Oct 18, 2024 · 1h 1m · news
Antoine Le Nel, CGO @Revolut: How Revolut Launch and Grow Products & Why CAC is a BS Metric | E1216 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of 20VC, Harry Stebbings interviews Antoine Le Nel, Chief Growth Officer at Revolut, who shares contrarian insights on dismantling traditional growth dogmas like CAC and excessive localization, while detailing the high-velocity operational, measurement, and product strategies that drive Revolut's global scaling.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Harry holds 19.6% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Harry as informed peer 2.9 Guest teaching 3.7 Guest disagreement 2.9 Harry pushing back 2.3
speaking balance: gold is Harry, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 24:25 Antoine rejects CAC as an irrelevant metric
Antoine forcefully dismisses CAC as a conversation topic, claiming CAC targets force marketing teams to acquire the lowest quality cohorts.
Hardest push from Harry ▶ 44:55 Harry rejects Antoine's idealization of remote workHarry directly challenges Antoine's praise of remote work, asserting that remote setups act as an escape valve that kills informal learning and post-mortems.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 54:03 Antoine reframes causality between brand awareness and product penetrationAntoine educates founders on where true growth causality lies, demonstrating that early brand awareness is a byproduct of product penetration, not the cause of it.
Harry holds his own ▶ 51:18 Harry uses the Apple iPod example to counter Antoine's brand thesisHarry draws on Apple's iconic launch strategy to demonstrate that high-impact brand creation requires equal parts product design and marketing genius.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Harry as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Harry pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Antoine's Experience at King and the Candy Crush Volume Game | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Harry asks about King's growth mechanics and performance marketing limits. Antoine explains how King went too far into pure data dependency compared to Revolut's product-first strategy. | |
| Product-Driven Innovation and Founder Mode at Revolut | 2 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Antoine outlines Revolut's anti-A/B testing philosophy, arguing that great product managers and 10x ambitions do not require micro-testing. Harry listens and asks about sustaining founder mode. | |
| Operational Agility and Defining the Growth Engine | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Antoine explains Revolut's decoupled startup-like pod structure and fast cutting of underperforming marketing initiatives. Harry asks straightforward exploratory questions. | |
| The Funnel Architecture and the Power of Measurement | 2 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Antoine defines the full-funnel growth engine and highlights how cracked measurement frameworks create unfair competitive advantages. Harry asks for definitions and timing. | |
| Virality, Team Structure, and the Danger of Beliefs | 4 | 3 | 5 | 4 | Antoine forcefully claims he has no beliefs or fixed convictions in growth tactics. Harry pushes back, pointing out that this contradicts the conventional value of experienced operators bringing tested playbooks. | |
| Playbook Adaptations and Upper Funnel Attribution Hacks | 2 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Antoine details how Revolut solved upper-funnel airport ad attribution using physical card vending machines. Harry probes on how attribution is validated. | |
| Decoupling the Funnel Segments and Launching Internationally | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Antoine explains the structural split across upper, mid, and lower funnels and why growth teams require deep domain specialists rather than generalist marketers. | |
| The Overrated Localization Myth and Why CAC is a Flawed Metric | 4 | 5 | 6 | 3 | Antoine vehemently rejects CAC as a metric, calling it irrelevant compared to ROI, and dismisses geographic localization as completely overrated. Harry pushes back on country-level nuance between markets like London and Brazil. | |
| The Customer Adoption Journey, Crypto, and Ambitious Goal Setting | 3 | 4 | 3 | 3 | Antoine reframes bank account adoption as a multi-step 'snack' journey rather than an immediate switch, and defends crypto adoption spikes. Harry questions if aggressive unachievable OKR targets damage team morale. | |
| Decisive Weekly Business Reviews and High-Velocity Problem Solving | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | Antoine outlines Revolut's weekly problem-solving review cadence. Harry cites Spotify CPO Gustav's philosophy on open debate to challenge whether rapid binary decision-making stifles team creativity. | |
| Fintech Penetration in the US and Globally | 5 | 4 | 4 | 5 | Antoine defends fully remote work as an equalizer for introverts. Harry forcefully pushes back, arguing that remote work removes critical informal learning moments and post-mortems. | |
| Problem-Solving Frameworks and Growth Optimization | 2 | 4 | 3 | 1 | Antoine uses a Usain Bolt analogy to argue that growth is about compound 1% micro-optimizations across the funnel rather than chasing moonshots. | |
| The Relationship Between Brand and Product Penetration | 5 | 5 | 4 | 4 | Antoine claims early-stage brand awareness is driven by product penetration rather than marketing. Harry counters with the Apple iPod launch to argue that product and marketing positioning are deeply intertwined. | |
| Product Successes, Failures, and CEO Nick Storonsky's Management Style | 2 | 3 | 3 | 1 | Antoine describes CEO Nick Storonsky's 'helicopter' management style and explains how Revolut avoids corporate 'feel-good' presentations in favor of raw problem-solving. | |
| Quick-Fire Round: Growth Tactics, Mortgages, and Nubank | 2 | 4 | 4 | 1 | In the quick-fire round, Antoine calls ad platform privacy narratives 'bullshit' used to cover up unmeasurable brand spending, and praises Nubank's deep execution in Brazil. |
Statements from this episode (41)
Le Nel: Good product managers don't need A/B testing
“If you're a good product manager, you don't need an A-B test. You should be able to know what is the right product.”
Le Nel: Focusing on CAC leads to acquiring the worst customer cohorts
“There's no CAC discussion. We only talk about ROI. Because if you talk about CAC, you'll always acquire the worst cohorts.”
Le Nel: Product localization is completely overrated
“I think the idea of localization is completely overrated.”
Le Nel: Growth is fundamentally a bidding war against competitors
“Growth is a bidding war, right? It's a bidding war. It's about whether you're able to bid above everyone else.”
Antoine Le Nel: Agility Is Measured by Speed of Killing Projects
“That's how you probably can measure the agility of the organization is how quickly you kill projects versus how many more chances you're giving to them.”
Antoine Le Nel: Revolut Is More Product-Driven Than Data-Driven
“That's the big difference, for example, with Revolut. I think we're a lot more product driven. Which means we spend more time looking at the product than looking at the data.”
Antoine Le Nel: Product Is Art, Growth Is Science
“Product and growth is very different. All right. So I think product should be more about art and a bit less about science when growth should overrate on science.”
Le Nel: King ran 1,000 parallel A/B tests at peak maturity
“I remember at some point we were running like maybe a thousand AP tests in parallel and so on.”
Le Nel: A/B testing increases time to market
“A-B testing increases your type to market. Because if you A-B test, you first need to do your A-B test, then you see which one wins, and then you launch.”
Le Nel: Revolut growth accelerates weekly with no ceiling in mature markets
“And it's steady, and it's accelerating week after week, you know, we just monitor every week, the acceleration keeps on going, just because the engine gets more and more optimized, you know, as we are progressing, and for now, we definitely don't see the limit…”
Le Nel: Revolut cancels underperforming marketing campaigns after two weeks
“Well, so, I mean, on the marketing side we've been there's been some campaigns, for example, that we've been running in some countries where we've been using some creatives that were quite generic, and after two weeks we saw it was a disaster, and we just cut …”
Le Nel: A tech company's edge stems from measuring what competitors cannot
“At the end of the day, your competitive advantage will always come from your ability to measure more than your competitors, because then suddenly you're gonna do that.”
Le Nel: King unlocked TV ad measurement long before any gaming competitor
“So, for example, at King, what we cracked We cracked the TV measurement framework way before everyone, and therefore we were the only company running TV.”
Le Nel: Product teams build viral engines; growth teams operate them
“I think the way I like it I like it to work is that the product team builds the end, build the variety engine, and growth operates it. So you build something that is that you can parameter, you know, with parameters, and then you let growth play with it, you k…”
Le Nel: Growth marketing fails when operators rely on channel dogma
“I think it's when you start bringing a little bit of belief. I think the less you believe in, the Better it is, you know. I have no belief in anything, you know. I have no belief in anything. Like, it's true, you know, because... Well, I don't necessarily beli…”
Revolut uses airport card vending machines for brand ad attribution
“So what we do in airport, which is pretty cool, is that, so we do the advertising on jet bridges and so on, you know, if you, if you've been to Rome airport and so on, for example, we've launched something really cool there. But next to it, we put vending mach…”
Le Nel: Celebrity brand campaigns fail if celebrities lack social media skills
“I think doing some big brand campaigns with some let's say some celebrities that just not necessarily super good with social media, let's put it this way that just doesn't work, you know.”
Le Nel: Upper-funnel brand marketing directly boosts conversion metrics
“Yeah, so investing more in this in this brand campaign was the big thing, and really identifying the ability that the brand marketing can improve your conversion metrics.”
Le Nel: Generalist marketers belong in management, not execution
“I'm a strong believer of specialists, and that people should be experts in what they do, and generalist marketers are good in managerial positions, but not at doing things necessarily, you know, and that's why we have people who are experts in mid funnel, expe…”
Antoine Le Nel increased Revolut's CAC to drive higher ROI
“So what I've done by, I've been arriving at Revolut is that I increased CAC significantly, but I improved ROI significantly too.”
Revolut hit #1 in Romania and Norway using identical growth strategies
“We became number one in Romania and Norway, With the exact same strategy, the same, I mean, the same thing, you know”
Le Nel: Revolut measures growth using three key metrics
“Alright, well, we look at three things, I'd say, obviously. So the first thing is the volume of users, you know, that we're getting. The second thing is the ROI at which we are acquiring them. What's the payback? What is the, in, in, in months? And the last on…”
Le Nel: Revolut sets targets so high the company never reaches them
“We never reach our targets, you know, because our targets are much greater than what we, than what we're achieving.”
Revolut's growth department operates across 20 to 25 matrixed teams
“In the growth team we have, I think it's 20, 25 different teams, you know... Because we work as a matrix, you know, so you have the channel people, and then you have the local people, and all of those are teams, you know. And then we run so I run a weekly busi…”
Monthly review meetings waste employee time on executive presentations
“If you had a meeting on, I mean, only once a month and so on, you would actually spend, I mean, we know how teams are, you know, they spend the last two, three days, you know, just preparing the presentation for the exec. It's a waste of time.”
Le Nel: Decisive binary choices outperform prolonged debates despite false positives
“If we say yes, it's yes. If we say no, it's no. And then we move on. And there are some false positive, you know, into it. You know, there are definitely some false positive, where we may say yes, and it should have been a no, and we said no, it should have be…”
Harry Stebbings: Chime is worth roughly a quarter of Revolut
“Chime, you know, is probably a quarter of the enterprise value of Revolut now.”
Antoine Le Nel: Economic maturity negatively correlates with fintech penetration
“I think there is a negative correlation between the maturity of the economy and the penetration of fintech.”
Le Nel: 15-Minute Meetings Work Remotely But Fail In Person
“A meeting of 15 minutes remotely works. In the real world, it doesn't work.”
Le Nel: Remote Work Gives Introverts Greater Impact Than In-Person Meetings
“And I think in the world of remote, I think it gives a much stronger chance to introvert people, more introvert people to have deeper impact in meetings compared to in real life.”
Antoine Le Nel: Growth is driven by granular execution, not moonshots
“They fish for the moonshot and so on, while actually it's just down there being excellent in the execution in everything you do at the lowest level of granularity.”
Le Nel: Revolut and King built brands before spending on marketing
“Out of sample of two, which is King and Revolut, the brand was much bigger before a single dollar of marketing was spent, right?”
Stebbings: Louis Vuitton failed by expanding into the mass market
“I would say they have failed, which is a bold statement, but they have now gone so low and tried to be so mass market that they've lost the high end.”
Le Nel: Investing in brand marketing early on is a mistake
“Investing in brand in the early days is the worst decision you can make.”
Le Nel: Early brand awareness is driven by product penetration
“I think in the early days, actually your brand awareness is driven by your product penetration and not the other way around.”
Le Nel: Revolut's Crypto Exchange Underperformed Internal Expectations
“I think, I mean, we launched the crypto exchange was a great product. I mean, it's doing good. I did not really, I mean, it did not necessarily pick up the way we wanted yet, but maybe, yeah.”
Le Nel: Revolut's £600/Year 'Ultra' Plan Performs Strongly in UK and France
“This is working. Yeah, that's working. Especially, I mean, UK, France, and those markets is working really well.”
Le Nel: New growth leaders must build analytical frameworks before spending budget
“Build the analytical framework before you start spending anything.”
Le Nel: Ad platforms use privacy as a pretext for untracked brand spend
“I think there is a lot of bullshit on On privacy, where they use as well sometimes this pretext to just reposition their platform as a brand platform, and because it's brand, just spend whatever you want, and you don't track anything, and it's better for them.…”
Shorts cut from this episode
▶ How Revolut builds products at speed ⚡️ · 20VC with Harry St (@9:36)
▶ Are you still using this BS performance metric? ⚠️ · 20VC wi (@0:12)
▶ Does this change your marketing strategy? 🚀 · 20VC with Har (@0:18)
▶ Why A/B testing is slowing you down! 🐌 · 20VC with Harry St (@0:00)
▶ The secret behind Revolut’s growth? 🚀 · 20VC with Harry Ste (@17:59)