Nexves.com has had a great founding year: by year-end we will have already achieved, or be in the process of achieving, the following: Scottish EDGE Wildcard Winner, grown to a team of 3, BETA on pre-registered users devices, developing a concept for a TV show with interest from National Broadcasters and participating in RBS Fintech and Elevator accelerators. We still have a very long way to go. 2018 was about creating the infrastructure needed to succeed, 2019 is about beginning to deliver on our potential.
This is day 1 for open banking and, if we execute on our vision, for Nexves.com. Today FinTech companies are innovating around existing products and services to create a better customer experience, tomorrow they will need to do far more. The first wave of challenger banks has amassed huge user numbers by doing little more than providing a more functional user interface, the next leap forward will come from enabling things which were previously impossible. That’s our goal. The future we imagine is akin to a Netflix of Financial services. Fintechs are on the brink of offering consumers a personalised menu of products instead of one-size-fits-all services. The more that the complexity of switching etc. can be abstracted away, the better for the end user.
We have a window of opportunity afforded to us by a unique confluence of circumstances. The unlocked door to previously inaccessible data endows customers with the chance to receive insights into their spending habits which could save them a fortune. Our goal is to move quickly and take advantage of this by creating a platform for mass consumer benefit through radical transparency. Our mission is to make every single person in the world pay the lowest price possible for all their bills and expenses, this drives every choice we make. We see significant opportunities in the markets we are targetting, with the feedback received from both traditional and challenger banks inspiring confidence in that belief. We must lean into that vision in 2019.
**_We are Focussed on the Long Term_**The fundamental measure of our success will be in both the amount of money we keep and put in our users’ pockets. This value will be as a direct result of our ability to deliver simple products which people use and understand. The more money we keep in our users’ pockets > the higher they will value our service > the more they will trust us to deliver services which are of greater financial benefit. That won’t be achieved over night.
The choices we have made reflect this focus. We make decisions today which will be the most advantageous or beneficial to our customers tomorrow. Instead of rushing out a product which might have delivered more value than products which already exist, we obsessed over small details which will ensure our users are blown away. There are a number of key innovations that enable us to achieve things that no other company in the world can match. Mostly, this is through our ability to acquire a level of data which is exponentially more granular than our nearest competitors — enriching our intelligence and insights to an extent which was previously unimaginable.
Nexves is currently and is likely to remain a remote distributed business. We see our pipeline for talent developing towards the most awesome, world-class people who don’t want to live or work in large cities for bureaucratic faceless corporations. We aim to be a leading figure in the evolution away from expected norms for working conditions and locations giving more choice.
**External Factors**The external factors which affect our decision making are the things which people outside the company have found interesting, we thought they would be valuable to share. Internally, we take extensive measures to ensure we are abreast of forthcoming technological developments and trends. This is with the hope that we are able to develop a cohesive vision of the future in which we will operate and develop products and service for it. [Our 2018 reading list: https://hackernoon.com/a-cryptopunk-startup-founders-2018-reading-list-a52c7fb6bc0a]
- The internet as it currently exists will capitulate. The revenue model of advertising only will give way to a distributed model of digital taxation. This will take the form of metered-micropayments for all products, services or content you consume online — compensating creators equal to your engagement. Where industries have died, digital tokens will enable those things which acquire most attention to thrive. Cryptocurrency has been fascinating but we are currently in the replication phase — where people are trying to reinvent what currently exists — instead of doing things with blockchain and cryptocurrency which were previously impossible. We hope to imagine then deliver the latter.
- Peer to peer has been awesome for platform creators but terrible for gig economy workers. As Ubers Valuation has skyrocketed into the hundreds of Billions, rewards for drivers have plummetted. In short, the compensation for providing the service and maintaining the platforms are misaligned. This will change. Service providers will be rewarded with equity in the underlying business through new fractional ownership models. Every trip will equate to a higher stake of ownership. Drive more? Own more.
- Last mile delivery is about to explode. It’s relatively cheap to get a large volume of goods from one geographic location to another but It’s ridiculously expensive to get it from one place in that city to a large number of addresses. Look for there to be a number of VC backed players emerge in this space in the next 18 months. They will initially tie together D2C companies and their community, enabling those businesses to leverage the engagement of the crowd to let their customers benefit and lower delivery costs significantly. I guarantee a unicorn emerges in this domain by 2020.
- Crowdfunding is dead, long live crowdfunding. Investing in equity is prehistoric, consumer purchasing behaviour will become a new form of investing. Voting with your wallet will mean owning through your decisions. Buy something, own it, buy more, own more. Instead of purchasing stocks and shares, everyday consumers will accrue ownership of the futures most exciting companies through their existing purchasing behaviour. This means that the can of coke you are drinking would be a tiny fraction of equity in the business, equally the chocolate bar in your pocket or the soap in your bathroom. Wealth will be redistributed. Where in the past the only beneficiaries of our actions were the shareholders in the business which produced the things we consume — there will be a mass reaction against this. Technology will enable a swarm of individuals to cohesively act as one for mutual economic benefit. This will give rise to co-operatively owned brands which produce a vast number of the things we consume. People will be incentivised to act as selfishly as possible, benefitting everyone who does so as well.
That is the world in which we see Nexves playing a central part. In order to participate in this cyclical economy, we need a digital passport which collects our data, protects it, lets you monetise it while enabling the payments alluded to above. We need a mechanism which enables us to hold the equity we earn through our behaviour and access markets to cash out when we desire. We layer on top of any existing bank account and will be the thing which facilitates your participation — Circa 2023.
Strong opinions weakly held is the worst advice we’ve ever heard. Things that are weakly held are cheaply discarded and doing this leads to uncertainty. Instead, continuously challenging the things we believe — either destroying or improving them — is the framework we operate within. Candour is the most efficient vehicles which enable us to discover things as a startup and challenge conventionally held belief or the dogma which holds others back.
Our challenges for 2019 are the following:
- Engage more fully with traditional banks and articulate clearly the ethical and moral benefits of saving their customers £Billions a year. The amount of money we could save the most exploited demographic is astronomical. At a minimum, from incredibly conservative estimates, in the UK alone, the figure is above £4Billion. BILLION. That is one customer segment. A year, every year.
- Public launch of Nexves is planned for the end of Q1 2019. Know someone who could benefit from a check of their bills and expenses and could appreciate paying a far lower price for them? We need referrals, a lot of them. Nexves works at scale due to the network effect of each new user acting as a check on the data we already have. Every person helping ensure the other pays less and each additional ensuring our data is up to date and correct.
- Media attention is a pre-requisite of the above. We need to talk to journalists, speak at conferences, build our public profile to help gain recognition as the pre-eminent team fighting for the rights of consumers. We exist to save everyone money. Our business model and the way we benefit is aligned fully with our consumers, always. We don’t take kickbacks from the companies we suggest you switch to — like comparison sites — we tell you when you are paying too much, for free. If you want us to do it for you, we take a small subscription instead of the opaque way in which alternative services operate. We give users the best deal possible.
- World class talent — Data scientists, front and backend engineers, product and community managers, UX designers, customer relationship experts — if you know someone who would flourish building the future of finance, introduce them to us. We intend to grow the team in the new year and need to best people in the world — people who improve the average strength of the team not just help us stay the same.
Everyone at Nexves is grateful to the contribution you have made on our journey so far and wishes you a happy Christmas and a fruitful New Year. If there is anything contained within you would like to discuss, something you need help or advice with or anything we can do to assist you on your journey reach out and we would be delighted to assist.
Equally, if you can help us with any of the above, through advice, suggestions or introductions we would love to have a chat
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Chris HerdFounderNexves