20VC: Revolut Founder Nikolay Storonsky on His Leadership Style and Relationship To Ambition, His Biggest Lessons From Scaling Revolut Globally; What Worked, What Did Not & Why Speed of Product Shipment is The Most Important Thing

Revolut's founder says shipping speed beats everything else

Revolut's edge, in Storonsky's telling, is how fast it ships product. A system of quantified goals, quarterly KPIs and weekly reviews keeps that speed repeatable. The same machine lets it enter five to 10 countries a year while putting profit back into growth, aiming to be number one or two in every market.

Takeaways

• Shipping speed is Revolut's secret weapon. Faster iteration gives more chances to win, and Storonsky says product ultimately wins. Revolut has spent the last five or six years perfecting how quickly it ships, and he treats that as the core advantage.
• Product decisions moved from gut feel to process. Standalone research teams now rank ideas by resources, infrastructure, customers, build time, P&L and engagement potential. Product teams of eight to 10 people sit inside departments, with quarterly KPIs cascaded from the company down to each team.
• Weekly reviews keep every department on its metrics. Each department runs a standardised weekly business review covering KPIs, roadmaps, risk indicators, audit findings and hiring. Separate weekly product reviews let designers and product owners iterate on new designs, and Storonsky calls them his favourite part of the week.
• He leads with measurable goals and freedom. Storonsky sets quantified goals, gives people freedom and dives in when metrics stop moving. Goals must be realistic, judged against a track record and a playbook, then adjusted to the person's skill and seniority.
• Trading made him thick skinned and model driven. Derivatives traders can lose $5m or $10m in a day, which builds thick skin. Trading on intuition across five or 10 daily trades taught him the world does not run on intuition, so he relies on models and numbers.
• Each new country takes up to two years. A market needs $10m to $20m to capitalise the entity, hire a team and scale. Licences for trading, payments, banking and credit, plus 30 to 50 moving parts, must land in sync. Revolut adds five to 10 countries a year.
• Growth comes first, funded by profit. Revolut wants to grow as fast as possible while staying profitable, reinvesting every dollar of profit in growth and marketing. Storonsky expects to outgrow local competitors in most countries and wants to be number one or two in each within five years.

How the US launch unfolded

1. Revolut spent two years preparing the US launch.
2. It launched during COVID with a limited product that did not include trading.
3. It stayed live in that form for eight or nine months while waiting on a trading licence.