The Exchanges

Q How do you do great product review sessions? Who's invited? We said it's weekly. How is the agenda set? What does that good look like?

A So the way I do it, and this is true across a lot of Revolut, is we will have the product owner along with the designer, the ops manager who are involved in certain projects, and then some of the engineering team. And then we'll potentially have a kind of a head of design who's more of Horizontal role who oversees some of the design aspects, same on product. Then it will be a review of metrics. So the goals that we talked about, how are we doing? Are we going the right way or not? Review of the roadmap. Are we on track to deliver what we said we'd deliver at the start of the quarter? And then what we spend most of the time doing is looking at designs. So the designer will literally present Figma and say, okay, we've got a new problem we're looking to solve. This is how we're going to solve it. And we go through screen by screen. We do that on a kind of team level once a week. And then once we're really confident in them, they get bubbled up to, we do a overall business one once a week, which is, this is the final output. This is going to be built. And that's the one then that Nick or Vlad occasionally join, and they'll then have their views at that point.

AI assessment note: “we will have the product owner along with the designer, the ops manager”

Q How do you do great product review sessions? Who's invited? We said it's weekly. How is the agenda set? What does that good look like?

A So the way I do it, and this is true across a lot of Revolut, is we will have the product owner along with the designer, the ops manager who are involved in certain projects, and then some of the engineering team. And then we'll potentially have a kind of a head of design who's more of Horizontal role who oversees some of the design aspects, same on product. Then it will be a review of metrics. So the goals that we talked about, how are we doing? Are we going the right way or not? Review of the roadmap. Are we on track to deliver what we said we'd deliver at the start of the quarter? And then what we spend most of the time doing is looking at designs. So the designer will literally present Figma and say, okay, we've got a new problem we're looking to solve. This is how we're going to solve it. And we go through screen by screen. We do that on a kind of team level once a week. And then once we're really confident in them, they get bubbled up to, we do a overall business one once a week, which is, this is the final output. This is going to be built. And that's the one then that Nick or Vlad occasionally join, and they'll then have their views at that point.

AI assessment note: “we will have the product owner along with the designer, the ops manager”

Q Yeah, it's incredibly tough given the scale. How do you structure product teams at Revolute Business?

A The way we structure product teams at Revolut Business and across all of Revolut is we have product owners who report into me and note we have product owners, not product managers. So the key difference is that product owner really owns the team and owns the outcome of the team. They're not trying to influence people around the company. They are a team owner and they stay working on that team for months and years at a time. I mean, take me for example, I'm kind of the ultimate product owner of Revolut Business and I've been working on it now for, for seven and a half years. And those teams then are cross-functional teams of engineers, designers, operations, and they all report into that product owner. So the product owner really kind of is the, the control for the, the control of the team.

AI assessment note: “we have product owners who report into me”

Q Yeah, it's incredibly tough given the scale. How do you structure product teams at Revolute Business?

A The way we structure product teams at Revolut Business and across all of Revolut is we have product owners who report into me and note we have product owners, not product managers. So the key difference is that product owner really owns the team and owns the outcome of the team. They're not trying to influence people around the company. They are a team owner and they stay working on that team for months and years at a time. I mean, take me for example, I'm kind of the ultimate product owner of Revolut Business and I've been working on it now for, for seven and a half years. And those teams then are cross-functional teams of engineers, designers, operations, and they all report into that product owner. So the product owner really kind of is the, the control for the, the control of the team.

AI assessment note: “those teams then are cross-functional teams of engineers, designers, operations”

Q And so that's you and the product owner?

A Yes, that's right. And then we have weekly product reviews, and that's where we have product engineering or senior engineering design for that particular team, or potentially a couple of teams together. And we look at metrics, we look at roadmap and we look at designs and that can be a fairly intense meeting. I mean, we want to make it to some extent creative, but we expect people to come with a pretty solid update on a pretty solid idea of what they're going to then be doing by having this cadence every week. It means we don't waste a lot of time preparing for the meeting. We're really doing most of the time. And then you, you get a good glimpse once a week of what's happening.

AI assessment note: “Yes, that's right. And then we have weekly product reviews”

Q What new project started off with poor numbers and has turned into a monster?

A So a product which has started off slowly and is gaining really good traction is Revpay for us. So Revpay is our merchants who use Revolut business are able to offer on their checkout pay with Revolut. There's a button you push and you put in your phone number as a retail customer, and then you get pushed to your retail app. As we grow more and more on the retail side and get more penetration there, as that product improves, as we get better known on the business side. That's just growing and growing, and now we're signing up big airlines, like we've just gone live with Whaling, for example, who are starting to put this on their checkout pages because we're so synonymous with travel now, but having a pay with Revolut is a very natural extension for them.

AI assessment note: “a product which has started off slowly and is gaining really good traction is Revpay”

Q So we have these different types, and then we're going through the interview process. When you look today, specifically for you in product, you're interviewing me. What are the skills you want to see me have if I'm going to come into your product team today?

A I personally believe a lot more in raw skills than I do in people who've learned frameworks. There's a lot of things out there that you can learn about. And to be honest, I don't know a lot of them. And I don't think a lot of people who've done well and built great products know about all of these frameworks. What I think you really want is people with great raw skillset. And so that means people who are able to ask the right questions, who are able to structure problems. Who are able to balance multiple solutions in their head and trade them off. These are just core problem solving skills, and I don't think you have to have come from any particular background to have them. You also need to have a hunger, particularly if you're going to come and work in a company like Revolut. There is no point coming if you kind of want to chill. And I think that you can see those things relatively quickly when you interview people.

AI assessment note: “people who are able to ask the right questions, who are able to structure problems”

Q When you see the grads coming into Revolut today that you have, as you just mentioned, that large cohort, it's a very tumultuous world. AI is changing everything. What advice do you have for them in terms of excelling at Revolut on the day one?

A That's a great question. And I gave the presentation, the senior leadership welcome to the grads yesterday, and I answered exactly the same question. So I'll tell you word for word what I told them. I said to them, firstly, ensure that you ask lots of stupid questions. Now's the time in your career when you can do that. You need to understand what's going on. Secondly, you need to focus on a small number of things and do them incredibly well. No one remembers if you've done 15 different things in your first three months, they'll remember the quality of what you did. So make sure that you focus on a small number of things and do them really well. And the final thing I would say is early in your career, you want to learn what good looks like. That's what will set you up well for the rest of your career. You want to surround yourselves with the best people. Fortunately at Revolut, we have a lot of good people, but choosing who you're going to spend time with and what functions of engineering or data that you're going to spend time with to really learn and absorb from them and learn what good looks like, that will set you up so well for the next five, 10 years of your career.

AI assessment note: “firstly, ensure that you ask lots of stupid questions.”

Q And so that's you and the product owner?

A Yes, that's right. And then we have weekly product reviews, and that's where we have product engineering or senior engineering design for that particular team, or potentially a couple of teams together. And we look at metrics, we look at roadmap and we look at designs and that can be a fairly intense meeting. I mean, we want to make it to some extent creative, but we expect people to come with a pretty solid update on a pretty solid idea of what they're going to then be doing by having this cadence every week. It means we don't waste a lot of time preparing for the meeting. We're really doing most of the time. And then you, you get a good glimpse once a week of what's happening.

AI assessment note: “Yes, that's right. And then we have weekly product reviews”

Q Was PMF product market fit for Revolute business just always there?

A The core of Revolut business is payments and cards, and that was available from day one, and a lot of people loved it from day one as well. That said, over the last seven years, we've built around that a lot of additional stuff that our business needs to run. If you look at our kind of retention metrics, if you look at the activity metrics, like the number of businesses using the account every day divided by those who use it every month, everything's just getting better every single month. So what that tells me is Yes, we had a great product market for initially, you know, we got a lot of growth, but if you look at what we've done over the last six years, we've really honed that and turned it into a product that meets all the customers needs rather than just some.

AI assessment note: “Yes, we had a great product market for initially”

Q When we think about private banking, it actually makes me just think of this core product challenge that is universal, which is how do you build For super users, and also how do you build for everyone? How do you think about the challenge of building for super users, normally very high value customers, but also not wanting to alienate everyone else by building for them?

A Well, firstly, we start with the goals that we're trying to impact. So the ones I talked about earlier on, and then we try and denominate the different ideas in terms of the impact they can have on those goals. So let's say gross profit is your ultimate goal. You should be able to do some pretty basic calculations on should you build your new, let's say localized tax feature in Spain, or should you build this hyper specialized feature for enterprises? And you can start to trade those two things off. By bringing them back into a common metric. I would also say that in most cases, what customers want, there tends to be consensus across a lot of customers. It tends to feel, particularly on B to B, relatively straightforward to know what to do. That's how we approach it.

AI assessment note: “start to trade those two things off. By bringing them back into a common metric.”

Q When did product market fit feel most off for Revolut business? I always think product market fits really like chapters and you never achieve it and it's done. There's one mountain and then a plateau and then another mountain and a plateau. When did it feel most off?

A I think about five years ago, there'd been a rush to launch a lot of the initial product, and we had a, what I would describe as a bit of a messy product that probably needs to be tightened up, brought into a kind of the Revolut design system a bit more closely, use a few more of the patterns from the kind of core Revolut experience. We did a big, one of our first big redesigns of the app, and immediately after that, you start to see all the product metrics improve, and that's when you think, ah, we could have been a lot better beforehand, really. So, uh, there was that, and then we did another big redesign of the app last year. And again, after that, you suddenly see, you know, all your core metrics jump up, and you think, we're leaving a bit on the table before that reads them.

AI assessment note: “I think about five years ago, there'd been a rush to launch”

Q When you see the grads coming into Revolut today that you have, as you just mentioned, that large cohort, it's a very tumultuous world. AI is changing everything. What advice do you have for them in terms of excelling at Revolut on the day one?

A That's a great question. And I gave the presentation, the senior leadership welcome to the grads yesterday, and I answered exactly the same question. So I'll tell you word for word what I told them. I said to them, firstly, ensure that you ask lots of stupid questions. Now's the time in your career when you can do that. You need to understand what's going on. Secondly, you need to focus on a small number of things and do them incredibly well. No one remembers if you've done 15 different things in your first three months, they'll remember the quality of what you did. So make sure that you focus on a small number of things and do them really well. And the final thing I would say is early in your career, you want to learn what good looks like. That's what will set you up well for the rest of your career. You want to surround yourselves with the best people. Fortunately at Revolut, we have a lot of good people, but choosing who you're going to spend time with and what functions of engineering or data that you're going to spend time with to really learn and absorb from them and learn what good looks like, that will set you up so well for the next five, 10 years of your career.

AI assessment note: “I said to them, firstly, ensure that you ask lots of stupid questions.”

Q When we think about private banking, it actually makes me just think of this core product challenge that is universal, which is how do you build For super users, and also how do you build for everyone? How do you think about the challenge of building for super users, normally very high value customers, but also not wanting to alienate everyone else by building for them?

A Well, firstly, we start with the goals that we're trying to impact. So the ones I talked about earlier on, and then we try and denominate the different ideas in terms of the impact they can have on those goals. So let's say gross profit is your ultimate goal. You should be able to do some pretty basic calculations on should you build your new, let's say localized tax feature in Spain, or should you build this hyper specialized feature for enterprises? And you can start to trade those two things off. By bringing them back into a common metric. I would also say that in most cases, what customers want, there tends to be consensus across a lot of customers. It tends to feel, particularly on B to B, relatively straightforward to know what to do. That's how we approach it.

AI assessment note: “denominate the different ideas in terms of the impact they can have on those goals”

Q Was PMF product market fit for Revolute business just always there?

A The core of Revolut business is payments and cards, and that was available from day one, and a lot of people loved it from day one as well. That said, over the last seven years, we've built around that a lot of additional stuff that our business needs to run. If you look at our kind of retention metrics, if you look at the activity metrics, like the number of businesses using the account every day divided by those who use it every month, everything's just getting better every single month. So what that tells me is Yes, we had a great product market for initially, you know, we got a lot of growth, but if you look at what we've done over the last six years, we've really honed that and turned it into a product that meets all the customers needs rather than just some.

AI assessment note: “Yes, we had a great product market for initially, you know, we got a lot of growth”

Q When did product market fit feel most off for Revolut business? I always think product market fits really like chapters and you never achieve it and it's done. There's one mountain and then a plateau and then another mountain and a plateau. When did it feel most off?

A I think about five years ago, there'd been a rush to launch a lot of the initial product, and we had a, what I would describe as a bit of a messy product that probably needs to be tightened up, brought into a kind of the Revolut design system a bit more closely, use a few more of the patterns from the kind of core Revolut experience. We did a big, one of our first big redesigns of the app, and immediately after that, you start to see all the product metrics improve, and that's when you think, ah, we could have been a lot better beforehand, really. So, uh, there was that, and then we did another big redesign of the app last year. And again, after that, you suddenly see, you know, all your core metrics jump up, and you think, we're leaving a bit on the table before that reads them.

AI assessment note: “I think about five years ago, there'd been a rush to launch”

Q How will AI be used to make customer experience in Revolut better?

A We could use it in analytics so you can understand your money better, for example, or in businesses, when you have many employees using the cards, you might want to be alerted when people are spending money on weird stuff. And suddenly having, uh, machines that are reading all these transactions and able to give you kind of qualitative insights on them is going to be very cool. It already is cool, but there's going to be a lot it can do there. Also taking some of the more mechanical tasks that finance teams do today. And automating them, categorizing expenses, being a, being a good one. We already do this, but you can, you can start to just speed up that process significantly by having AI do it.

AI assessment note: “We could use it in analytics so you can understand your money better”

Q Now, you started life as a consultant. I want to start there. Do you recommend this as an entry into the world of product?

A For me, starting as a consultant was fantastic. Two years, and, uh, you learn a lot of hard skills in the role. You get exposed to a lot of people you learn to present, and I think for most careers, if you start like that, and then go into something where you're a little bit more, uh, hands-on, it's a really good way to start. So yeah, for me, it was great. Now, we hire people into product roles from a lot of other Backgrounds. We've just taken in a big cohort of grads directly. We also hire from engineering and data as well. So there is a variety of different ways people can get into product. But for me, uh, having those couple of years at the start of the career was a great start.

AI assessment note: “For me, starting as a consultant was fantastic... it's a really good way to start.”

Q So we have these different types, and then we're going through the interview process. When you look today, specifically for you in product, you're interviewing me. What are the skills you want to see me have if I'm going to come into your product team today?

A I personally believe a lot more in raw skills than I do in people who've learned frameworks. There's a lot of things out there that you can learn about. And to be honest, I don't know a lot of them. And I don't think a lot of people who've done well and built great products know about all of these frameworks. What I think you really want is people with great raw skillset. And so that means people who are able to ask the right questions, who are able to structure problems. Who are able to balance multiple solutions in their head and trade them off. These are just core problem solving skills, and I don't think you have to have come from any particular background to have them. You also need to have a hunger, particularly if you're going to come and work in a company like Revolut. There is no point coming if you kind of want to chill. And I think that you can see those things relatively quickly when you interview people.

AI assessment note: “people who are able to ask the right questions, who are able to structure problems”

Q Wow. Okay. I appreciate the honesty. Where could it be better?

A We could always be so much better in, I think, everything we do. In Europe, for example, we can have capital deposit products where you actually incorporate the business for them, so you could count that as your first step in the process. In the kind of core funnel, we have obligations and we need to understand how businesses run, how they match against central registries, what their nature of business is, who they transact with, all these kind of things we have to understand. There's a lot of room for us to improve in that. There's, that's one place where AI I think can come in a lot trying to understand these businesses better at inception. So I'm sure we could do better there. And then, uh, the bit when they land in the product, do they see the product that they want? Most comparisons, by the way, we would have pretty good metrics on, on a lot of these things. I just, when I look at it, I see so much that we could do further, but you know, we know that in certain countries we don't have the products that they need to do X, Y, Z. Maybe pay a certain type of tax or particular integrations with accounting software. And so once we solve these things, I think we'll be up to an eight or a nine.

AI assessment note: “in certain countries we don't have the products that they need”

Q Is it ever good to be different? And what I mean by that is if you think about private banking, say, the design system may be more premium, may be more a certain way. Is it ever good to have non-uniform design?

A Absolutely. So four years ago, we had the business app looked a lot like the retail app. Very, very similar, even on web, you can imagine. And one of the big things we did over the last two years is we, we, we said, hang on a second, a business, you know, needs to have much bigger tables. I mean, Sounds obvious, but rather than saying, oh, we're going to have something completely different on web and something completely different on mobile, and you wouldn't really recognize them. We've built a design system that scales from a mobile device to an iPad up to a web device. And so, I mean, what you can literally do is scale the screen and you'll see how it works across all those different dimensions. And so to answer your question, yes, there definitely are different needs, but that doesn't mean you need to have a sort of fundamentally different approach to each one or a different team. An elegant solution will solve for the different use cases, but in a unified way.

AI assessment note: “An elegant solution will solve for the different use cases, but in a unified way.”

Q Now, you started life as a consultant. I want to start there. Do you recommend this as an entry into the world of product?

A For me, starting as a consultant was fantastic. Two years, and, uh, you learn a lot of hard skills in the role. You get exposed to a lot of people you learn to present, and I think for most careers, if you start like that, and then go into something where you're a little bit more, uh, hands-on, it's a really good way to start. So yeah, for me, it was great. Now, we hire people into product roles from a lot of other Backgrounds. We've just taken in a big cohort of grads directly. We also hire from engineering and data as well. So there is a variety of different ways people can get into product. But for me, uh, having those couple of years at the start of the career was a great start.

AI assessment note: “for most careers, if you start like that... it's a really good way to start”

Q Is it ever good to be different? And what I mean by that is if you think about private banking, say, the design system may be more premium, may be more a certain way. Is it ever good to have non-uniform design?

A Absolutely. So four years ago, we had the business app looked a lot like the retail app. Very, very similar, even on web, you can imagine. And one of the big things we did over the last two years is we, we, we said, hang on a second, a business, you know, needs to have much bigger tables. I mean, Sounds obvious, but rather than saying, oh, we're going to have something completely different on web and something completely different on mobile, and you wouldn't really recognize them. We've built a design system that scales from a mobile device to an iPad up to a web device. And so, I mean, what you can literally do is scale the screen and you'll see how it works across all those different dimensions. And so to answer your question, yes, there definitely are different needs, but that doesn't mean you need to have a sort of fundamentally different approach to each one or a different team. An elegant solution will solve for the different use cases, but in a unified way.

AI assessment note: “yes, there definitely are different needs, but that doesn't mean you need”

Q Wow. Okay. I appreciate the honesty. Where could it be better?

A We could always be so much better in, I think, everything we do. In Europe, for example, we can have capital deposit products where you actually incorporate the business for them, so you could count that as your first step in the process. In the kind of core funnel, we have obligations and we need to understand how businesses run, how they match against central registries, what their nature of business is, who they transact with, all these kind of things we have to understand. There's a lot of room for us to improve in that. There's, that's one place where AI I think can come in a lot trying to understand these businesses better at inception. So I'm sure we could do better there. And then, uh, the bit when they land in the product, do they see the product that they want? Most comparisons, by the way, we would have pretty good metrics on, on a lot of these things. I just, when I look at it, I see so much that we could do further, but you know, we know that in certain countries we don't have the products that they need to do X, Y, Z. Maybe pay a certain type of tax or particular integrations with accounting software. And so once we solve these things, I think we'll be up to an eight or a nine.

AI assessment note: “In Europe, for example, we can have capital deposit products”

Q How will AI be used to make customer experience in Revolut better?

A We could use it in analytics so you can understand your money better, for example, or in businesses, when you have many employees using the cards, you might want to be alerted when people are spending money on weird stuff. And suddenly having, uh, machines that are reading all these transactions and able to give you kind of qualitative insights on them is going to be very cool. It already is cool, but there's going to be a lot it can do there. Also taking some of the more mechanical tasks that finance teams do today. And automating them, categorizing expenses, being a, being a good one. We already do this, but you can, you can start to just speed up that process significantly by having AI do it.

AI assessment note: “We could use it in analytics so you can understand your money better”

Q What new project started off with poor numbers and has turned into a monster?

A So a product which has started off slowly and is gaining really good traction is Revpay for us. So Revpay is our merchants who use Revolut business are able to offer on their checkout pay with Revolut. There's a button you push and you put in your phone number as a retail customer, and then you get pushed to your retail app. As we grow more and more on the retail side and get more penetration there, as that product improves, as we get better known on the business side. That's just growing and growing, and now we're signing up big airlines, like we've just gone live with Whaling, for example, who are starting to put this on their checkout pages because we're so synonymous with travel now, but having a pay with Revolut is a very natural extension for them.

AI assessment note: “a product which has started off slowly and is gaining really good traction is Revpay”

Q Is there any brand marketing that you would most like to do for Revolut Business that you haven't done? Like, get on Rory McIlroy's cap.

A We, I mean, we're already on the business side, so we haven't really done much brand marketing ever. In fact, we didn't really invest much in growth for the first four years that I was working on Revolut business. And in the last three, four years, we basically taken a lot of the retail playbook and starting to apply it to business. We've also grown a big sales team. And what that means is now we're starting to do our first campaigns. Earlier this year, we, we did a big campaign in the UK. Some people who are based here may have seen it and it had a really big, I mean, we can measure the whole thing and we could see what The impact it had, and in that we were sponsoring some of the golf, sponsoring some of the, in the ad breaks in the F-one, and we can see the impact that each of those individual events have.

AI assessment note: “we're starting to do our first campaigns. Earlier this year, we, we did a big campaign”

Q Is there any brand marketing that you would most like to do for Revolut Business that you haven't done? Like, get on Rory McIlroy's cap.

A We, I mean, we're already on the business side, so we haven't really done much brand marketing ever. In fact, we didn't really invest much in growth for the first four years that I was working on Revolut business. And in the last three, four years, we basically taken a lot of the retail playbook and starting to apply it to business. We've also grown a big sales team. And what that means is now we're starting to do our first campaigns. Earlier this year, we, we did a big campaign in the UK. Some people who are based here may have seen it and it had a really big, I mean, we can measure the whole thing and we could see what The impact it had, and in that we were sponsoring some of the golf, sponsoring some of the, in the ad breaks in the F-one, and we can see the impact that each of those individual events have.

AI assessment note: “we haven't really done much brand marketing ever”