Starting up a Product that customers love: 5 lessons by Monzo
Notes on Monzo approach to Product development
Monzo has hit Londoners’s wallets by storm. Their sleek app and shiny card are gaining popularity at an impressive speed, and the young fintech startup has been recently granted license to become an actual bank.
Next to the obvious advantages that the company has to offer to its customers (instant spending notifications, budget management, no fee on foreign currency payments, simplicity and ease to use,..), there are several things happening at their offices worth looking at closely. I’m going to share some of them here with you.
Few days ago I attended a Show&Tell session by Monzo, co-organised by them and the Product community JAM.
The session took place next to Monzo’s new offices at Shoreditch, in what I assume was their building’s shared meeting space. The pile of tables on the side of the room and the mess of chairs below the small projector made the venue look as raw as you could expect from any hardworking and unpretentious startup. Craft beer and pizzas helped making it cozy, and it was crowded shortly after they opened doors.
Ole Mahrt, Monzo’s Head of Product took the stage right after Mathilde from JAM gave the intro.
Before moving forward I’d like to note that I have no business relation to Monzo, and that my experience with the company is limited to that of a user. I own a Monzo card since I saw Hugo Cornejo (Monzo’s Head of Design) give an impressive and hilarious presentation at another JAM event in late 2016.
Here are my personal notes and highlights of the session:
1) Know where you stand
Monzo is no traditional bank, and that’s crystal clear for both the company and its users. They don’t need to spend much time or resources on sharing their vision. The App speaks for itself. The friendly and emoji-rich interface is centered on the very few but important things anybody wants to do or know about their money. It’s precisely these things that traditional banks struggle to offer on their often outdated and try-to-be-everything solutions. Ole emphasised how important is to focus on doing very few things very well (rather than try to half-bake too much). Quoting Ole:
Once I worked at a startup whose CEO told us we had to “focus broadly”. That company doesn’t exist anymore.
2) Obsessively data-driven
Ole pointed out the importance of tracking everything that happens in the App since the very first day, when they only had 1 single screen. That obsession for data is the basis for a simple yet solid product that is ready to iterate fast. Monzo runs a “Product Council” every other Friday to review and act on metrics for newly launched features. Their public Operational Status page gives us another hint into Monzo’s obsession for measuring and transparency, of what I tell you more below.
Monzo also relies on experimentation to help them validate hypothesis and steer when needed. After some internal discussions on how much the initial card top-up could affect new customer retention, they decided to A/B test asking for £25 or £100. It turns out there was no significant difference.
3) Full (in & out) transparency
Last Sunday 5th March and for almost the entire day, Monzo and few other fintech startups suffered from an outage at a 3rd party service. As many other fintech companies at early stage, Monzo has not fully developed their infrastructure yet, thus they depend on external parties for processing payments.
Customers got in all kinds of troubles due to this outage (I found myself getting my groceries’ payment declined), but the mood at Monzo’s Twitter feed was far from that of an angry mob. Checking at their Twitter handle for some info about what was going on, I was amazed to see few negative messages largely outnumbered by customers sharing positive vibes.
Monzo sent notifications informing about the issue and advising customers to take another card if they were to go out. They were also fast to publicly reply every customer query and to update on the status of the outage in pretty much real time.
In fact, Monzo’s transparency goes far beyond proactive customer communication when outages. They recently launched a Transparency Dashboard in order to become as open as possible in diverse topics like internal investment, System status or Product Development. They also share their roadmap, and as a Product Manager I love this initiative. It positions Monzo far from the idea of traditional banks’ opaque agendas and it shows a courage and determination that helps keeping customers engaged despite being early days.
In order to have external transparency, it’s essential to foster that principle from within. To cite an example shared by Ole, at Monzo every email gets forwarded to an inbox everyone has access to. That way they can ensure nobody has privileged information and that everybody is on the same page when it comes to anything relevant.
4) Build community. And let community build you
Community plays a very important role at Monzo. Just by the fact of offering their product as “Beta” they can attract crowds of curious tech-savvy early adopters. Their active role in meetups, Product and UX events also helps them spreading the voice within that type of audience. Ole mentioned a couple of examples on how they listen to people; a great one is their also open Ideas Board.
Ole was sharp in remarking how careful one has to be when listening to customers’ feedback, and how that needs to be complemented by other means and research methods to inform the roadmap.
5) Trust your people
Startup products and deliverables are often heavily lead by their founders, who frequently ask to review and sign off any release. It is absolutely understandable that the founder of a company wants to shape his/her creation as he/she has envisioned; however that doesn’t seem to be the case at Monzo, where, as Ole mentioned, the founder will often be happily surprised discovering a new feature. Trust and transparency are ingrained to the extent of taking for granted that anyone will do what is right for the company.
Another great thing about internal transparency is that it reduces the need for strong direct supervision. Your work will be always visible and exposed to peer (or any other internal stakeholder) feedback, which triggers a virtuous circle of quality.
I have tried to be as objective as possible, but I have to admit I’m starting to grow some attachment to the emojis showing up on my notifications after I buy something.
I can’t tell whether Monzo will become a full-scale mainstream bank anytime soon. I will be honest to say that I doubt it, and I think they do too. Their intention is not to become the next Barclays or Santander, far from it, I want to think their intention is to help people tired of dealing with Barclays and Santander. The challenge is that people are used to deal with those banks, and we humans are creatures of habit. It’s a bold and brave goal to revolutionise banking from within. I dare to say it’s an almost heroic epic to achieve. But if there is anyone in a good position to achieve the feat, it is Monzo.
It’s going to be a long journey, a journey that thousands of people have already taken together with Monzo. I don’t know for how long, but I will follow them quite far if they keep down this road. Dare to join?
Thanks for your time, and as always, feel free to share thoughts, ideas or suggestions if you found this read useful.
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