Jun 21, 2024 · 58m · news
Val Scholz: How Revolut Acquired Their First 10M Users: Tips, Tactics & Strategies | E1168 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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In this episode of 20VC, host Harry Stebbings interviews Val Scholz, former Head of Growth at Revolut, to unpack the product-led growth strategies, frictionless referral loops, and high-performance hiring playbooks that helped scale the fintech giant past ten million users.
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 15.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Harry as informed peer 2.7 Guest teaching 3.3 Guest disagreement 0.9 Harry pushing back 0.9
speaking balance: gold is Harry, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 40:44 Rejection of fear-based leadership framing
Val rejects Harry's suggestion that Nick Storonsky leads through fear, framing the culture instead as an objective, Ray Dalio-inspired environment focused purely on scientific truth and data.
Hardest push from Harry ▶ 40:44 Host pressing on founder leading through fearHarry refuses to accept a glossed-over view of Revolut's intense management style and directly challenges Val on whether founder Nick Storonsky rules through fear.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 7:08 Correcting host's CPA math with zero-cash realityAfter Harry attempts to calculate Revolut's effective CPA based on conversion rates, Val corrects his assumption by explaining they spent zero cash on early referral acquisition.
Harry holds his own ▶ 6:52 Host calculating effective CAC from activation dropoffHarry demonstrates sharp analytical expertise by instantly running unit economic math live, converting raw CAC and 30% activation rates into an effective converted customer cost.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Harry as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Harry pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VC Branding and Call to Action | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Harry opens with warm rapport and basic biographical questions about Val's entry into growth marketing. Val pleasantly shares his background in engineering and early SEO experiments without any dynamic friction. | |
| Why Most Modern Referral Programs Fail | 2 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Harry asks why modern referral programs fail, allowing Val to explain that loop velocity is more important than pure invite ratios. Val details how emailing 4,000 inactive users uncovered onboarding bottlenecks that transformed activation from 30% to 90%. | |
| Managing Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) Incentives | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Harry does quick napkin math on effective customer acquisition costs based on conversion rates. Val clarifies that Revolut's early referrals cost zero cash because they lacked capital and only offered free cards, before sharing Nick Storonsky's FX origin story. | |
| Accelerating Growth Through Cross-Selling | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Harry explores whether multi-product strategies complicate growth messaging. Val details how Revolut used zero-fee FX as an acquisition hook to cross-sell high-margin products like crypto, stocks, and premium metal cards. | |
| Failed Growth Experiments and Influencer Calculations | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Harry asks for actionable lessons on running successful YouTube influencer campaigns. Val breaks down influencer marketing into simple deterministic math based on view counts, click-through rates, and target CPA limits. | |
| Cohort Analysis and Engineering the "Smiley Curve" | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Harry brings up the difficulty of calculating CAC when LTV is unknown. Val explains how monitoring month-over-month cohort retention curves allowed them to spot flattening retention and eventually create a rising 'smiley curve'. | |
| Alternative Acquisition Loops and the Power of SEO | 3 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Harry is shocked to learn Revolut did not use paid marketing during its 0 to 10M customer growth phase. Val explains that paid marketing fails to build sustainable equity, contrasting it with Canva's unbeatable SEO strategy and Revolut's social peer pressure loops. | |
| In-House Content Generation and Topic Clusters | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Harry asks if early-stage founders should diversify marketing channels or double down on what works. Val strongly advises doubling down on a single channel, explaining that spreading resources too early degrades data clarity and slows execution. | |
| The Right Timing for a Head of Growth Hire | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Harry frames a debate on whether a Head of Growth should be hired before or after product-market fit. Val firmly asserts post-PMF, warning that skilled growth hackers can mask a lack of retention and pump metrics for an unsustainable exit. | |
| The Young Talent Preference and the Intensity of Growth | 3 | 3 | 0 | 1 | Harry explores the ideal candidate profile for early growth leaders. Val advocates for hungry, inexperienced talent because senior growth executives are often burnt out by the unrelenting pressure of weekly metric targets. | |
| Assuring Culture Fit, Sourcing Strategies, and Funnels | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Harry asks how to vet candidate work ethic and whether applicants honestly admit if they dislike working weekends. Val explains that upfront transparency about extreme performance culture filters out misaligned candidates immediately. | |
| CV Red Flags and Identifying Rapid Learners | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Harry and Val discuss resume red flags, specifically candidates citing budget managed or team size as vanity metrics. Val explains why Revolut specifically sought computer science graduates rather than marketing majors for growth positions. | |
| Designing Rigorous, Real-World Interview Tasks | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Harry questions the efficacy of giving candidates nearly impossible take-home tasks that internal teams took months to solve. Val clarifies that the goal is evaluating structured problem-solving frameworks rather than expecting complete solutions. | |
| Inside Revolut's High-Performance Startup Culture | 3 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Harry asks if Revolut had a good culture, prompting Val to reframe culture through the lens of elite professional sports teams like Real Madrid where non-performers are quickly dropped. Val recounts having 4 daily catch-ups with a designer to force structured execution. | |
| Direct Leadership, Ray Dalio's Principles, and Truth-Seeking | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 | Harry directly asks if Revolut founder Nick Storonsky leads through fear. Val pushes back, explaining that Nick's culture was based on Ray Dalio's Principles and objective truth-seeking where data always overruled hierarchy. | |
| Scaling Pain Points and Hyper-Growth Challenges | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Harry asks what operational systems break during rapid scaling. Val shares how a targeted referral launch in Romania blew up daily signups from 2,000 to 64,000 in three days, overloading KYC and support systems into multi-week backlogs. | |
| International Marketing Adaptation and the "Better Than a Bank" Brand | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Harry brings up industry skepticism around neobanks ever becoming primary accounts and conventional data analytics setups. Val explains Revolut's explicit 'Better than a bank' branding and why event analytics tools like Mixpanel fail compared to SQL data warehouses. | |
| Best and Worst Growth Decisions at Revolut | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Harry asks for Val's best and worst growth experiments at Revolut. Val contrasts a simple free-card referral push that generated 180,000 signups in one week with a failed P2P outreach experiment that users rejected as potential fraud. | |
| Product Value and Revolut vs. Monzo | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Harry prompts Val to compare Revolut directly against its chief rival, Monzo. Val unhesitatingly declares Revolut superior, characterizing Monzo as merely a modernized traditional bank while Revolut built a complete global financial ecosystem. | |
| Lessons from the Underdog: Kittel vs. Canva | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Harry asks how startup underdogs like Kittle can compete with behemoths like Canva. Val explains that Revolut avoided head-to-head UK competition initially by capturing underserved markets like Ireland, Poland, and Romania where incumbents didn't operate. | |
| Analyzing Nubank's Masterful Growth Strategy | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Val details Nubank's growth strategy in Brazil, explaining how they leveraged mandatory zero-interest installment laws to offer upfront discounts and build a massive float. Harry agrees, noting the extortionate fee structures of incumbent Brazilian banks. |
Statements from this episode (43)
Revolut grew fastest in Ireland, Romania, and Poland, not the UK
“So if you think about Revolut against Monzo, right, like the markets we grew the fastest wasn't the UK. It was Ireland, it was Romania, Poland.”
Over 90% of Revolut's B2C customers came from referrals
“So for example, like 90% of the customers, B to C customers that Revolut ever acquired came through referrals.”
Revolut optimized its user signup journey to under five minutes
“And so we optimize the product to basically make sure that Enough people can go through that whole journey in less than five minutes.”
Revolut had to cap sign-ups due to referral loop speed
“One thing we've done at Revolut was essentially engineer how fast or how short it takes for new people to invite their peers and their friends, which actually worked really well to a point where we had to cap how many people actually Sign up.”
Revolut increased user payment activation rate from 30% to 90%
“In the early days, like we had maybe an activation rate of so basically like new users that actually make a payment, it was maybe like 30, 35%. Like when I left, it was around 90%. So, like, nine out of 10 people actually made a payment.”
Revolut achieved a £9 CPA versus £250 for traditional banks
“So I think back in the days we had a CPA of around nine pounds, which was like, compared to banks that had like 250, it was quite low.”
Revolut's early referral program offered free card codes instead of cash
“Well, so in the early days we didn't offer any money. So in the early, early days basically we just gave away a free Revolut code.”
Revolut was founded after Nik Storonsky lost 10-15% on exchange fees
“And when he went to Vegas and took some money to play poker they took away around 10 to 15% because of the currency exchange. And because he was like, look, I mean, I trade hundreds of millions of dollars without paying any fees. He was like, hey, maybe there'…”
Revolut's multi-currency foundation was the engine for its rapid growth
“And I think, you know, like, this was kind of like, for us, it was kind of like the engine that drove the company so fast, because we were always based on a multi-currency product, which allowed us to add cryptocurrencies commodities, but also, like, create ne…”
Over-optimizing a single product is the biggest mistake founders make
“I think it's actually the biggest mistake that founders do, that they over optimize their product.”
TransferWise couldn't figure out Revolut's free FX cross-selling strategy
“So that was always like the secret sauce, which I think, you know, like for a long time, competitors couldn't really figure out. I think Transwise couldn't really figure out like, how can we give it away for free and still make more money than them?”
Revolut sold 10,000 metal bank cards within one hour
“We had like 10,000 cards pre-ordered. It was literally sold out after an hour. And then basically we had like I think four months of like waiting line where basically every day more people ordered than we could manufacture.”
Revolut team handed out cards in Google and Uber cafeterias
“We went to all the big tech companies like Google, Uber in our lunch break to hand out cards in their cafeteria.”
Canva drives higher web traffic volume than Adobe
“So I think Canva nowadays is much larger in terms of volume generated to the website than Adobe.”
Canva uses massive in-house content teams to dominate SEO topic clusters
“If you look, for example, at Canva, what they've done is they created content. So they, you basically have crazy big in-house teams that generate content for you so that you can create these topic clusters.”
Startups without product-market fit can exit for $400M via traffic arbitrage
“Even if you don't have product market fit, you can sell a business for four hundred million, you know, because if you're just good enough to generate constantly more traffic and it's cheaper to generate or buy traffic than the money you're making, the business…”
Very few growth leaders want to repeat the role
“To be honest, there's not many growth people that want to do it again.”
Revolut hired young, driven talent over pre-existing skills
“Nick basically looked at, looked for very young people, very driven people, very smart people. That was basically the main requirements, right? The thinking was kind of like, you know, we can teach people skills. We can't teach them the right behaviors or atti…”
Revolut hiring managers did sourcing while recruiters only scheduled and closed
“We used recruiters to schedule call, close contracts. But like sourcing yeah, screen calls, CV screening, it was usually done by hiring managers.”
Revolut's growth team avoided hiring traditional marketing majors
“Also like, for example typically in growth, we didn't look for people that studied marketing.”
Revolut required candidates to analyze one million data points in interviews
“So for example, at Revolut, like if you wanted to become a product manager or operations person you had to analyze, I think a million data sets and figure out like what's the problem in onboarding. It took us three months to solve the problem.”
Managers know if a new hire will fail within a week
“I think you have a gut feeling pretty quickly. Probably a few days. Majority of people after a week, you're basically like, okay, that's not gonna work.”
Revolut belongs in the top 0.01% alongside SpaceX and Meta
“I think what a lot of people forget is that Revolut is like that company that's at the 0.01%. You know, it's like a SpaceX, Facebook Meta. I think all these companies are very similar.”
Revolut CEO Nik Storonsky held 70 to 80 one-on-one meetings weekly
“Nick, for example, had 70, 80 one-on-ones a week. So basically like every product team sync, Nick was it. In it. Every design team think Nick was in it.”
Nik Storonsky's relentless meeting cadence created Revolut's top operator alumni pool
“I think it's the reason why there's so many talented people coming out of Revolut.”
Revolut scaled from 80 to 2,500 employees in 2.5 years
“I went there when we were like, 80 people. I left when it was two and a half thousand. That's two and a half years. Like, my team went from two people to over a 150 in, like, nine months.”
Revolut's Romania referral launch gained 64,000 users in three days
“When we launched it, we went in one market, Romania, from 2000, and after three days we won 64,000... We then had to turn it off because we grew too fast”
Revolut user surge stretched customer support wait times to four weeks
“Suddenly KYC times, right? Went from three minutes to, or a minute, right, to suddenly like two weeks. Customer support waiting lines went from, I don't know, 10 minutes to four weeks.”
Revolut's website early slogan was 'better than a bank account'
“So, I mean, we even had on our website, right, better than a bank account, and bank was crossed out.”
Mixpanel and Amplitude create most data issues for tech companies
“Mixpanel, amplitude, didn't really change for like probably 1520 years which usually creates most of the issues in a company.”
Uber, Airbnb, Meta, and Revolut didn't use event tracking early on
“I actually think that if you look at Uber, Airbnb, Meta, they don't use events, or at least not in the early days. We didn't use events at Revolut.”
Application databases are the only true data source of truth
“Every software that's built, and even like any third party software you use, has a database. And the database contains all the valuable information. And that's your source of truth. Because if the database is wrong, I mean, the whole application is wrong.”
Revolut's free card referral campaign generated 180K signups in one week
“I think the quickest way to get a lot of growth for us was, I think it was a Monday afternoon Chad, me, and Tom, and I think Alan, basically set up a referral campaign, wrote an email, some T's and C's, and enabled free cards to Revolut customers, and that gen…”
Revolut's P2P payment flow for non-users failed to drive user growth
“For whatever reason, I thought that you can acquire a lot of Customers with P to P payments. And so I spent four weeks trying to make it work that people can pay someone that's not on Revolut. I just didn't do anything.”
Building product-led growth starting with paid marketing rarely works
“I don't think you can, it's really hard to build a product led business if you start with paid marketing.”
Kittl is looking into automating partnership manager negotiations using AI
“Yeah, I mean, we are thinking, we are looking into, like automating partnership manager negotiations, because suddenly you can scale it up to a million partnerships managers.”
Revolut is a superior product to Monzo
“I think Monzo is just a, it's a more modern bank, like Revolut is a financial ecosystem.”
Revolut demanded 'special forces' level execution at maximum speed
“To put it, as Nick put it, we're like special forces. We go in, we don't fuck up. So it had that mentality that every meeting, every design catch up, every marketing campaign, essentially anything you do is perfectly executed at all times. At the maximum speed…”
Nubank maintains a 90% customer retention rate over 24 months
“They have like a 90% retention rate, like over 24 months.”
Nubank has reached 100 million active users
“I think they have like a hundred million active users nowadays.”
Shorts cut from this episode
▶ Revolut’s winning product strategy 🏆🤫 · 20VC with Harry St (@9:37)
▶ Would you thrive in this culture? 🤔 · 20VC with Harry Stebb (@35:23)
▶ Revolut's genius marketing strategy 🏆 · 20VC with Harry Ste (@2:30)
▶ Revolut vs Monzo: Which do you prefer? 💳 · 20VC with Harry (@51:48)
▶ Could you pass Revolut’s interview test? 😳 · 20VC with Harr (@32:37)
▶ The psychology behind Revolut’s success 🤯 · 20VC with Harry (@11:32)
▶ Revolut’s origin story: Las Vegas 🎰 · 20VC with Harry Stebb (@8:29)