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

I watched an interesting interview with Nikolay Storonsky, founder of Revolut, then valued at $75 billion, conducted by Elizaveta Osetinskaya, designated a foreign agent in Russia. He describes building a company staffed entirely by top talent. First, the company’s scale at the time—I have written about Revolut before:

• 12,000 employees: 5,000 in the core team and 7,000 in support and sales.
• 1,200 developers; engineering, product, and data science together account for roughly 30–40% of the team.
• 45M users, with 15M daily active.
• $6B revenue and $2B profit; the 2025 plan was $9B/$3B.
• Operations in 40 countries, expanding into 60+ markets.

The company focuses on high achievers. Storonsky has conducted many thousands of interviews and describes these criteria:

• Top 1–5% throughout: from school to previous jobs.
• A STEM background with a proven track record.
• End-to-end problem-solving: bring solutions rather than problems.
• Ambitious goals: I liked his line that “almost anything that obeys the laws of physics can be achieved.”
• Willingness to dismiss weak performers: something most people fear doing.

He specifically says they do not hire:

• Traditional bankers: in his words, “low-quality talent; maintainers, not builders.”
• Average performers: “As soon as you start working with average people, they come and say, ‘We have problems; what should we do?’ We don’t like that.”

His approach to turnover is interesting: keep regrettable attrition low, at 1.5% per quarter, but push forced attrition to 10–20% annually to part with weak performers. He argues that this works because:

• Continual selection creates opportunities for new talent.
• Early employees leave as multimillionaires; senior managers made $50–80M through secondary share sales.
• Compensation exceeds banks’: salary, bonuses, and shares for all 5K core-team members.

He lists these company values: 1. Never Settle: set ambitious goals and achieve them. 2. Think Deep: rigorous analysis, logic, zero bullshit. 3. Dream Team: small teams of stars. 4. Get Things Done: ownership without micromanagement. 5. Deliver Wow: perfectionism for lasting quality.

AI and automation also receive considerable attention. I have already discussed Revolut’s approach to automating development. This interview focuses on risk management and compliance:

• LLMs process 400,000+ pages of regulations, extracting obligations and linking them to controls automatically.
• ML models use 200+ parameters, including IP addresses, transactions, and connections, with claimed accuracy above human analysts.
• 75% of customer support is automated through chatbots and voice assistants.

His management approach for this team of high achievers:

1. A flat structure

• Even the CEO has no private office and works in an open-plan space.
• He has 40+ direct reports plus 30 “bright young people”—former McKinsey staff, investment bankers, and founders—in the office of the CEO to conduct behind-the-scenes performance audits.

2. Everything is KPI-driven

• Weekly 15-minute 1:1s covering Jira, metrics, and problems.
• Department reviews on Monday and Tuesday.
• Net performance of 70%+, with attrition below 1.5% per quarter for strong performers.

3. Radical Honesty This resembles Radical Candor, the book I discussed before:

• No politics, just data.
• Direct, unemotional feedback.
• Anyone can approach anyone.

4. A product approach

• Teams of 8–10 people, bootstrapping for 9–18 months.
• Discontinue products whose gross profit is below 25%.
• Interviewers can be trained: their precision and recall are tracked, and the worst 25% are removed.

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