Zach Bruhnke (rhymes with monkey) - Software/Startup guy - dad joke teller and probably the reason we can't have nice things Co-Founder & CEO
@hmbradley
Today is a tough one -
@hmbradley
is shuttering its consumer programs. Not something I ever thought I would write. We're not done yet though, Now we're planning to deliver our products through other banks rather than building the consumer brand ourselves.
The next time a VC asks if I’m truly willing to play the long game I’m just going to tell them I’ve been on Twitter for over a decade and I just crossed 1k followers in 2021 🤣
@paulg
I lived with a friend in SF that was in wealth management at a very large old bank. He once told me he worked with “mostly second and third generation wealth”. When I asked why he simply said “There is no such thing as fourth generation wealth” 🤣
Im so delighted to know that many VCs have apparently found their “sweet spot” in value add by telling me, a literal banking expert, how the banking system works and which ~4 banks they roughly believe are safe to move funds into🙄
After a decade (literally) of me bugging the hell out of everyone I met who worked at
@Plaid
to build this I am SO happy to see it go live. Even if people don't realize it yet, this is big, and its a huge win for consumers. Congrats
@zachperret
@sweatystartup
I had two parents that I could literally count the games they missed on one hand. It had a profoundly positive impact on my life, can’t speak for their egos but I think I turned out pretty well 🤷♂️
@kevingibbon
assume all of your competitors have every single thing you share in a deck - its a safe assumption. Frankly though I'd hand all our competitors my deck anyways ... if they beat me at executing my own strategy I didn't deserve to win
@harryhurst
@pipe
we give every employee three offers at HMB - one with middle salary and middle equity, one with higher salary and lower equity and one with higher equity and lower salary. Let's each employee optimize for their own path and us to avoid awkward negotiations
I’d like to apologize in advance if you have a call scheduled with me in the next couple of months … I have a new co-worker who’s going to be a trainee for a while I think …
I’m super happy for
@williamhockey
and the team at
@columnbank
but I’m even more excited that I’ll stop getting texts from random people in Fintech saying “I heard one of the plaid guys bought a bank!! Do you know anything about that?!” 🤣 - William truly living the dream here
Just walked into a
@firstrepublic
branch to get a cashiers check for a truck I’m buying and it’s business as usual, manager overheard me tell the person I was working with that I bought some shares, walks over and hands me some swag, still love First Republic, may buy more now 🤣
OK ChatGPT is insane, I asked it to build a simple HTML and CSS webpage and it did, so then I asked it to convert it to nextjs using typescript and tailwindui and it did. literally took me more time to register the domain than it did to have the site built
Friday thoughts ... what if
@_HMBradley
paid your 3% APY but you also had the option to get it in Crypto? what would you choose? BTC? ETH? Something else?
@Austen
Almost certainly the most likely outcome, Greg is still building daily (just look at his tweets) they both live and breathe this, two brilliant billionaires with chips on their shoulders will literally be unstoppable. First company to reach 10 Trillion valuation seems doable ...
I'm not gonna lie the DMs from this tweet are 🔥🤣 I have clearly struck a chord here - I guess follow me for more hot takes from tired founders with two week old children at home keeping them up at night!
Im so delighted to know that many VCs have apparently found their “sweet spot” in value add by telling me, a literal banking expert, how the banking system works and which ~4 banks they roughly believe are safe to move funds into🙄
Money 20/20 was wild as always, great seeing all of you and looking forward to a night of sleeping in my own bed, also now that the cats out of the bag on what we’re up to at HMB, if you’re thinking about launching a deposit product and want to build on a real-time event driven
A nice surprise on the first day back to work in 2021
@Forbes
names
@_HMBradley
best newcomer of 2020, honored to be included on this list but still so much more to do, good to see
@mlevchin
and
@Affirm
hanging out with us there too!👋 ?
We're making moves at
@_hmbradley
- you should join us too so you can work with amazing folks like
@sairarahman
- Fireworks to follow (but not the start a forest fire kind!)
Trying an Experiment - I've gotten a several messages in the last few days with great feedback, if you were an
@simple
customer and you're looking for a replacement spend an hour on the phone with me talking about how
@_HMBradley
could be that for you I'll pay you $100 - DMs open
Legit feel like I am living
@dhh
’s life right now!
@Apple
just rejected an update of our app because it had a signup link leading to our site. Removed,rejected! It’s a free bank account but the app is only for customers, it has a bugfix for updating PINS for our customers ... wtf
Sometimes when I lie awake at night I’m comforted by the fact that if all else fails I can raise
@hmbradley
’s next round by taking calls about
@usealloy
@sardineai
@hello_orum
@astra_finance
and the whole compliance gang from all the“expert” networks 🤦♂️
Proud Founder Moment:
@sairarahman
getting some much deserved recognition - She's a rockstar! come work with her – also me ... but mostly just her and the rest of this team
@_HMBradley
!
I finally feel like we live in the future ... literally yo can tweet at City leaders and end up with an inbox full of DMs about why their city is the right fit for you and your business - can't believe this site is free lol
@harryhurst
If Josh Diamond and Walkabout doesn’t end up on here life doesn’t make sense ... he doesn’t have a Twitter but easily the highest value add investor I’ve ever met ... I literally bought and forwarded it to Walkabouts site 😂
Dear
@AppleCard
- if you're listening, I can help you pull off the most baller move of all time and we have the tech to build a WAY better product than GS did ... sorry
@arfrank
😘
Anyone else find it ironic that the same idiots that were shilling DeFi less than a year ago are now manufacturing bank runs and pushing for even more FDIC insurance after insisting it was essentially unnecessary then? I wish we had more people acting rationally right now
I was talking to a company today who floated the idea of
@_HMBradley
helping revive an iconic brand in finance … I can’t stop thinking about how amazing this collab could be … which leads me to thinking, what’s the brand you wish you could bring back to life?
not to mention at least 1 of the options many are recommending has literally taken on among other things subordinated debt at the parent company level months ago and I bet none of them have ever even picked up a call report or know what that means or why to be worried about it
Just released a feature today that let's you build your own "paycheck" from a series of external accounts on a scheduled basis so you can fund your retirement or follow a plan from your financial advisor - I'm guessing your current bank cannot do this 😎
OK so hear me out ... what if WSB traders just HOLD and then one of them forms a fund allows others to buy in and they take their (rightful) controlling stake in $GME ... this would be the LITERAL version of Occupy Wall Street - WSB could build the next $BRK.A by HODLing
When
@sama
was president of YC he stepped into a situation where another alum was saying untruthful things about me.
I sent him a facebook message asking for help, he responded within five mins and got on the phone with our investors to de-escalate. He's an absolute class act
CA DFI, FDIC, Treasury, FED, Ny DFS, White House: work through weekend tirelessly to strike a deal that protects Americans
Podcast hosts who’ve been screaming fire in a crowded theater for several days: PHEW, THANK GOD WE USED THE CAPS LOCK, GLAD WE SAVED THE US FROM FAILURE!
I really love it when our customers advertise for us ... I’d much rather pay them interest than give Zuck advertising dollars 🤷♂️ ... it’s even better that they tell their friends!
Just Imagine being a fly on the wall in the board meeting where Jack floated buying Tidal
Board: What's the reasoning in buying a business with substantially no users or perceived brand value to the general population for $250M?
Jack: YOLO
Board: Got it - Let's do this!
@mikulaja
I know you did not ask me, but FWIW "Runway" is not the problem in our case, we raised an additional 13M in July, but it was focused on the B2B opportunity, we have what should amount to years of runway post shutting the consumer programs
@tconrad
@hnshah
Ladies and Gentlemen THIS is why
@tconrad
is an absolute legend ... nice way to handle things with class 👏🏻 ... taking chances is never easy but taking as many as he has is more than admirable. Luckily for him (and all of us) many have paid off quite well for him
Just read Fintech Takes from
@AlexH_Johnson
this AM on our pivot
@hmbradley
and I have to say, that's a take I can truly live with - Thanks for the kind words Alex!
I’d like to take this time to announce that
@_HMBradley
has entered into a preliminary agreement to acquire substantially all of the assets of which has absolutely nothing to do with another fintech’s acquisition of a music startup ...what a coincidence 🤷♂️
Who do I have to sell my soul to in order to get this
@fintechtoday_
hat?! Seems like every other fintech infrastructure company is begging to put an
@_HMBradley
logo on their website and you clearly stole the _ from us … what gives
@iankar_
we get no love?!
@ericbahn
I wonder why you feel this way? Plenty of kids in impoverished states get high or perfect scores, my family was FAR from rich and I always tested well, including SAT and PSAT
This is a really great read on a really great company -
@lithic
is building a quiet giant, add to that
@bolingj
is just a great dude and probably my favorite person to grab a drink with when I'm in NYC (sorry
@Jordyalbert
!) and I could not be happier for this team - LFG
You may not know
@lithic
. Until recently, it was privacy dot com.
In May, it announced an Amazonian move: delivering the card issuing & processing infrastructure it built for itself via an API.
Now, it's worth $800M and growing like a 💳🚀
If you’re a founder just avoid listening to VCs and build a business … if you have conviction that’s all that matters, if you’re looking for VCs to help you build it you’re already screwed
What's up with "grown" men crying on Twitter about how important they are lately? Is there something in the water? Mercury in Retrograde? Like we get it bro, you're super important and successful but like can't we all just get along?
@Austen
High school … I had a distinct realization … I was not smarter or more motivated necessarily. I just had better parents … kids I went to high school with MUCH smarter than me are likely now in prison. That will change your whole mindset about why people do the things they do
Jeff Bezos said "Your margin is my opportunity" not "Your shitposting is my opportunity" so I'm just going to keep doing what I do and you keep doing what you do ... Thanks for coming to my TED talk everyone!
@iankar_
Probably because of the amount of fraud it fuels for banks ... it’s one of the biggest sources of Reg E disputes across multiple fraud consortiums 🤷♂️
adding an account number to plans and wiring funds from
@hmbradley
went live on the web app today.
You can now generate an account number for a plan and wire/ach money directly from or to it too!
Every day we're getting closer to a million of the things we've been dreaming
I just had a realization that I recruit employees similarly to how Tiger invests in companies and I think I have decided I have even more respect for their process now because while it might seem "fast" a lot of work goes into it and they are definitely playing the long game
Can we also talk about how dumb it is that things like my car insurance and mortgage asks for “education level”? I mean I finished high school over a decade and a half ago but wtf does that have to do with anything and what about all the shit I’ve learned in the last 15 years?!
Originally read this as “Standard Treasury meet up in Miami” and realized that I’ve been in Fintech too long and am so old that I know way too many people in it when I immediately thought to myself … “wow
@dkimerling
and
@ztownsend
have really gone down that Miami rabbit hole”
Did
@Wealthfront
just lower your rate to 0.10% too? Not all is lost yet! I've got 100 invites that will bump you to 3% as soon as your first Direct Deposit hits - use my code to signup!
Whoa. What a time it is in finance/banking
Depository institutions are so flush with cash (with nowhere to deploy it) that they’re in a position to stop paying neobanks/robos for deposits
The hunt for yield continues
For those that saw my talk at
#fintechdevcon
and thought I was kidding I got this email this morning … so please just sign up for
@_HMBradley
so I can become the man my Yacht Broker already thinks I am 🤣🤦♂️
Honest question…am I the only one that like does NOT try to calculate the paper returns of my Angel portfolio?!
I’m just over here like hey look that’s roulette/craps money Its on the table, if the dealer tells me I won I’m excited, but I’m not counting my chips at the table🤷♂️
this is your friendly neighborhood PSA to stop running on your banks, SVB did not deserve this and neither does First Republic
no one has lost money (insured or otherwise) in a bank failure in the US since 1982, just keep calm and carry on folks
I wonder how much more money
@ycombinator
may have made by including a ROFR to invest in future companies of founders at an early stage fixed valuation. My Batch (W12) alone now has founders of some of the best startups out there, can think of 2 in AI now and its been 11 years!
@NWischoff
I think I'd certainly put
@firstround
and specifically
@joshk
firmly in that category (though I've never convinced them to give me any money so far 🤣)
Next week
@zbruhnke
will be speaking at the Moov community happy hour on "The opportunities and obstacles in building a challenger bank"
If you're in Fintech you won't want to miss this talk and Q&A. Signup Here:
btw if you're an
@venmo
user and reading this you should sign up for
@_hmbradley
instead and earn up to 3% APY, get these same CC benefits AND boost your savings tier APY if you're spending at least $100/month on the card