How Revolut trains world-class product managers: The “local CEO” model, raw intellect over experience, and a cultural obsession with building wow products | Dmitry Zlokazov (Head of Product)

0:00 Everyone is striving for talented, skillful, smart people. Revolut values way more raw intellect and this. Unquenched hunger to build things rather than experience. I hear one of the ways you approach early products differently is you guys invest a lot in actually making it good. It's not getting traction. Is it because the underlying idea is wrong, or maybe your product just sucks? By forcing everyone to build a product that people will love. We kind of cut out this part of uncertainty. We can cut down the product in terms of functionality to to just. Most critical features, but we will never compromise on the quality and UX and the aesthetics. Is there anything that you've figured out about just how to set up new product for success? If something is ninety nine percent done, it's closer to zero percent rather than hundred percent.

0:53 Today my guest is Dmitry Zlacaza. Dimitri is global head of product at Revolute. Which is a finance super app, offering customers savings and checking accounts. Crypto, investing, joint accounts, even mortgages. Not only was it last valued at over sixty billion dollars, but in the research that I've been doing into which companies hire and incubate the best product managers, Revolute was right at the top, alongside Palantir and Intercom.

1:19 And so in our conversation, we dig into what Revolute has learned about producing and hiring great product leaders. Including a focus on ownership. Having people solve really painful and complex problems while making the experien and lovable by users. Also, indexing towards hiring really smart and driven people early in their career versus people with a ton of experience in the space. And so much more, if you're looking for a job that will accelerate your product career, or want to help your product team level up, this episode is for you.

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3:36 Dot. Come. Dimitri, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast. Al any end, happy to be here.

3:48 As you. No, I've been doing a bunch of research into which companies hire and create the best product managers. And I've been triangulating this across a bunch of different data points. I've been looking at which companies alumnite product managers Get promoted most when they leave the company.

4:02 become chief product officers at the highest rate when they leave the company. uh become the first P startup. Also start their own companies. And When I triangulate it across all the different all these different data points.

4:15 There's three companies that it Kind of sat at the top. Uh you guys revolute. Uh Palantir in intercom. Clearly you guys are doing something really special.

4:24 I don't think a lot of people especially in the US know a ton about Revolute. And so I'm really excited to have you here. I'm really excited to Basically extract as much wisdom as I can from you about what you guys have figured out in helping in hiring and training product managers. So

4:38 I wanna actually start with giving people uh a slight understanding of what is Revolute. I think a lot of people in the US especially don't know much about it. So What's the simplest way to understand what you guys do? Revolute. Challenges banks in uh fifty different countries. And it all started

4:56 Ten years ago in London. So maybe let me give you a bit of a context. uh, especially for someone based in the US, it's it's important to understand that European banking ленskap Is very dangerous.

5:08 In the US if you travel from state to state Like Things are different, but for example you always pay in US dollars, right? In in the UK you pay in British pound. If you travel to mainland Europe, you will pay in Europe.

5:21 But if you go to Switzerland, you'll pay in Swiss francs. If you go to Sweden you'll pay in Swedish crone and so on, so overall there are twenty five different currencies. And every time. You were traveling and paying in a different currency.

5:36 Banks were charging you Exorbitant fees on top of Terrible foreign exchange rates. And that's when Revolute launched as a multi currency

5:46 Uh card. And people loved it. They they loved that Revolute was saving them fifty or hundred euros. But even more so, they love the The транспаренсі ан симплісіті.

6:01 Of the product. And that's why when we Started rolling rolling out more and more products based on those principles. They were quickly getting trust of people, they were quickly getting traction.

6:14 So that's how P to P transfers appeared and then Frictionless. crypto buying and withdrawal to a bank account appeared and then more and more products credit products, savings products and so on.

6:27 Awesome. And then just to give people a few, uh like kind of the scale of the company, how many employees are there roughly, I think, the last valuation, something around sixty billion. I don't know if you can even comment on that. But just what are some numbers real quick for people to understand the scale of the company at this point? Uh the headcount is not something we're we're trying to or increase to be honest. Actually uh Revolu tries to stay as lean as possible. But I think It's uh yeah, it's just that the our appetite for growth is so big that uh

6:53 I think we're currently at maybe Uh six or seven thousand templates. No. Okay, cool. So let's get into the what you've learned about building an amazing product team and also hiring an amazing product team.

7:05 So first of all, you call your product managers Product owners. And when we were chatting through initially, I was like, Oh, I see. It's just like a big scrum business, and they just have all these product owners who You know. Many times on this podcast people have talked about us not actually a product manager. But that's not at all how you work. So in this context, product owners

7:22 An actual owner. Talk about uh just the kind of the story behind why you call the Your product managers, product owners. Yeah, it's not a scrum term for us. It's just our take on Emphasizing how ownership is important, really.

7:35 So Product owners are central to Company and its growth. Um they are end to end responsible for the product. For these part of the business.

7:48 And for their customers to be happy. And for that they do really everything. Uh they run the teams. They define Which rod me

8:01 Uh We need to build to improve certain business metrics. And uh They also contribute to like Хай левел кампані стратегії.

8:12 But then most importantly. They execute on it relentlessly. And uh They are ultimate responsibles for for the product to be shipped and uh achieve results. There's always this term of mini COPM as a mini CO, and it feels like in your context that's actually what you try to do with your

8:29 product team is they're essentially mini COs. They have a lot of power. Like I think engineers, designers report to them, is that right? Yeah, correct. Well I I prefer say local CO and not. Local Calm about that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but uh that's true. So The way we operate

8:46 Uh we have these uh Fully cross functional teams. uh meaning they are staffed with all necessary functions engineers, data analysts, designers, uh Operation managers and so on. And um

8:59 We also operate in metrics, so Everyone has a line manager. And the functional manager. So product owner is always the line manager for everyone on the team. Mien product only defines

9:16 What they need to do. But then functional managers They define how these things need to be built and uh Essentially with the right level of quality and so on. I love this because it's so fun just to learn about such different ways of operating.

9:33 Uh another fact that I saw is that there's two types of product owners. There's kind of like a UX product owner and then there's a different like a technical product owner. We actually have three. Three. And the third type becomes uh uh increasingly more important.

9:47 Mm. So the first type is UX product owners. Uh then there are technical product on us, and then there are data science product on us. So you X product owners are the ones who

10:00 Ко Work on consumer facing. Part of the product. Uh usually they they have a great uh taste for for things and uh they understand what constitutes

10:16 UX that will work. And which things will not work. So they also have this expertise in In the industry.

10:28 Then tech product on us. Ah, they are the ones who delve deepest into the details. Usually those are Former engineers Uh who

10:40 who grew into Making decisions and driving business. And the data science product owners I usually form uh data scientists uh who decided to to

10:51 Grow into management positions. But they're still very hands on. And you know what? There are a lot there are way more things that are common to each of these three specializations. So What we see sometimes is people just shifting them.

11:07 Because I would say that, you know, what defines the specialization is probably five, ten, fifteen percent. While eighty five to ninety percent is coming to Each one of them.

11:19 And those things are So first of all being a great problem solver. And uh have uh great uh linear thinking but also

11:31 You know, have a creative approach towards nonlinear problems. Then Building this context of for customer and uh building empathy towards customer and translating translating it into the team Then Going down to to details

11:51 Very, very deep. Because Yeah with the main There are no Obvious things.

11:58 And uh You need to get to the root cause of the problem really, really deep to to to understand okay what will work and what will not work. And that means that you also need to be quite technical, even if you're UXP, you still need to often go as deep as sitting, you know, with engineers and uh reading code.

12:21 Uh and then I would also emphasize uh Importance of business acumen because uh we we tend to measure uh and quantify product performance a lot and

12:35 you need to understand okay what things will we build that will drive eventually that business metric and that target So you I love this idea of the product owners having to go really deep. I think a lot of people hearing this, they think they can go deep, go deep, really understand the w the details of what they're working on. I'm curious if there's an example that's illustrative of just what you actually mean here. For example Uh

12:57 Tu Провайде без пособів продукт. In every country of presence. Uh we need to have necessary licenses. In Europe it means that we need to

13:07 launch local branches of our European bank. For example, a branch for France, a branch for Germany, or a branch for Italy. To launch a branch. you need to fully comply with all necessary regulation. You need to

13:23 Um you need to report necessary data on customers to various regulators and uh authorities. You need to register with local payment systems. And

13:36 Each of these Things they Uh they have a lot of projects. Nest it within Uh we have a very lean team of just a few people who need to scope everything.

13:47 And do it at the scale of like of Fifty countries, right? So the way we do it is We go very deep. On example of each of these projects, for example, we launched a branch in Ireland, we launched a branch in the Netherlands, then we

14:02 Reverse engineered what was the The Best process to do it. And then we went back up. On top level

14:10 And we said okay. But what's the what's the ideal framework? of doing it a scale. And then we formalized it into a process. Really like an algorithmic process.

14:20 With uh stabs and quality gates. And the SAEs and like which what people do we need to hire and how s how soon do we need to start doing that before we want to launch uh a new country. And then so It's not only going deep, but also being flexible, you know? And like Doing this switch between

14:43 Zooming in very deep and then raising on the on the level of of Helicopter Vio And then understand it, okay. So these seemed very, very complex.

14:53 In details. But then when you zoom out. Like how can we simplify it and build a robust process around it, which is scalable? And that's something that uh we have to do a lot. As you're talking and we go through this chat.

15:07 I'm keeping kind of track of what I think is most contributing to your alumni product. Owners, product managers. Becoming so successful. So a couple of things so far that I think are probably contributing to this is one is Just having a lot of ownership.

15:20 Over what they're building. Which uh leads to building skills to start companies and become leaders at other companies. So these product owners that you have are just like own a lot and are essentially GMs. Of the of whatever product they're working on.

15:33 And then there's this depth and complexity where you have to really get good at understanding A problem really deeply. I imagine many of these people go on to work on something like that later, somewhere else. Because they've spent all this time. Or they just get really good at dealing with complex

15:48 uh many layered problems. So is there anything else just kinda along those lines as I say that that you think is important? I would probably add an obsession with uh building wow product

16:02 Wow, W O W W O W Cool. Um And Yeah, I think in FinTech overall, this is probably the most neglected part usually.

16:13 But it's also a part that we at Revolute we pay enormous attention to. So it's not only you know, when you When you do a trade in the When you send money. It's very important

16:27 For it to be very fast and uh Uh Cheap process for you so that you don't pay a lot of fees. But We also pay a lot of attention to look and філ.

16:37 of the air. And how smooth it is and how uh fictionless the process. Not only we invest into reducing cliques.

16:49 And uh optimizing finals. But we also want People to feel that we really cared about them. We also want people to feel that We

17:00 We love our customers. And we apply extra effort. to for the product to look great and feel great. And uh I hear this a lot from our uh customers, like the the the app is something they really love.

17:16 And it helps them solve their problems. It's at least one of the ingredients of of the company's success. Uh and I think people that work at travel they built habit of You know, paying attention to these small nuances, small details that make the product lovable. And then

17:32 Second is uh handling this context because you know like It's a lot of uh details where you need to dive, but There are also А лотов дай менш where you need to dive into different details, right? And uh I think this ability to

17:50 to ha to keep this like large context in your mind and Consider second order effects. And Like view subjects from multiple angles. I think that this is also a very important skill that people usually train and revoluted.

18:05 Okay, cool. So we have three three uh bullet points on the on the ingredients of great Uh product managers slash owners that you guys incubate. On this wow piece, which I love.

18:15 How do you operationalize this sort of thing? I imagine a big part of it is hiring people that are really good at this and value building lovable products. Is there any way you kind of have a process around Making sure the things you ship are wow and lovable. Two things that uh uh you need to understand about how Revot operates is that we operate in uh small lean teams.

18:34 that are tasked to build products and uh As I mentioned, like And having end to end responsibility for products and usually they're the ones who build it from zero and then they they they're growing and developing this product. And then another thing is that uh

18:50 Company is very flat. And hierarchy is very flat. We still have our founders, Nick and Vlad, very hands on. Uh going down to details for every product and every part of the business.

19:04 And Every week They have a product reviews with every team. uh giving an opportunity to every product owner present directly to CEO and CTO.

19:18 And uh Show what team What what increment has Team achieved in the last week? But also uh get steering uh from founders which is super valuable.

19:31 So essentially founders of the company They still Review hundred percent of screens that have been shipped. And everything that you will see in the app the this this past this review And there are a lot of

19:45 uh eyeballs that were, you know. Scrutinizing this. And uh thinking of all possible edge cases and uh uh nuances that we need to consider to make sure that

19:57 Every single customer will be happy in this product in this flow. That seems to be a consistent theme in products that are incredible as the founders are deeply involved in in The experience and review everything. Uh how many how many product owners are there?

20:12 Uh a revolute, just to give people a sense, by the way. Oh, I'm afraid they say it's already more than one hundred fifty people, maybe one hundred seventy. Cool. That's that's what I would expect. And then You said that uh there's kinda these three types. There's kinda like the Ench type, the PM traditional type, and there's the data product owner.

20:30 When you hire the UX type of product owner, do they Is there previous role usually a product manager at another company? Yes. Um But I would say that

20:41 Not necessarily it's a very experienced product manager, well maybe even It's way more important. to To have this hungger for building things.

20:53 You know? And uh Uh Heaving Raw Intellect? And we always try to find people with uh Uh these

21:04 Intrinsic traits rather than you know hiring people who are very experienced, but maybe Uh are not super excited about building things. What percentage of your product owners come from internal transfers from other functions? It's a quite substantial part of

21:21 Product owners who eventually become very successful. By the way. So It's like a positive self select. So It means that someone already succeeded in another role, so it's a guaranteed culture match. It's

21:35 It's a guaranteed domain knowledge. And then they simply grow Usually it could be operations managers or engineers they grow into

21:48 Само хунав менеджер the team. And uh that's why it's a very successful path. Uh so the other company on the list of top three companies that produce and hire the best PMs according to the research I've done. Palantir. I just had someone that was at Palantir for a long time. We we talked about exactly all the same Questions?

22:05 And interestingly, so so far we have kinda these three bullet points. Uh In terms of what Pee product owners within Revolution.

22:12 Uh get to do. There's a lot of ownership, there's a lot of depth and complexity, and there's a lot of uh focus on wow lovable products. So interestingly at Palantir also tons of ownership. Also tons of depth and complexity. The other ingredient that I want to ask you about is

22:27 They also they have this concept of a forward deployed engineer where they put an engineer in the office of the company they were building the product from. They sit there building it for them with them. And so there's a lot of skills built in terms of uh understanding

22:41 Customer problems, talking to customers, getting you know, empathy building, things like that. Is there anything you guys do or focus on around just like talking to customers, the way you approach Having your product owners work with customers, understand problems, things like that. That might be helpful for people to hear. For us it's a bit easy, uh, to reach out to customers simply because the customer base is so big. It's more than fifty million people, and uh

23:04 Usually Uh We ourselves uh Power users of the product. Um We receive our salary into Revolut and then we we spend with Revolut.

23:16 Our friends the same. So It's it's like a no brainer to to talk to people continuously and even if you're not practicing to intact, they will reach out. If you have a problem in the product I guarantee that

23:32 We we know about it very, very soon. We we've also built tools for product owners and designers. To Have an easy access to a panel of users by different tools. So that they can just

23:45 start an interviewing process or a survey Or yeah. Test of different designs in a few clicks. For me it was very important. To build this direct

23:56 Connection to customers. When you delegate such an important thing as as customer research and collecting their feedback to someone. You will get uh refined the filtered version. You won't get this, you know, like the these

24:11 No. nuances of how people describe things, which emotions they they feel like and so on, and where where they think stuck. It's it's it's very easy to lose all those important bites of information in this process. So I'm a strong believer that It's very important to have direct

24:28 uh communication channel to to Two customers. As you describe this, it's funny how you're at the You guys are the extreme opposite uh end of the spectrum from Palantir in terms of How easy it is for you to get feedback.

24:41 They build stuff for like the government and for like Airbus. Well it Employees would never use a product like that or need a product like that. You guys are uh getting paid in Revolute, using Revolute to pay for things and constantly in the product. And so I could see why there's less of a need for something like a forward to play engineer.

24:59 Okay. Amazing. Let's talk about hiring then. Is there Is there anything unique about how you approach hiring, sourcing, looking for people, what you look for in people that you think might be contributing to

25:10 Your alumni being so successful down the road. I think Everyone is uh Striving for Talented, skillful

25:18 Smart people and experienced people. Uh Revolute. values way more raw intellect and um These

25:27 Unquenched hunger to build things rather than experience. So let me maybe, you know, like bring an example. Imagine You hire a great experienced professional

25:42 Oh with amazing regalia of achieving a lot of things. But then what I see in product The Adoption curve is usually longer than in other functions.

25:57 Because Provide owners By definition are the ones who You know, who are the experts in the domain and then all those intricacies of of how product is Build on how it's used.

26:10 So what we see from these professionals is they still take a lot of time to ramp up. Uh and uh Sometimes they also take time to adapt to new culture. Or worse they just Rest on their laurels.

26:25 But you already have like super inflated expectations and usually the compensation is by the way. quite high and which adds up to these expectations. So And I myself, after conducting maybe

26:40 four or five hundred interviews with product owners at Revolute, I I also see this. Uh Unfortunately Professionals with a lot of years of experience from established companies. They don't have this uh

26:56 uh these strong uh urge So Change status quo. Which By the way, we'll require

27:05 No. Total tears and sweat and uh And that's why Uh What

27:14 Even if S a candidate doesn't have a lot of years of experience. But they they love building things. They've done it. They worked with engineers.

27:24 Uh maybe by the way, maybe in their own startup. Or one of the best profiles. Okay. That I've seen is А те кофодер.

27:35 So I think that's that's probably the best way to boost career is to you know, to to go and to find something and work in a startup. build things yourself or with a very small team Uh working all different

27:50 areas because in startup you have to work in all different areas. And then these kind of people Uh they really thrive at Revolut. And uh even if they don't have uh А лотов єрзов experience.

28:04 They actually Attack a specific problem. They They have a Sense of what

28:13 Кен коз кастемер пейн. And they are very fast moving to solve it quickly. And then that's how they get appreciation from everyone around. Team starts respecting these people because they solved some specific problem, and then they take another problem, they solve it. And then they take another and that's how they grow in the company. Essentially what I'm hearing is you you hire kind of more junior

28:35 Super high raw intellect. Driven Mm. Passionate. Uh, how do you describe hungry?

28:43 People And this explains why so many people have so get promoted so much more. That leave Revolute because they start they're earlier in their career. And you help them learn all these skills, ownership, depth, understanding, working

28:57 Complex environments building amazing products. So this all makes a lot of sense. Uh. W is there anything you figure out about where to find these people? Cause this is the dream. Hire amazingly smart people that are super driven that nobody knows about yet and then make them awesome. Uh, where what have you found anything about like where to source and find these folks?

29:14 So the w the way we work, uh we have a weekly catch ups with the recruitment team. So Essentially they they are also a team that runs in sprints. So we every every sprint we define what Uh do we want to focus on which areas, which companies.

29:31 One of the great sources is uh Uh actually uh looking into products and depths that we love ourselves. So If someone built a great product, then

29:43 It's likely a high performer. So Usually like we we provide some great products in specific areas that are more important for us to to the sourcing team and they just uh try to source uh targeting those companies.

29:59 It could be also different areas. It could be even schools like good schools and uh So it varies from sprint to sprint. That makes sense. There's uh Gogol had this really good piece of advice. I think it was on the podcast. If not, he tweeted about it. Where you know you look at like there's like successful companies, but then there's also like what function in that company is the is the key to their success. And

30:18 So you want to go like a company A for sales, company B for customer support, cust company C for Design. And so it sounds like that's kind of the way you guys think about it a little bit. Very cool. Okay. We're I love how we're uncovering and we're uncovering this mystery.

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31:18 Use Stripe to handle all of your payment related needs. including billing, revenue operations, checkout flows, or simply launching or inventing new business models. Learn all the ways that Stripe can grow revenue for your business at Stripe. Dot com. Let me go in a different direction and see if there's more to learn here.

31:37 When it comes to running your teams Is there something that is kind of fairly contrarian in how you approach running the product team? That Uh

31:48 companies operate that you think is key to your success. I've changed in how I operate. After he joined Trav. Uh probably because Revolut is a founder led company. And probably it's because so fled.

32:00 And also because my role is uh quite spread across many things. So my role at Revolut is uh leading product function across company. But also lead in Retail. Which is a

32:14 Yeah. uh part of Revel's business. And uh It's very easy. to be spread thinly across

32:23 All those uh domains uh and uh Kitchen up with uh fifty or seventy projects. Uh that's uh uh being executed simultaneously.

32:36 Which would mean that you know you will just Spend your entire week just just catching up on statuses. Uh not really adding value to anyone. But but it's also you know, it's also scary to not do it. Because

32:49 W what if there are some things going wrong, right? And you and you won't be able to to to to stop it or steer in a in a better direction. So I think that's why also a lot of managers, especially in senior positions, they they They they kind of stay high level and they don't go very deep into details. But so How

33:09 We did differently at Drevallood is Uh To go very deep into details. Uh we Take maybe if you're gonna do it.

33:19 Севен утен проджект. Which are most impactful for customers right now and uh Uh We go super deep into them, like really, really dip. Uh

33:32 Sitting with engineers Like Change like reading code level and understanding okay how how it's built exactly and what's what's the underlying issue. And uh You could think that

33:47 Okay, but what if what about others like let's say fifty or sixty items, right? But the thing is that it actually It's counterintuitive, but it works. Really well because First of all, teams

34:04 They talk to each other. There are formal and informal uh ways of communicating through meetups or just, you know, meeting in the office. And they know which areas are being scrutinized right now and Which team is being scrutinized.

34:19 And uh It also gives information on what are the current priorities in the company. But in addition It's signal to other teams that If they are not

34:32 Proactively Executing scenes on the expected level. Paying attention. To all the details and uh being meticulous in all those details, especially in quality. They will be the ones that, you know, will

34:48 Will be reviewed. To a such Deep level Next Next phase, next cycle.

34:55 So As a result, it also builds A great discipline and since Like Revolute is an Із суче концентрація

35:05 Very ambitious people. Uh Thrive for being You know, best versions of themselves and And grow.

35:14 And It's very important for them to prove That You know, they can They can deliver

35:21 Great teens and build Next. That great company. А за результат за ду Евритін. To

35:32 operate autonomously and when you start diving deep into details, like you see that everything is fine. You see the op uh modus apparent, and you can understand okay. If this team is on good track or not on good track. And if it's not on good track, it means that it probably will be one of your next areas of focus. Okay, so what I'm hearing is there's you said there's fifty to sixty things kind of projects.

35:57 being built in. Okay. Okay, so there's like a hundred things happening uh at any point, like features being built, products being launched. And you and this is you and the Founders choose seven to ten to focus on.

36:11 Or is it just you? Uh no it's just me. And by the way, do you have like a leadership team that you're a part of with like a design lead or is it just you basically at the top? So the way it's structured, um Uh my responsibility is uh product function, we also have uh head of design function.

36:30 It's also part of my team. Uh but then all the other functions uh they uh separate like engineering and uh data function. And all of them report directly into CO. Got it. Okay. So you so out of a hundred things you choose, here's like the seven to ten things I'm gonna go deep on.

36:47 These are the things that matter most to the business that if They don't go well. It'll have the the most down down side. And then you just you're you basically said you sit next to the engineers, you You get really involved in every detail.

36:59 Yeah, awesome. Okay. That is definitely counterintuitive. Uh, we had Brian Chesky in the podcast and the way he approached this problem is he just Cut down how many things happen at Airbnb? Be and because he wants to be involved in everything. And so I think it's cool to hear a different approach where okay, we can still do a lot of stuff.

37:16 But I'm gonna choose, I'm gonna go deep on the things that matter most. No uh I I think we will never cut down since uh it's just The appetite for for growth and also

37:30 Entrepreneurial approach In the company so high. that we will never allow ourselves to give up on some Great opportunities. But also this this approach is way more scalable. So while

37:45 Лідерші ан об'слі фандры. Keep everyone accountable and go deep into details. It doesn't mean that they micromanage everyone. That's actually That's actually a very important thing.

37:59 So the ideal position uh for any product owner is to be fully autonomous. And again it doesn't mean that you will never be challenged. But if when you're challenged You can show

38:10 All the logic behind decisions you've made behind the road map. And even if metrics are not yet there. Like You You you will

38:21 still like let's say have this credit of trust to keep building things the way you want to build them. Eventually, yeah, you will you will be presenting the outputs of your activity on these weekly product reviews. But again, it's it's not uh micromanagement either, it's more like uh Let's say a last uh line of control to make sure that What we're building is all

38:43 all makes sense and that's value and this Thoroughly thought in all details. And then you said still every screen that is shipped, the founders review at some point. So it's not like someone's shipping stuff without the founders seeing it in some form. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

38:58 They have like full over you. Over everything. Mm. Uh but also The it it actually

39:05 Um Ілаз ас тобіл со мені син. Because There is a w uh actually little micromanagement. Like

39:16 If there was if founders had to be like involved into everything, they had to the the they they had to to cut the things down, right? But By Given people autonomy They actually boost company growth. And uh And as a result, I think Revolute is

39:34 is a strong outlier in the industry in terms of how many uh products being shipped and how fast they ship. A another thing here is What I've mentioned previously is us, uh Investing heвіly into platform And uh so that

39:52 Every solution is scalable from the get-go. So that we don't have any custom solutions. And I don't for example take our credit team The

40:02 Ship neo Products like loans or credit cards uh in a country. Literally every month. And it's just maybe three hundred people. Yeah.

40:13 Uh and I think that You know, a credit division in a In a Incumbent bank It's maybe like

40:22 Two or three thousand. People Building just credit products for a single country. And uh our team is building it for fifty countries.

40:33 So and Yeah, it's enabled through this approach with uh platforms. Which we build uh on top of. Small teams. Which

40:43 are fully equipped with necessary functions and also have autonomy in defining what what they're building. And the flat. A hierarchy.

40:55 Uh with everyone being accountable and uh Founders have in direct view over everyone. uh and uh inter uh intervening if if necessary. I'm gonna give people a list of the things you guys do. We I didn't do this at the beginning'cause it would take too long, but You talk about all the products you're building and all the things that's going on. So I have like a list here that it may it's probably incomplete, but just to give people a sense.

41:18 So you guys have credit cards, debit cards, savings accounts? Multi currency accounts, domestic international transfers, joint accounts. uh minors accounts for like less than people less than eighteen years old. Stock trading, cryptocurrency purchasing. Loans.

41:35 Is there anything big I missed? I mean it's a Some of those things are huge by itself. Let's say stock trade, right? It's it's not just stocks, it's also Uh uh і ті всбонза

41:48 And uh We were working on uh uh tax efficient accounts uh in different countries And uh crypto it's uh w we also allow stake in crypto, for example. Uh we have uh

42:01 uh on ramp off ramp uh product We have acquiring product. On credit, we have loans, we have uh uh by now by later product we have we even launched mortgages. We launched first mortgages in in Lithuania uh recently. And this is uh and then all of these across fifty different currencies.

42:20 And countries. Yeah, fifty different jurisdictions with each with its own regulation. With its own requirements. No boy. Uh this is a it's a good example of Paul Graham has this concept of schlep.

42:34 Blindness or sleeping. Where people Wanna avoid hard Problems. But that's where the big opportunities are, solving really gnarly

42:42 Painful problems. And that's Basically what you guys did. Yeah, that that's one of the things that excites me maybe the most uh uh ter The market is so big.

42:55 And uh it There are still a lot of Very inefficient players. And uh as a result Customers have a lot of problems that are unsolved.

43:06 While we grow Insayne uh And I think we'll soon be so When when I joined we had maybe just slightly north to twenty million customers. Now we are fifty million customers, soon we'll be at a hundred million customers.

43:21 The d degree of You know, surrounding each customer with the ecosystem of our product extends a lot. So they become More and more people start using Revolt as their main bank account. They they

43:35 start receiving the uh their salary into Rev and holding their savings into Rev because they they love the product more. And so we can easily do another I don't know, two three X. for X in uh Yeah.

43:50 Customer based growth. But we can also do another ten X gro growth in How actively these people are using the product. So it's let's say what, thirty, forty X to current uh uh forty five billion valuation.

44:05 Right. So It's uh It's like a It trillion dollar company easily.

44:13 And uh on that note, I knew. Uh, what I'm hearing is it's still a good a great time to join. There's a massive upside. So I know you guys are hiring, we'll just note that real quick. There's a You're hiring product owners and a bunch of other roles, I imagine. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, we

44:25 Well Uh As a as a someone who owns a product function, I'm uh especially interested in uh product honors, obviously. But we yeah, we hire a lot of roles, I think. We have maybe uh three or four hundred open positions currently. How my dad.

44:40 Okay. New stuff that you work on. So Uh new products that you Mm.

44:46 decide to invest in. Is there anything that you've figured out about just like how to Set up new products for success. Because a lot of the stuff we've been talking about is staying on top of stuff that you're iterating on and making better. What have you learned about just

44:59 helping new products succeed. Yeah, so we launched quite a few Products that you actually maybe wouldn't expect from a bank. Starting with crypto that was uh insanely successful, but also Uh non financial services like uh booking a hotel through Revlutep, our uh loyalty program Rev Points, which Um

45:21 Which is sort of disrupting European market where people don't get great benefits from spending with card. In the US you can easily get like what, two percent cash back with a credit card. Uh or in some sort of point. In Europe they don't have it. And uh we were actually the first to build a

45:39 Mm. a program on card spend rewarding people with really meaningful uh Monetary rewards. In the in the manner that I described, like we we understood okay, what's the recipe uh of this success to then scale it and reproduce.

45:57 So we built a new Bets framework. Uh and essentially everyone can come up with a new idea, it could be a product owner, but it could be anyone like Uh And uh

46:08 They need to show some key important things which usually can expect from a startup like market is there. uh business case is there Uh we know that we can do it way better than competitors leveraging, for example, some things that that that we have Obviously Uh, some

46:25 Uh concepts of product and then what customer problem we're solving and so on. Uh and there is very little bureaucracy. Again. Than to having uh founder hands on, we can

46:37 Easily get a green light on anything. start launching it quickly. Uh what what we do is assemble Same lean team. With just a few people to build first version. And then iterate and iterate.

46:51 And uh The main import thing here is to build first version very quickly to get uh feedback. But then not scale it before you polish the product. But then after after we make sure that, you know, all metrics are fine, retention is great.

47:09 We start scaling it and the good news is that it can be instantly multiplied by our fifty million customer base. and get uh great traction. So for example One of the products that you mentioned joint accounts, essentially an account that you could have with a significant other one. was one of the recently launched feature and it uh grew uh significantly and now it uh has over a million uh active Uh users.

47:33 I hear one of the ways you kind of approach these early products differently is you Guys invest a lot in actually making it Good. And not just like a scrappy MVP. Does that ring a bell? Does that resonate?

47:45 Indeed. Um that that that's what I may be m uh meant by, you know. Keeping your first version narrowed down to a small user base. But even Івен із кейс ви стіл

47:59 Make sure that the product is well. So No one is excluded from this requirement of, you know, building a super polished Product. It takes time, but it pays off. You know, the the thing is that when you launch a scrappy version and it's not getting traction

48:18 How do you know? Is it because the underlying idea is wrong, or maybe your product just sucks? And you need to to improve it. So By You know but

48:30 By forcing every one to build a product The People will love. We're building a wow product. We

48:38 kind of cut out these part of uncertainty. So Bottom line we can Um cut down the product in terms of functionality to to just

48:49 most critical features, but we will never compromise on the quality and uh UX and the aesthetics. An interesting advantage you guys have that I'm realizing as you talk is Like Most of the stuff you

49:01 Launch is stuff that is clearly something people will want. because it's stuff they you know, they get other places but they get the advantages of it being integrated into all the other features and products you have. So it's like you know A cryptocurrency product.

49:15 I could it's kind of like okay, yeah, people would love a great cryptocurrency product built into this or joint accounts. So there's almost like a benefit of just like okay, the people will want this now, let's just make it work really well with everything else we got and not hurt. Like you almost don't need to be the best at every Product.

49:32 Although it sounds like you still try to be the best. But we must be the best. Yeah, a hundred percent. But there's also like you know, like if you don't have the best joint account, but all the other stuff is awesome, people are like all right, it's fine, it just makes my life easier. But tell me what I might be missing because So I think there are those uh kind of table stakes that we're building that anyone would expect from a bank. Uh

49:53 Uh like for example, savings account, right? It's it's just a basic thing that if if a bank is not providing savings account, you wouldn't even consider it. Uh but then We make sure that our rates are Very competitive.

50:08 If not the best. Then we make sure that there is no bad UX, like you know, some banks they, for example, they don't allow you to withdraw instantly. And there are delays. Uh or they don't Pay interest on daily basis.

50:23 We will never do that. We will allow you if you if you want to move m money out, you will be able to do it. You won't lose any interest. And interest is being paid daily. And this is a fully flexible product. And then on top of it

50:38 Um What I would call uh Um like Maybe uh S some delighters is we we will allow you to open the savings account in many currencies.

50:49 So we want to add like different currencies so Because it's Now interest rates are going down. So people might find it valuable to open the same as account in For example,

50:59 I know. In Europe, like Swedish Krana interest rates are higher than Europe, but it could be even something like Brazilian real or with what twelve percent uh interest rate versus like two or three percent on euros. And then And the cherry on top there is this all that in an amazing U app, very smooth Uh you can set uh custom

51:21 wallpapers, you can set goals, you can automate uh spare change towards your savings content and and all those features. So there is an underlying Uh Basic for life. uh fundamental layer the

51:35 Where you need to be just You know on par with competition. But then there are a lot of things on top. That

51:43 Just make people love your product way more. And obviously there are a lot of synergies in between those things. Uh so Yeah. Thinking of crypto, you can just

51:54 receive crypto on your wallet and then you can just instantly convert it to to cash on your account. Or just spend it with your card. How amazing. Can it be, right? uh with Ethereum. I love that.

52:10 Okay. Let me take uh this opportunity to try to summarize what I've learned from you so far in terms of w what you guys have figured out about creating incredible product leaders that go on to do wonderful things and Basically one of the

52:22 One of the top three most successful companies at this. So there's kinda these two buckets as I talk to you and the Palantir guy. Uh there's kinda like the hiring piece and then there's the what you do to help incubate this kind of forge for incredible product leaders. So in the

52:36 What you do internally. Kind of the four bullet points I've got here is Give people a lot of ownership. They're essentially GMs of the product, the feature. there's a lot of focus on depth and complexity and getting really good at

52:49 Solving really gnarly problems. And then there's building a focus on building wow. Product. Amazing. Lovable. Products that are very h that have a very high bar.

52:59 And then there's kinda like a subul Impactful here is just Working closely with detail obsessed founders. Or product leaders like you.

53:08 And learn from you all. And just like seeing the value and impact of being super detail oriented. On that bucket, is there anything else that you think is super core that I missed before we get to hiring? Yeah, I would just maybe uh highlight uh the aspect of this, like going deep into details, right? It's it's the the there are two main uh streams. First is let's say Being technical, understanding how underlying systems work. But second is also

53:36 You know, building empathy towards customers, understand the possible context. uh and making sure that your product will satisfy Each one of them. That's a great point. So it's like actually understanding the bare metal of what is happening and how it's possible.

53:51 And then making the experiences s simple and wowable as possible. There is also a third aspect. Uh but it's a boring one and it's a it's it's like uh compliant with all possible regulations and making sure that your product, you know, s uh will will satisfy the regulator.

54:09 Uh but it's also an important part of the of the job. Like what I get from that is just building patience. I would say I would say it's actually being able to to unblock your team

54:23 And that sometimes requires product owners to steamroll changes. Because it it it also means that you know, you could easily get stuck with uh A lot of uh people just looking into each other and thinking okay, can they approve it, can they not approve it. We try to innovate in it. We try to automate as many things as possible. We use even AI models for that.

54:44 But Uh it also requires a product owner to be able to to get things done, you know, just just getting people down to to consensus and uh Uh understanding who you're stakeholders how to uh

55:01 Get them to the necessary decision and then blocking your team so that eventually Like the value is shipped to to customers. Awesome. So essentially it's just getting shit done.

55:13 Plowing through blockers. Yeah, dealing with Many stakeholders Yeah, that's always the most important. Okay. That that's a great addition. I could see why that would be really helpful for folks that are trying to

55:25 Get ahead in their career. Okay, and then on the hiring piece, what you look for is Raw intellect. Drive hunger. Passion, essentially. Those are the first two.

55:34 And then interestingly, non senior, non Not people with a ton of experience in the problem space. More so focusing on Intellect than hunger. Is there anything else in that bucket that you think is important that

55:46 leads to people being really successful. Most importantly, it's Again, getting things done, getting your hands dirty and uh You know, like Great product owners are very hands on.

55:59 They don't think of themselves as uh managers who just uh give tasks to people and wait them to to complete it. They they just go and get things done and uh uh they understand that most important things Uh they will likely have to do themselves. And uh they understand that

56:20 There needs to be relentless focus and execution and If something is ninety nine percent done, it's closer to zero percent rather than hundred percent. Wow. Uh say more there. Is the kinda the insight there is just like things seem like they're ninety nine percent done, but they're actually very far from being done. Like

56:38 Sometimes the product is built. But then product owners are the ones who also, you know, make sure that for example uh customer care team or sales and marketing team are using it to a full extent. Right, because without it it could be just another useless feature which no and no one knows about it. That is super cool. I like that mentality.

56:59 Uh Let me ask you something completely different. What's kind of the story of you landing at Revolute. I know you had to move your family was a whole Adventure. Uh, my journey into Revel it actually coincided with uh me moving to the UK.

57:13 So it was a completely new Um environment for for myself. Uh it's it's It's a huge uh stress lot for the brain as well. And it's not only about, you know Using the

57:28 the other side of the lane on the road, yeah, in the UK, but also it's A lot of things, for example In in the industry like uh some concepts that I've never heard about. And actually I've never worked at FinTech before, so I also changed the industry. So it was like a complete

57:46 uh complete uh turn around for for me and for my career. But I was uh I was very determined and excited about it because

57:58 Everyone who I've been talking to they were saying Revolut is like it's top talent, he's a Trevalut, like all best product people are at Revolut and I I I was I really wanted to be part of this Great team. Uh eventually it actually appeared to be advantageous for me because I also had this Fresh view on things.

58:19 And uh Even In the Revolute app. Which is actually Way, way better than other bank's products, right?

58:28 But even there I found some things that for me because of this like lack of context They were not intuitive. And uh I worked hard uh Uh to uh with the team to to to change that.

58:43 Okay, great. I'm gonna take us to a recurring segment of the podcast. I'm gonna take us to Fail Corner. Sun Fail corner. Uh The idea here is People come on this podcast, they share all these stories of success. Everything's always going great.

58:56 But in reality things don't often go great and there's a lot of Things that Uh don't go right. Is there a story you could share where's where things went wrong in your career, where you failed with a product you were building or

59:08 A moment in your career where things were looking really bad. I think the most spectacular failures probably were on the earliest stage of my career. Which I studied back at university and uh Maybe in my second year of university I started building some things.

59:28 Different startups. And one of them Uh was actually A product that makes me proud even now because it was like what uh Uh fifteen years ago.

59:41 Uh so twenty twenty ten. Meaning like still no No one really had even iPhones back then. Uh and uh

59:51 Me and my friends we started building A website that uh allows people to buy tickets to the cinema so that they can skip the line. So they they don't need to come in advance to select best seeds. And they can just Uh buy ticket online and uh go to the seeds directly. Something that today seems uh

1:00:12 As a commodity back then. Like no one had it, like people were using pieces of paper. And We build like an<unk> то енд систем. Because not only we needed to build a website, but we also needed to

1:00:26 or built hardware to scan those tickets, for example. And to have these tickets in digital format we needed to hack SMS standard because I again like the people didn't have smartphones, they had this Nokia's uh Uh and uh we were sending

1:00:44 uh і mage s q codes inside an sms we Which is like a a a a a heck of the of the standard, in in a way. And then we were Canning those things with uh our own devices. And we build our own devices with scanners.

1:00:59 And we actually like We created this. Yes, uh beautiful uh um devices uh made from stainless steel, which looked really nice inside uh cinema halls. Uh and uh I I remember how I was excited about it.

1:01:16 W with my friends we were like What an amazing thing it's like look we We're bringing future here. But Uh we actually

1:01:26 Uh We spent All our uh investment on on this hardware Uh and we were expecting that, you know, like everyone will just Rush into using our system.

1:01:38 Uh but It was a very low share of customers who started buying tickets online because people were not ready for it, which was growing quite slowly. And eventually we had to close it because we simply ran out of money because we spent all of it on on this on this hardware. without any proven business model.

1:01:55 So something that that currently looks like um An obvious mistake. back then we were just, you know, enjoying building uh a product that we would love to use ourselves. We which I think is a is the right principle, but And also It also was a very painful lesson.

1:02:11 You need to stay lean, you need to validate things before you scale them. uh you need to uh think way more about uh the run rate of your business So there were a lot of painful lessons for me. Since then I also tried to avoid working with hardware. I was just gonna say that. That's it.

1:02:29 common common challenge for startups trying to get right into hardware. Uh although I wouldn't be surprised now if Revolute launches something another product and this is this is the Uh a new product line of Revolute. Now that you've had that experience. Yeah, we recently launched a

1:02:45 Oh. POS terminals for acquiring. Right, there we go. Demetri, before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else that we haven't touched on that you think might be really helpful for listeners to Here maybe a less wisdom nugget.

1:02:59 that you haven't already shared or even just something to kind of double down on that you've already shared. No, I think uh that it was uh an amazing chat and thanks Daniel. You like we we we covered a lot of different topics. I would just maybe uh uh summariz that You know, if you if you're excited to build uh certain things

1:03:17 Uh, never hesitate to do it. The the best way to do it is probably your own startup. And uh it also the the what will give you the steepest possible learning curve. But then if you want to join a company, try to choose the one that That has this highest entrepreneurial spirit, and that

1:03:37 will allow you to work as closer To a mode of a founder as you possibly can. That's a recurring theme in these conversations I'm having with companies that produce the

1:03:49 Uh PMs that have the Steepest career. uh trajectory. And so it that that advice is exactly what I'm taking away from this too. Assuming you want your career to accelerate really quickly after you go work at this company.

1:04:02 Okay. Dimitri, with that we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready? Yes, let's go. Yes, here we go. Okay, first question, what are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people.

1:04:14 Uh the hard thing about hard things. By Ben Harowits. Actually read it quite uh some time ago, but I I Foyself recommending it to other product managers most often.

1:04:27 It's actually illustrative that Uh To B a great product. manager someone needs to

1:04:36 Um Strive to be in a great seo. And besides this book emphasizes uh The importance of

1:04:45 building systematic solutions uh and scalable solutions which is critical for scaling company. Also uh be being honest on how important it is to grind stuff.

1:04:59 Um and then second book is uh Uh I I read it more recently, uh Built by Tony Fidel. Um I was really inspired by this one. Uh, especially given uh how I appreciate uh how it's not easy to build hardware and what uh what uh Tony was describing there is just is just super exciting and uh and inspiring and also I you know I think that There are

1:05:25 Different archetypes of product managers. Uh There are people who tend to disrupt things more. Personally, I think about myself as of a builder.

1:05:34 So Telling us uh Uh uh highlighted in the book they they resonate with me a a lot.

1:05:44 I'm trying to get Tony on the podcast. If anyone listening knows Tony Fidel. And uh can nudge him. Hey, say yes to Lenny. That'd be great. I've been in touch with his team. He's not doing podcasts right now, but I'm trying to get him on. Okay, moving on. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show that you've really enjoyed?

1:05:58 I think the last movie I watched uh was Oppenheimer, uh, and uh I really liked it. I always uh I love watching uh Biopics. Uh I think they give you kind of a perspective and uh let you think about uh you know things in perspective. Is there a favorite product you recently discovered that you really love? Manos.

1:06:21 Is uh is a great scene. The uh AI agent. Yeah, yeah, it's it's just like I was super impressed how I I was mesmerized, like it's it's so autonomous and smooth. And I I just Spend like a few hours

1:06:35 Uh Vipe code in and I created this JavaScript app that Uh sense a rare English word every day to learn and remember and Yeah.

1:06:48 I It it worked and uh I was I was just amazed. What's a what's a learn? What's a word you learned? Uh ineffable. It was the yes.

1:06:58 I love that it's still going, that's great. Diva Favorite life motto that you often Come back to you. Find useful in work or in life.

1:07:07 I love this phrase um I think uh Eisenhower, said it. Uh plans are worthless, but planing is everything. It's It's like

1:07:17 You know, we we We often say how important it is to be flexible and agile and adjust to changing circumstances. But it doesn't allow us to actually not have a plan at all. It's important for us to remember that, you know, we we we always need to think many steps ahead and uh While being flexible, we also need to

1:07:39 uh to think things uh thoroughly. Final question. For folks that are maybe checking out Revolute for the first time, that wanna play with it already users. What's the most underrated feature? What's something that you think people should check out? Maybe they're not aware of Or even just like a UX I don't know, animation something fun that people may not

1:07:57 No about. The thing that І з нот'я уд. But I really loved it is what we call a wealth protection. So if you go to settings you can enable

1:08:10 A limit. for any transfers outside the Freud and if you want to do a transfer above this limit you will have to do a selfie check, which is our procretary technology. We do video selfie and it allows us to make sure that it's you, no one else. is doing the transfer.

1:08:25 And uh it's actually It's Almost as smooth as uh face ID and uh the way team built it is is really great. I was I'm really proud of those guys. Dimitri, you guys are doing something very special. I really appreciate you spending so much time with me chatting through all the things you guys have figured out. I think that's gonna help a lot of different companies level up the way they think about product.

1:08:49 And for people to join Revolute that wanna uh experience this and accelerate their career. So Thank you for being here. Two final questions. Where can folks find you if they want to reach out?

1:08:57 And how can listeners be useful to you? Uh I think the best way is to find me on LinkedIn. And um Yeah. So I would be happy to receive a note from anyone on uh how we can improve the product, any feedback on the product.

1:09:11 And also if uh If you know someone who can be uh a great feat to revolute after Uh after you've listened to what I've told uh Uh, then yeah, I would be grateful for that as well.

1:09:26 Awesome. You're about to get a flood of applications. Get prepared. Dimitri Mm. Yeah. Lenny, thanks a lot. It was amazing time. Thank you very much. Same. Bye, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

1:09:45 Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show. at Lenny's podcast dot com. See you in the next episode.

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