YouSaid · the spoken record

Nik Storonsky

lines on the record
67
first
2024-12-04
most recent
2024-12-04
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “Them now, that's how other banks are doing. We're ahead of them. That's for metals. The problem with the traditional banking CEOs, they are not tech driven at all. And then they'd rather speak in very vague jargon to hide the incompetency or their limited knowledge in intech-related matters. So regulators, I don't think they like it.”

    2024-12-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Revolut Founder Nik Storonsky on When and Where Revolut Will IPO & What Revolut Need to Do to Hit $100BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Actually, much better again because I was inexperienced and I had this perception in my mind, which was, well, not forced on me, but confirmed by many, many people investors, because I'm young, right? Tech. I should not speak with regulators because they will not understand me. Instead, I should hire some gray-haired banking CEO who've been in the business for a long time and that I need to speak to the regulators. What I really found is actually very bad advice because whenever you speak of regulators yourself, whenever you explain exactly in plain English what we do, how we do it because you build it yourself or I build it myself, right? I can explain it in very simple terms. And because we are also innovating a lot in these areas compared to legacy banks, you show data as well that our results are better compared to legacy banks. That's in the end what matters, right? If you show data, that's how you've been like, you know, three or four years ago.”

    2024-12-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Revolut Founder Nik Storonsky on When and Where Revolut Will IPO & What Revolut Need to Do to Hit $100BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “No reality, you can also build a governance process around the products, around all the countries in a very tech driven efficient way. So yes, it will be a bit slower, but I mean not as slow to be honest here. If you really apply brains, how to optimize governance, how to build the whole structure, processes, who approach war and when. You can do it much better compared to legacy things.”

    2024-12-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Revolut Founder Nik Storonsky on When and Where Revolut Will IPO & What Revolut Need to Do to Hit $100BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “What I really learned is whenever you want to build a bank, you'd rather get a banking license before you have customers. So that's a key lesson. Because as soon as they have many customers, millions of customers, tens of millions of customers, regulators will be much more thorough in assessing your capabilities. As a result, the whole license process will take much longer. And then for smaller banks or for banks who don't have clients, they don't really assess because there's nothing to assess, right? So they grant license much easier.”

    2024-12-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Revolut Founder Nik Storonsky on When and Where Revolut Will IPO & What Revolut Need to Do to Hit $100BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I do believe in brand marketing now before I didn't, but you need to be very careful in what you buy as an asset to show your brand. For example, recently we started buying AirPods, jet bridges. I personally believe IRONI is amazing, but we clearly cannot measure it. But if your brand marketing is only a very small portion of performance marketing and you can afford it, then you believe that these assets are great, why not?”

    2024-12-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Revolut Founder Nik Storonsky on When and Where Revolut Will IPO & What Revolut Need to Do to Hit $100BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “I think we're very efficient on spending money, to be honest with you. I think when I look at our costs, I think our top cost is actually marketing now, and then second cost is people.”

    2024-12-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Revolut Founder Nik Storonsky on When and Where Revolut Will IPO & What Revolut Need to Do to Hit $100BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Myself, yeah, I think I'm very efficient into getting people to deliver with small resources. And I'm very cost-conscious as well. I think people, when they throw money at the problem, they're just wrong people. I think what really delivers the most is your brain power, right? When you sit down, then forces self to think how to solve the problem the most kind of cost-effective and efficient way. That's actually much more powerful compared to spending millions on, I don't know, external people, external consultants or hiring super experienced professions for a lot of money.”

    2024-12-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Revolut Founder Nik Storonsky on When and Where Revolut Will IPO & What Revolut Need to Do to Hit $100BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Usually when I hire people in a new area that I haven't wrote before, for example, when I started Revolut 10 years ago, I was hiring my first head of compliance, head of recruitment, head of people. I'm terrible at hiring first roles. I never kind of rogue before, so I ended up trying many people until I find the good ones. I learned how to do it now, so every time when I hire a new role, which I never hired before, I first interviewed the whole market, tried to learn for people how they do their job and only after I learned how they did their job, I kind of select the best person for the job. Israel, if you never worked with designers, you have zero skills to hire designers. If you never worked in reg affairs or government affairs, you have zero skills to assess who is good, who is not. So in order to first learn the skills, you need to interview as many people from this area as possible.”

    2024-12-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Revolut Founder Nik Storonsky on When and Where Revolut Will IPO & What Revolut Need to Do to Hit $100BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Comes for with media. Well, yeah, probably because by now I have a lot of experience speaking with media, but I was always holding people accountable to delivery, right? You know, sometimes I was communicating in a harsh way or sometimes in a softer way, but I was always forcing people to deliver.”

    2024-12-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Revolut Founder Nik Storonsky on When and Where Revolut Will IPO & What Revolut Need to Do to Hit $100BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “I made a lot of mistakes scaling team, and I think the most painful mistake was believing, well, I never believed it, but I was forced to believe that, you know, in order to scale the company to hire experienced professional managers, that's a dead end. I think I hired 55 through executive recruiters, paid like, you know,”

    2024-12-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Revolut Founder Nik Storonsky on When and Where Revolut Will IPO & What Revolut Need to Do to Hit $100BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Other things fair right there because I was always looking for people who can deliver, right? There was always execution oriented rather than talk oriented. Because if you look at all this management consultants, they come to you with a nice presentation, explain you how to get things done. Reality here is when you start hiring management consultants to help you run the company. That means your employees are not competing in what they do, right? And for me, it's a bad sign”

    2024-12-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Revolut Founder Nik Storonsky on When and Where Revolut Will IPO & What Revolut Need to Do to Hit $100BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Just give them the goals, and then it has some weekly or bi weekly catch ups, and then they show you what they produced. Then you just observe what they produce for two, three weeks, how small they are, how deep they go over their analysis. Just based on what they show you.”

    2024-12-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Revolut Founder Nik Storonsky on When and Where Revolut Will IPO & What Revolut Need to Do to Hit $100BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Well, majority of people you see them performing strong or excellent up to three, four weeks, right? So they hit the ground running on week three. Majority of them, they actually perform week one. So generally, if you see a person who's not performing for one, two months, most likely they'll not be performing for the next year. So I don't really believe in kind of needing some time to adapt, to speed up. So if the person is not delivering within the first three months, most likely they will not.”

    2024-12-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Revolut Founder Nik Storonsky on When and Where Revolut Will IPO & What Revolut Need to Do to Hit $100BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “So we got 40 plus reports, and to build this UI, I build a team already for the last five years. So generally because I don't really work with people who are not excellent. Another way I define people who are excellent, strong, average below average is pretty simple. So they should be like a self-guided missile, right? So excellent people, they select the goal themselves, when they press the button, then they reach the goal themselves. Strong people, you need to show them the goal and they reach the goal of cells without you iterating with them. Average people you need on a weekly basis iterate to reach the goal. And then my below average people, I mean, you to rate with them, but you know, sometimes very often they don't reach the goal. So the key is to select all your direct reports with a strong excellent so they're able to reach the goals themselves without you kind of directing them.”

    2024-12-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Revolut Founder Nik Storonsky on When and Where Revolut Will IPO & What Revolut Need to Do to Hit $100BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Well, basically, the whole goal setting, right? So we set up the goals for the companies. Usually we have five, six goals or a year, and then we quantify these goals. So what does it mean to achieve certain goal? Then we cascade these goals or the department level, then on the team level, and then on individual. So every single effective team department and on the company. We have metrics describing the performance. Then all people go through performance review process every quarter. Then they judge based on the metrics that they delivered, the skills, and then cultural values.”

    2024-12-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Revolut Founder Nik Storonsky on When and Where Revolut Will IPO & What Revolut Need to Do to Hit $100BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Because they don't want to have a rational person, right? That's all I can answer. So let's have a better product from UK than if I get a better product from UK, I would listen to UK. But so far, if you just compare these products, one is far ahead compared to”

    2024-12-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Revolut Founder Nik Storonsky on When and Where Revolut Will IPO & What Revolut Need to Do to Hit $100BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “I just don't understand how the product which is being provided by UK can compete with the product provided by US. It is less liquid, so it's much worse compared to US plus it's much more expensive because you pay some duty. It's just not rational.”

    2024-12-04 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Revolut Founder Nik Storonsky on When and Where Revolut Will IPO & What Revolut Need to Do to Hit $100BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source