From funny memes and juicy gossip, to inspiring TED Talks and handy life hacks, we love seeing information and ideas spread.
We’re lucky that our amazing customers play a big part in bringing Monzo to more and more people, by helping us spread the word. We started the year with 100,000 users and, as it comes to a close, almost half a million of you are now using your hot coral cards to spend and manage your money.
Since joining us a few months ago, Jordan has been focussed on helping all our customers to upgrade their accounts!
Tell us a bit about what you do here.
I’m the Product Manager for growth, which covers anything related to expanding the number of customers we have. It also means doing things like encouraging people to activate their cards, to use Monzo more regularly, or to refer their friends.
The Product team at Monzo is currently split into two parts: growth and retention. Each half isn’t equally weighted, and the focus on each changes according to our goals as a company.
At the moment, my main focus is on helping our entire user base (that’s almost half a million people!) to upgrade their Monzo accounts. We’ve designed the experience so that getting a current account is as simple as possible, and in just a few taps, everyone will be able to upgrade.
Your current account comes with a sort code, account number and a new hot coral debit card. And you’ll be able to do things like set up Direct Debits and standing orders, make bank transfers and have your salary paid in straight to your account.
What does your day-to-day look like?
Making sure we’re building and shipping new releases in the app on schedule means working with a lot of people across many different teams in Monzo.
As well as the other product managers, I work closely with engineers, product designers and with the marketing team on everything from copy and communications to customer acquisition and growth.
For example, I work with our Financial Crime and Security Team to make sure our upgrade and signup processes meet the relevant legal requirements and are robust enough to help us prevent financial crime.
By starting conversations with our customers, I also make sure that their needs guide every decision we make at Monzo. I try to find out what they like about using Monzo, what they feel is missing, and what they think we need to improve, then use their feedback to shape the way we develop our product.
Together with the relevant teams, I then identify how we might solve these problems, figure out what’s feasible, and work out what we need to work on next. Then I come up with a strategy for how we can build it all!
What is growth and why’s it good for Monzo?
Growth doesn’t just mean trying to build our user base and bring Monzo to more and more new people. At the moment, it means making sure all our existing users are able to upgrade their accounts.
Once that’s done, things will really start to get exciting!
Golden tickets have worked really well so far, but they are also quite restricted: you can only invite one person per ticket, that person has to sign up before you’re given a new one, and you have to wait a while before you’re given your first golden ticket. I’m excited about building a better version that will help us spread the word about Monzo as far and wide as possible!
We’ll then be able start finding new ways to help people use Monzo as their primary bank account, or educating people about particular features so they can take advantage of everything Monzo has to offer.
And are there any challenges associated with growing quickly?
The challenge for us is making sure that we can scale at the same pace as our user base. We’ve grown an astonishing amount in the past few months, and we have to make sure we are growing the capacity of our team at a rate that can keep up.
What were you doing before you worked at Monzo?
I’ve worked at other startups, in music, tech and education. I’ve also done a few bitcoin side projects, and before that I was a professional musician.
If you weren’t at Monzo, what would you be doing?
Either travelling the world or starting a cryptocurrency startup of my own.
I’m interested in cryptocurrencies for some of the same reasons I like Monzo. I think bitcoin has the potential to be a more transparent, deceit-free monetary system, that could help make money and finance fairer. I believe that by building a transparent, ethical, user-first bank, Monzo has the capacity to do that too. What’s interesting is that Monzo has a much more viable (and not to mention beautiful) user experience. The problem with bitcoin is that there is no user experience that will allow a regular person not to worry about money.
Tell us something unexpected about yourself.
My surname is Fish and I used to swim for Britain.
Connect with us on Twitter or join the discussion on the community forum. To find out how to upgrade, watch our handy How to Monzo guide 👀
If you’d like to work with Jordan (and the rest of our talented team!) take a look at the open roles we have at Monzo.