The hidden joy of Startup Investing / Covid19

The main reason I invest in startups if to learn something new from smarter founders and teams and apply that knowledge for my ongoing business.

The side goal is to earn money.

Even though my tickets are very small, I am very happy to be part of something. And especially during the pandemic of Covid-19 I had 3 startups in my portfolio which were helping to fight this public enemy.

HelloWisp – Was selling Covid19 antibody testing.

BillionToOne – scaled Covid19 testing to 1 million per day.

Molekule – released a unit for medical environments

Revolut vs N26

Revolut and N26 are new generation banks on App only. The initial idea of Revolut was travel card with free currency exchange. N26 has also this feature. Later on, with my personal experience I found out that you may be be charged up to 3% markup if you paid Revolut vs N26 in Thailand on the weekend. Other features of both apps are: free wire transfers, free cards, insurance.

RevolutN26
Free withdrawal in Spain200€5000€
User experienceClear winner. Super easy and intuitive.The could just copy the Revolut here 🙂 especially that the card number could be visible in the app
Customer supportin app. with delaysold school email writing.
Apple PayNOYES
CryptocurrenciesBTC, ETH, LTCnone

I have been using both services for more than 15 months. I would say the Revolut was better in the beginning, but then were were two reasons why i switched to N26

  1. I reached the spend limit in Revolut and lifting 3 times was pain in the ass, and finally i was too bored to do that again.
  2. I need more than 200€ of cash every month.

Which is better?

If I could choose only one, i would choose N26 just because of the withdrawal. In general having both is good option and sometimes convenience especially if that card is dominant card in your country – so you can send money easy for your nanny or split the bills with friends.

Thailand, Malaysia (Russia and Ukraine)

Revolut puts a Markup on those currencies (THB, MYR, RUR) for purchases and ATM. So if you travel to those countries – definitely get the N26. N26 ads only 1.7% markup for ATM transactions, but with N26 black card this is 0%. (if you take 4k € / year in one of those countries, the cost of the Black card pays off. Not to mention other perks such as insurance)

My tips:

Get rid of your old school bank and get both

Revolut exchange rate on weekends rises.

For small businesses Revolut business product is quite expensive – 300€ / year, so get Paysera corporate account if you do not do currency exchange.

p.s. I am investor in Revolut

BillionToOne investment

I have invested in Billion To One a startup that is trying to make prenatal testing easy/cheap and safe. Even though i stopped my first ”fund” of startups, I have chosen to invest in this particular one because i believe and support their mission:

Our mission is to make prenatal diagnostics safe and affordable for all.

If there will be 1% advance in prenatal testing made and  i will lose all my investment – I will be happy with the outcome

2019 March. Raises series A

Startup vs ICO. Revolut vs TenX

I have invested in Revolut, my friend invested in TenX. Both have a similar service: free currency exchange bank card

RevolutTenX
Valuation55M (2016 June)80M (2017 June)
Does it have a product?Yes. 200k users at that time.Not public. 1000 Beta testers.
New users per day15000
Competitive advantageFree currency exchange0.1% cashback on spent cryptocurrency
CompetitorsN26Mona.co
valuation 2017 08420M420M
active users 2017 08500.0000

After Revolut announced that it will ad 3 main cryptocurrencies to its app – what is the competitive advantage of TenX then?

What valuation would i give?

5-10M: ±12 times! less than it is now. Competitor Monaco has now a 9M valuation