Revolute Founder // interviews

Looking for people who can deliver results, rather than just present ideas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXubBqd8uXs

This is a conversation with Nik Storonsky, the founder of Revolut, discussing various aspects of his company and leadership style. Here’s a summary of the key points:

Revolut’s Approach and Nik’s Leadership:

• KPI-Driven Culture: Revolut is heavily focused on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Goals are set annually, quantified, and cascaded down to departments, teams, and individuals. Performance is reviewed quarterly based on metrics, skills, and cultural values.
• Distributive Management: Nik has over 40 direct reports. He believes in hiring “excellent” or “strong” individuals who are self-driven and require minimal supervision.
• Hiring Philosophy: He looks for people who can deliver results, rather than just present ideas. He initially made mistakes hiring “experienced professional managers” who didn’t deliver and has since learned to better assess candidates in new roles by first understanding the role himself. He believes that if a person isn’t performing in the first 3 months, they likely never will. He believes in the saying “when there’s doubt, there’s no doubt”.
• Team Dynamics: Nik emphasizes collaboration over internal competition.
• Leadership Evolution: Nik admits to making mistakes while scaling the team and acknowledges becoming more comfortable with media over time. He believes the best CEOs are efficient resource allocators.
• Spending Mistakes: While generally efficient with spending, Nik says marketing is now their top cost, followed by people.

Brand Marketing and Banking License:

• Brand Marketing: Nik’s views on brand marketing have evolved. He now believes in it but emphasizes the importance of careful asset selection. He cites Revolut’s airport advertising as a successful example.
• Banking License: Nik learned that obtaining a banking license before acquiring a large customer base is crucial. Regulators are more thorough with established companies, leading to longer processing times. He regrets not getting the license sooner but acknowledges that a tech-driven approach can still streamline the process. He believes that having the license earlier does not inhibit product innovation.

Regulators, Crypto, and the US Market:

• Relationship with Regulators: Initially hesitant due to advice to let experienced banking professionals handle communication, Nik now believes in direct engagement with regulators. He finds that explaining Revolut’s innovative approach and data-driven results is effective.
• Crypto: Nik believes including crypto was a good decision, despite challenges with varying regulations and licenses across countries. He acknowledges that speculation remains a significant use case, but sees value in stablecoins and instant money transfers.
• US Market: Nik sees the US market as a challenge due to the prevalence of credit cards and the need for fintechs to partner with banks, which slows down innovation. He believes Revolut’s integrated financial services app can succeed where others have failed. He believes that the biggest barrier to entry in the US market was getting a banking license.

Product, Expansion, and Future:

• Product Successes and Failures: Nik highlights the rapid growth of recent product launches like e-sims, attributing it to Revolut’s larger scale. He admits to being a poor predictor of product success, citing the example of a salary advance feature that failed due to a complex conversion funnel.
• Product Development: Revolut runs 20+ product “bets” concurrently, with a small team dedicated to each. A committee decides which bets to launch, and successful ones receive more resources. About 5 out of 27 recent bets were highly successful, while 5–6 failed outright. The rest performed moderately.
• Global Expansion: Revolut aims to be in 50 markets in three years, achieving top market share in 90% of them. Nik considers Latin America a key growth area and is pursuing banking licenses there.
• Private Banking: Nik sees private banking as a future opportunity, given Revolut’s growing number of high-net-worth customers.

Public Listing, Competition, and Personal Reflections:

• Going Public: While Revolut operates with strong controls like a public company, Nik acknowledges the need to eventually provide liquidity to investors through public markets. He criticizes the UK’s stamp tax on share trading and suggests he would consider listing in the US due to its more liquid and cost-effective market.
• Competition: Nik respects Nubank in Latin America and JPMorgan Chase in the US. He views Asia as a more challenging market due to regulatory hurdles and different user interface paradigms.
• Quantum Light: Nik describes his venture into data-driven startup investing through Quantum Light, aiming to outperform traditional VCs by leveraging machine learning models.
• Personal Success: Nik defines success as the percentage of goals achieved, regardless of the goal itself. He doesn’t believe money directly brings happiness but sees it as a tool to achieve goals. He identifies winning the US market as a key personal goal.
• Work-Life Balance: Nik believes an imbalanced life, prioritizing goals over other aspects, is more likely to lead to success and potentially happiness. He describes his workdays as filled with pressure and problem-solving but maintains high energy through fitness and a structured lifestyle.
• Advice to Young People: Nik advises young people to pursue careers they enjoy, as passion leads to greater dedication and success.
• If he had to do it again: Nik says he would do things faster and cheaper.

In essence, the conversation paints a picture of a driven and ambitious leader who has learned valuable lessons while building a global fintech giant. Nik’s focus on data, efficiency, and a willingness to challenge conventional wisdom are evident throughout the discussion.

Interview at Slush

This is a conversation between Martin, a partner at Index Ventures, and Nick, the founder of Revolut. Here’s a summary of the key points:

Revolut’s Growth and Success:

• Revolut has reached 45 million customers and announced over $2 billion in revenue and over half a billion pounds in net income.
• It’s the most downloaded financial app in Europe across 20 countries.
• Recently valued at $45 billion in a secondary transaction, making it the most valuable private tech company in Europe.
• Nick celebrates achievements briefly but quickly moves on to the next goal.

Early Days and Vision:

• In the early days, Revolut focused on short-term goals (3-month views) to survive and build features that people wanted.
• Long-term planning was minimal initially but has become more important as the company scaled.
• Nick’s long-term vision for Revolut:
• Number one global bank in 100 countries.
• 100 million daily active customers.
• $100 billion in annual revenue.

Nick’s Typical Day and Management Style:

• Mondays and Tuesdays: Business reviews with general managers, focusing on KPIs, roadmaps, and problems.
• Wednesdays: Product reviews, where product teams present UI/UX changes in Figma. Nick is still deeply involved in these reviews, providing feedback and working directly with designers.
• Thursdays: One-on-one meetings.
• Nick has 40–45 direct reports, including general managers for products and core functions.
• He believes managers must be deeply involved in details and interact with individual contributors, not just manage from a high level.

Founder Associates and Quantum Light:

• Nick invented the concept of “Founder Associates,” a team of bright, young individuals (ex-McKinsey, banking) to tackle problems and turn around departments.
• He also launched Quantum Light, a venture fund that uses machine learning models to identify and invest in startups.
• Quantum Light also publishes “playbooks” based on Revolut’s internal processes, including performance management.

Performance Management at Revolut:

• Revolut quantifies everything, starting with company goals that cascade down to individual levels.
• They use a system called “Revolut People” to track goals, hiring, performance, and conduct quarterly performance reviews.
• The goal is to create a “machine” that produces the best quality people.
• Playbooks on these processes are documented and shared through Quantum Light.

First Principles and Strategic Decisions:

• Nick emphasizes a first-principles approach, questioning conventional wisdom and developing solutions from scratch.
• He was inspired by Ray Dalio’s early principles (PDF version) but adapted them to his own quantitative, model-driven approach.
• Three key strategic decisions made early on:
• Multicountry expansion (contrarian at the time).
• Multiproduct approach (consumer and business).
• Building most of the tech stack in-house.
• These decisions were driven by Nick’s desire for control and a willingness to experiment and iterate.

Global vs. Local and Mistakes Made:

• Nick believes both local and global approaches can work, but global is more challenging and ultimately more rewarding.
• Mistakes made:
• Initially avoiding regulation, which made it harder to obtain banking licenses later.
• Rushing expansion with a light regulatory approach, leading to less comprehensive products and weaker product-market fit.

US Expansion and Future Strategy:

• The US market is credit card-driven, requiring a banking license to compete effectively.
• Revolut is pursuing a banking license to launch credit products in the US.
• Revolut is exploring selling its internally developed compliance and risk engine to third parties, similar to the “Revolut People” tool. This follows an “AWS strategy” of building internal tools and then productizing them.

In essence, the conversation highlights Revolut’s impressive growth, Nick’s unique leadership style, the company’s data-driven and process-oriented approach, and its ambitious plans for the future.