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Lucky for both of us, the value prop isn't just "we are offering better interest rates on the same instruments because we gave up our cut"

It's actually "we found a way better set of instruments for long-term cash that allow us to offer better interest rates without giving up the cut altogether"

That being said, we do think the current treasury products can be a little predatory with their rates. For example, Rho charges a variable rate that peaks at 0.6% for any deposit of $2M or less. We think that's crazy so our margin is a flat 0.25%, no asterisks or fine print.

by TZubiri7 hours ago|

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As other users mentioned, that would probably raise concerns about risk. In terms of yields for startups I'm assuming we would be talking about zero risk assets, that is US treasury. But I'd be interested in learning about these alternative assets.

by mogonzal7 hours ago|

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That's totally fair. Risk is 100% the right concern to have when you hear about higher yields

We have a pretty comprehensive blog post about these assets (floating-rate agency MBS) and why we think they are a much better fit for startup treasuries. I encourage you (and anyone else reading this) to give it a read so that you understand exactly how they work and what the tradeoffs are: https://www.palus.finance/info/safety

That said, we understand not everyone wants to spend their day reading our blog posts. So the best tl;dr we can give is that the higher yields do not come with a credit risk, but instead with 1-2 days of liquidity cost versus same-day for MMFs. Which is much more ideal for a startup's idle cash

by TZubiri6 hours ago|

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Interesting, I think maybe an approach that would sell me more is actually leaning into the risk aspect a little bit. If you tell me that there is no beta increase, just pure alpha, alarms ring off, but if there is a slight beta with outsized alpha, then I think of it as a tradeoff that I am making, I am willing to take a little bit more risk for a higher return, which might in turn reduce longer term startup risks and allow me to increase my chances of winning by having an extra month or two of runway, now I'm comparing risks instead of thinking about just the risk you introduce.

It helps that even if from Palus' perspective there is no increased beta risk compared to the market standard of treasury instruments, even if your thesis that the alpha comes from an inefficiency due to bad 2008 reputation, as a buyer there is still a non-systemic risk associated with going for a niche provider and trusting you.

So when you consider that in the eyes of a buyer there's already a non-systemic risk inefficiencies based on lack of distributor trust, then it doesn't really make sense to keep systemic risk low, I think the play here would be to increase the systemic risk of the play to something manageable, since the customer is already paying a last-mile risk of trusting you as a distributor of the federal products.

All of this might make it more tempting for clients to switch and choose you, otherwise if the choice is between 3.5% and 5%, it's not really a significant difference, however if the difference is 9% vs 3.5% and the risk is minimal, then maybe startups will bite, founders are already making wild bets, it isn't crazy to bet that there will not be a housing market crisis and that a provider won't scam you. If that happens tough luck, I guess.

I would go even further and say that this bet could be tied into the vision or industry of the founder, for example if the founder thinks that things are basically the same as they always were and that AI won't change the market dynamics much, then that's not a strong sale because lightning may strike twice on the same spot.

Or to put a simpler example, the industry itself might make it a good fit, if the industry is Real Estate that's the most obvious example, they are going bust anyways if there's a housing crisis. But if it's entertainment, or any other industry that depends on consumers having large discretionary income, they are probably going to fail anyways if there's a large consumer crisis.

So yeah, tl;dr I think that the better play is to lean into the risk rather than trying to communicate that there is no risk.

by sam_palus6 hours ago|

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I definitely see your point. Our thesis with the MBS product, in finance terms, is that most startups can afford to take on a bit more liquidity risk on their long-term cash (on the order of a couple of days) to get significantly better yields without taking on credit or price risk on their principal.

We've had discussions about offering products in the future with higher yields that carry more risk. Most founders we've talked to are very risk-averse on their company treasury, but if our users tell us they want access to different instruments with different risk profiles, we're happy to meet them where they are.