Hi Max,

Normally I wouldn't respond to a comment like this, but the value of Hacker News is in fostering discussions about the business of startups. You actually pose some interesting questions, and hopefully I can offer useful answers for people who might come across this thread.

First off, we're not a "SF startup"; we're a distributed team. My co-founders are in Brooklyn. I'm in Portland, along with two other employees. Our engineers are in SF, but quite frankly, they could decide to move to Siberia tomorrow and that'd be just fine.

If you read the blog that my co-founders have been contributing to over the last year, you'll find that they're very much "in love with the customer", and eager to explain how traditional banks have been doing those customers wrong. As was previously noted here on HN, they've been personally emailing anyone and everyone who signs up for more information about our service. The initial product we're launching is based on direct feedback resulting from thousands of those conversations with potential customers. We take their feedback very seriously.

Now, question-by-question:

1. Our Lead Engineer is not exclusively a Lisp programmer. He's worked in a variety of languages, including Common Lisp, Erlang, Ruby, and most recently, C#. I'm a big fan of "polyglot programming", and to me, Dave's ability to work in a variety of languages is, to my mind, an asset and a testament to his skill as a programmer.

2. Yes, we have a Creative Director. Our business involves much more than just a web presence, and we need much more than the average web designer. Banking is a complex economic and social interaction in which design plays a key role at every step. We chose someone not just with web, print, and identity work in his portfolio, but someone with deep industrial design experience. Bill earns the title of Creative Director through years of hard work, service to his industry peers, and a commitment to approaching the problem of designing a better banking experience holistically.

3. We're staffing up fairly conservatively when you consider our mission. This isn't just another build-it-in-a-weekend consumer web business. We're a fraction of the size of the web teams and/or IT teams at most banks.

4. Yes, we're hiring people who've worked effectively together. You'll find many posts from VCs and entrepreneurs about the value of "putting the band back together". I'm thrilled to have a team who are already in sync with one another.

5. Yes, Dave has worked in Erlang, and we're considering using technologies like Riak that are developed in Erlang. And yes, we plan to work in Scala and Clojure. I'm not sure why this is a question. They're great technologies. They work well. Lots of people are using them, including people in the financial services world who have run into the limitations of legacy technologies. Interesting technologies keep developers happy, motivated, and learning.

6. Yes, we're a distributed team. This should be nothing new in the tech world, particularly in the startup community. Being distributed allows us to work with talented people wherever they may be, keeps our costs down, and forces us to communicate clearly and explicitly amongst one another. It also lets us focus, and avoids the burdens and time-wasters of office water cooler culture.

I don't think you've taken the time to read about our backgrounds. If you had, you'd know that our CFO has spent years in the banking industry; that our CEO has helped managed a multi-billion dollar hedge fund and run an online marketplace for mortgages; that our Creative Director is an industry leader in UX and has focused specifically on issues of humane product and service design. I'm comfortable saying that our team has equal expertise in banking, "people", and technology.

Of course, part of our company's thesis is that a bank run like a tech startup will do better by its customers than a traditional bank or credit union. It seems like you disagree on that point, which is puzzling for this forum, given that so much of the Hacker News ethos is about making the world a better place through technically-minded entrepreneurship. So yes, we have a startup mentality, and people on our team are passionate about technology as well as about our product and customers. I see no need to apologize for that.

We do understand that the people are going to be hesitant to trust a new financial institution, as well they should be. The burden is on us to bridge that trust gap and, frankly, to prove people like you wrong. I'm confident that we will, and that we've picked the right team to do so.

Thanks for your questions, Max.