20VC: Monzo's Tom Blomfield on The 3 Phases of Startup Scaling, The Secret To Building a 1.2m Community with No Advertising & How To Use Boards As A Tool To Instil Operational Excellence

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 30 November 2018

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tom Blomfield is the Founder & CEO @ Monzo, in it's simplest words, the bank of the future allowing you to open a full UK bank account in minutes, from your phone. To date, Tom has raised over $190m in funding for Monzo from the likes of Thrive, Accel, General Catalyst, Stripe, Mike Moritz and Goodwater just to name a few. As for Tom, prior to Monzo he was the Co-Founder of another of London's rocketship startups in the form of GoCardless and before that co-founded student marketplace Boso.com alongside Triplebyte Founder, Harj Taggar.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Tom made his way into the world of startups from University and came to found the bank of the future in Monzo?

2.) Why does Tom believe that scaling a company today can really be broken up into 3 distinct phases? What are those phases? How does what one needs for each phase differ accordingly? What elements has Tom found most challenging to navigate in the scale-up phase? Are there challenges or elements that are the same across every company?

3.) Why does Tom believe that product decision-making is both an art and a science? How does Tom determine when is the right time to add ancillary products? How can one really stress-test true customer love for the first product? How does Tom balance between product expansion vs geographical expansion? How does Tom balance between being customer-driven vs customer informed?

4.) Tom has grown Monzo to 1.2m users with virtually no advertising, how does Tom respond to the statement that there is a lack of free and open distribution today? What does Tom mean when he says "when it comes to customer acquisition you have to play a different game"? In building community, what have Monzo done so right? Where have they made mistakes? What have been some big lessons on early community building?

5.) Having raised over $190m in VC funding, what have been some of Tom's biggest lessons when it comes to fundraising? Why does Tom believe that so few boards are managed and run well? Where do they go wrong? What do great board managers do to run an efficient process? What does Tom mean when he says "use board meetings as a tool to instil operational excellence?"

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Tom’s Fave Book: The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Tom on Twitter here!

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to The 20 Minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings at H. Stebbings, 1996, on Instagram,
0:05.7	and there you can suggest both questions and guests for future episodes. But to our episode today,
0:10.7	and I have to say, I was so excited to record this one. First, I love, love, love the product. Second,
0:15.9	I've known the founder for a while now, and he's truly one of the great founders of Europe. And then third, this is the first
0:21.2	guest I've had on the show from the UK in over 500 episodes, so quite the milestone there. But without
0:26.4	further ado, I'm delighted to welcome Tom Blomfield, found and CEO at Monzo. In its simplest words,
0:31.8	Monzo is the Bank of the Future, allowing you to open a full UK bank account in minutes from your
0:37.0	phone.
0:48.1	And to date, Tom has raised over $190 million in VC funding for Monzo from the likes of Thrive, Excel, General Catalyst, Stripe, Mike Moritz, and Goodwater, just to name a few.
0:54.4	As for Tom, prior to Monzo, he was the co-founder of another of London's rocket ship startups in the form of go-cardless, and before that, co-founded Student Marketplace, Boso.com, alongside TripleByte founder, Hajj Tagar.
1:00.1	But before we dive into the show's day, I want to talk a little bit about hymns, and a fun fact
1:04.0	to start the day, did you know 66% of men start to lose their hair by the age of 35. So the main question for you is, do you want to wait for
1:11.3	a bald spot to pop up or do you want to do something about it first? I know my answer to that,
1:15.9	and that's where Hymns comes in. Hymns connects you with real doctors and medical grade solutions
1:20.2	to treat hair loss, and it's just so easy. With the products even being shipped to your door,
1:24.4	even better though, listeners of 20 VC get a trial month of HIMS for just $5 right now
1:29.4	while supplies last. Go to 4hymns.com slash 20VC. That's F-O-R-H-I-M-S.com slash 20VC. And thanks to my
1:38.5	friends at WePay, let me introduce you to another very cool player in the space we love.
1:42.9	AmeriCommerce. AmeriCommerce is an e-commerce
1:45.0	platform for high volume online stores and complex products. It's powerful and prograde by design. With it,
1:51.0	you can run one store or multiple stores with shared or separate inventory, manage wholesale and
1:55.5	retail, customized for specific customers or scenarios, and more. And because of this, it's particularly
	...

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