The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
00:04:52 · Harry Stebbings, Harry Stebbings, Alan Chang
[00:04:52] S2: You have now arrived at your destination. Alan, dude, I am so looking forward to this. So I I have you to thank for hiring my chief of staff because we were sitting in a cocktail bar in London, and you were helping me hire. And I was like then, holy shit. This guy is brilliant, and I need to do a show with him. [00:05:13] S1: That was three years ago. So thank you [00:05:14] S2: so much for doing this with me. [00:05:16] S0: Yeah. Thanks for having me. [00:05:17] S2: I think a really interesting one to start with is you're a freaking machine, and I just want to understand, when we look at, like, transformative moments, one of the most transformative early moments to you was getting the job with Nick and with Raf Lude. Can you just take me to that? And Saker actually said I had to ask this one. Was like, you gotta start with how he actually got the job. How did you get the job with Nick, and what did that look like?
00:05:17 · Harry Stebbings, Alan Chang
[00:05:17] S2: I think a really interesting one to start with is you're a freaking machine, and I just want to understand, when we look at, like, transformative moments, one of the most transformative early moments to you was getting the job with Nick and with Raf Lude. Can you just take me to that? And Saker actually said I had to ask this one. Was like, you gotta start with how he actually got the job. How did you get the job with Nick, and what did that look like? [00:05:39] S0: At the time, I just graduated, and I was just perusing on the Facebook group. Like, it was called London Startups. And I saw this job post, Revolut. And I was like, okay. I have no idea what this company does. But I was looking for fresh grads. I like, okay. I I applied. And Nick replied within five minutes. I was like, oh, wow. That's that's very quick. And then he asked me to come for a face to face face interview the next day. So I came for an interview, and he asked me a bunch of physics questions. I was like... I I didn't realize I was look... I was applying for a physics job. And he offered me a role, you know, right after the interview. I said yes, and that was it. That was, like, the fastest interview process I've I've ever had. [00:06:14] S2: What was the position, and what size and scale was Revolut then? [00:06:18] S0: Yeah. So at the time, in terms of full time, it was Nick, Vlad, and two other full time engineers, and that was it. So it was just hot desking. Job was just... You know, was called operations analyst, but effectively, the first three months was doing customer support.
00:06:18 · Alan Chang, Harry Stebbings
[00:06:18] S0: Yeah. So at the time, in terms of full time, it was Nick, Vlad, and two other full time engineers, and that was it. So it was just hot desking. Job was just... You know, was called operations analyst, but effectively, the first three months was doing customer support. [00:06:34] S2: When did you realize that this was gonna be a massive $100,000,000,000 company? [00:06:39] S0: So at the time, Revolut was in a co working space called Level thirty nine. [00:06:43] S2: Yeah. I remember this. [00:06:45] S0: Yeah. And so Level thirty nine is... Yeah. For those who don't know, it's it's basically a giant start up co working space with maybe over 200 start ups. And Revolut was the only team that worked past 7PM on the weekday. So after 7PM, the whole floor is dead. It was also the only team that worked on the weekends. So when I realized that, you know, I knew there was something special, the second moment was I asked Nick, like, what's what's your ambition? Like, what what keeps you motivated? And at the time, he's, you know, worth quite bit of money already. So, you know, what what what drives him? Right? And he told me he wants to beat JPMorgan. So that's the second moment I realized this is gonna be a massive company. [00:07:25] S2: What do you think you guys did really right really early on that led to such success early?
00:07:25 · Harry Stebbings, Alan Chang
[00:07:25] S2: What do you think you guys did really right really early on that led to such success early? [00:07:31] S0: So at the time when when we got started, there were basically three players. There was Revolut, Monzo, and N26. Yeah. And for the first two years, at least from the outside, it feels like neck to neck. Right? It wasn't clear who the winner was. But for me, was crystal clear. Right? It was crystal clear who's gonna win. And and the reason why is because it's just the team's ambition execution. Right? Because ultimately, if you if you ask the same teams at the time, like, basically the product road map, almost everyone would tell you basically the same. There wasn't any differentiation in the product road map. But what differentiate between us and everyone else was basically ambition and speed of execution. I think that was it. [00:08:10] S2: How do you move so fast? What is your biggest lessons on how to create speed of execution within teams? I want this internally. You've met my team here. You see it. How do I encourage this urgency and speed of execution internally, and how do you do it? [00:08:24] S0: Yeah. So I think have small teams operating in a independent unit and give them very clear goals. Let them let them execute. And what you should do is monitor those teams. If they do well, let them be. If they don't do well, replace the team. [00:08:38] S2: What did you learn from Nick about managing people and people performance?
00:08:38 · Harry Stebbings, Alan Chang
[00:08:38] S2: What did you learn from Nick about managing people and people performance? [00:08:42] S0: It's all about results. I think Nick's make this make this analogy before. There are three types of people in the world. There are there are people who can self identify the target and shoot and hit the goal. Then there are people who can't identify targets, but if you point, they shoot and they hit the goal. And then the third type of people, which is neither. Right? You wanna maximize the first and second group of people, and you want, ideally, the first and second type of people leading teams. And basically, the throughput of your company is basically sum of the number of people in the first and second bucket. [00:09:14] S2: When you bring those people together and you grow very fast, what was the most significant breaking moment in the early Revolut days? And what did you learn and take from it? [00:09:24] S0: I'll I'll say the get shit done culture, the best way to build something great very, very fast. And it's something I I I took on board, but I even amped it up even more. [00:09:34] S2: How do you amp [00:09:35] S0: it up more? Putting even more intensity. Right? Just driving a lot of urgency within the company. Always keep people on their toes. [00:09:42] S2: How do you, like, always keep people on their toes? Is it, like, pushing them in terms of their goals? Is it pushing them in terms of the hours and the work and the intensities? What what what is it?
00:09:42 · Harry Stebbings, Alan Chang
[00:09:42] S2: How do you, like, always keep people on their toes? Is it, like, pushing them in terms of their goals? Is it pushing them in terms of the hours and the work and the intensities? What what what is it? [00:09:51] S0: Oh, in terms of results, right, or or lack thereof. I always emphasize, like, we're we're not moving fast enough. We could be doing more, but we're not. You know, for example, like, I I told the team last year, execution was maybe four out of 10. Right? And we need to get a 10 to... 10 out of 10, and we're not passing. [00:10:06] S2: What was the problem there, and how did you fix it? [00:10:08] S0: The problem was speed of execution. We were too slow. We wanted to ship a bunch of things, and we we didn't. Right? Things were delayed. [00:10:15] S2: When were you off target in execution with Revolut, and what did you learn from that? [00:10:20] S0: I think we're off execution maybe every year. I think I think that mindset should be... I think you need to be best versions of yourself. So you always need to review, okay, in the past week, in the past month, what could I have done better? Maybe maybe a more extreme analogy. Right? Like, used to ask my team, right, at at Rev, if you have a gun pointed to your head today, would you have done more? If the answer is yes, that means you're not doing a good job.