[HN Gopher] Double is winding down
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Double is winding down
Author : NetOpWibby
Score : 55 points
Date : 2025-07-02 15:33 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (double.finance)
(TXT) w3m dump (double.finance)
| bckmn wrote:
| Previously (launch):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42377018
| 3D30497420 wrote:
| Only 6 months ago? Oof.
| tptacek wrote:
| Most startups fail, and you should be so lucky as to have one
| fail quickly and decisively. It's like landing on Free
| Parking in Monopoly.
| apgwoz wrote:
| > It's like landing on Free Parking in Monopoly.
|
| I have no clue what you're trying to convey with this
| analogy? "Free Parking" is different in virtually every
| household.
| tptacek wrote:
| I was not thinking about random house rules in the
| analogy.
| toast0 wrote:
| Standard rules free parking is a no-op; you get nothing
| and pay nothing. It just prolongs the inevitable.
| tptacek wrote:
| Yes, that's what I was referring to.
| apgwoz wrote:
| But then this analogy doesn't hold... Has there ever been
| a startup in history where it's break even everywhere?
| Investors don't get their money back, customers
| (hopefully!) are made whole, and the founders and
| employees are now out of a job and _perhaps_ didn't get
| their final pay check depending on how bad it is.
| tptacek wrote:
| Yeah, you're missing my point. Given most startups fail,
| the question isn't "at the end of the day do you still
| get a paycheck for your failed startup", it's "how much
| of your life did you burn on that failed startup".
|
| Since we're talking about a specific startup whose
| founders are participants here, I think we can do without
| the ghoulish stuff about them not making payroll or
| whatever; "winding down" implies they're failing in an
| orderly way.
| axus wrote:
| I like that they had already written their "destructor
| function": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42379135
| ezekg wrote:
| > You can initiate a cash withdrawal or transfer your assets
| to another brokerage. We ask that you do this by July 31,
| 2025.
|
| Seems to still require manual work, though? With less than 30
| days to do so...
| sethhochberg wrote:
| When you work with Apex (or really any other technology
| bridge to the traditional financial world, Q2's Helix is
| common for traditional banking, Apex Clearing is common for
| stock trading, etc) they require you think about things like
| this during your implementation. Its not quite as turnkey as
| something like opening a Stripe account; your implementation
| will need to demonstrably pass a playbook of tests before
| your partner will allow you to play in real financial
| transactions - and those tests typically include things like
| account closure or program shutdown.
|
| Basically, the traditional financial services partners who
| give startups access to these legacy networks know their
| clients are startups who might not fully understand the space
| or might want to cut corners. They're good at making sure
| they're protected against their clients' behavior, and in
| most cases legally the end users are actually the customer of
| the financial services company, the startup will be
| considered a "deposit broker" instead of a "bank" etc. Its
| been longer since I've touched the stock broker side so I'm
| fuzzy on the specific terminology but its similar there.
| jjice wrote:
| Good to see that they at least gave some instructions on moving
| the money (it was the absolute minimum, to be fair). No hate to
| them - some business don't work out.
|
| That said, I personally don't understand keeping my assets that I
| hope to retire off of someday at a startup style company.
| Everyone's gotta start somewhere, but financial services like
| this are probably a hard sell for a lot of people.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| Yeah that's what I was thinking. There is 0 benefit to such a
| product unless the company can guarantee they will be in
| business for 10-20 years. Otherwise moving my money us just a
| big time wasting headache if the company shuts down before any
| benefit is realized. (<1 year... ouch to the users).
|
| It seems like a good idea. It is a margin profits play though.
| I know that in dealing with big money there is a lot of foot
| guns as far as costs. If you mess up even one thing it can cost
| you tens or hundreds of thousands in unexpected expenses. No
| offense to the founders but I'm guessing that they didn't have
| someone with 20+ years finance experience to make absolutely
| sure they never stepped on those mistakes. You'd have to
| operate flawlessly with only margin profits.
|
| Hopefully the founders will give us some more context on what
| happened.
| fragmede wrote:
| The attraction is easy. Internet company means lower overhead.
| I'm not paying to go into a lavish office with people in it
| like with Fidelity, and the money just needs to sit there
| generating modest returns. It's all numbers on a screen anyway.
| blitzar wrote:
| Internet company means a VC is setting a bunch of money on
| fire and providing you the product at a loss to them - which
| is your gain. They hope they can buy enough eyeballs to get
| their exit and the users can move on to the next
| revolutionary idea to giveaway a bunch of cash.
| chis wrote:
| On the one hand I don't think there's risk of losing money with
| something like this, they kept the money in a third party
| broker and it's SIPC-insured. But it's probably good to have
| some humility and admit that even for me I'm not 100%
| confident, these rules and systems are hard to parse.
|
| I think the biggest problem with this startup was that the
| product they offered was so marginally different from Vanguard
| ETFs unless you have a super specific and unique investment
| thesis.
| jjice wrote:
| > On the one hand I don't think there's risk of losing money
| with something like this, they kept the money in a third
| party broker and it's SIPC-insured. But it's probably good to
| have some humility and admit that even for me I'm not 100%
| confident, these rules and systems are hard to parse.
|
| Oh for sure - I'm sure they did. I just still wouldn't want
| to bother with a turbulent company and having to migrate
| assets from working with a company that has less of a
| reputation.
| eweise wrote:
| I worked for a wealth management company. The money was held at
| the financial institution's accounts. We just calculated when
| to re-balance the portfolios and executed the trades on the
| customer's behalf. Not sure if that's how this works.
| ram_rar wrote:
| I'm curious what led to the lack of demand for this--was it the
| friction involved in moving brokerage accounts, or do ETFs
| already meet the needs of most retail investors? A post-mortem on
| the limited traction would be quite insightful.
| timhigins wrote:
| Yeah this would be interesting. Also the founders should
| consider open sourcing some/all of the code. It could be an
| awesome platform for the open finance community.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| Reading the post, it sounds like they are
|
| > If you are technical, we are open sourcing our optimization
| engine, Oracle, which does our daily Tax Loss Harvesting and
| rebalancing. You may be able to use this to set up your own
| trading bot on Alpaca. You will need to contact Alpaca
| support to request an ACATS of your current assets held at
| Double.
| xur17 wrote:
| Also note:
|
| > Note that ETF Holding data, corporate action data, and
| possibly factor model data would be required to reproduce
| Double's Direct Index strategies. Unfortunately this data
| is not generally free and would require a fair bit of work
| to get Oracle working.
|
| It would be interesting to have an open source direct
| indexing system with plugins for different brokerages. A
| CLI tool that provides recommended trades and an option to
| accept or cancel would be perfect.
| lyrrad wrote:
| There is financial friction involved.
|
| As I understand it, this product involved using fractional
| shares to try to adhere to an index, while using tax loss
| harvesting to optimize for tax.
|
| Fractional shares cannot be transferred between brokerages and
| are generally sold when transferring brokerages. If you owned
| on average, half a share of the largest 250 US companies, you'd
| may need to sell about $30,000 in shares, which could result in
| an unexpected tax bill.
|
| There are large brokerages and companies offering similar
| direct indexing products, generally at a higher cost. However,
| I expect those products are less likely to be shut down.
| calmbonsai wrote:
| This was precisely their business model.
|
| The problem was easy/trivial competition from larger
| brokerage firms. The core IP was all about tax optimization.
| The same customers who would employee direct indexing already
| have dedicated accounting services for exactly that purpose
| and the additional brokerage fees are either sunk costs or de
| minimis.
|
| To use an analogy, the folks who are hedge fund customers
| don't care about the lack of liquidity or higher management
| fees. You can't capture that market on margin, volume, or any
| kind of flow ancillaries.
| pragmatic wrote:
| Why on earth would you trust your money to a start up like
| this?
|
| Nobody with any real money and smarts is going to do that.
|
| Now if this was somehow a crypto play, I'm sure they'd be
| rolling in it.
| mritchie712 wrote:
| it wasn't obvious to me how Double is significantly better than
| an ETF. It'd have to be MUCH better (e.g. at least 50bps to
| 100bps) to warrant taking a bet on an unproven company.
|
| They had cute names for the indexes ("Founder Mode")... but do
| those actually make me better returns than an ETF? Probably
| not.
|
| this[0] also scared me away
|
| 0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42377934
| citizenpaul wrote:
| Sorry to hear. I know you are probably down right now but is
| there any chance you would be willing to share some details on
| why things didn't work out? I'd like to learn and I'm sure lots
| of others on HN would benifit from your experience.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| This is the first I'd heard of something like this. What other
| services are in the area of "Cheap automated portfolio
| management" that HN might recommend?
| stilldavid wrote:
| I've been pretty happy with Betterment.
| ajoseps wrote:
| generally ETFs as a whole and if you want direct indexing like
| they offered, fidelity has something similar:
| https://www.fidelity.com/direct-investing/overview
| khuey wrote:
| The Target Date Retirement fund from your preferred low cost
| fund provider (i.e. Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab, iShares, etc)
| is an excellent choice.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| >Target Date Retirement fund
|
| Every-time I look at those they seem extremely risk adverse
| for such a long term investment. Sometimes with 50%+
| bonds/notes. If you are looking to retire in 5 years sure but
| I'm guessing most HN are hoping for more than 4% returns on
| their retirement account 25+ years from now.
| khuey wrote:
| Are you looking at ones with retirement dates well into the
| future? The one Vanguard suggests for people born in 1990
| (VFFVX) is 90% equities.
| mandevil wrote:
| Vanguard Target Date 2045 (suitable for someone born in
| 1980, looking to retire in about 20 years) is, as of
| September 2024, at 50.3% Total US Market Institutional
| Shares, 33.2% Total International Investor Shares, 10.9%
| Total US Bond Investor, and 4.8% Total International Bond
| Institutional.
|
| Fidelity's 2045 fund is even higher in the market, they are
| 10% bonds and 95% equity (they appear to be levered by 5%).
| liveoneggs wrote:
| The target date fund glide path: https://institutional.vang
| uard.com/investment/strategies/tdf...
|
| tl;dr at age 40 (90/10) it starts increasing bonds until
| age 60 (60/40); age 65 (50/50), and then 72 (30/70)
| toast0 wrote:
| If you're investing in a taxable account, Target Date funds
| might be less preferable than holding the underlying funds
| (or similar funds if the underlying funds aren't available).
| Vanguard recently made changes to their target date funds
| that resulted in a lot of redemptions and extra costs to
| those holding these funds in taxable accounts.
| nfinished wrote:
| I use Wealthfront and highly recommend it. In addition to a
| normal managed portfolio they've also recently offered a direct
| investment option tracking SPY with a management fee equivalent
| to the ETF's express ratio. Great for scraping a couple dollars
| off your tax liabilities with loss harvesting. Can share a
| referral that (iirc) reduces management fees for a couple
| months if you're interested.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| vanguard life strategy funds
| timothylaurent wrote:
| M1 Finance is quite like this.
| fyrabanks wrote:
| I have money in a Fidelity retirement fund and have invested
| additional money into Vanguard funds. Additionally, Schwab
| Intelligent Portfolios have treated me well. That portfolio has
| total unrealized gains of +37.27%. I have read lots of
| anecdotal stories of people taking losses using it, though, so
| YMMV.
| devy wrote:
| Re: License for https://github.com/doublehq/oracle
|
| The README.md says it's MIT licensed on the very last line (https
| ://github.com/doublehq/oracle/blob/b69ef4c940217a2fbf52...).
|
| However, LICENCE file (not LICENSE.md file, which doesn't exist,
| https://github.com/doublehq/oracle/blob/b69ef4c940217a2fbf52...)
| says it's GPL 3.0 license.
|
| Which one is it?
| mdaniel wrote:
| Seems to be a failure to update the README, since
| https://github.com/doublehq/oracle/commit/7923eee62bccb565c8...
| was an explicit change away from MIT to GPLv3
|
| That also tracks why the README would be pointing to a 404
| file, since the other commit that touched that file was to
| change its name, and _also_ not update the README
| didip wrote:
| Why gave up so soon? I remembered reading this on HN not too long
| ago.
| xur17 wrote:
| Welp, looks like I am moving to Frec. Hoping the Apex -> Apex
| transfer means I can transfer partial shares.
|
| Note for other folks in this situation: you should be able to
| find a referral link and get a $250 bonus for transferring over.
| amberlyfrec wrote:
| Frec is here to help! And going to offer a $250 bonus to
| clients moving over. Double will be sharing the link soon.
| xur17 wrote:
| A few questions that you might be able to help with (also
| happy to jump on a call to discuss, you can find my details
| in my profile):
|
| - Transferring - will partial shares be liquidated (since
| both are part of Apex)?
|
| - Can I see my portfolio through Apex Clearing independently
| (something that Double provided)?
|
| - If I want to transfer my assets in in kind, and invest them
| in the Total US index, how do I ensure that nothing is sold
| as part of the rebalance during that transfer?
| amberlyfrec wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| 1. We also custody with Apex so you'll be able to transfer
| easily between Frec <> Double and continue to see your
| assets held independently.
|
| 2. We can definitely setup a call to review the individual
| positions and the evaluate risk of positions being sold to
| rebalance.
|
| You can book a demo here:
| https://calendly.com/frecdemo/frec-demo or feel free to
| email me amberly@frec.com
| xur17 wrote:
| Thank you. Do you know the answer to the partial shares
| question?
| amberlyfrec wrote:
| We are running a test to know for sure but don't think it
| will be an issue since we both use Apex. I will circle
| back here upon confirmation.
| xur17 wrote:
| Thank you!
| infecto wrote:
| Saw some posts asking why and for postmortems. I am not the
| founder, not in the retail industry but adjacent space to
| understand enough of why.
|
| 1) there are already competitors in this space that have been
| there for a decade or longer. Higher fees but not significantly
| so to counter the risk of doing business with a startup.
|
| 2) If you use their calculator is a bit disingenuous, starting
| balance of $1mm. Those clients exist but that's the minority. If
| you bring that number down to a more typical average or median
| for someone with a 30 year horizon you see that the difference is
| not material compared to their default assumptions.
|
| 3) if you are a high net worth individual where tax low
| harvesting matters, the product does not feel that compelling.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Indeed, this is ideally suited as a small team in a brokerage
| or other asset management firm, marketed to existing high net
| worth customer relationships either as part of the asset under
| management fee or some cut of tax savings realized. It is not a
| sustainable standalone business.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| SEC is a complete joke at this point. Zero due diligence being
| done on companies like this, and as always, the consumer is left
| footing the bill.
| amberlyfrec wrote:
| Frec is an option for customers looking for a new low cost direct
| indexing provider! All assets remain securely held with Apex +
| Frec has grown to over $300m in assets with continued rapid
| growth.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Would you be so kind to elaborate?
| languagehacker wrote:
| Can someone double-check my understanding of this?
|
| Double is a portfolio management service that purchases shares
| that match the blend of a specific index for its customers. So
| instead of owning an index, you own the shares.
|
| Double is winding down because they are not profitable. They are
| instructing their customers to either fully liquidate their
| holdings, or perform an ACATS transfer, which generally requires
| that any fractional holdings be liquidated first. However, the
| business model will necessarily require holding fractional shares
| because of the way indexes work.
|
| So my question is, this is going to cause many of their customers
| to get dinged by short-term capital gains tax, right? That
| stinks.
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