Hey, thanks for the datapoint! I'd like to break your comment down into what I believe are the two main points, and address them independently.
1. On whether or not FRB should be in the list — we certainly think they should. Based on the founder surveys we sent out, we found that FRB was quite-well represented across the startup community (and I think that your datapoint adds to that finding). Our inclusion of a company/product is not an endorsement, but rather a result of what we think would be useful to test for the community. In this case, we evaluated FRB because we know a lot of founders (including yourself) have considered/are using them.
2. On whether our evaluation reflects your experience — this is the more interesting point for us. We have data from ~15 founders re: FRB, ranging from full-blown interviews to anecdotes. In general, we didn't hear anything substantially negative about their core banking service, but we aren't going to conclude that they're perfect from that data alone. That said, the founder data was informative enough to draw some directionally-accurate conclusions from, although additional data points help us both realign as well as shrink or expand our confidence interval.
If you're willing to email me about your experience with FRB, we'd very much like to look it over and take it into account when we update the guide.
On 1: this is because they've done a great job with partnerships. Cerkly's corporation set-up becomes free if you sign up with FRB – this was a YC deal we used. So this doesn't mean much.
2. I recognize that this is generally a hard job. Our original product/company was along the same lines as Wirecutter (https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/ask-suto-launch/) and it's an extremely tough path to take. I do feel that it's easier for businesses since the value-props/features are a lot more distinct in how businesses make decisions.
1. On whether or not FRB should be in the list — we certainly think they should. Based on the founder surveys we sent out, we found that FRB was quite-well represented across the startup community (and I think that your datapoint adds to that finding). Our inclusion of a company/product is not an endorsement, but rather a result of what we think would be useful to test for the community. In this case, we evaluated FRB because we know a lot of founders (including yourself) have considered/are using them.
2. On whether our evaluation reflects your experience — this is the more interesting point for us. We have data from ~15 founders re: FRB, ranging from full-blown interviews to anecdotes. In general, we didn't hear anything substantially negative about their core banking service, but we aren't going to conclude that they're perfect from that data alone. That said, the founder data was informative enough to draw some directionally-accurate conclusions from, although additional data points help us both realign as well as shrink or expand our confidence interval.
If you're willing to email me about your experience with FRB, we'd very much like to look it over and take it into account when we update the guide.