Sorry we have been a bit AWOL recently. But, we have a good excuse. We’ve been busy building.
Transparency is at the heart of everything we do at Donut. Whilst a key ingredient internally, we believe maintaining an honest and transparent dialogue with our community is equally important in making sure we build the product you want (hence this blog series).
Enter: the last three months at Donut. They have been huge 🏆🏆🏆.
Today, we are updating you on four recent milestones:
(1) 🇺🇸 We are launching in the US!
(2) 📱 A look into our beta product releasing this summer.
(3) 🍩 Our new website: Donut.io.
(4) 👨🎨 A sneak peak into our new brand and why we believe it is so important.
But first, a quick recap on our mission 👋🏼
Donut was born out of a simple frustration that many of today’s generation do not know how to set good savings and investment habits.
The new and exciting world of crypto and blockchain piqued curiosity, in turn putting a temporary hold to matcha latte consumption 🍵. Yet, the zeitgeist of replacing banks and governments worldwide has been dwarfed by mass confusion. What is blockchain? Decentralized finance what? Huh?
Further, investment products suck. You invest alone, the user experience is boring and it’s a hassle to set up. The result — parked dollars in bank accounts earning 0.01% interest. Sound familiar 😔?
At Donut, we have set out to change this by designing a product built to help activate your long-term financial potential. Our focus is on the digital asset (read: crypto) world, which we believe is the gateway for future wealth creation opportunities.
We are committed to be the easiest and most friendly entry point. We promise to communicate in simple English 🇺🇸 and Emoji 😄. No more complicated jargon.
Our mission statement embodies this:
We make investing in digital assets smooth and effortless.
✌️
🇺🇸 We will be live this summer in the US!
Yes, that’s right. We are on track to launching a live beta of our product in the US this summer ☀️. You may ask: why did we go to the US if the product is being built out of Berlin?
Easy. We can get a product out to you sooner, in turn tackling your problems in weeks rather than months!
All decisions at Donut are built on one simple value: customer first. Shout out to 600 of you who filled in our Test Kitchen 🧪 and the 350+ users in the US and Europe we have spoken to. We appreciate your feedback and have consumed 1,000+ Donuts 🍩 in assessing your needs. This has all been invaluable to informing our decision to beta launch in the US.
We are proud to be born in Berlin 🇩🇪 and will launch in Europe 🇪🇺 soon. But for now we will have our newest bakery in LA, keeping close to our creative consumer focused roots (a la Bird 🛴, Snap 👻, Tinder 🥰 etc.)
If you haven’t already done so, get yourself on our beta launch access here!
📱 Effortlessly accumulate crypto.
We have built a mobile app that works on a three simple steps:
(1) Connect your bank account through a secure login 🔒
(2) Build your investment Triggers 🏆
(3) Enjoy accumulating and managing your crypto assets with ease 📈
We will start by providing this service into Bitcoin initially, but plan to add further assets down the road. Don’t worry, we will teach you along the way.
As part of our product, you can either Quick Invest or use a new concept we call Triggers. The four investment methods we have are as follows:
⚡️ Quick invest: buy $500 now
📆 Schedule: add $200 at the end of the month
🍵 Round-Up: buy a matcha latte for $4.50, round up to the nearest whole dollar of $5.00, and add the difference of $0.50 into your account
🏃♂️ Lifestyle: add $25 if you do 3,000 steps a day or $200 if you spend less than $3,000 a month
The core of our product is built around a concept called Dollar Cost Averaging, a phenomenon used by investment gurus such as Warren Buffet.
Putting regular sums away has a few key benefits:
✅ Timing: No need to time the market 📈
✅ Convenient: no need to think about investing frequently 👊🏼
✅ Affordable: just like paying a bill 💳
✅ Not emotional: frequently accumulating to reduce volatility 😅
We will be writing a ‘Making Dough’ special piece on this soon, including an insight into how our CPO Dan fared whilst using this method!
🏆 Announcing our new website: Donut.io
We have been working extra hard in the background (shoutout to our Team) to refresh our website, under our new virtual bakery, Donut.io.
You’ll see a few new pages, including our referral mechanism Donut Earn. We want to bring more community into investing, so you can Earn when your friends and family set money aside too 🙊.
You’ll notice we also added some new members to our team. Say hello to Nico and Sophie. Both are helping to increase Donut consumption in Berlin (special thanks Brammibals 👋🏼)
P.S. If you want to come and join them, we have a number of new positions we are recruiting for here!
👨🎨 And finally, introducing our new brand
Investing apps and FinTech brands are boring. Our brand vision has always been to be different: playful, bold, non-generic (no blues or greens please). We are all about standing out to help build a better relationship with your money.
We went through an extensive design process with our Manchester based creative power-duo, ToyFight & Young, to help build our new look. We will be writing a ‘Making Dough’ special on this in the coming weeks, as we have worked super hard in crafting something unique and trustworthy.
As ever, let us know what you think!
That’s all folks, until next time ✌️
— — —
Written with ❤️ in LA 🇺🇸 & Berlin 🇩🇪
Disclaimer: this article should not be construed as containing investment advice.
