#594 Nik Storonsky on Democratizing Access to Finance

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Nik Storonsky is the co-founder and CEO of Revolut, one of the UK's largest private businesses. Revolut offers everything from currency exchange and surcharge-free ATMs to global transfer payments and budgeting. In this conversation, we discuss building a billion-dollar fintech company. pandemic insights to user behavior, serving both retail and enterprises, crypto and stock trading, lessons from 2020, and his personal portfolio. I really enjoyed this conversation with Nik, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Revolut. I've partnered with Revolut, which is that finance app that's come to the US from the UK, and they say that they're the simplest way to access crypto. They're putting their money where their mouth is, too. You can sign up today, make 3 card transactions, and get $15.

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Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments.

All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Alright, guys. Bang Bang. I've got Nik here with me. Thank you so much for doing this.

Hey. How are you doing?

So I wanna start first with this idea that you've built one of the largest unicorns in Europe and specifically have this idea of kind of a financial super app. Right? Anyone in the world can show up to Revolut's door, and you're able to service their financial service needs. Maybe let's just talk about where the idea for this came from and, and kind of So initially it started from my own problem.

So obviously I was expat living in the UK, so I traveled abroad and also I sent money abroad a lot. And I was always pissed off by commissions that banks charged me. And then I came up with a simple solution. It's effectively a global account, Plus account, which allowed you to send and spend money at interbank rates. But then our last 5 years, we really expanded the product to super app concept. So the new value proposition is rather simple. So we give you all your financial services products that you need for your daily life, 10 times cheaper and 10 times better compared to banks or stockbrokers or so on. And then the idea is that all these products are highly personalized to your needs because they all talk with each other. So we actually save you a lot of time by just opening one account within 2 minutes for Robinhood Retail. And then secondly, we allow you to have all these products either for free or at significantly discounted prices compared to banks. So you can trade with us stock trading for free, obviously currency exchanges for free, and so on and so on. So we save you money and then we make it in a nice user-friendly way.

For sure. And what's so fascinating is you talk about kind of your prior experience really driving a lot of, uh, not only the philosophical approach that you have, but a lot of the features that you guys have built. Um, you spent time, uh, as an equity derivatives trader at Lehman and a few other places. Uh, when you started to build out the actual financial service technologies, how much of your experience, uh, from the trader side kind of played into this versus it was just more of your personal experience with financial service platforms?

Good question. To be honest, when I started doing this business, I was shocked because I didn't really know anything. So I didn't know payments, I didn't know acquiring, so I had to learn everything from scratch. So the idea to start this business was, well, obviously I was an equity derivatives trader and I realized how much money I wasted on banking fees. But that's the only thing that actually helped me to build this business. Everything else I had to learn from scratch.

Yeah. So if I'm a retail investor today or a business owner, I can use the software that you guys have built. Let's start maybe with the retail trader first or kind of a regular investor, an everyday person. I come in, what are all the features that are available to me?

So ultimately for stock traders and crypto traders, at the moment we give you access to all our US stocks. We're shortly giving you access to European stocks. So the whole idea is that account, is global for you to trade, right? So obviously, if you're in the US, you load your dollars, but then you can trade every asset out there without actually incurring commissions and then without incurring FX fees. Just to give you some numbers to compare, so whenever you open at the moment US stockbroker account and you trade, for example, European-based stocks, Australian stocks, or Japanese stocks, There is a currency conversion fee involved, and at least half percent, sometimes it's 1%. So whatever you trade, your two-way ticket is at least 1% cost to you. So we help you to avoid this cost. And plus, on top of it, we obviously have a very nice interface, very easy to use.

Got it. And so what is, what like is the difference of the user behaviors that you've seen over the last 12, 18 months, right? Obviously, we've got Kind of COVID happened, you saw all sorts of uncertainty, but then also we saw this kind of historic monetary policy decisions across different geographies. What changed in user behavior, or are there specific kind of insights that you have watching how users use the platform over the last 12 to 18 months?

So basically, because we have one app combining all the financial services that people use in their daily lives, so we can clearly observe a change in their behaviors. So first, Obviously spending went down a lot, like all the categories such as travel, restaurants, bars decreased at least by 60-70%. And then what we see a lot of people starting actually putting this money into their stock trading account and then buying stocks. So interest in stock trading probably doubled or tripled during this period of time. Crypto at least 3-5x compared to what we've seen pre-COVID. So in short, people are have excess money because they cut their spending and then they put this excess money into assets, trading assets.

Yeah, what's so fascinating is, uh, here in the United States, we definitely saw savings rate went up, personal income rate went up, uh, and then you have kind of hard data and you can actually see and measure on the platform that a lot of that excess cash was going right into stock trading accounts or into crypto trading accounts. But it sounds like, um, the crypto accounts actually had kind of a higher lift than the stock trading accounts. Is that just kind of a base effect where crypto was smaller before and so it's easier to kind of multiply it, or was there actually more cash inflow into crypto than maybe the stock accounts?

Yeah, I think we saw probably double our cash flow in crypto compared to stock inflow. So if you look at our balances and compare crypto versus stocks, so crypto will be double compared to stocks.

I mean, that's pretty incredible. Talk to me about the business accounts. So I think this is probably one of the most fascinating parts of what you guys are doing, where most folks who have tried to build kind of these super apps or one-stop shops for financial services, they really pick one vertical, right? So they say, hey, we're going to go after retail, or we're going to go after kind of the institutional client, or we're going to go after enterprises. And those are really kind of 3 different platforms. You guys have these business accounts right next to the individuals. And so maybe talk a little bit about what a business can do on the platform, and then kind of why adding business accounts alongside of what the everyday person could use.

So the main value proposition is, again, allowing businesses to use all financial services they need under one umbrella. So you can open an account within 5 minutes online, and then you've got access obviously to your bank accounts in multiple currencies. You can do payments globally, plus you can acquire cards or acquire payments online or offline with our acquiring solution. So think about it as Citigroup plus Stripe plus your payroll provider under one umbrella, and they're at price significantly cheaper compared to any other providers. So that's advantage number 1. And advantage number 2, we are allowing you to do global business from day 1 because obviously all the accounts are global, right? Have multiple currencies, you can send and receive payments from your local suppliers and then also you can sell globally as well. You can sell in the US, you can sell in the UK, you can sell in Europe, Australia and so on. And plus on top of it, we save you a lot of money because of all this, you know, cross-border fees, cross-currency fees. Overall, it's a very beneficial product, especially for people who just start their own business. We give them ability to sell globally.

Yeah, what's so fascinating about this is obviously coming out of COVID it seems like remote work, kind of the digital economy has become much more prevalent in a lot of businesses that maybe weren't Online now are coming online very quickly, but also people starting businesses, they're basically global on day one, right? I remember maybe a decade ago or maybe even, you know, 8 years ago, businesses basically, let's say, would start in the United States, they would penetrate the US market, and it would be a pretty big decision, almost like an executive or a board-level decision. Okay, this is going to be the year of international expansion. They would try to go push into other markets. But today, businesses basically, when they turn on, on day one, they're global. And so having that financial infrastructure, it sounds like that's really what you guys are trying to serve, is being able to have a global business from day one. And not have to worry about all of the various countries, the different accounts, and all the different fee structures?

Exactly. Yeah, that's exactly our value proposition for businesses. Plus on top of it, we also automate all your processes. So we automate your payroll, we automate your acquiring, we automate your bank accounts. So you don't really need to run kind of any spreadsheets or any programmatic interfaces for software outside of Revolut for Business.

Yeah, one of the best ways to build a valuable company is to just replace whatever spreadsheets people have buried somewhere in their, uh, inside of their business, for sure. Uh, speaking of, uh, kind of different geographies, I know that one of the focuses for, uh, Revolut during 2021 has been geographic expansion. Uh, you've recently come to the United States. I know that you're pushing into Asia. Maybe talk a little bit about, uh, kind of the penetration that you have, uh, in Europe, and then, uh, really what the catalyst has been for your own geographic expansion globally.

So if you look at Europe, we are quite penetrated into Europe, and then in some countries we achieve more than 50% penetration. So for example, if you look at Ireland, 1 in every 2 adults in Ireland, they're using Revolut products. And then the reason why we're actually running these 2 products, one retail, one business, it's effectively 2 ecosystems. So our goal is to pull these 2 ecosystems together and enable businesses and consumers to transact without intermediaries. So what it means in practice, consumers and businesses will be able to avoid all the acquiring fees, issuing fees, scheme fees. As a result, transactions become effectively free and instant. And secondly, what we're trying to achieve, we're trying to enable businesses to sell directly to, to their customers through a very simple product, very similar to what Facebook or Google do. But we call it the merchant ads when the merchant can go in the business account and then set up certain budget and then put certain discounts on their products. Then these products will be automatically matched with the types of people who have similar transactions before. And this matching is actually much more precise compared to Google and Facebook because we own transactions of consumers, we know where they spend, what they like. As a result, conversion for purchasing becomes much higher compared to Google and Facebook. And it's a win-win for merchants, they make a sale, and then for customers, they, they get a purchase at the discounted price.

Got it. And so when you start to think about, uh, the various geographies, one of the things that, uh, in the United States specifically, but I think also some of the European companies, um, that the knock against them or the critique is, oh, these fintech companies, you know, they're trying to skirt the law, they're trying to kind of avoid the regulations that a traditional financial institution would have to To follow. For you though, I think that you guys, I've read online, have applied for a US bank license. I think in Europe you've also applied for that license. And so maybe talk a little bit just about the idea behind getting the banking license and kind of really, it almost feels like take brand new technology and kind of superior user experience and software, but also leverage all of the kind of components of the legacy system and kind of bring this together to provide the best experience for users.

Well, ultimately, when we initially launched the product, we launched it without banking license, and it was a partnership with the bank, or in some countries it was like a lighter license. So what we learned is that it's very difficult, almost impossible, to mesh our tech with existing legacy compliance and infrastructure of banks. So partnerships are usually very difficult to do because we are very differently built and our systems don't really talk with spreadsheets of banks, there's a problem. So we decided to go for banking license in almost every single country where we're in, purely to control infrastructure and to provide the best experience for consumers. Plus, on top of it, banking license allows you to monetize better and also provide deposit insurance for your consumers.

Yeah, makes a ton of sense. One of the things that's fascinating to me is it feels like over the last 12 months, 15 months, You saw all of that user behavior changing from what I'd consider kind of the more traditional financial services, things like the deposit accounts, etc., and a big shift into crypto trading and stock trading. Talk a little bit about almost a renewed focus. It seems like you guys have on those products and kind of what you're building there to help service some of the clients and really just empower them to do what they're trying to do on the platform.

Yeah, so we're obviously as we observe consumers going into or particularly wealth management, stock trading, crypto trading, we increase our efforts in building new products for them. For example, recently we launched social trading. So the way it works, you're able to see a leaderboard with all top traders on Revolut. And then you'll be able to follow them and then see what they do, what they buy, what they sell, see composition of their portfolio, see their returns. So in short, you can, you know, just follow what they do. That's number one. Number 2, we're obviously into crypto. So at the moment, we have quite a large number of tokens. And then we're working actually on enabling everyone to deposit crypto in our wallet and withdraw crypto from our wallet. Plus, on top of it, we're working on paying interest on your deposits in crypto. It was kind of high-level overview what we've done and what are our plans.

Got it. And then when you start to see the stock and crypto trading, I don't know if you know this data off the top of your head, but I'm assuming that most of the users that are really kind of pushing into the crypto trading are probably younger. They probably have smaller balances. I think we kind of see this across the industry. But is there a lot of overlap between the people who are using the crypto trading features and the crypto trading accounts with the stock? Or do you feel like these are pretty segmented and, you know, Some people want to trade stocks, some people want to trade crypto, but there's not a ton of overlap there.

It's rather segmented, I would say. So we see a lot of interest from crypto and then we see a lot of people trading stocks. So usually if you look at data, probably if you look at crypto traders, probably 80% just trade crypto and 20% that trade stocks and crypto.

It's pretty, uh, pretty crazy to think how segmented it is. Almost 2 different kind of worlds, 2 different financial systems being built there. Um, what's, uh, been kind of the lessons that you've seen from the GameStop, the AMC, uh, kind of all these meme stocks and kind of the Reddit crowd? I'm assuming that's driving some tailwind in, in stock trading in general, but any lessons learned there or insights, uh, as this has kind of become more prevalent financial markets?

Well, lesson number one is your infrastructure should be as stable as possible, right? And then be able to take a 10x and even 20x load when these things happen. Because otherwise, if your infrastructure cannot handle the load, then you'll have a lot of complaints from consumers. You'll have problems with regulators. So generally, it makes sense to overpay for your cloud providers, but to be able to have very high load.

Yeah. And so really, it's a technical infrastructure kind of problem more than anything, right? It sounds like kind of these surges of interest is something that previously either hadn't happened or were hard to anticipate. And the approach that you guys have taken is just almost overkill, right? Have so much infrastructure availability and have the elasticity to bring it online as quickly as possible to serve these moments of surge of interest and trading volume.

Yeah, exactly. So it actually makes sense to run at huge overcapacity just to ensure that peak loads is I want to switch gears, talk a little bit about 2020 and into 2021.

You're the CEO of a multibillion-dollar company that has tens of millions of users. You guys do, I think, hundreds of millions of transactions per year. Any lessons learned over the last 12 to 15 months in terms of the pandemic and the monetary policy experiments that are going on as you sit in that CEO seat? When you look back over that time period, like what are some of the lessons that you take away and you're like, wow, you know, this was either surprising to me or things that I wish I had known going into the year?

I think what I learned personally and what the whole company learned is it pays off to be extremely tight in costs, right? You know, before 2020, we were running as a usual startup, right? So we were hiring a lot of people. We didn't really care about, you know, costs. But as COVID hit and obviously our business was very payment dependent. So we saw revenues, you know, going down 40%. So we were very fast at, you know, cutting costs, you know, ensuring that our unit economics is great. But ultimately, for startups that are less fast, it could have been a very troubling experience. So even, you know, COVID is now almost over, we still are very tight with costs and unit economics.

Yeah, it's interesting you describe kind of pre-COVID that you were more of a payments business. Would it be fair to say that you would categorize yourself as someone had asked, you know, 2 years ago, hey, we're more of a payments business than anything, and now this is more of kind of a brokerage-type business? Or how would you think about that transition between where you get most of the volume and revenue from for the business?

Initially, we're definitely into payments business model and our 70% of revenue came from payments. Now we make probably less than 30% from payments and then the rest is being made on other types of businesses. So we definitely diversified a lot and COVID actually helped us to shift as well.

Yeah, it's fascinating to kind of see and, you know, you guys probably won't get enough credit, but to, you know, make a transition like that with the speed that you did, given the size that you were and the user base that you had, I'm sure it's not easy. Um, one of the other things that's fascinating to me about you specifically is, uh, as the CEO of a multi-billion dollar business and one of the largest unicorns in Europe, do you feel pressure to kind of be successful because you feel like, uh, that the European tech industry is kind of counting on you to, to be the example of, hey, successful companies can be built here in Europe? Or, or how do you think about, uh, kind of the position that you're in or the company's in, uh, in light of kind of the local tech community, uh, across all the European countries?

Well, to be honest, I never think about it. European tech versus Asian tech versus US tech, another way in business. And then we need to compete within this niche and we want to be number one in it. And then I focus every day on ensuring that the company produces number one product and then our financials are also number one across the category of digital banking.

Yeah. And when you think about that, what are some of the things in the future or kind of on the horizon that will help kind of vault you guys to number 1 and stay there, uh, in terms of features? Are there things that the user base wants, uh, that you're excited about or kind of thinking through how to bring that to them?

We've got quite a few. For example, our product number 1 that we already built, and we are in testing phase, so it's travel related. So we, we, we bet that, you know, a lot of people will return to travel and then there will be a huge spike in travel activities. So we build a product within our marketplace, within our hub. You effectively have equivalent of Booking.com or Expedia. So it's our interface, everything is ours. You can book stays or hotels, you know, houses at the same price as Booking.com and Expedia, plus on top of it you can get 10% cashback instantly. So it's exactly the same experience, same prices, plus on top of it 10% cashback. So that's product number 1. Product number 2 that we built during pandemic is actually credit related. So basically it's called Salary Advance and then the way it works, as soon as you connect your salary to our account, you are able to withdraw your salary much, well, before that your salary is being paid. So how it works in practice, for example, if you're being paid on 30th of every month and today is 15th, You can get 50% of your salary upfront.

Got it. So basically the whole idea is, uh, you can get access to the cash and there's some underwriting that's going on in terms of you guys are fronting that money. There's probably a little bit of, uh, of a fee that you're taking for that. And, uh, what it really does is, uh, it allows people not have to wait for that next paycheck if they need to, you know, some sort of expense, etc.

Exactly. So we basically underwrite your salary, then we allow you to withdraw your salary early. Proportionally to accrued days.

Yeah. What's fascinating about this is, um, you know, I think it's the top 4 banks, uh, in 2019 made about $8 billion in overdraft fees, right? They essentially took money from people who didn't have money. Uh, and what's so interesting about it is when you start to unpack that data, a lot of those overdraft fees are not because the people didn't have the money. It's because of exactly what you're addressing here, which is, uh, you know, they just have expenses that occur right before they actually get paid. So rent's due on, you know, the 12th, they've got a car payment on the 13th, the Netflix bill hits on the 14th, they get paid on the 15th, but somewhere in there they overdraft and then they're able to pay off what they owe plus the overdraft. And so this specific credit product sounds like you would essentially allow people to kind of avoid that overdraft situation, you know, by getting access to the capital early, which is pretty impactful.

Exactly.

Yeah. And then talk a little bit about with that product specifically, uh, the whole idea of like accrued days. Uh, is that a risk mitigation type, uh, you know, aspect to it? Or, or why not kind of front the entire, uh, you know, pay period, uh, and only do the accrued days?

Well, at the moment it's a bit risk mitigation. Um, and then the reason for it is we— well, effectively we sell this product to companies As a benefit for their employees. And because it's not a credit product, so we actually can advance to people what they actually earned. If we would advance people much more compared to what they earned, it would be a credit product.

Got it. So really what you're doing is you're essentially building infrastructure. You're going to the corporations and you're saying, hey, here's a great product that you should offer to your employees as a perk. And then your relationship is with the corporation, not directly with the individual employee. So it's kind of a B2B2C type product more so than a B2C product.

Exactly.

Yeah, makes, makes a ton of sense. Talk to me about plans in the United States. So you guys have come to the United States, you've applied for the banking license. Anything specific in the US that, that you're focused on or specifically excited about?

So we're still building the product for US. So ultimately the product should be at par compared to our European product. Very shortly. And then initially we want to start targeting the whole expat community in the US. So there are at least 40 to 45 million people in the US who are not from the US originally and who still have a lot of connections abroad. So our product allows them to have, on day one, global account, and B, allows them to send and receive money from Europe, from Australia, from Japan, from India, instantly and for free, avoiding any fees. Plus on top of it, if they want to trade stocks, crypto, we're doing it at better pricing compared to local stockbrokers.

Yeah, makes a ton of sense. Before we get into the rapid-fire questions to finish up, I'm always fascinated by people who spend all day building financial technology like yourself. What's your personal portfolio look like in terms of, are you mostly allocated to cash, to stocks, to crypto? Just how do you think about investing your own own money across all these various asset classes?

Good question. To be honest here, I mean, obviously the majority of my holdings are actually in the Revolut stocks, which are private and not tradable. In terms of stocks, I generally look at top 5 tech companies and then I'm long only. That's it. And then crypto-wise, well, to be honest here, last 1.5 years I didn't do much. Because, you know, sorry, you know, price is too high. And then it went even higher, even higher. Now it crashed, but I didn't do anything.

Yeah, it's, uh, it's one of these weird things where, uh, people always forget— technology entrepreneurs for the most part— that, uh, the idea that 90, you know, plus percent of their net worth is tied up in the illiquid stock of their company is, uh, is always true. But, uh, but, but obviously you've made a, a great bet there, and, uh, and the company has continued to accrue value. So I think you're doing just fine. Um, But, but, but pretty cool.

All right.

I always ask the same 3 questions to, to wrap up, and then you'll get to ask me one question to, to finish this up. The first is, what is the most important book that you've ever read?

Well, good question. I'm unprepared, to be honest. Your last 10 years, I think, you know, the most enjoyable book I read, maybe the last 15 years, was Principles by Ray Dalio. But then back then it wasn't even published. It was a simple PDF within a few 50 or 60 pages, which was actually Much more brutal and honest compared to a book that was written with 300 or 400 pages. And the book is so PR polished that I didn't really recognize the initial PDFs that I read and enjoyed.

The PDF, I could not agree more. The PDF is way better. It's way shorter. It's much more direct and frankly much more valuable. So that's a great insight. But I think the PDF people can still get. If not, then you got to go read the book and suffer through 400 pages rather than 50 or 60. But I couldn't agree more there. Second question is around sleep schedule. So I used to sleep 5 or 6 hours, you know, kind of badge of honor of not sleeping a lot. But my friends over at Eight Sleep sent me a kind of thermoregulated bed, so I basically can turn it super cold. Now I sleep like 8 or 9 hours and completely changed the way that I thought about sleep. What's your sleep schedule and how has that evolved over time as the business has gotten larger?

To be honest, I used to be the same, right? I used to sleep 5, 6 hours, you know, because, you know, I spend a lot of time, you know, on my travel as well and on external meetings. But then, during COVID I completely switched to 8 hours. So, I effectively go to bed early, I get up early, I do training, and then similar to you, preferably cold temperature in the room. So, 8 hours for me is optimal.

Amazing. You said you go to bed early. What time do you usually try to get to sleep by?

Well, usually ten thirty.

Oh yeah, yeah. So so early by tech standards, but normal by the rest of the world standards. Third question is aliens. Are you a believer or a non-believer?

I think probabilistically believer, right? I think most likely given the whole universe. I mean billions of you know stars out there. probability of, um, of some kind of natural connections, you know, between, you know, molecules to enable creation of DNA, you know, with time. Uh, it's very, very probable. So I, I am a believer.

Yeah, I tend to agree with you that, uh, uh, it's more likely than not, which, uh, which is frankly all we can ask for. Uh, the bigger question, I guess, is just like, will we come in contact with them during my or your lifetime? But, uh, That I'm less confident of, right? They're out there, but maybe too far away for us. You get to ask me one question to wrap us up here. What one question you have for me?

What do you enjoy the most in your podcast?

Yeah, I mean, look, it's this.

What do you enjoy when you speak with people? What do you enjoy the most?

It's frankly, you spend all day thinking about a very specific vertical in the world, right? You talked earlier about, uh, you're, you're not focused on US technology or Asia technology firms or whatever. You're focused on how do we build the best software, become the best, uh, kind of financial services, uh, application for our users, uh, be number one, uh, and then make sure that the economics of the, uh, kind of the P&L stay number one as well. And so it's fascinating that, uh, you know, you and I can talk and, uh, I can basically glean a lot of the information that you spend all day thinking about And so when you do that over and over and over again across different verticals, you find that you just learn a lot, right? And so, you know, easy learning already just off the top of my head was when you were talking about the fact that the crypto accounts kind of have seen 2x the inflows to the stock accounts, right? I think that most people would think that, oh, the stock market's much larger, the stock market is more likely to kind of have folks interested. But given the user base that you have and kind of the year that we saw over the last 12 months. It's just fascinating to me how popular crypto has gotten so quickly. And so it's little things like that, which not groundbreaking on their own, but when you can start to piece that together through many conversations, you start to just get a more nuanced detailed version of the world, which I think makes you a better investor, makes you much more well-rounded as well.

Yeah, makes sense.

All right. Where can we send people to find you on the internet or, or learn more about Revolut? You have a Twitter account?

Yeah. @nstoronsky. And obviously website revolut.com.

All right. So revolut.com or, or your Twitter account are the 2 best places.

Yep.

Awesome. Well, listen, Nik, thank you so much for taking the time to do this, and we'll definitely have to do it again in the future.

Thank you. See you.