kaushikktiwari

Navan (tripactions) is going public, they are in the same space will be curious to see what the s1 says. It’s a competitive would out there but brex def has a good head start.

^This + drunk PowerPoint game!

Medical debt in the United States is another one of those defining monuments to inequality we have erected in the past decade another being the student debt crisis.

Thanks for writing this, it’s a great end of the year reminder. Enjoyed your focus on sensations! I did a 10 day silent Vipassna retreat and the importance of sensations was such a revealing insight they drilled down on.

^Totally agree with you. Single payer is the answer. The comments on this thread inspired this writeup--how the insurance distribution ecosystem itself sucks up a lot of the dollars https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21710050

Great that you bring up margins--wrote about how the insurance ecosystem is what eats up the dollars https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21710050

We need a single payer--that's the answer. Wrote about it here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21710050

Saw your comment, thanks for bringing that up. Insurance companies dont take the prize, its the brokers--distribution is where the lion's share of premium goes. Wrote about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21710050

Thanks for that man! I edited that out those parts are just bold now, the italics on LinkedIn look way more prominent than the one on medium.

"Total individual market enrollment, measured on an average monthly basis, increased from 10.6 million in 2013 to a peak of 17.4 million in 2015, before declining to 13.8 million in 2018."Quoted from https://www.kff.org/private-insurance/issue-brief/data-note-...

That's a very good point! I agree!

We make money off interchange--its protected by regulation for small banks and we partner with those small banks in return for them getting to keep our deposits. No one is getting squished---there are regulations protecting banking from being monopolizes. Big banks win because of branch networks and that doesn't matter for online banks

huge fans of you guys! Dimitri has been such a great person for advice!

^this is a real problem

thanks perspective1! I find overt self-promotion to be distasteful, so glad it came across well. We are using the interchange fees to pay for the $5000 emergency fund, they have to move their direct deposit over to switch "ON" the safety net. We do break even based on our current estimates of annual spend and claims, but looking at a few different ways, upselling insurance is the big one! Will write about it and make sure to post on this comment thread!

You are right! This one is more of a general overview of the space. I will write one about the assumptions we are making wrt to betterbank.app

too harsh brother, I agree it makes way more sense to use a credit card and pay it off immediately. It's just not that easy for a lot of people.

does that make the points less valid? I felt it added to the credibility of the piece? Looking forward to your criticism on that

Access is the big one, risk-averse because of being burned in the past. Even missing a single payment means 25% APR+late fees, so likely to not put everyday expenses on credit. Use it more for planned stuff, like travel etc. The biggest irony is credit card rewards are a tax on the poor for the rich---merchants jack up prices for all but the rich spend and benefit!

Def, you are right. Everyone is building on top of legacy banks but you hope that slowly the customer orientation will change to positive largely by better tech and more competition! Thanks for reading and appreciate the comment!

its not an advertisement my friend. Just explaining how I see the world as someone who is working in it. Tried to be as unobtrusive as possible!

still love the OS idea--it found its home on a HN thread. The US has been selling the word its OS for the most of the last century, some would say about time another one showed up

most of the amazing facial recognition tech is actually israeli--and turns out the biggest buyers of military foreign tech tend to be competitors of china, so not sure how much legs this OS idea has, unless you mean small eastern european republics signing up

not sure if I agree with your point about promise--especially with the implied "moral hazard"--if they are trying to solve the inefficiency in the justice system then its better for them that the system remains inefficient-- def seems like something beyond their control that they had no role in creating, and they are trying to help as best as they can. There is a bigger problem for private prisons---not promise

This is really cool--did you hear about how a bunch of hospitals are coming together to manufacture generic drugs that are marked up by PBMs--I imagine if something like that where a stakeholder with input in the buying process can come in and guarantee like a monopolistic market for an upstart..the drugs are going to be cheaper but the fact that the hospitals themselves are consumers means people can take long term bets without fear of losing money

I guess a lot of blowback is coming from the fact that you decided to call it Government 2.0. It seems a bit presumptuous, guilty of the same hyperbole tech is always accused of...changing the world etc...but at the same time it's a title I would click on. It's outrageous, but serves a purpose

Love the debate on this thread whether startups can't meaningfully tackle deep societal problems.

We are the working on building a free universal basic safety net for all: https://betterbank.app/

Essentially it's a checking account+insurance policy, bank with us and if you ever got hurt we will pay upto $5k in cash…use it for out-of-pocket expenses+ lost wages. It's free because we make money from debit interchange, targeted at either uninsured young folks who find obamacare to be too expensive or families with high deductibles.

Do we qualify as a profit minded start also doing good? If not, are there any other models out there