A Deep Dive into Revolut's Product Organisation
Find out how Revolut built their Product organisation and how it changed - from 2015 to today.
FinTech is so 2014! So why are we doing a piece about Revolut?
From humble beginnings in 2015 as “Your Personal Money Cloud” to one of the most successful FinTechs in the world. Revolut continues to outpace its competition in product development, international expansion, and localisation of its offering. Having raised a similar amount as N26 and Monzo ($1.6-$1.8bn), Revolut clocks in at 30m MAUs vs Monzo’s 4m and N26’s 2m today, and it’s adding 1m sign-ups a month from over 150 countries around the world. In 2023 the business passed $2.2bn of revenue and $420m of net income.
Their last funding round valued the business at $33bn (2021), but it is also said to be currently offering a secondary share sale to its employees at least the same valuation, but rumoured to be up to $45bn. While many growth companies have struggled to grow back into their post-COVID valuations, Revolut is apparently already there and then some.
So many factors influence this success, but surely the slick product is a major component.
Nik certainly thinks so, saying on the 20VC Podcast: “[Product is a] Secret weapon - it’s how we can compete with other companies. […] The faster you can ship products, the faster you can iterate on products - the more chances you have to win. […] As a result: pay attention to [the] speed and [the] quality of the product - ultimately, product wins.”
That’s why this article focuses on the Product organisation. This team was known for its lightning-fast ability to execute and ship in the early days - and it hasn’t let off the pressure since then.
We will first go through an overview of how Revolut evolved in the past 9-10 years (Zooming Out), then we’ll look at how Revolut’s Product function is organised and what is its secret sauce (Different by Design), and, finally, we’ll go through some of the stats of the Product org like tenure, attrition, geographic footprint, etc. (How Revolut’s Product Org evolved).
If you’re interested in discovering the secret to its fast-paced execution, read on!
Although we invested dozens of hours of research to compile this data, we can’t guarantee it’s 100% accurate, as we may have missed some people in our research here and there. It reflects reality to the best of our knowledge at the moment. The focus of the data falls on individuals who held product manager, product owner, product strategy, and product design roles. Developers, engineers, and data scientists were excluded from this analysis.
Zooming Out
Let’s begin by looking at the trajectory of the business from a bird’s eye view. Mapping its product releases, we can see that the push for improvements to its core product offering, as well as diversifying its revenue base with new product tracks and features has been relentless.
What started in 2015, founded by the two co-founders Nik (CEO) and Vlad (CTO), as a simple mobile app tied to a prepaid credit card to help travellers save money abroad on their currency exchange has evolved into a wide product mix.
Its strategy to diversify its product offering quickly in tandem with aggressive international expansion is evident in the data. This strategy is also a bit controversial: the typical scale-up advice is to land in a new country with one product before adding complexity (or to consolidate existing markets and expand with new products there). Revolut decided to do both from the very early days. Every year, it added new offerings to its consumer and business customers, while also entering new markets.
The graph below, posted by its Chief Growth Officer, Antoine le Nel, and also available in its most recent annual report, gives a good overview of the revenue and geographic mix the business has built.
It all started with saving customers money on FX transactions and making it easier to hold multi-currency accounts. Today, the B2C and B2B products are evolving into sophisticated multi-product “super app” offerings that will eventually mean you can go to Revolut for most of your financial services needs. Already close to 10% of its user base is rumoured to be using Revolut as their main financial service provider (salary to account). Customers can pay, trade stocks, ETFs, crypto, earn interest on their savings, manage their expenses and subscriptions, get travel insurance, and more. Nik has said in the past that he admires WeChat for the super app ecosystem it has built: he is clearly aiming to set Revolut on a similar path.
Revolut also recently spun out its HR/ATS system: Revolut People. An interesting case of one of the internal “platform” products it has built for itself spinning out and being sold to its customers. Whether this strategy will work out remains to be seen. Someone we spoke to recently called it a "flop”, but we couldn’t confirm its success or lack thereof. Before you think it’s odd for a digital bank to venture into the HR space, though, think about how Revolut’s business customers need to execute payroll every month. This could be an interesting angle to continue to develop its Business offering.
To build these products and enter new markets, Revolut also continued to broaden its license portfolio: it first acquired an E-money license in 2018 and applied for a UK banking license in 2021 for which it finally received approval (with restrictions) in July 2024. It received its European banking license end of 2021 (acting as a licensed bank in 30 countries in the EEA), and submitted a draft application for a US banking license in 2021, which now that the UK license is on track will likely be the next big focus.
In Brazil, it was recently granted a direct credit society license (May 2023), paving the way for it to offer Brazilian users a digital account with transfer and payment options. In Mexico, it was granted a banking license (April 2024). In India, it received in-principle approval for a PPI license (April 2024), giving it the ability to issue prepaid cards in the country (building on its existing ability to offer FX services in the country). It has also made strides on the Credit front, offering Personal Loans in France, Germany, and Spain, as well as credit cards in Ireland and Spain.
Developing its license portfolio goes hand in hand with its product strategy. Revolut needs to be able to operate on its banking infrastructure (vs relying on local 3rd parties for the “pipes”). Its execution speed and success stem from its ability to test and iterate on local product approaches quickly. When needing to rely on external partners, this system slows down (and so there are fewer “chances to win” when iterating on products).
This seems to have been what is holding them back in the US, where after two years of laying the groundwork from 2018 onwards, they officially entered the market in 2020 during COVID. Key services like issuing prepaid cards and accounts, as well as vaults, are offered via partners. So far it has “only” grown to around 1m users in the US. While user growth is trending in the right direction, it is still very small - and surely, the team isn’t happy with these results. One can expect that now the UK banking license has been approved, Revolut will tackle the US next more earnestly.
While the tech market in general has been suffering these past two years, Revolut continues to grow aggressively all around the world. Between 2022 and 2024, its workforce will have more than doubled (!), growing from 6000 to a projected 14000 employees by year-end. At the same time, the last funding round was in 2021, when it raised $800m. Since then, it posted 3 straight years of profit totalling circa $450m. 2023 was an especially impressive success with $420m of net profit. This success comes on the back of its diverse revenue base, where Revolut can capture more and more wallet share from its users by solving more and more use cases for them.
You’ll be hard-pressed to find many other recent growth-stage companies posting this combination of growth and profitability.
It has built a strong position in competitive markets (UK, Europe), where there are plenty of alternative banking options (traditional and FinTech). But, equally, it’s building a footprint across the world in underserved markets: Mexico, Brazil, India, to Eastern Europe. The competition in these markets is much lower - in some cases, their target users don’t even have bank accounts. And in many of these markets, FX is a core customer need - something Revolut excels at using as an entry point. The ability to send money abroad to 140+ countries and hold 25+ currencies at a far better price than its competition is very appealing. And, of course, that’s only ever the starting point.
While revenue coming from these international markets is still low, it is understandable. It takes Revolut about 2 years to launch a new market, with 30-50 complex moving parts needing to align: from needing to set up the required entities, to applying to different licenses (trading, payments, banking, credit…), to onboarding and KYC systems that need to be adapted to each market. This is no easy feat, so no wonder they aren’t targeting more than 5-10 new markets per year.
It seems the stage is set. The foundation of a truly global digital bank has been built. It’s no surprise it is in a powerful position to command a premium valuation in the current secondary. It has developed a world-class product and user experience as well as the technical, compliance, and regulatory infrastructure to absorb customers from ever-new locations around the world. As it gains traction in new markets, its global approach allows it to continue extending its product and technological lead, outpacing the investments its local competition can afford.
Different by Design
In the beginning, Revolut’s approach to Product was not very sophisticated, it was a “very entrepreneurial approach” where decisions were made more on gut feel. But over time, the team became more scientific about it - and alongside this, they’ve developed their unique sauce. Which has brought unique outcomes.
Surely, a lot of this has developed organically over the last 10 years. But, equally, you can see that there was a unique and principled approach that Nik developed from the starting point.
The simple long-term vision never changed: building a global digital bank.
Clear values that emphasised work ethic, ability to learn, taking initiative, speed of execution, and technical prowess. This was present from Day 1.
A mindset across the business to only solve a problem once. This means recognising that they will likely encounter similar problems in other markets as they grow.
A culture of prioritising building in-house: 99% of their technology is built in-house and on open-source frameworks. This allows them to release, test, and iterate faster than if they had to rely on partners.
Whether you like it or not - in a world where people often say culture isn’t tangible enough, Revolut’s culture clearly is.
Nik is the ultimate architect of this, but also the architect of the Product organisation. Revolut doesn’t have (and has never had) a Chief Product Officer: that role is and has always been with Nik, the CEO. That by itself is unusual, considering the $45bn valuation. Nik is said to be incredibly hands-on involved in the product to this day: Revolut has built an app simulator that allows employees to simulate the experience of a user in any given market. Nik is said to spend hours in this simulator looking for bugs and improvements.
Below Nik are dozens of direct reports, organised by departments. The organisation was described to us as a “product-first” organisation, and the org chart reflects this. Departments are organised by Product (Retail, Business, Wealth & Trading,…), or else account for Marketing, Operations, EU Bank, UK Bank, US Bank, X Bank, CEO Office, or Services teams. According to our sources, it is estimated that there are about 60-70 departments in the organisation today, of which more than 50% are Product departments. Most of these are customer-oriented; others are horizontal, internal platforms (e.g. Design System, ML System, Data System,…).
Of these 60-70 departments, likely more than 30 report to Nik directly, including the most important Product departments.
Nik’s favourite part of the week? Product reviews. Nik will review progress weekly with each department, going through a business review, giving feedback and directing adjustments and improvements himself. If your idea isn’t good, you’ll know very quickly. If another team made a better user flow, you’ll be asked to copy theirs.
The other Product departments report to Dmitry Zlokazov, Head of Retail and Global Head of Product (the closest thing Revolut has to a Chief Product Officer under Nik). Or they are overseen by someone from Nik’s notorious CEO Office - more on that in a moment.
Some of the Product departments are large cross-functional, matrixed organisations of 200+ FTE, operating almost as independent businesses within the larger organisation. Others are experimental spin-offs from larger departments with teams of 5-10 FTE. Some of the larger ones even have their own compliance and regulation teams when they have unique license needs that differ from other departments.
Department leaders can come in different flavours: someone like James Gibson is said to be more from a Product and Business background, while someone like Aleksej Polukarov is said to manage the Credit product more from a P&L perspective.
Every person in a department has two reporting lines, being part of a function (dotted line) as well as part of a department (fixed line).
Parallel to this organisational structure, Nik has built another key department: the CEO Office, run by Alex Dolgopolov. This team is said to act as an extension of Nik throughout the entire business. It is staffed mostly by young 20-somethings who are highly technical, highly ambitious, and execute what Nik wants without questions. If you’re doing well, this team will leave you alone. If you have lost Nik’s trust, Nik will give someone in the CEO Office the same tasks as he gives a department head, and they will start to challenge the department head’s decisions. Very few individuals in the organisation have the trust and authority to push back against the CEO Office.
Performance is tightly managed. There’s no shouting - it’s just subliminal expectations embedded in the culture as well as how it runs its performance management system. Unlike many other tech companies who are only recently waking up to the need to measure and enforce performance in a push to become more productive and to become profitable, Revolut has systemised performance management for years. Revolut sees talent and talent management as a strategic edge, working to increase talent density by continuing to perfect their hiring and onboarding processes to lower non-regrettable attrition from a current 7% down to 2%.
The hiring process is a key component of this, but once someone has been hired, everyone falls into a KPI system that assesses managers and their reports quarterly across 6 pillars:
Profitability
Growth
Deliver Wow
Dream Team
Best Product
Consumer Trust
Much of this is again driven and architected by the CEO Office, and then executed by Lucian Ivan and the People team.
In this way, Nik has a tight grip on the evolution of Revolut’s product. A unique approach to running an organisation, one that seems to fly in the face of all management and leadership books you may have read in the past few decades.
On the plus side, this is exactly what has allowed Revolut to achieve these astonishing results and keep the pressure on execution so high, year after year, despite growing in size to over 10k employees. If there is really only one person who makes decisions on the direction of the product and reporting lines and decision-making lines are kept so short, it’s no wonder that this accelerates execution.
On the flip side, the criticism is that this produces a culture with a “feature factory” mentality. If the customer seems to need it or Nik tells you to do it, we will build it, and quickly. Without the usual deeper research and customer development that happens in other product organisations. It is said that this complicates Revolut’s employer brand among the product development community - and is another reason why Revolut likes to hire from emerging markets (more on that below), where talent is used to more top-down management styles.
Whatever you think about the downsides of the culture … for now, at least, the results seem to speak for themselves. The product is often lauded as one of the best FinTech apps out there. And the financial results are hard to argue with. But it is a highly unique structure that heavily depends on Nik to make it work and to keep up the pressure.
How Revolut’s Product Org Evolved
First, for the basics:
Total FTE: According to LinkedIn, Revolut is an organisation that is on track to hit 14k FTE by the end of 2024 (up from 8.5k 1 year ago!).
Geo Footprint: The bulk of the overall employee base is situated in India (circa 24%), followed by the UK (13%), Portugal (10%), Poland (9%), the US (7%), and Spain (7%).
Product Geo Footprint: Its Product function is largely situated in the UK (30%), India (13%), Portugal (7%), the US (7%), Poland (5%), Germany (4%), France (4%), Spain (3%), and then the rest of the world (27%).
Total Product FTE: At the time of writing, there were around 563 people who ever worked in Product at Revolut (current and past). Today, there are still over 315 FTE in Product. About 2100+ FTE are in Engineering and Information Technology roles. So the total PDE organisation is likely somewhere around 2400 FTE.
Now, let’s take a closer look
Here’s how the Product function evolved over the past 9 years.
Right at the beginning just 1 FTE was working on Product in 2015, outside of the co-founders. This was Ricky Lee who seemingly was the first clear hire in Product in 2015, joining as Head of Product Design/Strategy (he joined from Lloyds Bank where he architected its flagship mobile app, so this must have been a somewhat obvious hire at the time).
Fast forward to today and the organisation is circa 315 FTE strong - please note, again, that this doesn’t include engineering, data science, and DevOps. We focused solely on individuals in product management & ownership, product strategy, and associated roles.
The hiring spurts between 2018 and 2020 (+130 FTE), and 2021 and 2023 (+170 FTE) were particularly intense periods of growth. Since the peak of 2023, the organisation was cut back slightly by 9%, likely in line with the rest of the technology market optimising more for profitability and cutting back on running too many initiatives at once. Coinciding with these growth spurs, the product organisation also internationalised (see below graph on Employee Background), probably reflecting the need to tap into new talent pools to meet its hiring bar, as well as its strategy to build regional Product & Engineering hubs in different time zones.
Along the way, Revolut has struggled a bit with the gender diversity of its product organisation. It has somewhat made up for that in the last two years, reaching 30% female representation, but that’s still below the average for the Product function across the Technology industry (35%).
You can also see that especially at the beginning it had a strong penchant for hiring STEM graduates into its Product (and Operations) team (90% in 2016, 82% in 2017, and 69% in 2018). This has somewhat lessened over the years as the organisation grew to its current size and now sits at 54%.
Another sign of how closely the Product and Operations teams collaborate is that 96 people joined the Product function from other areas of the business and a whopping 50% of those came from the operations teams. Our sources claim this is driven by the gradual lessening of scope for the Operations teams. In the early days, Revolut extended the definition of what it means to work in Operations: it hired generalists who were good at figuring things out, and highly technical in their skillset, while they were given a large problem scope to target. As the organisation has grown, these “0-to-1 problem sets” have become smaller and smaller, while Revolut’s products are growing increasingly complex in scope: meaning, the more interesting work now happens in Product.
Despite the organisation growing in size in the lower levels as it matured, the Product function is also attracting, on average, more experienced product managers. This is at odds with the beginning of the journey, where often aside from one or two experienced individuals, most of the talent was highly ambitious, young, technical STEM graduates with little prior work experience.
Two good examples of these (but there are many more):
Dan Westgarth was one of the first employees to join the business (in May 2015 first as an Associate before becoming Payments Product Manager in May 2016). He went on to run international expansion, before becoming GM of North America, and then joining Deel as COO.
Neil Shah joined the organisation as employee #5 in 2015 and worked in product and operations roles. Neil went on to co-found Tilt.
There are plenty more of these examples - not only in the Product function but across the whole business. These were some of the most successful hires at Revolut and the success of this talent strategy informed how Revolut would build its organisation for years to come. Indeed, you could argue the CEO Office and its Founder Associates are a continuation of this strategy to this day.
Another point that stands out is the early emphasis on bringing onboard product designers (led at the start by Alex Murashko). Out of 10 FTE who worked in Product in 2016, 6 of them operated in Product Design. In the subsequent year, out of 22 FTE, 10 were product designers. By 2018, 15 out of 42 FTE were product designers. After this, the ratio lessened. But it’s clear: the design of the user experience was an important piece of the puzzle from the get-go for the team.
Curious about Attrition?
Judging by the media headlines that now and again flared up over the years, as well as lingering market feedback, you’d think Revolut’s attrition must be sky-high. Well, let’s take a look.
Annual attrition rates in Product range between 2% (2019) and 38% (2020), but mostly revolve around 10-20%. This is in line with the broader technology industry where attrition rates between 13-20% are normal and can go up to 25% for high-growth technology companies.
Avg. tenure of people who left is 1.4 years. Avg. tenure of people who are still there is 2 years. Overall avg. tenure 1.8 years. This seems like a pretty standard tenure in product management. The avg. tenure of leavers over the years increases, but even in the first years (2017-2020), it wasn’t shockingly low.
Not surprisingly, the more senior people stay longer with the company. It’s to be expected (it takes time to climb the company), but it’s also good to check as we’ve sometimes heard executives in the European technology market call Revolut “a revolving door” for leadership.
As far as the Product function is concerned, there is no concrete evidence for this in the data: 5 Partners worked in Product roles, of which only 1 departed (there are 24 Partners currently in the entire organisation). There have been a total of 70 Execs/Directors/Heads over the last 9 years. 49 are still there (30% churn over 9 years). The bulk of the churn happened at senior PM/mid-levels (56% churn over 9 years) and product owner/analyst level (43% over 9 years).
Employee Background
If you thought Revolut had a heavy presence of talent with a Russian background you’re not completely mistaken. The Revolut founders hired in their likeness, both culturally as well as skills-wise.
You often meet founders in the technology industry who, rightly so, are adamant about tight cultural cohesion and hiring for a strong overlap with existing values. That’s evidenced, also, by the 20-40% of Product employees who had Russian backgrounds up until 2018. After this, the first of Revolut’s intense FTE growth periods began, and the makeup of the organisation changed quickly. It is interesting to note how early on Revolut also integrated talent from India, which, thanks to its Indian hub, has now grown to be the biggest chunk (20%) of its Product function. Of course, being based in the UK, and the UK still being its biggest market, it is no surprise that the UK is heavily represented.
These stats are also reflected in Revolut’s top choice of universities. Right at the top is a cohort of the Indian Institutes of Technology (we decided to group them for simplicity, but this bucket represents a multitude of different IIT universities). But there are 2 other Indian universities in the top 8: University of Mumbai and Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani. The next biggest university providing Product talent to Revolut is the Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto, linked to its Portuguese hub. The remaining 4 are top UK universities.
The most common companies Revolut hires from seem to reflect its operational product culture: Uber in first place, Amazon in second place. All the other top companies are other tier 1 technology businesses, consultancies, or financial institutions.
Talent Density - ex Revolut Founders and Investors
A good clue to the strength of an organisation and its culture is looking at what people do after they leave the business.
Aside from many Product professionals joining other top growth-stage businesses, 49 of them, or a whopping 20% of leavers, founded their businesses since leaving. 3 of them are women - for example, Michelle Tran Luu. There are also a bunch of ex-founders working at Revolut in Product today - for example, Martin Mexia Ponce.
Another 11 (4%) have turned to investing officially, listing this activity on their LinkedIn profile or joining an investment (VC) fund. Doubtless, there are more who do angel tickets under the radar. A good example of this is George Robson, who joined Sequoia as a Partner.
Other special mentions of incredible people who worked at Revolut:
Alan Chang, who first ran CS, then operations, and became Nik’s right hand in the business, culminating in his CRO role - he recently founded Fuse, a full-stack renewable energy company. Not a Product person, but an integral piece of Revolut’s growth.
Edward Matthews was also one of the few people present in 2015. He later went on to found Grasp, an ed-tech business backed by Tier 1 VCs.
Grace Stuart, joined as a Marketing Manager in 2015 - one of Revolut’s first employees, before moving to Product Marketing in 2017. Now a Senior Director of Product Marketing at Deel.
George Robson joined the business in October 2017 becoming Senior Product Owner, Revolut Premium. Today, he is a Partner at Sequoia.
Bogdan Uzbekov, who worked at Revolut for close to 4 years, then left for Square, before founding Apron, a start-up simplifying invoice processing that raised funding from Tier 1 VCs.
Yaroslav Kravchenko joined the business in January 2019 and built the Wealth & Trading product. Now COO at Apron, working with Bogdan.
Aditya Goel who launched the US business for Revolut and is now Co-Founder and COO of Sardine a Series B start-up.
Ahmed Shafik, one of the first hires in Canada who co-founded a Canadian FinTech at seed stage.
…and there are many more, too many to mention.
If you’re interested, we've reported the top European Fintech Hubs that build Europe’s top rising star engineering leaders.
Conclusion
In the space of around 10 years, this organisation has achieved things that any entrepreneur can only dream of. The net outcome for the world? Fairer, faster, drastically better (and cheaper) financial services access. That’s one of the core building blocks of a better world.
“Our growth is driven by putting the customer at the core of everything we do. […] our customers have come to trust that we will always innovate and disrupt the financial industry for their benefit, launching new and exciting products that’ll save them time and money.” Nik Storonsky
There are many good companies with potential in the world. There are only a few that are truly excellent. Revolut has shown that in results and the quality of talent it has hired and developed over the years. The Product function specifically has been a hotspot for some of this world-class talent.
On its path, it has built an infrastructure that will continue to compound for years to come. The scene is set for further great accomplishments. We can only hope it can keep this level of execution horsepower going as the business continues to scale in complexity. Or, given the idiosyncrasies of the org design, we can only hope that Nik can continue to keep the set-up and pressure working. He is rumoured to receive a significant additional share package upon hitting an extraordinary valuation milestone, so certainly there is at least a huge financial incentive to keep this up. However, given the flat organisational structure combined with its ambition to become a global digital bank, one wonders how long Nik can continue to increase complexity for himself before relinquishing some of that control and changing the organisational set-up. If it comes to that point, will the system need to be broken for something new to emerge, or can it simply evolve?
Thank you
To everyone who contributed to the creation of this article: to The Big Search and Navis teams who pitched in, as well as the confidential advisors who offered insights on the inner workings of the business.
Feedback, edits, suggestions? Please reach out to Learco below.
If you like these articles, then you’re in luck! We have a few more interesting research pieces lined up for the rest of the year!
Subscribe to our Substack to get the next instalment.
Looking for a Product leader? Want our advice on a leadership hiring challenge? Feel free to reach out for a confidential conversation.
Or email: contact@thebigsearch.com