Nik Storonsky on Revolut’s Product Bets and Global Banking Ambitions

Harry Stebbings asks Revolut co-founder and CEO Nik Storonsky what KPI-led management means in practice. Storonsky says the company sets five or six annual goals, quantifies them, and cascades metrics through departments, teams and individuals. Quarterly reviews assess results, skills and cultural values.

Storonsky says he has more than 40 direct reports and wants them to be capable of achieving goals without constant direction. He describes excellent people as setting and achieving their own goals, strong people as achieving assigned goals independently, and others as needing more frequent guidance or struggling to deliver.

He expects most strong hires to show their ability quickly, often within weeks, and doubts that someone failing to deliver for months will suddenly succeed a year later. He evaluates the work produced and the depth of analysis during weekly or fortnightly catch-ups. These are his management judgments, not a universal rule about onboarding.

Asked whether his preferences have shifted toward professional managers, Storonsky says he has always valued execution over presentations. He argues employees should collaborate toward common goals rather than compete with one another. He is skeptical of using management consultants to run a company, seeing it as a sign of insufficient internal competence.

His most painful scaling mistake, he says, was hiring experienced executives on the assumption that a growing company needed professional managers. He estimates that he hired about 55 through executive recruiters at a cost of roughly £2 million, and eventually dismissed around 49 or 50. The figures are his recollection, not independently verified.

Storonsky says he has always held people accountable, though his communication has sometimes been harsher or softer. He acknowledges that hiring for unfamiliar functions is difficult: when he has never worked with designers, compliance or government affairs, he first interviews many people in the field to learn how to assess the role.

He sees resource allocation as a core CEO skill and considers himself cost-conscious. In his view, thinking through a problem can yield more than paying external consultants or hiring expensive executives. He says marketing is now Revolut’s largest cost, followed by people.

Storonsky has changed his mind about brand marketing. He now sees value in assets such as airport jet bridges, although he acknowledges that their return cannot be measured clearly. His approach is to keep brand spending small relative to performance marketing and choose placements he believes are worthwhile.

On Revolut’s banking license, he says his main lesson was to seek one before acquiring millions of customers. In his view, regulators scrutinize a business with an existing customer base more extensively, lengthening the process. Stebbings asks whether earlier regulation might slow product development; Storonsky says it would slow things somewhat but wishes he had applied sooner.

He attributes his original choice partly to inexperience. He also says he received bad advice to avoid speaking to regulators himself and leave the relationship to an experienced banking executive. He now prefers explaining the product and providing data directly; his comparison with traditional bank practices is his own assessment.

Storonsky says his principal lesson about crypto is not to speculate. He regards Revolut’s decision to offer crypto as sound, while acknowledging that much activity is speculative. He points to stablecoins and transfers as possible useful applications, without treating them as risk-free or settled replacements for existing payment networks.

Different licenses and rules across countries have made the crypto product difficult to operate. Storonsky claims a UK rule initially led to very high false-positive rates on blocked transfers and says Revolut worked with the regulator to change the approach. The interview does not provide enough independent evidence to verify the exact rates or characterize every blocked transfer.

Stebbings asks why no US neobank has dominated. Storonsky argues that fintechs relying on partner banks inherit those banks’ processes and compliance approvals, and cannot use deposits or their own balance sheets in the same way. He says credit cards, interchange revenue and rewards matter especially in the US; this is his account of the market and Revolut’s competitive opportunity.

He says Revolut’s US brand is not yet strong. His planned sequence is to complete UK bank mobilization and move UK customers onto the bank before applying for a US license. He hopes a digital bank combining credit cards and other financial services in one app can compete there, but acknowledges that doing so will take time.

On Latin America, Storonsky says Revolut has applied for a Brazilian banking license, obtained one in Mexico and, he believes, applied in Colombia. He wants to pursue several major markets while working on the US, though he acknowledges parallel expansion is hard. These are company statements at the time of the interview.

Asked which product made the biggest difference, he says scale makes launches across different years difficult to compare. Business accounts grew well when launched; newer offerings such as eSIMs and points can grow rapidly because the company now reaches a much larger customer base.

Storonsky admits he is often poor at predicting which products will succeed. A salary-advance product he expected to work struggled because it required selling to employers, employees and payroll systems. He recalls only around 100-plus users despite the effort, so Revolut decided against continuing it.

A typical new product starts with a team of about ten people working for one to one and a half years, at an estimated cost of £2 million to £3 million. A committee of experienced product builders decides which ideas to launch: unanimous enthusiasm leads to a launch, unanimous opposition stops it, and mixed opinions still result in a test.

Storonsky says more than 20 bets run in parallel. Of around 27 launched over the previous two and a half to three years, he estimates five worked exceptionally well, five or six did not work at all, and the rest fell in between. He says the portfolio’s aggregate results are strong, but gives no audited return figures.

After launch, teams compare monthly revenue growth against other bets. Stronger products can add teams as they grow; middling products retain a small team rather than receiving the same expansion. Storonsky highlights eSIM as an example he likes, calling it an attractive, easy-to-use product—a claim from the company’s CEO.

Revolut tracks launched and developing bets, their stages and gross profit through a dashboard. Stebbings asks whether adding so many products risks clutter. Storonsky argues that interface design should show the right product at the right time, using a car’s many functions behind a simple interface as an analogy.

The product he would most like to add is private banking. He says it was previously too early, but some customers now hold millions in their Revolut accounts, making him think the time is right. This is an ambition, not an announcement that such a service is already available.

Over three years, Storonsky would like Revolut to operate in about 50 markets, up from 39 at the time, and to be a leading growth player in 90% of them. He says it was then number one on that growth measure in roughly 19 or 20 markets. He wants the business to be fully localized as a bank in about 40 markets, offering local accounts, cards, payment methods and loans.

He hopes to reach 30 million to 40 million daily active users, versus around 10 million then. He also discusses raising market share in the ten largest European markets from an average he puts at 10% to 30–40%, which he suggests could make the business roughly four times larger. These are goals and estimates, not guarantees or a consistent audited market-share series.

Storonsky attributes fragmented banking to country-specific regulation and the difficulty of scaling local banks across borders. He sees technology as a way for Revolut to build a global bank and predicts that in five years there will be fewer banks and a handful of global players. His prediction reflects Revolut’s commercial ambition.

He says Revolut already operates with controls appropriate to a regulated bank and discusses the attraction of an IPO: venture investors eventually need liquidity to return money to their own investors. A public market can provide more liquidity than private transactions, in his view, but he does not announce a listing date.

On where Revolut might list, Storonsky says he regards the US market as more liquid and UK stock trading as more expensive, citing a 0.5% stamp tax. He says he would consider London if it offered a better product, but does not commit to a venue. His comparison is his view at the time, not a complete assessment of listing and trading costs.

He says he spends some time in Dubai for the local team and licensing work but does not live there permanently. He describes Revolut’s culture across offices as consistently ambitious and hardworking. Asked about cap-table controls, he says restricting private share transactions helps prevent discounted secondary sales from competing with a primary fundraising round.

Storonsky names Nubank, JPMorgan and WeChat among companies he respects, while also pointing to the local conditions that support Nubank. He thinks Asia would be harder for Revolut to win than the US, citing difficulty obtaining banking licenses; Stebbings adds that local product interfaces and customer expectations differ.

Storonsky explains that he created QuantumLight after frustrating fundraising experiences, including investors withdrawing or repricing offers when markets moved. He says early investors also rejected Revolut when its unit economics were negative, which he attributes to its early stage and the need for volume.

He says a data-science team built models to select startups for investment, targeting companies from Series B onward. He claims the model outperformed 95% of venture investors in backtesting; the interview provides no methodology or independently verified live investment results, and he has a direct interest in the firm.

Stebbings asks how QuantumLight wins access to attractive companies when established investors compete for them. Storonsky says selection is not always obvious and describes a model narrowed from more than 300 features to around 25. Inputs include valuation, founder and employee characteristics, and the track record of participating investors.

Storonsky says the firm tracks returns at the fund level and uses investor quality as one signal. He reports a correlation in its data between founder age and outcomes, with ages 30–35 strongest in the group he describes, and says top universities and STEM degrees also correlate positively. These are his claims about a model and dataset, not evidence that age or education causes success or should determine an individual’s prospects.

He says Revolut’s first round was especially difficult. A later round, begun in 2019 and closed just before the pandemic in early 2020, was priced at a $5 billion valuation after a higher proposed figure fell. He treats repricing as business and names investors from Index, TCV and Ribbit among those he values.

Storonsky defines success as the proportion of one’s goals achieved, whether those goals concern family or money. He sees money as an instrument rather than a direct source of happiness. Winning the US remains an important unachieved goal, particularly because European startups rarely make the reverse journey as successfully as American companies entering Europe, in his view.

He believes an imbalanced life focused on goals can improve the chances of achieving them and perhaps bring happiness. He describes his own work as full of pressure and difficult problems escalated to him, rather than constant pleasure. His account is a personal philosophy, not evidence that imbalance is the best approach for everyone.

To manage the pressure, he says he relies on energy and exercise. He works from different countries for months at a time, adjusting his hours to the time zone: in the UK he may rise around 6:30 and start around 8:30 or 9; elsewhere he might start later and work until 11 p.m.

When in difficulty, Storonsky seeks advice from people who have built large businesses, including some who did so without venture capital. He says he tends to assume he will succeed when trying something. Working from different cities has also changed his view of London as the only place to live and work.

If starting Revolut again, he would probably start in the US. His advice to a young person is to find an area they enjoy and pursue it. He admires Apple’s products and brand, while criticizing its market power and high charges; if he could lead another company for a day, he would choose something in biomedicine or genetics to learn about it.

He says he would build Revolut faster and more cheaply if starting again. Asked why he does what he does, he says he needs something to do and would otherwise be bored, while agreeing that passion for changing the industry is also important.