632 karma · joined August 21, 2019
It’s only on the first $1000 or something, so it seems like a promotion to get them listed on those “top 20 bank” listicles. Regardless, I plan on opening a savings account with them because that’s ridiculously good for a risk free product
What do you think about a fully managed service that moves the funds automatically behind the scenes. You’d only have a single account/app which you’d use to withdraw your funds, but whenever rates change, the funds get moved. You’d always be getting the best rates (and the best distribution of rates) but not have any of the overhead of moving the funds. Would that be worth paying, say, 5% of the total interest earned?
I’m the main developer of bankrank.io, but I’m part of a passionate team of financial-techies. We were inspired by credit card churning, which is when people cycle through credit cards to optimize their rewards [0]. We wanted to apply a similar approach to checking and savings accounts so consumers could maximize their interest rates and minimize fees. There are approximately 10,000 banks and credit unions in the US that offer deposit accounts, and since banks can change rates and fees on a daily basis, there’s huge variance what constitutes the “best” account at any given time.
Additionally, we noticed that most existing financial blogs/tools don’t provide a wide view of the market. Sites like nerd wallet, bank rate, or businessweek cherry pick a list of products that partner with them to provide kickbacks, referrals, or pay for exclusivity, which is why you’ll often see “Advertiser disclosures” at the top of their articles [1, 2]. We wanted to build a tool that enables users to query as much data as possible, and make an informed decision without bias. We currently monitor hundreds of products, and we’re adding more to our catalogue each day. To that end, we don’t serve ads, monetize user data, or allow banks to pay for sponsorships or preferred placement. Instead, we plan on monetizing premium features which offer convenience to users, kind of like “managed deposit accounts as a service.”
We also exclude products and tiers which require activity such as setting up direct deposits and spending thresholds, or products that do not offer interest rates on account balances. Your money gets loaned out to other people who pay interest to the banks, and we think you deserve a portion of that without having to jump through hoops.
Along those lines, we show the minimum and maximum balance range that earns the listed APY for each account. If a product has multiple tiers, each gets listed separately. We also set the minimum balance to whatever is required to both earn the advertised interest rate and avoid monthly fees. We found that many banks allow you to open an account with lower balances, but will charge you a recurring fee until your balance reaches a threshold. We consider this a “dark pattern” in banking, so if the balance listed on our site is higher than the bank’s, it’s probably because the bank is charging hidden fees.
We’d love to get the community’s feedback on our proof-of-concept. There are 3 pages you can visit:
- bankrank.io, where you can see a demo gif and read about some features.
- bankrank.io/search, where you can search and compare products.
- bankrank.io/waitlist, where you can read more about the premium product we’re building, and signup to join the alpha version when it launches (u can also access it via the “coming soon!” tags on the landing page).
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/churning/wiki/index/.
[1] https://www.nerdwallet.com/best/banking/best-online-banks-of....
A: Demonstrating a (1) solution to a (2) problem that (3) users will pay for. Katzgrau's response outlines exactly how to solve those 3 requirements. This helps get fundraising from VCs and new customers.
> And how does one go about the above without giving away enough information about the proposal to simply jot down, hire the relevant experts, and execute as if the idea is their own
A: It is a waste of time to worry about this question. If your solution is so fragile that sharing the process of how it solves the problem makes it vulnerable to competitors, you're probably missing something. Why wouldn't the experts have already solved the problem? If you're smarter than the experts, then you don't need to worry about the "relevant experts", and u should be able to share your idea freely. If it really is a good solution, then as soon as you make your first sale people are going to copy you, so you need to have something to distinguish yourself besides being the first mover.
But let me share what makes the field thrilling for me:
Accounting is a universal language for valuing time. Clocks allow us to measure time, but accounting allows us to assign time value. It, quite literally, allows us to compare apples to oranges (or Apple to Amazon).
This is important because time is the single most valuable resource any of us have. It's both the scarcest resource and the most liquid, but it's only liquid in one direction. Time can be exchanged for anything: food, drink, entertainment, love, death. But nothing can be exchanged for more time in my life.
We can, however, exchange our time for the time of others. Without being able to do this, our quality of lives would be terrible. But how many of my programming-hours is worth a T-shirt? How many chai-latte-making-hours is worth a heart transplant? It's not enough to count the hours, we have to assign value to the hours. Accounting is the system and language we use to value different units of time. It's a universally applicable language that is consistent in its application. It applies to a child running a lemonade stand and trillion dollar multinationals. Whether you're a charity or a bank, a government or a revolutionary, the rules of accounting are applicable to whatever it is that you're doing, whatever is it that you've done in the past, and whatever it is that you'll do in the future.
Currently, I work as a software engineer for a fintech company, and I find that the most fun I have at work is engineering something from scratch. Thinking of the architecture, mocking up the algorithms, and implementing a new solution to a problem is vastly more thrilling than maintaining existing systems or hotfixing minor bugs. Yet, the bulk of my job is maintaining systems that other people built. And, if I'm being honest, sometimes boring.
Similarly, the thrill of accounting is in learning how to more appropriately account for transactions, new goods, or new services. How should we account for someone who mines a crypto currency? How should we account for someone who trades a crypto but doesn't mine it? How do we account for auto insurance for self-driving cars? These are the thrilling aspects of accounting.
But for the bulk of the job, it's probably a bit boring. Working on a team to fix other people's technical mistakes. Reviewing documentation, getting access to various systems. Sounds a bit like software engineering!
2. Avoid alcohol within 2 hours of sleep. Alcohol worsens the quality of sleep, and while you may feel relaxed, it’s more of a physical sedation rather than a sleep aid.
3. Drink more water. More than you think. A general rule of thumb is to drink your body weight in ounces: if you weigh 150lbs, drink 150 ounces daily.
4. Avoid using social media, and if you can't, at least avoid using it for entertainment. Social media can create negative psychological stress, and it’s usually a distraction — which can cause anxiety if it’s used as a tool for procrastination. We have mobile devices capable of voice, video, and text communication. Social media is a distraction.
5. Wake up a few hours before you have to go to work and do something which is personally stimulating. I like to play an (easy!) game of sudoku, read, or work on a personal project.
6. Run Outside. Do this before work if possible. Running can act as a mental cleanser of sorts, and gives you an opportunity to meditate/think/reflect. It also helps keep your natural rhythm in check, let’s you blow off steam, and makes it easier to fall asleep at night if you physically exert yourself.
7. Ween yourself off of caffeine if you drink more than 1 cup per day, and don’t drink after 11am. Caffeine can negatively impact sleep quality, and on days when you are caffeine deficient, your stress and frustration levels will be unnaturally high. If you think you need caffeine, you don’t. You need more sleep and water.
8. Take inventory of the things you spend your time on, and determine whether they are energy-positive or energy-negative. Work is usually an energy-negative, but sleep and spending time with people you care about can be energy-positive. Try to switch out as many energy-negative tasks with energy-positive. For instance, I recently quit playing video games because I noticed I would get overly consumed with them, and instead of giving me energy, I’d feel drained because I spent time grinding a useless achievement or item. Instead, I’ve replaced that time with hanging out with friends and reading more, which are things that make me feel recharged.
With regards to building a habit, the Nike slogan is particularly relevant: Just Do It. Set alarms for each day to stop drinking, to go to bed, to wake up, to run, to stop drinking coffee. It sucks for the first few weeks, but if you just do it, it’ll become a habit. Saying no and prioritizing yourself is probably the most difficult part of developing a habit, but it’s essential.
Hope this helps. Managing stress is difficult, but it pays dividends. The fact that you’re looking to more effectively manage your stress is a healthy sign, so best of luck.
I know that YC has also funded Lambda School, which offers a data science course, but their payment model is based primarily on ISAs. Did you consider ISA payment plans, and if so, why did you go with the flat fee? If not, do you think you would want to move to an ISA payment system as you scale?
Congratulations on the launch and best of luck!
> To complaints of a job poorly done, one often hears the excuse, “I am not responsible.” I believe that is literally correct. The man who takes such a stand in fact is not responsible; he is irresponsible. While he may not be legally liable, or the work may not have been specifically assigned to him, no one involved in a job can divest himself of responsibility for its successful completion.
1. Do you think there's an opportunity for you to obtain 3rd-party insurance on deposits, as a sort of middle ground between uninsured deposits and FDIC?
2. How/why did you choose to partner with Fidelity?
3. Have you launched on any other financially-focused websites? If so, how was your product received by those crowds?
4. Out of curiosity, what tech are y'all building with?
Best of luck!
I find it slower having to switch between viewing different screens or moving my head, yet I'm the only one in my friend group who does this -- everyone else seems to prefer dual monitors.
I'm curious if HN people find that dual monitors feel like more of a distraction, and if it's at all related to multitasking.
Total Hours of College: 4 years, of which 2 years are "core" coursework and 2 years are general education.
2 Years * 2 semesters per year * 15 weeks per semester * 15 credit hours per week = 900 hours for a degree.
Lambda School: 6 months * 4 weeks per month * 40 hours per week = 960.
Obviously this doesn't account for a number of variables such as 0-credit "mandatory" labs, out-of-class work/projects/studying, but a Lambda student who spends an extra 5-10 hours per week during the program would end up with 1000-1200 total hours.
But this still ignores the main advantage of a program like Lambda, which is the ISA. An education that would be inaccessible to students at the margin -- think people who can't afford to move to a university, qualify for loans, or take 2+ years off of work -- can get in if they're committed enough. Even if Lambda were a total scam, at worst you're out 6 months and $0. If Local State University doesn't get you a job, you're out 4 years and $50k+.
Just curious, what's your tech stack, how long have you been working on it, and how many users do you have?
For tech companies, the important thing is to understand the breakdown of your total costs: fixed and variable. Compare MoviePass to another tech company like Facebook. They both have similar fixed costs like rent, servers, and developers, but Facebook's variable costs per user are bytes of data which cost fractions of a penny, whereas MoviePass had larger variable costs per person because they actually had to buy the movie tickets as "inventory". You can pay a single developer a fixed salary per year whether 10 people are running their software or 10 million people, but your costs will be vastly different if your users see 10 movies per year compared to 10 million. MoviePass was gaining $10 per month per user, but since each user was costing more than $10 per month, no amount of scale would have saved them.[0] This is very different from companies who have virtually zero variable costs and actually increase in profitability (and valuation) from each additional user they recruit.
[0] Unless they pivoted, renegotiated costs, or added other sources of revenue.
But that's a pretty big if ;)
When I read these rules, I thought of a potentially amusing tax loophole with regards to the stolen property section:
>Stolen property. If you steal property, you must report its fair market value in your income in the year you steal it unless in the same year, you return it to its rightful owner.
There's another rule[0] on the books that says interest-free loans to friends and family can have tax implications, but if your friend/family _steals_ the money from you and repays it later that year, they could potentially get a short-term, interest-free loan without incurring the tax implications. I'd have to dig into the details to see if this would actually work out, but it's an entertaining thought exercise nonetheless.
The short answer is theoretically, yes, but in practice, it's not always practical to have transparent financial reporting.
For context, financial reporting is a tradeoff between cost and effectiveness. Whenever you're reading audited financial statements, you're reading an accounting professional's opinion which would be reasonable given a certain level of constraints. In theory, auditors could audit every facet of an organization and obtain 99.99% assurance, but the financial cost of doing so typically doesn't make sense for the company nor shareholders.
Of the reduced disclosures, the most significant is not having their internal controls audited. For a big company, this is a red flag because the financial accounts are only reasonable if you also have reasonable assurance that there are controls in place to prevent fraud and that they're working effectively.
But for smaller companies where most of the ownership is usually owned by founder-workers, employees, or early investors who are monitoring it on the ground level, there aren't many benefits from increased reporting over internal controls because if they are committing fraud, they'd mostly be defrauding themselves! That, combined with the fact that most early stage companies are already resource-constrained, makes regulators a bit more lenient because they assume investors/employees know what they're getting themselves into.
Now, when a company decides to go public, they need some time to adopt best practices and comply with broader regulations. That takes time, so regulators give them a few years to get the personnel and processes in place without penalizing them. But to cover their bases, they're required to make disclosures like above, so that early investors buying into the IPO know that they won't have similar levels of assurance about the financials for a few years.
But once certain startups turn into big companies with hundreds of millions of users, with computing needs that they’ve come to intimately understand, it can be far more efficient to set up computing infrastructure designed exactly with those needs in mind.
But once the constraints of a userbase are more established, it should be easier to migrate off these platforms, since their pricing is optimized for users of all business sizes and use cases, whereas your specific hardware can be optimized for your specific users.
My biggest question is whether cloud providers could achieve a scale where they are able to offer the most optimal infrastructure costs for specific businesses. Maybe this is the case for smaller or mid-size companies, but I'd be interested to see where the inflection point lies.
Remote: I'm open to remote and in-person work
Willing to relocate: Yes
Technologies: Typescript, React, Redux, Node
Résumé/CV: https://resume.creddle.io/resume/auzseqpdwxy
Email: acalderaro [ a@t ] protonmail.com
Location: Washington, DC / Northern VA
Remote: Yes (or in person)
Willing to relocate: Yes
Technologies: Typescript, React, Redux, Jest, NodeJS, AWS (Certified Associate Developer), Relational DBs(PostgreSQL), Non-relational DBs(Mongo, Fauna, Firestore)
Résumé/CV: https://resume.creddle.io/resume/auzseqpdwxy
Email: acalderaro@protonmail.com
I'm a former public-accountant-turned-developer and I'm passionate about financial technology. I'm open to working for all types of companies, but I have a strong preference to fintech.
The rule that Assets = Liabilities + Equity is important because Liabilities and Equity can be viewed as opposing forces. Notwithstanding the financial engineering and nuance around debt, liabilities in their purest sense are a balance of how much you've taken beyond what you've earned, while equity is a measurement of how much you've earned beyond what you've taken. The assets show what you have, but L&E show how everything was acquired.
As I get older, I've come to appreciate how accounting also serves as a prism through which to view the world, because the financial concepts that apply to billion dollar businesses also apply to small mom-and-pops and individuals. One can think of themselves as a company, of which they are the CEO and sole employee. They earn revenue (from a job), incur expenses, and may have physical assets (homes, cars, computers) or liabilities (student/car/home loans). Every decision that's made is financial in nature, and thinking about decisions as an exchange of money or time helps me prioritize what I do personally and professionally.
Accounting is a wonderfully beautiful system and I hope it becomes more common knowledge because it is absolutely fundamental to living in our modern time. The largest governments and businesses are bound by the same rules of accounting, and so are we -- whether we are aware of it or not.
Negative interest rates also that you get paid for taking out debt, which is a tremendous opportunity to buy something that costs $100 for less than $100, but because OP indicated their aversion to taking on debt, this puts them at a disadvantage.
>The acquisition of Wachovia by Wells Fargo was completed on December 31, 2008, after a government-forced sale to avoid Wachovia's failure
The Lambda model is set up to operate at scale -- and teaching people who don't want to get a career in tech or change their mind is baked into their operational model.
Generally speaking for well run, ethical companies, whose management actively try to do the right thing, unions add unnecessary redundancy and bureaucracy. When there is a sense of trust between employer and employee, communication flows between employees and managers, employee working conditions are safe and healthy, and compensation is reasonably fair. For companies that are shady and treat employees poorly, unions help enforce structured communication and transparency between managers and employees.
Usually I look for symptoms of bad management when hearing about employees who want to unionize. In tech, we can generally assume reasonable working conditions and pay, so Kickstarter unionizing screams “toxic management” for me, personally. I haven’t heard management’s defense, but ultimately the burden is on management to convince a majority of its employees that they don’t need a union. Clearly they haven’t, and given how easy it is to appease developers, this is particularly damning.