversarial, but what would it be saying about me?
I think my issue here is that is feels more like a direct steal of a business idea and less like competition. I don't see any changes, differences, innovation, or rebranding.
It's a fine line, and everyone sees the line differently. For example, an outsider stealing a business idea is better in my mind. They could have very well been working on the same idea concurrently like Leibniz and Newton. They will also have a different perspective and take on the situation. When a previous employee steals an idea without improvement, it doesn't sit well with me.
I think I'd be fine with it even if they just shifted focus. As a direct improvement on SS they could say they are focusing on transparency and security, pushing users towards 2FA and secure practices while being open with some of the risks involved. They could focus on local small businesses within X km or maybe some new attempt to quantify risk and match investors to businesses based on risk profiles. They did none of that. They took the exact same "Main Street" motif and just changed the color. Competition is good, but cookie cutter companies like this with no innovation only hurt each other. And then when these companies fail, everyone that that pulled in to invest and the small businesses involved suffer.
If you hired me to implement a great idea but you were miserable to work for, I’d definitely consider quitting to do it on my own. I’d expect the exact same from you, it’s an important reason to take extra care in how we lead employees.
And there isn’t any such thing as cookie cutter companies, at least not successful ones. When you start second you need to do something important better, or you can never catch up.
Apple is famous for being second to market with the same idea, but with a lot more thought and polish put into how it works.
I think it's a worthwhile data point that the creators of Mainvest couldn't be bothered to come up with a different layout for their landing page and took it verbatim from their former employer.
It helps me make the decision of using their investment platform or not. Where else did they take shortcuts?
Has StreetShares maybe pivoted a bit since you worked there? I'm looking at their website now, and it looks like they sell bonds and then invest the funds in veteran-owned businesses, so it seems like investors aren't directly exposed to any individual business. Honestly I don't see much in common with Mainvest, either in design or concept.
If StreetShares used to look like Mainvest but changed their model, and Felix believed in the original idea and decided to quit and try it again, what's wrong with that? It's like the Vine founders starting Byte, or the Screenhero founders starting Screen. Not only is copying ideas a core part of capitalism, but it barely even counts as copying when it's an idea you yourself worked on.
Yeah its likely. The moment I saw the Mainvest homepage I was reminded of the SS homepage when I was there. It looks like there have been changes since.
I assumed a founder or one of the employees was the one to post the link. I was genuinely curious to see how they are different. SS did a lot of things wrong, and there was a lot of room for improvement, but at a glance this place looks the same.
edit: After re-reading the original comment, I guess the "blatant ripoff" line was a bit rough. I probably should have used some softer language
Except that you are now at the mercy of MasterCard/Visa. Sure it might not be a problem now, but things can change quickly. 14 years ago they turned off Wikileaks donations because it violated their "moral standard" while still allowing donations on the Klu Klux Klan home site. They often impose arbitrary rules on adult sites to the point where many small vendors can't keep up, and that is ignoring the 20% fee that they charge for being at high risk of chargebacks.
> who is going to pay the rewards (and loyalty program) modern CC carry?
These loyalty programs are simply offsetting some of the existing costs. If you remove the transaction fees entirely, more money would be saved than leaving them in combination with a rewards program. Maybe that is a hard sell from a Product PoV, but it is not like the rewards are coming from nowhere.
> but isn't this just going back to the age when financial systems weren't developed enough to help merchants acquire and maintain customers ?
Like when the card companies used aggressive tactics and lobbying to prevent vendors from upcharging card payments to offset the costs of transaction fees?
It sounds like you are institutionalized in the sense that you are familiar with all the existing institutions and can't imagine any changes.
edit: Everything I said is more generally in line with cryptocurrencies however. The biggest advantage of stablecoins is for the minter / maintainers. It is a relatively low cost product that can generate a boat load of interest if you can garner enough interest like USDT and USDC have. The only advantage to users is that the prices are (ideally) pegged and less impacted by wild speculation that has been rampant in the cryptocurrency space.