Day one - the start of lovemoney.com

by Saul Devine on 15 September 2009  |  8 comments
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OK, so the first post of a new "corporate blog" detailing the adventures of lovemoney.com from launch. Can lovemoney.com really be different in a crowded marketplace?

Day one: 03.09.09. This was the day when the transaction was completed, and lovemoney.com, the recently launched personal finance site (with a twist) became majority owned by its employees.

Of course it all seems like a big bang, but the truth was that it took months and months of work to get to where we are today. At this point it is worth mentioning the rationale behind the realignment. The Fool, our previous owners, wanted to concentrate on investments. The majority of the Fool UK staff, really had their expertise in personal finance and were passionate about creating a new type of web experience for personal finance in the UK. That experience is lovemoney.com, and everything we hope it will become in the future.

So what is really so different about lovemoney.com? Well it is all about being social. Sharing your experiences and knowledge with others. People helping people with their money. Money is not the be all and end all, but it is certainly a big driver to security and peace of mind. Everyone’s circumstances are different, we hope to bring together that knowledge pool and let everyone become better off together.    

This is a pretty saturated marketplace, there are the big price comparison sites, the financial publishers as well as the discussion forums on money saving. All of these sites are pretty good at what they do, but it all seems to be grinding to a halt in some respects. We wanted to do something really quite different, something that would excite people about their money. We also wanted to do it all online, no collecting telephone numbers and selling them products, this was going to be a pure web experience where everything was in one place and you would discover new things about your financial trends and habits.

So stage one was building the new website, it has taken around 9 months so far, and we still have a series of exciting features to add over the coming months. Stage two was to complete the transaction, it means so many things, but most importantly it gives the owners of lovemoney.com the freedom to pursue our strategy and try and build a site which will be of real value to many people. That is the goal.

So what will this blog become? Well, I am going to talk about good old corporate stuff on here. I will talk about our strategy and plans, the sector/industry we work in (and the challenges it represents), and I will also talk about the journey about becoming an employee owned organisation and how that eventually powers us on to success : )