How Nikolay Storonsky Built a $45B+ Fintech Empire

Don't allow any kind of parts of the business to speculate. Banks blow up, right? They invest, they call it invest customer money into financial instruments. I just don't do it. I want guaranteed revenue. Very early on, I realized that all these managers are not like me. One-on-one, how are you? Making sure people feel great. For me, I never bought it. Like, great people don't need how are you. As soon as you start spending time managing people, they're probably a failure. People need to be independent. They need to self-deliver it without my help.

You feel a lot more efficient and disciplined than most US Yeah, US is a large market.

If you show traction, product-market fit, okay, they throw at you infinite amount of money and then you can afford not to be efficient. My kind of attitude was always every day I want to be at 100% so I don't have regret in the future.

I'm super excited to have this conversation with Nik, the founder of Revolut. Revolut is one of the largest neobanks in the world with over 40 million customers worldwide. And Nik is the founder, having started the business in 2015. So super excited to have Nik here and talk about his personal story and the story of Revolut. Nik, first, thanks so much for coming and doing this. I know you don't do a lot of these, so I appreciate it.

Thank you for inviting.

Yeah. So I think we've met in 2018 or 2019, I think in London. I'm trying to remember. And I remember the first impression I had of you. It was like, wow, this guy's a hardcore guy. He's like super intense and focused. And I remember coming to Revolut's office And it was like 8 PM or something. And it was like everyone was there. It was like super late. And like, you know, I was like, oh, it reminds me of some of these Chinese companies. Like people work so hard. And I was really impressed. I came back to Brexton, was like, we need to work more like those guys, you know, like they're crushing it there. So I'm curious, right? Like, were you like that since you were a kid? You know, were you always like super hardworking, super intense in the beginning, or is something that grew later?

Yeah, I think when I was 7 years old and I was at school, school was pretty tough. And I was also taking part in a lot of competitions like in math, physics, also swimming. And because no one was really preparing me for these competitions for math, physics, and then initially I was losing them. And because I was so competitive from childhood, I really kind of learned myself to work hard, to compensate for someone else preparing me because I was competing with other kids who had parents preparing them for Olympiads. And when I was losing in the first 3, 4 years, it was really kind of tough for me. So I kind of got used to working hard and then putting myself 100% in something I want to win.

And was math and physics your main—

you're like a Yeah, maths, physics, economics as well.

Economics, even from a young age?

Well, not from a young age. I think I started competing in Olympiads in economics when I was probably like 13, 14 years old.

Is it like Science Olympics? Is that the kind of thing?

Science, yeah. So it's very mathematical, yes.

But is it the kind that goes to the International Physics Olympics, like IPhO? Yeah, it does. Those kind of competitions?

It does, yeah.

Did you ever go to— did you do well or do you kind of struggle?

No, no, I actually won twice international. I won when I was 19. 9th grade and then 11th grade as well.

Oh, wow. The international one?

International, yeah.

For physics?

No, no, it was economics.

Economics?

Yeah.

Oh, I didn't know they have it for economics. What do they test you on?

So there are 2 parts. One is effectively problem solving in economics, like in a mathematical Olympiad, but in economics. And second one is practice. It's effectively you kind of play a game setting up business and then putting money in R&D, in marketing, setting up the price. And then there are many, many other teams who have companies, and then you just compete in a modeled environment. So, it's all kind of computer program, right? It is based on rounds. For each round you set up price, R&D spending, marketing spending, like hiring employees, firing employees.

Interesting.

how many units you produce.

And who wins?

So you've got many, many teams across many countries, so usually 100+ teams, and then we have same as in football, like in the rounds, right?

Yeah.

And then in the final round, you compete against other, I think, 7 or 8 companies, and yeah, I won twice when I was 14 and 16.

But how do they decide who wins?

It's a computer program, so winning is basically how much profit you make overall. So it's a combination of profit, market share, quality of the product.

But how do they run the simulations to make sure?

On computer, it's a computer program.

Oh, there's a computer program that's like—

Yeah, so you as a team, you just input certain parameters, right? Computer calculates everything for all the teams.

Interesting.

And then they give you a report on your company in terms of what is the P&L, how much you sold, and so on. And then you put input for the second round, third round, and so on.

And how did you find out? I never heard about this. How did you find out about it?

I think my teacher just introduced us to it.

Interesting. So did you have econ class in Russia?

Yeah, I did.

That was part of the core curriculum?

Yeah.

That's so cool. Yeah. Yeah. Huh. And then you're like, okay, now you have these econ classes, go do this Olympiad.

Exactly, yeah. And then when I went to uni, I went to study physics. It's top university in physics in Russia. MIPT is equivalent of MIT but in Russia. And yeah, I went specifically in the group where they had economics classes as well.

And why did you go study physics, not economics?

Just because it was the best university and I always thinking it doesn't matter what you study, it matters how they develop your brains. And then in my mind, economics was much easier compared to physics. And I was actually living alone since I was 13, 14 years old. And then I stayed with my brother.

Oh, interesting.

At the flat. And then, yeah, I continued school.

So you're living by yourself since you're 14?

Yeah, it was very cool.

Yeah. Yeah, that's very interesting. That's like a different thing. You know, it's funny, I actually had a similar experience. I went to do exchange programs, which is kind of living with family, but then I kind of was living by myself since 15, 16. And I definitely think that Living by yourself, you know, makes you an adult faster.

100%, yeah.

Did you like have any like funny stories about, you know, that time that you were living by yourself?

That was so long time ago, but I mean, preparing food for myself, like cleaning for myself, I think it's a very important part.

You had to do everything. You were cooking for yourself, cleaning up after yourself, and you're living in the home that they left. They left and you stayed in there. Okay, and then how does the uni process work? You just do a test and you kind of get in?

So basically in uni back then, it was like more than 20 years ago, so they had exams. So they had the exam in maths and then in physics. And yeah, I just passed 2 of them with the highest scores and then got accepted to the hardest faculty.

How did you think, growing up in Russia, now pre-Soviet, what did you think about the US, the Western world? What was the kind of narrative that you grew up with about what was the I mean, to be honest with you, back then there was no real narrative.

I remember when I was studying in the university, a lot of people— so basically I studied physics and then simultaneously I got accepted in the best economics school in Russia as well. So I was finishing actually 2 universities simultaneously.

Oh, so you went to— sorry, during your physics one, you applied to the other one too?

Yes. So basically physics I was doing for 6 years in university. So standard bachelor, you do 4 years and then 2 years you do Master. So when I'd done bachelor, I also applied for master degree in economics and finance in like top university in Russia. So I was finishing two masters in parallel for physics and then wow!

And they were both in Moscow.

Both in Moscow.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Back then, a lot of people they wanted to go to do PhD in American universities. Even myself. Yeah. Thanks God I haven't done it.

Yeah. You don't seem like the PhD kind of guy.

And then back then. What actually changed my opinion on PhD because all the trading houses and investment banks came to recruit all the brightest graduates from physics and economics in Russia. So I just decided to change career path from PhD to going to work.

To going to work. But the USSR had a very different economic model for a long time, right? Did you study the economic model or how do you even think about, was it fully capitalism economics or were there other ways when you're studying it?

No, in Russia actually, so USSR collapsed when I was 8 years old, right? So I actually observed all the kind of capitalism, right? And it was like pure capitalism.

Yeah.

Because there was nothing and then suddenly old people started, you know, building businesses or trading.

So you were seeing that from very close. How did it feel like? Like, what did it look like?

Now I think I was too young, right, to get something done. So I kind of, you know, observed everything as a kid. Yeah, but I haven't done anything myself because I was, you know, too young.

But you were observing it, right?

I was observing it.

Yeah, what did you think? Like, you're thinking like, hey, I need to start a business because everyone's starting businesses here is making money. Like, is that kind of the conclusion you got?

I just observed that like a lot of people, you know, become rich. You see like different cars. You see people buying cars before they didn't have cars. And for me, it was like motivation to kind of, you know, earn money.

What was the— was cars like you really into cars growing up?

Yeah, I was a kid. I was a young kid.

Yeah, yeah, you're like, oh, you know, I want to get here and get me money. I'm gonna buy this awesome Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like for me when I was growing up, I was just a tall kid. I'm like my height since I'm 14. And sometimes I traveled and I just want— one day I'm gonna make money, I'm gonna go on business class, you know, 'cause like this fucking economy seat, I don't fit in it, you know, it's terrible. I remember that being a big motivation. Yeah, very cool. Okay, so you said the recruiters came to visit.

So yeah, basically after first year of MA, So recruiters came for the internship, and then internship was in London. So I passed all the stages, flew to London, and I liked it there, right? They liked me, so they gave me a full-time offer. I think they had like definitely 10,000+ applicants. Who was that? Lehman Brothers.

Lehman Brothers, yeah.

Yeah, my last year into university, I was actually working full-time for Lehman Brothers and then in parallel finishing studies.

Oh wow! So you were doing like two masters and working for Lehman, which is not a chill job, right?

Not a chill job. To be honest, university last year was pretty chill, so yeah, it wasn't that hard. Yeah.

And did you want to leave Russia?

Yeah, it was a good opportunity to effectively learn how things work abroad, and yeah, it's just cool.

And you thought at that time that you're going to go back or no?

I thought actually that I would work for someone for two years and start my own business in Russia or outside. Doesn't matter. I just wanted to to start something on my own. But then reality, Lehman Brothers collapsed, and I went to Credit Suisse. And back then, I was on a work permit visa. So you can't really resign from the bank and start your own business because then you will lose access to the country. Right? So I had to wait. I think five years until I get passport, and then the day I got passport, I just resigned.

Oh wow! So okay, so you're at Lehman, and what was your first job? What was the kind of trading?

Trading?

Yeah. And what was the like? It's probably like a very you know it's a very intense. I imagine it's a very intense culture. Like what was the culture like when you joined?

It was actually quite fun, right? And you know, I I was always you know enjoying trading myself because I mean back then I thought it's like. Quite intellectual challenge to.

What were you trading?

Options. Options.

Yeah.

But in reality, option traders are not really speculating in the bank. I mean, they are speculating back then, but majority is just market making, right? So you make prices on different derivatives. When customers come, they buy or sell to you.

So explain to you know the audience how it works, right? Like what was options trading job in practice doing there?

Well, just come in the morning, right? Usually come six thirty a.m. before the market opens. You've got you have. You have a book where you have all your positions. Market opens, then you have incoming requests. Some customer might buy puts or calls or—

I want to buy, I don't know, a 6-month call from Barclays at like $30 a share or something like that. Someone shows up.

Yeah. And the sizes are usually large because they're all institutional orders. So they usually quote in like $10 million.

$5 million or something like that.

$5 or $10, sometimes $100 million versus index. Then you make a price, and then they trade with you. You effectively put it on your book, then you hedge position, then you go through a broker to hedge your position, to resell this option to some other bank or some other client. So, just market making.

And you were the one doing that? You're, like, talking to customers on both ends or you're getting some sales guy?

Sales guys were bringing deals.

Sales guys were bringing deals. You're doing the job of, like, finding out what's the right price.

Yeah, you just, as a trader, you're just ensuring that you make The largest penalty on your book, as simple as that. So you need to hedge the book. Sometimes you also take propositions because you think, you know, market goes up, market goes down.

And was there anything you learned in uni that was, you know, helpful for this or no, you had to relearn everything?

No, you had to relearn everything, yeah.

Just the core math that you learned in university?

I mean, the reality back in uni, I was studying like, you know, Black-Scholes models, how to price options as a course, but reality when you work As a trader, as a market maker, you already have tools which price options for you, and you just become you know so much more practical in terms of how you value options.

Okay, so then you're at Lehman. I mean, you were a trader, and then it collapsed, right? Like you were there when it collapsed. How was that?

I think I was like 22 back then.

22. That's crazy.

Fun, fun experience.

So tell me, like what was the play by play when it collapsed? You were there.

So on Sunday, they announced that Merrill Lynch was bought out. by government or bailed out, and then Lehman Brothers was effectively let go. So, on Monday I came to work, all the systems were closed, you can't trade. And there were like other, like, you know, 200-400 traders on the trading floor, no access to the systems. You just sit there and they were all playing like the same computer game.

Which one?

Some shooting helicopters. Yeah, web-based, the only game which was not blocked by corporate system.

Wow. And but like, were the days before, did you already think it was gonna happen?

Like, was there— No, no, no, no one ever thought it would happen, to be honest. It was like completely unexpected.

Wow. So like on the Friday you're like, I, you know, I'm just gonna come to Monday, and then Monday they showed, it's like, oh fuck.

Yeah, it's done. Well, to be honest, I was very young and, uh, very, uh, confident in my abilities to find any other jobs.

So you weren't scared?

No, not at all. For me it's like Interesting what happened.

Yeah, yeah, good learning.

Completely, yeah, exactly.

Is there any learning that you took at that time about like, you know, what to do, what not to do, life, anything that you were thinking at that moment in time?

I mean, to be honest, I was so confident in myself that, you know, in my mind, like, I can do anything. I would never be without like, you know, money or something.

Where do you think all that confidence kind of came from? Like, did you just win a lot when you were a kid?

Yeah, exactly. I think, you know, when I was a kid, Because of all these competitions, because you build a certain track record. Also because universities were very hard with exams. You kind of learned how to—

And you were always number 1 or something?

First 2 years in university, I was always top grades and so on. But then I started working as well. And then I realized going deep into science is not for me. So I started doing some side projects, started working.

Like what side projects?

Like just to make money, like different things. Because back then, like, a lot of students were trying, for example, buying cell phones, selling cell phones, this kind of thing.

Oh, interesting. So you got into the buying cell phone business?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Interesting. How did it work? Like, that was kind of your first, you know, business?

I mean, initially I thought I lost money, right? But then, yeah, I actually made it all back. And I think I made like, you know, 5 to 10x on what I put in.

But what was the business like? What was this buying cell phone business?

So basically, there were guys who were kind of who had their I think one shop, and it was really you know going well. They were selling cell phones. They wanted to expand like a retail shop, a normal retail shop. Yeah, yeah. So and so I give them money, and they went into the business. But then business didn't do well initially. So they're in a Well, less at all.

How about how do you get the money to give them that? You're so young, right?

Like, uh, yeah, desire to make money, right? Just desire to take risk. Uh, and but how did you have the money to give to them? Oh, because I was also working part-time as well.

Oh, you were working part-time?

Part-time, yeah. So I had—

for what?

Uh, so basically I was doing, um, I was working part-time at, uh, Institute of Economic Research.

What?

Uh, it's Economic Research Institute.

I forgot its name, but it's kind of like a research job.

Yeah, it's like a research job. So basically what you do, they give you a problem, then you read many, many articles of foreign literature scientists on this problem. Then what do you do? You just design a certain way to solve the problem that you discovered in these articles. Then you effectively program it in Stata, you calculate certain things, then you write it down. And then I think they resell research to the government afterwards.

So So this is the first job.

Yeah, that was my first part job.

Yeah. Okay, so you were making some money from this and then you're using it to— I still don't understand the cell phone business. You would like give them money to expand their retail shop?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. So it's kind of an investment?

Uh, kind of.

Yeah. Ah, okay. So they were doing super well just retailing cell phones and, you know, you gave some money.

I mean, it didn't work well initially, but they, they actually— then it worked well, and then in a year they, they, they returned this money.

So how old were you when you made this like first cell phone money, I guess?

Like, like 19, probably.

Okay. So you had some confidence like, I made money when I'm 19, I can probably keep making money.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah. Yeah. Because I think like there's a lot of people that like, that's not like they're 22 and they're like not confident, you know? And I think that's— it does seem like a pattern I see in a lot of people who are successful that they're just like hyperconfident when they're young. I had the same thing. I was like 100% sure. Everything was gonna work out.

For me, the same. I was like 100% sure that I can make money.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's— I try to describe that to people today, and sometimes I come out as like not relatable because people are like, what do you mean you were 100% sure? I just don't know. I just 100% sure, you know? Um, and I think part of it is then you're pitching, you're doing, you're recruiting, everything, you know, that confidence kind of transpires over time.

Exactly. You just build a track record, and then you're— because you're also young, you have a track record, and then you're extremely confident.

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so Lehman Brothers, you're trading there, it collapsed, and then what do you do?

So my boss, he actually went to Credit Suisse, and then he hired myself with him as well. So he was hired in Credit Suisse, and then he hired me.

For doing same thing, trading?

Same thing, yeah.

Trading. Well, funny that Credit Suisse also, years later.

I was actually there first, had a job in Nomura for one month.

To Nomura?

Nomura, yeah. But then he kind of hired me from Nomura to Credit Suisse.

Okay, and trading was the same thing? Yeah, well, but like, and then why did you— do you think you're gonna have like a long career in Wall Street? Because you could make a lot of money at a time in Wall Street, right? Like if you just like kept doing what you're doing and like big bonuses and kind of—

yeah, but to be honest, I was never satisfied because like in trading job, yes, you have P&L, but then banks became very political. So I saw a lot of people who kind of, you know, lose money but then still being paid, you know, big bonuses as well.

Yeah, did you get paid big bonus?

Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What was your like first bonus? Do you remember?

First bonus? I don't remember. Yeah, but it was like, you know, half a million or something. What? Yeah.

Well, that was your first bonus?

Maybe a bit less, but it was like definitely close to half a million.

That like kind of like order of magnitude?

Yeah, when I was like started properly trading.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Makes sense, makes sense, makes sense. And what were your like kind of hobbies at the time? Like what were you doing as kind of like outside of work? Around this time?

So I loved windsurfing, so I started, you know, windsurfing.

Oh, you're— where did you windsurf?

Uh, I think initially I started probably in Egypt.

Egypt?

In Dahab, yeah, that's where I learned windsurfing. And then, uh, I actually switched to kitesurfing after I went to Dahab, or probably I went to Croatia, and then there wasn't enough wind for windsurfing, but kitesurfers still were kiting, so I decided to switch to kiting.

Do you need more wind for windsurfing than for kiting?

Um, I mean, the reality for windsurfing, yes, to really glide you need more wind. Yeah, compared to kite.

And then you moved to kitesurfing what year? Like you said it was like 2011 or something, right, that you moved to kiting?

2012? Yeah, probably 2011, 2012.

Yeah. Yeah, you're a very early kiter. Kites were like kind of dangerous back then, right?

No, not really. I mean, to be honest, you— I looked at equipment now and back then I mean, it didn't change much.

Was it— is it 4 lines already when you started?

5 lines.

5, okay, because the early, early kiting, I think it was 2 lines that people had.

Oh no, it's too early, no. I was already like, you know, 4 liners to 5 liners, yeah.

Makes sense, makes sense, 'cause that was really dangerous. That was like, you know, there was no way to stop. You could just like get pulled away. And then, okay, so you, you know, you're windsurfing, kitesurfing, so you went to Credit Suisse and then you were trading same thing there, just options.

Options, yeah, same markets.

Making like, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonus and beyond. And then what would happen after that? What do you do after? You got your visa, you said, right?

Like, yeah, I was already kind of set, uh, to leave. I was just waiting for last year for the passport. That's it.

Oh, so you already knew you wanted to leave, you just didn't want to leave because of the passport?

Exactly.

And then you already knew you wanted to start a business, or—

Yeah, exactly. I want to start a business, and then yeah, just Waiting for my passport to arrive.

And is there anyone you were like looking for like inspiration, you know, or like which entrepreneurs did you follow or track around that time? Like what was how do you even know like what to start? You know, like what's a good business? All that.

Good question. I don't remember following anyone to be honest. Yeah. Because back then it was all like you know about banking consulting. All top graders went into banking consulting. And then back then. No one actually talked about tech and startups. Now everyone talks about tech and startups. It's hot, right? But back then, I mean—

Which year is this, you think? 2014?

It was 2014, yes. 2013, 2014.

I remember around this time I had just started my first business and I remember TechCrunch was like a huge thing for me. I was just like, I was reading TechCrunch a lot and that was like a big inspiration.

Oh, interesting. No, I didn't know anything about TechCrunch.

You didn't know any like media websites online about tech and stuff like that?

No, no, no. I didn't really, you know, read it all. And for me it was because I was in an environment in London, and London was really financial capital of Europe, maybe the world back then. And I was surrounded by bankers or traders or salespeople. My friends were bankers as well or traders, and no one really talked about startups.

But like when you thought about starting a business, you're like, I'm gonna start the next Lehman Brothers? Was that what was kind of going on to your mind?

No, to be honest, I was much more modest, right? I was just looking for some business idea just to start. And I was looking for several ideas and several problems to solve. I was looking at what's happening in China, what's happening in the US, what worked in China, what worked in the US. And yeah, just looking for ideas.

And was Tinkoff already successful?

No, back then Tinkoff probably haven't launched yet.

Oh, it didn't launch yet?

Maybe they had.

But it wasn't like you were—

But back then I didn't know about Tinkoff.

You didn't know about it. Which is interesting, like until kind of recently it was probably one of the most successful kind of neobanks, let's put it like that, in the world, right?

Yeah, back then, yeah, probably.

Yeah. And so, but what about like venture? Like did you know that VCs wouldn't invest in startups? Like was that a thing you're like kind of like aware?

No, back then no. I just wanted, I had this desire to build something myself. Right, to be kind of independent of all these bosses who I thought they are not very clever. And yeah, just left, had this idea about a card with zero FX and transfers.

So, before we get into Revolut, what were the other businesses you considered? Like, what were you—

So, I was looking at, what was it, loans business, like, you know, microloans business. Microloans.

Yeah. Then I was looking into all in Europe or were you looking like just UK?

And then I was looking for marketplace. I think you know buying and selling clothes. There was some kind of social network in China back then that really you know took off, and I thought you know maybe I just copy it in Europe.

How would you finding out what's happening in China? Like how are we even knowing?

I was just researching on the internet, you know, trying to find some business ideas. Yeah.

Interesting. Was there anyone that you got really close to doing?

I think I selected 3 or 4 ideas and then I just went with Revolut.

Do you remember what the other ones were?

So yeah, last ideas were loans, right? Microloans, like, you know, fast digital, because I think, you know, back then there were no services who would give you back loans very fast. Then this Chinese website as well, Replik, and then it was Revolut, yeah.

And the other one was Revolut.

Yeah.

And what was the Chinese one exactly? It was like just—

I don't remember the name, but it was effectively a social network where people post about their clothes. And then you can also buy clothes on this website.

It's kind of social commerce.

Kind of, yeah. Yeah.

Interesting. Interesting. And let's talk about that. Did you look a lot to China? Like, what did you think of China back then?

Yeah, I looked a lot at China.

Why? I guess it's not an obvious thing for someone to do back then, I guess.

No, it's just because you look at growth, right? And you look at number of people and then you look at innovation, what's happening. So I was looking at the US and China back then.

It does seem that a lot of your economic stuff from back in the day did play a role in how you think about the world, right?

Yeah, maybe. But for me it was just intuition, right?

Yeah, yeah, interesting. Yeah, but usually intuition, you know, you have to build it from—

No problem.

From something. You're very kind of like numbers-focused, and you always talk about like the growth and the, you know, it's a really interesting like way to think when you're that young, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah, okay, so then Revolut, well, okay, so tell me what the first, first idea for Revolut was.

So I simply wanted to have a card. So basically what I've done, I set up myself multiple bank accounts with different currencies, and when I was traveling or sending money, I was trying to spend from these bank accounts and send money from these bank accounts, but it was like super clunky, like very difficult. And then back then online banking was also pretty shit, so you cannot really, you know, go on the website, you need to put, you know, tons of passwords, some devices to enter. It was like really messy back then. So I decided to effectively build a company or a product Like a bank account plus a card attached to it, so you can go abroad and then spend in multiple currencies that interbank rate. So kind of in my head, I already knew how to do infrastructure around it in terms of hedging currency exchange because obviously I was a trader. I know how things work. But then in terms of card payment infrastructure, I knew zero. So what I've done, I started researching. How to get it done? I found call it partners in the value chain, like in the issuing bank, processor, card factory, few few others to to put it all together, to integrate it all, and then launch a card. And then I was trying to find how to issue multi-currency card, how to set up infrastructure, and everyone told me from issuing banks that you know it's not possible, doesn't exist. So, what I've done, I hired the best consultant, prepaid card consultant in the UK to help me with infrastructure.

How did you find that guy?

Someone recommended me to him, and I called him and he said, no, like, it's impossible to get done. I won't even charge you for it. I said, okay, why don't you wait? Why don't I pay you, like, you know, for 2 days consulting? Just come to the office, you explain me how MasterCard works, Visa works, card processing works, and maybe we'll figure something out. So, I sat down with the team and then—

Why did he think it was impossible? Like, why?

It's just because no one ever done it before in the UK. And so, we kind of sat down with the team and then we figured out how to get it done. We showed the scheme to him and he said, yeah, it might be possible. So, that's—

What was the first version of it? Like, how did you get it done early on?

So, basically, all the— I think all the prepaid card providers, they were putting balances on the card. Right. So it was sitting with a processor, but as soon as you take it out, right, you create ledger yourself and then you just simply authorize based on the signals, then it is definitely possible.

Got it. So what you do is like you basically, instead of using the balances from the prepaid card providers, you would like just use them as an authorization engine and then have the balances yourself and in the ledger. In the ledger. You know, it's funny, it's It's not too dissimilar when we started Brex because everyone told us that doing a credit card was very hard in the US because, you know, banks and credit. So it was like, so what we did is we got a prepaid card and then we just pre-fund it but have a ledger on credit in the back and we would just like, you know, charge people and then like keep funding it, you know, for the amount of people. Yeah, exactly. It was like similar, I guess, with what you guys did. So the value proposition for the customer was I am traveling around, And I don't want to pay FX. And, you know, I can just like spend in different currencies for free.

Yeah, I also wanted to do transfers as well. So I wanted to have an account with a card, which would also allow me to send money abroad. Because I mean, it's just convenient. And then everyone was telling me, no, it's crazy. It's like, you know, 2 different products. Why would you put 2 different products in kind of, you know, one app? Like every single person told me, VCs told me, like, you know, founders in fintech told me, But I just kept insisting, so I built effectively an account with a button, transfer money abroad, and then with the card as well to spend from the same balance.

Got it. So you would be— you're able to put like some balance there so you can like transfer that to the card as well?

Exactly.

And that was impossible?

Well, card was attached to the wallet, right? So card was simply authorization method. But then from this wallet, from this balance, you could also send money in different currencies to different—

Well, and that was probably hard to build too, right?

That was hard to build too.

And like, where did you get the insight of that people would want that? Like, how did you build that intuition?

Just because I wanted it myself. For me, it was obvious if I save money that way, plus it's slick to use, why wouldn't other people use it as well?

So you're like, I travel, and when I travel, I hate paying FX fees.

Exactly, yeah.

And, you know, if it's easy, why wouldn't— and were you doing some version of it yourself? Like, would you have multiple cards that you were kind of using yourself?

Yeah, before this product, I had multiple cards, multiple accounts. I was, you know, transferring money from one account to another, to the broke as well to exchange money.

So, and like, I guess, have you always like been optimizing costs like that in your life?

Uh, no, I mean, to be honest with you, like, I was, uh, all about revenues rather than cost. Like, cost, I, I never cared. But for me, it was, uh, I just don't like waste, you see what I mean? Yeah. Uh, so for me, it was waste, right? Is, uh, is okay, one type of money goes into another type of money, then it's less I mean, it's waste, it's commodity, right?

So you felt that growing up, it's not that you were super focused on your costs, you would spend money, no problem.

Yeah, I was completely opposite, right? I didn't really care about costs. For me, it was always, okay, I need to make more and more money. And then cost, I mean, it doesn't matter, right? Because, okay, you reduce costs by 10%, 20%, revenues can grow 1,000%, 10,000%.

The waste is kind of what bothers you.

Waste has always bothered me. Yeah, I want to be as efficient as possible.

Oh, interesting, interesting. Where do you think that came from? Like, is there anything that—

I don't know, I was always a perfectionist in what I do, right? And for me to get something done well, I do not want to have waste. Yeah, for me it's like—

interesting. Okay, so then you're doing this first version, and how long did it take you to— did you code it yourself? Like, how do you get the first people to code? Did you raise money?

So basically, so I've done first research myself, Like, you know, figure out that it's possible, and I got contracts done with all the providers.

And you had a little bit of money at this point yourself, right? Because you had made some bonuses and—

I had quite a lot of money back then, yeah.

Oh, you did?

Yeah, because of trading, right? And basically, so first, because I was very new to tech, right, and to development, I hired a kind of outsourcer, like a team on outsourcing to build a product.

Yeah, like engineers?

Engineers plus design on outsourcing and—

And you paid them yourself out of your own pocket at this point?

I just paid them, like, you know, transferred money to them. They were freelancers.

But like it wasn't venture money, it was your own money?

No, no, it was my own money, yeah. And so basically we kind of, you know, built their— so we built something, but I think back then it wasn't really working and it was like a very bad quality. So I very quickly realized that outsourcing doesn't work. So I kind of, oh no, now I learned how to do like development, right? I know who to hire. I started hiring people in-house myself. So I ended up hiring 6 or 7 people, like engineers plus design in-house. And then we continue building the product and we build the product.

And did you know how to code?

Yeah, of course. Yeah.

You did already?

Yeah, because I learned it, right? Plus in trading, I was also like, you know, doing Python and MATLAB as well.

Oh, interesting. I didn't know that. So in trading you had to code?

No, not really, but I was always, you know, backtesting different strategies. Got it.

So you knew how to interview engineers for someone good or bad at that point?

No, I wasn't good at it. No, to be honest with you, no.

Got it. So you just hired people that you thought were smart?

Yeah, I just hired first contractors and then I brought team in-house.

And this is all yourself, you're just building the prepaid card and you need to get like a provider. Who was your first provider for prepaid card, like your first bank partnership?

It was actually, back then it was called Optimal Payments. They were issuing bank, I think they later became Paysafe.

Paysafe?

Yeah.

Okay, so they were kind of like your BIN sponsor?

Yes, exactly.

Early on, and then you had a processor back then that you used?

So it was GPS. GPS.

Got it, got it. So, okay, so you started, you brought this team in-house and they were building with these partners that you got in. And how long did it take you from starting to build to launching?

18 months.

18 months? Oh, so it's kind of like a long build.

Yeah, it was. I think in a beta version, we were testing already, it was within 12 months. But then official launch, we official launched to external people, to a lot of external people in 18 months.

And did you fund all of it yourself or you kind of raised money in between?

Yeah, no, I funded it all myself. Right. And then when we started having our first customers, I raised money because I was running out of money.

Oh, interesting. And you applied to YC at some point, I think, right?

Yeah, I did. Yeah.

I think you were YC's biggest miss ever.

Probably.

I don't think there's a company that's more successful than Revolut that YC missed. When was this? You remember?

It was 2010. 15, probably 2015. Yeah.

And that's when you launch, or that's when you—

I think I applied before we launched officially.

Yes, before you launch. Um, so you're kind of trying to raise money a little bit at this point, or—

for me it was, um, yeah, I think back then, you know, I, I, I wanted to raise money already because I know I was, you know, running out of cash. And the advice was first to go to Accelerator. Accelerator or YC, because then they'll promote you to other investors. Because I was starting pitching to investors and every single investor declined me. And someone gave me advice, okay, why don't you go to accelerator and then you have a wider reach of investors and then they will also prepare you to fundraise.

Interesting. Why do you think, looking at your pitch with what you know now, back then, why do you think you didn't get in?

I don't know, to be honest, back then I already realized that At least accelerators took too much or take too much in equity, right, for what they provide. And back then I wasn't already that motivated to get it done because I just applied and then see what happens. And then if they would accept, then I would start really looking at this seriously.

Oh, interesting. Okay. So it was more like an optionality thing.

Why not kind of thing?

Yeah.

It happens, nice, it's another option, but if it doesn't—

And how much of your own money did you spend between raising money and Well, I wasn't working for two years, right?

So I probably spent like probably seven hundred k on business plus and personal expense.

But that was like a big percentage of your money. Second, was that a big percentage of your money?

Yeah, it was. Yeah, like I think overall my cost for for this year was one million plus. Oh wow! Personal plus.

Yeah, so it's probably like the risk. It's a lot of risk, right? To like spend this out of your own money and like do it.

I mean, to be honest, you're. Like I always had this attitude that I can always, you know, make money. So I wasn't really scared at all.

So you're like, look, worst case scenario, if this doesn't work, I just go back to have a job.

Exactly.

And finance and make millions of dollars again, kind of thing.

Kind of. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. That's a really good, like, safety net.

Yeah.

Yeah. Cool. So then you started Revelio, you got this first team, and then when do you raise your first money?

2015 as well.

After launch? Before launch?

It was just before launch, so we, I think we closed in May, or we agreed the deal in May, and then in June or July I launched.

What were the kind of like early terms back then?

Pretty bad for me. I think they gave me $1 or $1.5 million at $6 million pre.

$6 million pre?

Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you my first deal and you can see, you're gonna feel better about yours. My first deal was $300K for 60% of the business.

Oh, that's crazy.

In Brazil. So, you know, the market's definitely got frothier since then.

Yeah, no, I think it makes sense, right? Because reality is, I think back then, like, a lot of companies were undervalued.

Yeah, well, there weren't the big outcomes, right, to kind of justify the— and did you think it was a great valuation back then or no, you thought it was okay?

I was running out of money, so I took whatever I could.

But did you think, wow, I got a great deal, or no, you were like, I got a shitty deal, but it is what it is?

No, I wanted to take money as soon as possible and then just focus on—

So you won, you're like, hey, I won, you know, I got money, which is what I'm—

Yeah, and then, you know, because I was already fundraising, it was— I spent already like 5 or 6 months fundraising, everyone said no. So for me it was—

So it was hard fundraising?

It was super hard, yeah.

Interesting.

It was London, right? Plus in London there is no kind of— back then there wasn't that much Many VCs. So it was very, very hard.

What was the biggest pushback that people had back then?

They were all saying, no, like, unit economics doesn't work. How do you make money?

It's monetization.

Yeah, they were so kind of spreadsheet-focused rather than product-focused. And for me, it was always, you know, I'll figure out economics later. I just need volume first.

Was that very obvious that you were going to be able to monetize to you?

For me, it was obvious because again, this mentality that I can effectively compete, right, with other organizations, other people. Because okay, I was in Kenilworth, which is London's financial center. You look around, all these, you know, huge buildings, huge banks making a lot of money, right? And then okay, they make money. How come I wouldn't be able to make money?

So you're like, hey, if I compete with these guys, I'll win.

Yeah, of course.

So therefore, I just need some volume so I get to compete with these guys.

Exactly.

Very interesting.

And no one believed me at the same time, like, unit economics doesn't work.

So the first product was this, you know, you launched, and was it like instant product market fit or it took a little bit to kind of get it right?

It took some time. So it took like, I remember we had 1 sign-up a day, then it went to 5 sign-ups a day, 10 sign-ups, suddenly it went to 100 sign-ups a day. So it just—

And retention was always good from the beginning or no?

To be honest here, like first three four years I didn't even measure retention, right? All all those things. I was so focused on product.

On product. Yeah.

Infrastructure product product infrastructure. Yeah.

Interesting. And then was it how long was it just like one product or like two? I guess the wallet and the not long to be honest here.

So we launched with so traction and then I started looking to other products like credit.

And then at this point, when did fundraising kind of become easy?

I think second round was easier, yes. Third round was even easier. Fourth round, fifth round, it was like really bumps because that was in a bad economic environment. So it was very hard to raise money. So it was hard. Yeah, sometimes, like generally every single, every consequent round was easier, but then sometimes we had bumps.

Makes sense, makes sense. And then at this point, do you think that the vision that you had back then kind of stuck, or like what changed in the vision?

It obviously changed, right? Because like reality is you never have clearly defined vision or clearly defined idea, right? Like you really need to start working on it to get more information, to build something, iterate. It's like Finding a gold, right? Okay, you try here, you try there. Okay, this thing sticks. You go deeper.

And what is what do you think if you had asked you know Nick back then like what's the vision for Revolut? What what is a 2015 version of it would have looked like?

I mean, it was just just a wallet and a card. I wasn't even thinking about vision. To be honest, back then I was always skeptical about people who. Kind of have you know great vision for ten years forward. They have strategy.

Yeah, okay.

I was never like that, to be honest with you. For me, okay, that's an obvious problem. Yeah, let's let's get it done. Move on, right? That was my approach.

And after you started, like which were there companies that you admired more than others? They were like, oh yeah, I kind of want to model these companies. And you know, did you keep looking to China as kind of like model companies as well?

Yeah, looked at WeChat. I think back then I looked at, well, because I started looking at tech, obviously I looked at big tech successes like Stripe or Airbnb as well.

But company culture or operating model, were those the companies you kind of looked at, like Stripe and Airbnb? Because you guys seem to have a very different culture than they do.

Yeah, no, I looked at it, but I was never going deep to understand how they operate. I was just too busy, to be honest.

How did you, like, did you think intentionally about kind of company culture, or was it something that you just did and it kind of just happened early on?

I think company culture is just a product of a founder, right? It effectively replicates you, who you are. And because I was always extremely competitive, extremely aggressive on what I do, extremely wanted to win, plus I was a perfectionist as well. So it As a result, when I was hiring people, and when I was hiring people who are very different to me, I mean, we didn't really work together well. So I ended up building interview process, how to hire these types of people who I know they will deliver. So we started hiring these people. That's how culture is born, right? Because then these people start hiring the same people.

And do you think that you ended up hiring people that are similar to you At some point you probably tried the idea of hiring people that are different than you. Do you think that was a good idea or no, you just kind of came back to hiring people that are more similar?

All people are different, right? All people are different nationalities, different backgrounds, but values are the same, right? So for me, very important was hardworking. Very important was kind of delivering things very fast. Very important was perfectionist or quality of the product. So for me, as soon as I saw people that are not fitting into these values, obviously we couldn't work together well for long.

So one of the things that I find very interesting on this people topic is that you have a lot of direct reports, right?

Yeah.

How many do you have now?

Like 40, around 40.

4-0?

Yeah.

4-0. I thought it was like 30 and it was like already a lot. Yeah.

You know, I have like 32 direct and then another like 10, 15 indirect or functional, we call them.

So, you know, obviously, as you know, there's not a lot of CEOs that do that. Why do you think that's kind of what you do? Jensen is a very successful one that does, right? Like, apparently, I think he has 60 reports or something like that.

Well, reality is, my philosophy is very simple, right? So as soon as you start spending time managing people, they're probably a failure, right? Because then you need to dive deep into tell them what to do. My approach was always people need to be independent, they need to be self-guided, right? So they need to kind of self-identify what needs to be done, they need to self-deliver it without my help. And then we have one-on-one or business reviews just to sync on direction of what needs to be done across the whole company. And but as soon as you kind of go deep, as soon as you start telling people that they're doing things wrong, And you do it consistently on a weekly basis, so they're just wrong people.

I remember when we talked, you talked a lot about like building the systems, right? What does that mean to you exactly?

Well, basically, because I was always, you know, quantitative by nature, you know, by my education and by trading job, I was always, you know, trying to quantify things and not rely on emotions but rely on effectively machines. to deliver outcomes that I want. And then machines are obviously process and then people within process. So I think quite early on I figured out, so usually I was managing myself directly, 20, 30, 40 people and company grew up, say above 50 people and then I had to put management structure in place. And then very early on I realized that all these managers are not like me. rather than don't go down into details. They just simply have all this classical management thing, one-on-one, how are you, making sure people feel great. For me, I never bought it, right? Like for me, people don't need, you know, how are you, right? Or like great people don't need how are you, they just need to have fun at the job. And having fun at the job is when you build great products, when you see results. So I was always against classical management their styles. And I also remember arguing with my VCs, they always wanted me to hire senior executives. They gave me examples how these guys are great and I just never kind of trusted their opinions. For me, people who are kind of senior executives who are in the market for sale, right? They're probably like negative selection bias.

Totally.

So I was never into Older people, senior executives.

You know, it's interesting that I think in, I don't know, the last couple of years, maybe 2019, 2020, 2021, you know, I would hear about Revolut and that would be the, I think the main criticism, it would be something along the lines of, you know, Nik doesn't hire enough like great senior people, you know, like, or something along those lines. And I felt really good. I was like, yeah, we hire great senior people, you know? And then like now 2025 come along, I'm like, fuck, Nik was right from the beginning, you know, like, you know, very few of them actually work and you probably have to, you overpay them. And a lot of our leadership team today is just people who grew up at the company. They're just really, really talented.

Exactly, yeah. A lot of people, they're just career harvesters. I mean, that's reality, right? They have great CV, then they sell their CV, but they can't really deliver.

Yeah, what do you call them?

Career harvesters.

Career harvesters, okay, that's interesting.

Career harvesters. Friendship seekers, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I like that name. But what do you actually, when you say building systems, right? Once you gave me an example, I remember you guys had this, I don't remember which year it was, like some compliance scare that was like all over the press. When was that?

It was like probably like some compliance system.

Yeah, 2020, 2021, something along, you know, I remember there was like some, it was all over the press and—

Yeah, basically we were, basically because I was never relying on senior people, how they did things, because I saw in the past, Because I was very kind of system-driven, tech-driven, systemizing everything. Then obviously when I looked at compliance, like all these people from big banks, I don't know, they don't really have technical education. They don't know maths, physics, and they approach solving problems in a very traditional way, right? And for me, it was always about building models or building rules and models to kind of solve compliance problems. systems because early on I realized that machines are so much better at standardized problems compared to humans. And I was always building systems to replace manual work. And the same with managers. I very early on realized that this management structure doesn't work for me. So I very early on started developing systems in-house to manage people, assigning KPIs to each team on department level, on the company level. Making sure everything is super transparent in terms of KPIs, dashboards, analytics, or a team in the system. And then building up the whole recruitment process, defining people as their skill set, then value set, and then deliverable set, and then actually testing each of their parameters within the interview process. So yeah, very early on.

So this is like, talked to a lot of CEOs, a lot of companies. This is like one of the most unique things I think about you and Revolut is like how much emphasis and time and energy you spend on building the system. So I want to make sure we— I really understand it. So like, let me— let's get an example, right? In this sense, obviously every company has like KPIs, you know, but I think the hard part is, you know, what is that? You have a meeting and they're off the KPI, for example. Like, what do you do?

Yeah, I mean, the reality When you're doing one-on-ones, so you do business reviews, you do it 2, 3, or 4 times, right? You always start with KPIs, where they are, their roadmap, and then you dive deep. Okay, what are you building? Why are you building it? What's wrong? Within 2, 3 iterations, you realize who is good, who is going deep enough, and who is not. So you've got also intuition about person or a team. Then this intuition is a lead indicator, is ahead of KPIs. Even if KPIs are not there, but you agree with what the team is doing, You agree that they're delivering fast, you agree that quality is good, you know that KPIs will catch up. So you have this intuition.

Got it. So you're saying it's like, look, it's— you need to build the— when you do these business reviews with your like 40 direct reports, what you're looking for is trying to see, okay, are they doing the right thing in order to drive this KPI?

Yeah, is the logic right? Is the direction right? Are they going deep enough into details themselves? It's super important. Because a lot of managers, I would say 95%+ managers across all the areas, they don't go into details. And that's wrong. For me, manager is a person who goes down into details and is able to direct the team and then identify if something goes wrong. Because in reality, how do you achieve goals? So you define goals and then you define a roadmap, what needs to be done, a direction, and then you execute. So team can be very good on execution, but direction can be wrong. So they all kind of work half a year, but direction was wrong, they all wasted all this effort.

Yeah.

And then great manager or any manager in my view, they need to go down into details, understand the quality of execution, and then only details will help you understand direction as well. In a lot of cases you think, okay, this product would work, that's how you do it. Well, then you go down into details, you realize yourself, no, no, that's not how you need to build it. So I'm gonna change all of them.

But do you think your job when you're doing that is to kind of like also know the details or make sure they know the details? Like, how do you know? Because the company's so big today, like you can't possibly—

No, I go down into details myself. Like, as soon as I see kind of, you know, red flags, I just go down into details. Like on design level, code level, like, you know, structure level. And then that's the best way to identify weak performance, right? You go down into details, lower compared to them, you see the difference and then they're not good, right? I mean, how come you're doing it like 100% of your time? I just spend a weekend diving deep into details and then, yeah, exactly, unacceptable.

Interesting. And then whenever someone leaves from that role, that makes it very easy to put someone back there, right? Because you kind of have the systems.

Yeah, exactly. Plus, because you're kind of into details, you also know each team member as well. And that's pretty easy to kind of, you know, promote someone.

So if someone leaves, you always have someone there kind of like in the back burner.

Yeah, because you're into details.

Because you're into the details of everything.

Yeah.

Interesting. But like, are you not at the level now that like it's just so big that you can't get into the details of kind of everything or no?

Everything, no. But again, I have all these, you know, KPIs, metrics, and then if things go wrong, you see it on KPIs. And if KPIs are not moving in the right direction for a long time, I just go down into details. So very selective where I go down into details.

And then obviously I kind of feel that in product, the way to do that is a little bit more obvious, but you do it all in the entire company, right? Like marketing and compliance and every function.

Yeah, when things are going well, you obviously don't dive deep. You kind of know that, okay, this person who manages self-guided, they're into details themselves. As soon as things go wrong, you see it on metrics and then you dive deeper. That's how you end up having many, many reports because if you have philosophy that you only work with self-guided people, with time you filter out a lot of bad people and good people stay and then you can actually have many direct reports in the system because they're all self-guided, they deliver all the time.

And how do you know who to have a report to you versus who to not report to you?

I mean, if things go well, right, I usually kind of let them go on their own, plus I might, you know, put someone to manage them. But then in critical areas where I kind of don't trust my intuition, you know, I always, you know, manage.

Like what's an example?

Compliance, FinCEN.

Got it. So that part you manage yourself always because—

Yeah, I always enter details because it's a complex area.

It's a complex area.

In our business, yeah.

Yeah, interesting. And how do you think about experience? Like hiring people with some experience in that area versus not just hiring smart, hungry people?

Reality, ideally you need to have both, but that's very, very rare. So I usually prefer smartness and hunger to experience because reality, if you hire a smart person who solved difficult problems in the past, and you give them easier problem to solve that they didn't know about, they will figure it out, right? But as soon as you hire a smart person and you give them super complex problem they haven't solved, so above their IQ level, then they will fail. And then in a lot of cases in finance and banking, because they always rely on manual process and no tech, people with tech backgrounds, smart, They can solve the problems through tech much better compared to traditional people.

The only thing is they need to know the edge cases from that problem. They need to know what are they even solving for.

Yeah, exactly. But then here is a trade-off. Obviously if you have experience, you know edge cases. If you don't have experience, you build system and then system is not complete because there are edge cases. You keep improving. Yeah, you keep improving and they make mistakes obviously, but then Yeah, interesting.

The other thing I found very interesting about how you run the company is, you know, you're the first person that actually knew how much an engineering team costs. Like, you know, X people cost this much, you know, and kind of think about the ROI. I literally never heard a tech CEO talk about it like that, which I think is—

Because I built it in my system as well. So we built this software called Revolut People, which we sell now externally to other companies. which shows you a KPI on a company level, department level, team level, individual roadmaps, all these trust metrics that we have, NPS, customer support tickets, bugs, audits, findings. And one of the tabs there is financial costs. So every time when I dive deep into a team, I see the KPIs roadmap, I see total cost per year.

Well, that's another interesting thing. It feels that a lot of times The software that you have creates the system and not the system kind of like builds the software.

I think you start building, you have idea about system in your mind, right? You first create spreadsheet, then you put it in software and then you look at it, right? And then you're, because certain user features don't satisfy you, you kind of add, add, add. And with time it becomes very good.

But like, I kind of keep thinking about kind of like HR software and I feel that like, for example, You know, it's kind of hard to pull from traditional HR software and like all everyone's salaries and like, you know, allocate that across teams. You know, like if you use Workday or something, it's like not the easiest thing in the world to kind of do that.

Yeah, exactly. That's why I built my own system.

Yeah, no, that's what I'm saying. Like, I feel that then a lot of companies just say, okay, like given this is the software, I'll adapt my system instead of being like, well, this is my system, you know, what software can kind of Yeah, I mean, that's also the reason why kind of we generally don't do acquisitions because again, I know how much a team, one team of 10 people can deliver, how much it costs per year, right?

I know how long it takes to create a bet which is similar to the product you want to buy. And then buying is always so much higher compared to building, right? So I kind of ended up passing a lot of deals.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's very interesting. And is launching a country similar to like, you know how much it costs to launch a country and like all Yeah, exactly.

So before I wasn't running expansion and we kind of did it all wrong. I think just back then we were not ready, to be honest here, system-wise, people-wise. Started doing it myself and systemized it. And we approach each country as a new bet. So there is a clear playbook what needs to be done. So we first hire a very small team, including CEO, they are tasked to get banking licenses, After they get the license, there is a kind of launch stage when there is a clearly defined roadmap for every single central team to deliver this country. And after product is launched, we go into onboarding optimization, retention optimization, unit economics optimization. After these metrics are hit, then we switch on marketing engine and then acquiring more customers in this country.

And in this case, you're describing now a little bit what your ops— you're kind of coming up with that for expansion. That's like your job. You're coming up like, hey, this is our playbook for expanding to a new country.

Yeah, because it wasn't done in a very structured way, that's why we kind of failed a lot.

Do you feel that's true for a lot of things in a company? You're the one creating what the system is?

Yeah, actually, ultimately you end up solving the hardest problems, right? Because reality, okay, you've got your good people, but then something blows up, right? That means that raw horsepower of this person was not enough to solve this problem, right? And then You put someone else, but it still blows up, right? Then you jump on it yourself and then solve it. So you end up kind of being the last line of defense.

You know, that's another interesting insight about executives. I think these expensive executives, they also don't like if you do that. They kind of block you from it.

Yeah, exactly. Everyone's like, whoa, really?

Yeah, they really do kind of block you because they're like, well, that's my job. If you're doing that, what am I supposed to do kind of thing, right? And you're too close to their shit and they don't like it.

Yeah, because then you will figure out that they're not good at what they do.

Yeah, no, I think that definitely seems like a big superpower from you guys. It's like you're just so close to the details on everything.

Exactly. I think you need to have a very high level and then very low level. It is super important. Otherwise, you cannot identify people bullshitting you.

So what's the version of very high level?

Well, high level, you oversee all the portfolio of products that you have and portfolio of countries, just high-level metrics. Okay, things are going well, not well. And then if things are not going well on numbers, you just go down deep into details and then you figure out problems. Okay, is it onboarding problem? Is it financial problem, unit economics? Or is it product problem? Then just going on the level zero and then understanding what went wrong. Usually 95% is just wrong people doing the job.

Yeah.

Not detailed enough, not good enough.

What about competitors? Do you think about it?

No, not really. I mean, to be honest, well, I obviously watch them, but like early on since I was a kid, my kind of attitude was always not worry about competitors, but like every day what you do, you just need to be at 100%, right? Then even if you lose, you know what, you've done everything, right? I mean, it's bad luck or you are not as good, but as soon as you are not kind of 100%, then if competition wins, you don't know, they won because they're better or because I didn't put additional energy, right? So every day I want to be 100% so I don't have regret in the future, right? That was my approach, like every day 100%.

Is there any battles on Revolut that you felt that you lost? Of course, many.

I mean, obviously with experience you realize that many things I started went wrong and I should have avoided it.

Tell me an example of one you remember.

In reality, we applied for banking license too late, right? Because when you're a large organization, it's much more difficult to receive a banking license.

To what?

Sorry? It's much more difficult to receive a banking license when you have millions of customers rather than a new bank without any customers.

Oh, really?

Yeah, of course.

Interesting.

Because I mean, in the views of regulators, you're much less risky if you don't have customers. So then going to certain— yeah, I remember when we were doing expansion, Brexit happened, we need to have like a base for Europe, went to Ireland. And then we didn't check statistics of licenses they gave. And then if you just check statistics for the last 10 years, they gave zero licenses. So it was pretty stupid to expect to get license in Ireland quickly.

But who decided you're going to go to Ireland or why?

Some lawyers. Yeah, it was like I was young and stupid, right? Obviously now we always look at statistics of success rate of number of licenses applied, granted, rejected before going to the country.

Yeah, so it was just like someone else that kind of, you know, looked at it and made a decision.

And because I was always like a very product-focused, I was, I really love, you know, design, I really love, you know, visuals, I really love, you know, perfection in the product. And back then when I was younger and less experienced, I was always putting uninteresting subjects to someone else, like legal or compliance, HR as well. But then I quickly hit the wall with these areas, so I kind of started managing myself. I learned it all, but I just hate doing that. I mean, no one could, so I had to do it. Yeah.

You know, it's interesting as you describe Revolut in a very positive way, it reminds me a lot of the kind of like Chinese companies actually, you know? Yeah, because like, you know, building a lot of software yourself, you know, operating like very aggressively, you know, working really hard, having systems for everything, you know, at least when I visit China. Have you ever visited the Chinese companies?

I've never been to China, no.

No? It's an interesting trip. It's like, It reminds me a lot of stuff you're saying is things that I've kind of like seen there in a very positive way. Like, I think they've obviously done an unbelievable job, you know.

I think it's very important to look systemically at things, right?

Yeah, yeah. More than like the, you know, US companies, I feel you feel a lot more efficient and disciplined than most US companies.

Yeah, US is a large market, right? And like almost unlimited capital as well as you can raise. So if you show traction, product-market fit, okay, they throw at you infinite amount of money, right? And then you can afford not to be efficient. Obviously, as a company scales, it becomes— grow up and then they ask for profits, then a lot of companies start cutting people, cutting costs, renegotiating vendors. We didn't have this luxury at all just because fundraising is much more difficult in Europe.

What is the moment of Revolut that you remember that was the hardest for you?

Like a lot of negative media in the beginning was pretty hot because it was really unfair and dependencies when you start, when you're not a bank, you rely on issuing bank and process and so on and they're so bad at what they do.

You know, for me, I'm curious your thoughts on this, but one of the really weird moments was the Silicon Valley Bank blowup. Yes. It made me think about fintech and financial services that like that was a 60-year-old-plus institution that just like evaporated, you know? Yeah. Do you ever feel like scared about?

Yeah, also because I came through, you know, Lehman Brothers experience for me.

Yeah, that was your version of it.

Yes, for me, I had this kind of scary of speculation, right? Because I mean, Reason banks die, just not because they have you know bad product or you know competition drives them out of the market. Banks blow up, right? And for me, because of this, I'm always afraid of kind of gambling speculation. I just don't do it like full stop, right? I want guaranteed revenue, not like you buy something, it goes up, you sell it, goes up, goes down, right? Like yeah, I just don't allow in in our organization any kind of gambling type of businesses. And what do we see at a lot of banks? There is a treasury department and what they do, effectively they invest, they call it invest customer money into financial instruments. That's in my opinion how you blow up. There is misprice, something happens, curve goes that, it's not hedged. So I just don't allow any kind of parts of the business to speculate. For me, we want to be pure kind of Commission-based business that just grows as a machine, right? Doesn't have you know downturns, upturns. Now it's like always makes money.

Yeah, totally. So yeah, and it's it's interesting because like you know, SSB was like treasury securities, right? That kind of blew them up. It wasn't even that they were buying like you know options on.

No, it's it's DVO on risk, right? If if they effectively borrow from customers and then do long-term bonds.

Yeah, it's duration.

Yeah, duration.

Yeah, yeah. No, for me it was like very eye-opening. Maybe for you it's similar to the Lehman Brothers that, you know, such an institution can just like blow up. You know, it's, it's crazy to think about it. And, and what do you think, like, you know, looking forward, right? Like you've been building Revolut for 10 years now. Yeah. What do you think is going to be different in the next 10 years?

I think every 1 or 2 years are so different, right? I think it's super important to always be in business, right? Because you see all these things happening, like, you know, before it was crypto.

Now it's AI.

AI, and now it's LLM, which is a really big thing. And you always need to kind of dive deep and understand where you can apply to your business. I think it's very valuable.

What is that version for you guys in Revolut? What is LLMs going to mean?

Just we, again, build almost everything in-house and just ensuring we have infrastructure platform to running out LLMs for all the use cases that we have. And the same thing for models as well, like machine learning models.

So just finding the— is it mostly cost cutting you think that's going to be applied?

Or is there anything customer-facing? Well, customer-facing as well, but we're very focused on improving all these corner cases processes that are solved by people. So for us, it's very important to have them automated.

And you started a fund a couple years ago, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, why did you do that?

To be honest, I was very angry with certain investors I had.

Why?

And I don't remember the reason. I don't remember exactly the reason, but I thought, you know what, Like, why are they so dependent on you, right? And why don't I compete with you? That's how it started. Interesting.

What do you feel towards investors today of Revolut?

Look, I mean, they have business to make money on founders, right? And sometimes, obviously as a founder, right, I sometimes feel there's a lot of free ride.

Yeah.

Or what I do. But I mean, it is how the world works.

But do you think as you became an investor, you have more empathy towards them?

To VCs? Yeah.

Or less? You're kind of like, oh no, yeah, actually.

No, just because I'm doing it in a very different way, right? And for me, it's more like a statistical investment rather than what they do, looking in the eyes of founder, okay, is it a good founder or not? Is it a good business model or not? So for me, it's Rather model-driven than human.

But there's a lot of like the, you know, after making the investment decision, you know, how you deal with the company, right?

Yeah, for me, to be honest, I think great founders, they just don't need—

They just don't need you.

Help, right? If someone needs a lot of help, I mean, it's like the same in business, right? The same with my direct reports.

You want self-directed people.

Yeah, if they need my help a lot, I mean, they're the wrong people, right? And for me, it's just easy to write it off.

So do you think that founders should maximize valuation in every round as much as possible, given nothing else matters?

Pros and cons, right? So if maximizing valuation distracts you from building business, and then if you're running out of money, then probably not. I think by and large, I would say We need to maximize valuation and to maximize brand recognition by bringing top tier VCs.

Why is that important, do you think?

I think it is important. It's a good early signal, so it allows actually to raise more money in the future. So I think it is important. So brand, I think, matters. Other than that, it's like function of valuation.

Makes sense. So given it's a top tier VC, optimize valuation kind of thing.

Yeah, just make sure they compete with each other.

And has any VC ever fucked you?

Yeah, yeah, quite a few times.

Really? How come?

Well, many times, right? I remember once I had the fundraising done, we signed the term sheet, and then next day S&P dropped like 10%. It was like December, close to Christmas, and then the guy just, you know, withdrew term sheet.

Oh, I can remember this one.

He gave me, like, you know, much lower evaluation.

Yeah. Did that motivate you or was it just annoying? You're like, oh, fuck, I want to—

No, obviously, like, for me, negative emotions also kind of, you know, you can use them as additional energy to get things done.

Yeah. Yeah.

Interesting. Like, some people, they have these negative emotions that slow them down. For me, anger actually speeds me up. Yeah, I'm more like a war type person rather than wartime.

Yeah, it's like you get angry, you just work harder.

And exactly, yeah, it's just additional stimulus.

Obviously you're hyper successful, right? So you think like, you know, kids that have wealthy parents that don't have the necessity, it's just harder?

Exactly, yeah. And I think in every generation they're worse and worse.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's why you look at, you know, wealthy societies It just goes down, right? I mean, when one society was, you know, poor, there were some great people who built everything, you know, made businesses, made money, and then every single generation who don't have necessity, right?

It gets worse.

It gets worse, worse, worse until they blow up, society becomes poor, and then it starts again. That's why we see like cycles everywhere.

And they start, you know, when societies have too many, they don't have enough problems, they start caring about like micro problems, you know, that are not that big problem.

Yeah, exactly. Really, what happens in the majority of societies, because it's democracy, right? So you have, you know, each new generation is a bit, uh, kind of, uh, is a bit more entitled. Yeah, right. So they vote for politicians who give it to them, and politicians are motivated, right, by promising things, wrong things, to people. So as a result, you see kind of, you know, politicians giving more and more and more Each generation becomes, you know, a bit worse and worse and worse, and then things collapse, then starts over again.

You know, it seems that Europe would fall into this, uh, into this trap.

Seems so, yeah.

Yeah, but at the same time, you managed to build like a massive business in Europe, right? Like, why do you think— you think it's just like lack of good people like you that Europe hasn't had great outcomes, you know, in comparison to other places, or, or no, there's something more systematic about it?

Well, first of all, Europe is a combination of many countries, many languages, right? Different regulatory regimes. This number one, so it's very fragmented. It's not like US, you launch business and then you sell it to like 400 million people. Yeah, in Europe you still need to go country by country. That's number one. Number 2, because I think Europe is further away in this cycle when— because first, like, Europe became rich US became rich, Europe becoming poor.

Yeah.

And so it's in the cycle when people are probably more entitled compared to US, so they receive probably more, better job securities because of regulations. So they're kind of lower in the cycle compared to US, and as a result, it's just harder to build a large company, right?

Yeah, but you seem to be able to figure that out, right?

Yeah, good interview process because ultimately when there are 400 million people, you can always find very good ones. If we're talking about averages, right? If you hire based on averages, then yes, probably a disadvantage compared to the US. But if you target top 1%, I think top 1% of people everywhere, they're super good.

But still, I think top 1% is amazing in Europe, but 1% There's just not a lot of big outcomes in Europe in comparison to US and China, for example, right? Even with the top 1%. And I think what you're saying about the different countries is probably, seems to me to be a huge factor that like it's just so hard to do everything.

I think it's a cultural thing as well, right? Because society is like a bit further away in the curve. People are more kind of protected, entitled, and they value work-life balance much more. Compared to US or China. As a result, you just don't have people working hard enough to achieve success.

Oh, that's another thing. You have a lot of people in Russia, right?

No, we used to have like 200 people in Russia, but then we transferred them to UK, I think Lisbon as well.

Oh, after the war?

Yeah.

Yeah. But like, do you feel that like you can hire great people in Europe or you hire just people elsewhere and they kind of build products for Europe?

No, we hire people everywhere, right? Within certain time zones. Yeah, like we have so many kind of different people.

Makes sense. So like you kind of like, I'm just going to find the best hardworking people in every country.

Yeah, it depends on the specialty, right? So for each specialty, we have a playbook where we define which companies we're hiring from, which countries we're hiring from, because on the experience we know that, you know, these particular companies for this particular specialty, people are good.

What's your remote kind of situation today?

Like we can work remotely, can work in the office. We don't care as long as you're kind of in a Deliver.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was that the same pre-COVID?

No, no, no. Like COVID completely changed how we work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what do you think you like you're bad at?

I'm bad at probably social interactions. Social interactions? Yeah.

Interesting. How does that manifest?

I mean, to be honest, I got bored very quickly, right? When chat is not deep enough and For me, I just hate to waste time. And yeah, so when interaction is not meaningful, I just get bored very, very quickly because I'm so direct. I don't even bother to pretend.

And when does that hurt you? Like, when is that negative for you?

I mean, it's always negative, right? Because I mean, sometimes people think that you are too cold or just not interested in them. And for me, I just—

A lot of times it's true. But when you are interested—

For me, I'm just so busy that I should Like, I really kind of, you know, try to save every minute, right?

Yeah, yeah, you're just like so efficient with your time and dedicated. Cool. Well, that's a— it's a good note to end on the podcast, but I really appreciate you doing this. I thought it was— I got to know, you know, we know each other for a while, but I feel I got to know you a lot better after this. So I appreciate you doing the time, and I feel everyone will know you a lot better as well.

Cool.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thanks to our friends at Atomic Growth for helping with production and distribution.