At some point during the next two months, we will need you to make arrangements to transfer your money to an alternative account but there is no immediate rush. You will have received direct instructions via email and we are on hand for anything you need. Step by step guides on how to transfer your money are here.
Our current shareholders continue to support the business today, throughout this transition time and the plans for the future. Project Imagine is continuing, but simply changing track to B2B for the time being, to give the long term mission the best chance of success.
1. Closing Dozens and reducing operational cost will help us immediately carve out more space for technological innovation As a business, we are supported by regular monthly funding from our investors. Any responsible business that takes on external funding needs to ensure they’re producing maximum positive impact for customers, employees and investors. Unfortunately the high operational costs of running a twice regulated business means that the majority of our resources go into day-to-day operations, with little left for financial and technological innovation. This, quite simply, isn’t what we set out to do, or what people need.
By closing Dozens, more funds and management mindspace can be immediately invested into executing ambitious designs (such as a cryptographic back-end, and new front-ends for individuals, businesses, families and internal ops teams) on the tech platform.
2. By focusing on B2B for a period, we will be building a self-sufficient business
Any responsible business that takes on external funding also needs to ensure they are securing revenue, not just external investment. Otherwise losses are scaled and the business can end up in a spiral of debt. As business owners this isn’t a path we’re willing to take.
We hold a strong stance on venture funded marketing, i.e. investors ploughing money into a business to increase customer numbers at all costs, without considering positive unit economics and average balances. Our approach is noticeably different to the grow-first, cross-sell-later model that most have adopted so far. But it is our belief that visible top-line growth, funded by continuous dilution, without work on relatively more invisible cost and revenue controls is a risk to any business, and its mission. Ultimately those losses have to be made up somehow – at the expense of the customer (usually through offering unsecured, high-margin personal lending products such as BNPL) or by resorting to new investors and delayed IPOs.
We know that to have any chance of achieving our long term mission, we need to be self-sufficient via organic capital generation from our own revenue lines and profit centres.
3. A lot of value has been created in running Dozens and working with our customers over the past 3.5 years. This will help propel us to the future.
Any banking service has four main costs – technology, operations, real estate and credit losses. Real estate is typically less of a concern for digital businesses and credit is one area we haven’t experimented in. But we do have an incredibly good hold on cost control in technology and operations, and have even built our own internal product to help with this and operational compliance.
So as well as our banking technology and tools to help internal cost control, we have also developed the best team structures, refined target cost-income ratios and customer loadings, and built a positive relationship with the regulator as we tried out new financial products and developed new ways to fight financial crime.
By making this technology and insight available to established banks in need of new architectural models, we have a chance of securing long term, sustainable revenue for Project Imagine.