“We Play on the Offensive.”An Interview with Revolut Founder Nikolay Storonsky (Category Leadership)

I saw it. curious Nikolai Storodsky, founder of Revolut ($75 valuation)What he gave to Elizaveta Osetinskaya, a foreign agent. In this interview, Nikolai talked about how to build a company where only top talents work. First, let’s talk about the scale of the company today. (By the way, I'm talking about Revolut. told)

• 12,000 staff (5,000 core team, 7,000 support/sales)
• 1,200 developers, approximately ~30-40Percent of the team is engineering + product + data science 45M users, 15M daily active
• $6B revenue, $2B profit (2025 plan: $9B/$3B)
• 40 countries, expansion into 60+ markets

Company focuses on hiring hgih avievers (reacher). Nikolai himself conducted many thousands of interviews and thus formulates his criteria.

• Top-1-5everywhere From school to previous places of work
• STEM background track record
• Problem-solving end-to-end They should come with solutions, not problems.
• Ambitious goals Nikolai quotes from the interview that I liked "almost everything can be achieved that obeys the laws of physics."
• Willingness to dismiss weak Most people are afraid to do it.

Separately, Nicholas noted that they do not take

• Classic bankers “Low quality talent, they maintainers, not builders”
  - Average performers As soon as you start working with average people, they say, ‘We have a problem, what do we do?’ We don't like them.

Nikolai's approach to flow - regrettable attrition should be kept small (1.5quarterly)Forced Attrition must be accelerated to 10-20yearly (to bid farewell to the weak). According to Nicholas, this works because Constant filtering opens the ladder for new talent Early employees leave as multimillionaires (The top managers made $50-80M on secondary stock sales) Compensation above banks: salary + bonuses + shares for all 5K core team

Nikolai shared the following cultural values adopted by the company 1. Never Settle Set ambitious goals and achieve them. 2. Think Deep Deep analysis, logic, zero bullshit 3. Dream Team Small teams of stars 4. Get Things Done ownership without micromanagement 5. Deliver Wow Perfectionism for long-term quality

Separately, a lot of focus on AI and work automation (By the way, I'm already. handler Automation of development processes in Revolut). Specifically, this interview focused on risk management and compliance:

• LLM is being processed. 400,000+ pages of regulationsAutomatically extract obligations and link to controls
• ML models on 200+ parameters (IP, transactions, connections) Accuracy higher than human analysts
• 75% Automated customer support via chatbots and voice assistants

Nikolai’s approach to managing such a team of achievers looks like this. 1. Flat structure Even the CEO doesn’t have an office, he works with open space.

• 40+ direct reports + 30 "bright young people" (ex-McKinsey/IB/founders) Office of CEO for Shadow Performance Audit

2. KPI-driven.

• Weekly. 1:1 along 15 Minutes: Jira, metrics, problems Monday/Tuesday - Department reviews
• Net performance 70%+, attrition <1.5quarterly for strong

3. Radical Honesty (Just like in the book Radical Candor. (Radical candour)Which I'm talking about. told)

• No politics, just data.
• Fidbeck straight, no emotions.
• Anyone can approach anyone.

4. Productive approach

• Teams. 8-10 bootstrap 9-18 months
• Kill <25% of gross profit products Interviewers are trainable: their precision/recall track, the worst 25% clear

#Engineering #Leadership #Hiring #Culture #AI #Management #Startup