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Comment by shruubi | Hacker News Reader

I'll be honest, all these asides feel like there is some kind of explanation or big reveal that never comes. I can understand a bank identifying a large-sum account and wanting to look after them, being annoyed by that account moving banks as well as a local branch having to take precautions on such large withdrawals. But otherwise, I feel like I'm missing something here that isn't spelled out.

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The author is used to thinking of their bank account as an anonymous number, with operations handled impassively by whoever happens to be staffing the bank's reception desk that day. They probably never considered 35 million dollars to be an amount worth fussing over ("this is not a lot of money to a big bank, they'll barely notice").

The bank thinks of multi-million dollar business accounts as a deeply personal relationship between the CEO and account manager, where the AM takes the CEO to fancy dinners and golf outings and remembers the names of the CEO's children. HashiCorp's account might have been the largest that had ever been opened at that particular branch.

This article is an amusing(?) story about those two worldviews making contact.

I admit I was laughing at the part where he transferred out the $35mil and Alex called him.

Honestly I'm sure a lot of people on HN have experienced the "hey I just wanted to see how you were doing" call from their bank. Once you have >$100k in your chase accounts they'll start doing that.

But why would anyone have that much money in their Chase accounts? I keep a nominal amount of money in my chase account and send the bulk of my money to fidelity to throw into whatever investment vehicle I like. Sadly, I think you need to have $1mil at fidelity to get the same red carpet treatment chase will give you for $100k.

Having that kind of cash with Fidelity gives you a lot of perks, but you still need to keep an eye on them. My Fidelity guy is now a VP, but because of my balances he still handles my accounts personally. I've been with them for a while and my conclusion is that they are no better (and often worse) than I am at financial planning and wealth building. The economy is always changing, and the big sudden changes are the ones that usually catch everyone (including the experts) by surprise. What worked well five years ago doesn't work anymore. You'll never get the kind of attention and analysis from Fidelity (or any firm) that you can get from yourself if you are willing to put in the effort.

> Once you have >$100k in your chase accounts they'll start doing that.

Is there a good reason for this other than if you're about to buy a house or something? Most of my net worth is in investments; very little is in checking or savings, because it doesn't seem like there is any benefit to that.

Nope. And that's part of why they start calling you - to sign you up for CDs, money market accounts, etc. (I'm not sure if they get a commission for selling you into a locked investment, but I imagine they do). They probably also are trying to get you on a good credit card, get a mortgage with them, be the first place you come when you want to buy a car, etc.

I guess I'll note, I've never had that much in my personal account but I have a friend who did for a while (and a family member who also did). Personally, I canceled my chase account because a teller at the local branch was being a condescending dick to me. I assume because I didn't have that much money in my account lmao.

> Is there a good reason for this other than if you're about to buy a house or something?

Liquidity. FDIC insurance upto $250k. Of course, you don't want to put a big chunk of your money into a bank like this, but $100k is not a "big chunk of your money" to a lot of people, in relative terms.

I'm assuming your sentiment applies to HYSAs as well, which is the better place for this kind of thing.

Checking is the backing buffer for a queue of pending transactions. If you have one or two highly-compensated people in your family, and somewhat randomly-distributed large expenses (paying cash for a car, renovating a house, credit card bills after a vacation, etc), then $100k does not seem like an unusually large buffer size.

> But why would anyone have that much money in their Chase accounts?

They said in TFA they were just chugging along with the startup and didn’t know any better until hiring a finance person.

Obviously having $35m sitting in a bank account is less than optimal.

> >$100k in your chase accounts they'll start doing that.

Heh, not Wells Fargo.

After 20 years being a customer and carrying very large deposits they will charge you for a cahiers check at the window. After you politely ask for it to be waived (having worked for the bank knowing they can waive it for you), being declined by the manager on duty who handled the escalation, and responding "I need the check but if you charge me for this I will close my account" to the question "Do you still want the check for the fee?"; then they will start calling you after the 10k daily transfers out start.

got called by a Chase branch manager once it was over 30k (2022)

Hmm yea that doesn't surprise me. I really wasn't sure what the magic number was lol.

Says a lot about the level of service my credit union gives lol. I've had more than that in my account before and they never gave me special treatment. XD

Now I understand what's wrong, so he missed on a lot of cool stuff by just not engaging with Alex.

Doesn't seem like that a big of deal, but a bummer for sure!

It's more like "this Alex dude's entire career was at the whim of a naive young startup founder who was oblivious to this fact."

I'm thinking of that scene in Billy Madison where Steve Bucscemi is crossing names off a list. Poor Alex!

The only thing I was amused about was the fact that a 22 year old without any sort of work experience got 1 Million dollars just like that (and much more later on).

He turned it into a company that changed the industry and went public, so somebody made a good call.

Yes, it seems very business as usual.

I am more surprised about the founder lack of interest for bank and finance. It’s fully in his duty to know where his investor money is. And he seems to be careless about it.

Knowing it is all in a specific Chase account seems like a very simple way to always know exactly where your money is?

I mean the part with hundreds of thousands of fraud for months.

By that point he wasn't in charge of finances.

How the CFO can guess this wasn’t closed?

"I know _exactly_ where the statue is"

It makes sense considering he's gone from founder / CEO -> founder / CTO -> individual contributor i.e. probably never focused on these things and just wanted to build the product as an engineer.

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