Nik Storonsky, Revolut Founder: What Revolut Needs to Do to Hit $100BN Valuation | E1233

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 it based on M right so it's like it's just not rational and say you would list in the US I consideration person right if I get better product from UK I would list in UK but so far if you just compare this products and one is far compared to the other ready to go [Music] Nick I'm so excited to

do this thank you so much for having us in your office first thanks for coming not at all listen I was chatting to CLA homel before and he said you know I'm not going to do the German accent if I'm terrible at it but he said that revolute is one of the most kpi Le companies and so I just wanted to start with how do you approach kpi based leadership and what does that actually mean well basically is s the whole goal setting right so we set up the goals for the companies usually have five

six goals a year and then we quantify these goals so what do meant to achieve certain goal then we Cascade the goals on the department level then on the team level and then on individual so every single eff team department and on the company we have metrics describing uh the performance and then all people go through performance review process every quarter then they judged based on the Met that they delivered their skills and then cultural values in terms of the management when you get the metrix how do you think about distributive management I spoke to

a lot of your team and you have a lot of direct reports yeah how many direct reports do you have and how do you think about distributive management so we got 40 plus reports me to here I I build the team already for last five years so gener because I don't really work with people who are not excellent and the 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 goal themselves and they press the button and they

reach the goal themselves strong people need to show them the goal and they reach the goal themselves without you iterating with them average people you need to on a weekly basis iterate to reach the goal and then below people I mean you trade with them but you know sometimes very often they don't reach the goal so the key is to select all your direct reports get the strong excellent so they're able to reach the goal themselves Without You of directing them will they be excellent on day one and how long do you give them to

get good enough well majority of people are you see them performing stronger excellent after three four weeks right so they hit the ground running on week three majority of them they actually prob on week one so generally if you see a person is not performing for one two months most likely they not performing for for the next year so I don't really believe in kind of you know needing some time to adapt to speed up so if the person is not delivering within first three months most likely they will not what are the most common

ways you find them not delivering in the first three months what are the most obvious signs well they just give them the goals right and then you have some weekly or bi-weekly ketchups and then they show you what they produced and then you just observe what they produced for two three weeks or how small they are how deep they go with their analysis just based on what they show you do you agree with when there's doubt there's no doubt well there is doubt there is no doubt when you yeah I mean someone just start doubting

I mean there's no doubt in terms of the different people I I love that kind of spectrum from like you know exent to strong to average I chatted to it I mean you're Alan Changs of the world but so many who work with you and have worked with you and they said that what you look for in people has changed a lot over the years you used to like not like the management consultants and the investment bankers and now you got a lot more professional management how do you think about that and is that fair

I don't think it's fair right there because I was always looking for people who can deliver right so was always execution oriented rather than uh 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 uh reality here is when you start hiring management Consultants to help you run the company that means your employees are not competent in what they do right and for me it's it's a bad sign should employees compete should employees compete yeah you said with each other

yeah U no I don't think so I think I think they should collaborate they should work as a team they should work on common goals can ask when you look back at the growth of the team in particular what was the most painful scaling bit and what did you learn from that well uh I think you know I I made a lot of mistakes scaling team and I think the most F mistake was believing well I 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 that I think I hired like you know 55 through executive recruiters P like know 2 million I ended up you know firing 4950 of that so show of money how did you change as a leader I mean this in the nicest way you've also got a lot more friendly I was was friendly you're always friendly you feel more comfortable with media well yeah probably because you know I I know by now I have a lot of experience speaking with media yeah but I was always you know holding people accountable

to deliver right you know sometimes I was communicating more in a has way or sometimes you know in a softer way but I was always you know forcing people to to deliver it what do you think when you look forward now you most need to work on in your own leadership style where are you like I'm still not great and I'd like to get better or usually when I hire people in a new era that I haven't work before for example when I started revolute 10 years ago I was hiring my first head of compliance

head of recruitment head of people uh I'm terrible at hiring my first rolls I never kind of know WR before so I ended up you know uh trying you know many people uh until you know find the good ones I'm I learned how to do it now so every time when I hire a new role which I never hired before I first interview the whole Market Tred to learn for people how they do their job and only after Lear how they did their job I kind of you know select the best person for the job

because reality if you never kind of worked with their designers you have zero skills to hire designers you never worked in reg Affairs or 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 like as many people from this area as possible then you Lear then you you'll be able to select when you think about the different areas where you invest in you mentioned like kind of the compliance the regulatory do you think the best CEOs are the best

resource allocations I think so yeah I think the best CEOs or can squeeze a lot of ir out of you know very ridal resour when you think about where you squeezed iron most effectively what comes to mind first myself uh um yeah I think I'm very efficient into getting people to deliver with a small resources and I'm very cost conscious as well so I think you know people when when they throw money at the problem they just wrong people I think you know what what really uh delivers the most is your brain power right when

you sit down then forces s to think how to solve the problem the most kind of you know cost effective and efficient way that's actually much more powerful compared to spending Millions on I don't know external people external consultants and so on or hiring you know super experienced Professionals for a lot of money where did you spend money with the benefit of hindsight you wish you hadn't well I think we're very efficient in spending money to be hon you um I think when I look at our costs I think our top cost is actually marketing

now and then the second cost is people has you idea around brand marketing evolved you know before you're a very data driven performance- driven guy we like seeing what inputs lead to what outputs and brand marketing is hard because it's like 50% worse but you don't know which one has your ideas on brand marketing changed I do believe in brand marketing now before I didn't uh and but you need to be very careful in uh what you buy as an asset to show your brand uh for example recently we started buying airpods uh jet Bridges

and uh I personally believe IR on it is amazing uh but you know we clearly cannot measure it but if your brand marketing is only a very small portion of Performance Marketing and you can afford I don't you believe you know that these assets are great and why not can I ask when you think about um Bley the expansion to the US and banking licenses I do want to start on the banking license it took longer than expected what this one was from Mickey so you can blame him on me what did you learn about

building a regulated business from the banking license process taking longer oh what I really learned is uh it's uh so whenever you want to build a bank you'd rather get a banking license before you have customers so that's uh kind of in our key lesson because as soon they have many customers millions of customers tens of millions of customers Regulators will be um kind of you know much more thorough in assessing your capabilities as a result the whole license process will take you know much longer and then for smaller Banks or for Banks who don't

have clients they they don't really assess because there's nothing to assess right so they Grant license much easier can I see that if you have that status much earlier and you are say monzo where you did decide to get it earlier it inhibits your ability to execute on product in such a fast way because you are bluntly encumbered by Regulators much sooner no like do you wish you'd done it sooner oh 100% no reality you can also build their governance process or 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 that slow to balance here if you really apply uh brains how to optimize governance how to build whole structure processes who appr for and when you can do it much better compared to Legacy things and so you didn't because you just didn't why did you not earlier then when you reflect on it or I I wasn't experienced right so I didn't know what is the right way yeah sorry wrong how would you rate your relationship with the regulations today it's actually much better because

uh again because I was inexperienced and I had this perception in my mind which was uh um well not forced on me but confirmed by you know many many people in investors that because I'm young right I very like you know take care I should not speak with The Regulators because they will not understand me instead I should hire some gray hair banking CEO who whove been in the business for a long time and then they need to speak with Regulators uh what I really found is is actually very bad advice right because uh whenever

you speak with Regulators yourself whenever you explain exactly inl English what we do how we do it because you build it yourself or I build it myself right I can explain it in a very simple terms and because we're also innovating a lot in this areas compared to Legacy Banks um and uh 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 you show that that's how you've been like you know three or four years ago that's how we do now

that's how other banks are doing we're ahead of them that's for mapers the problem with the traditional banking Co they're not Tech driven at all and and then they they rather speak in the very vague jugon to hide uh their incompetency or their limited knowledge in in Tech related Mets so Regulators I don't think they like it what have been your biggest lessons around crypto Nick biggest lessons around crypto never speculate crypto have you changed your mind on an being in crypto you made the decision to include crypto early how do you reflect on that

now I think it's a good decision um I think um U because reality a lot a lot of use cases in cryp is still speculation right people I me speculate is more I would say entertaining for them um but then some use cases are definitely valid for example stable coins or enabling or instant money transfers through stable coins competing with Swift on corresponding banking system yeah it's uh it's actually very valuable what's been the biggest challenge with the crypto product there were quite a few I mean Rel probably biggest challenge is different licenses in in

different countries and then different uh rules attached to this licenses I remember when we received our crypto license like several years ago in UK there were certain rules attached it which actually Cost U kind of 99% false positive so for example a person wants to send money in crypto to another account and then uh we would block this transfer because of certain rules imposed by regulator but then in 99.9% of cases we were wrong you know blocking this transfer because I mean transfer is was okay right it wasn't forent wasn't it took us you know

some time to explain to regulat short date that uh these rules that you impos on us are actually wrong rules we should kind of optimize it uh and then uh we can capture you know more kind of know frent transfers and then not waste time of like in innocent people I totally get you you mentioned that kind of the different regulatory elements you moved but added the us as another geography I I never understand the US Nick if I'm honest because like the thing I love about revolute is revolute is the one company from Europe

that shits on its us counterparts like China is the biggest you player in the US which is like a quarter of the size of revolute which is completely unique why has no one been able to win us Neo banking I don't understand that well I think in us um first of all so there is a culture in tech companies they don't want to be regulated because they don't want to be regulated they need to partner with a bank to use use their license and use use their platform as soon as you partner with the bank

and use the license that platform you you need to uh follow the processes which are not automated which are not build as a product it slows you down Plus on of there is a compliance of the bank that needs to approve every single screen every single marketing material so on because they are not very efficient it slows it down uh plus uh because you're not a bank you're not able to use your balance sheet or your deposits so you cannot really do credit credit cards efficiently and the US is credit driven market and whatever a

customer spends with a credit card bankes actually much more money from a mission compared to debit card and Banks they um effectively spent part of this Interchange to do to give additional benefits to customers in M Points the result of credit cards are much uh more attractive for customers compared to debit card well as a result you see fex Pur partnering with a bank issuing debit cards just not their attractive value proposition so when we think about going into the market it's been hard what's been harder than you thought and what's been easier than you

thought I mean 99% of things were harder than I thought yeah the few things that were easier were things that actually don't matter as well nothing in life that's like meaningful is easy yeah nothing is easy do you think the revolute brand is strong in the US U not yet but we will get there as soon as we get Bank Li in US launch a bank there it will take time but I think you know we can get where we now in Europe us I saw your talk with Antoine and not an laon sorry at

index and you said about the US banking license is that now like how do you think about the staging of the US roll out and the banking license there so basically first we need to uh roll out our UK bank uh so go through all this mobilization conditions and then put our UK customers on the bank as soon as we get it done actually unlocks us or our ability to apply for light in the US what will you do to win the US in way that people who've tried before haven't won the US with people

in the US never tried their digital Bank uh with a credit card with all the functionalities that we have already so one simple app where you have all the financial sour that you need to spend do you think moner did uh moner still are not in for I know I mean they expanded there just didn't work didn't work okay yeah maybe maybe I not to I don't worry about it I I asked them and it was a bit of an awkward conversation um so I totally get it you're also in Lan and crushing there how

do you feel about Lan Market what did you do that worked really well uh no what we done we we played for license in Brazil for banking license in Brazil so we got a banking license in Mexico ahead of new bank uh we I think we applied already in Columbia uh for Bank license so we're working on that as well basically trying to capture like in top top four top five markets and launch can we do North and South America at the same time uh yeah you can paralyze yeah I mean it's hard but almost

anything is possible when you look back at the products what product introduction you made has been the biggest needle manver and the reality changes like 3 years ago or one launched 5 years ago business account already you know went very well in terms of growth uh but then recently we launched also I don't know EES growing super fast R PS growing super fast because our scale is so much larger compared to five years ago so whenever we launch product Market uh with with the right product Market fit just scale super quickly so you cannot really

compare with also very successful product launch five years ago because yes five years ago it was super fast but if you look at speed up growth now it it was there slow what product did you think would be a mega hit that wasn't I'm actually pretty bad at it like every time when I think on certain product that will be Mega hit uh it's not and sometimes uh when I'm uh well nothing it will not it will which one when you thought it would did it not most comes to mind uh well for example we

launched seller events to compete with credit card so the idea is um person just uh well receive salary in our account uh and then halfway through the period for the salary uh the passive button to receive half of your salary so it's pretty cool so competes with credit cards competes with loans much ship as well but it didn't work for us because the whole converstion funnel was very bad first you need to sell to Enterprise and Enterprise needs to sell to their employees you also need to sell into Paro systems if you look at conversions

I mean uh for for a lot of effort we ended up having I don't know like 100 plus uh people using solar danport so we decided just well this is the hard thing when you get to your scale which is it just has to be meaningful and there's opportunity cost to everything that you do you know I always chat to Anton he's like oh man it needs to be 10x needs to be 10x how do you think about what is worthy of your time in terms of new products in terms of size so usually to

launch a product you need to have a very small team of uh 10 people they will work on the product for say one to one and a half years cost will be probably I don't know two three million pounds um and uh cuz they own dependent you can run a lot of BS independently um and uh so the way we think about what to launch what not to launch we just have a committee of people who done it before who launch products before and they have opinion and uh so when everyone is positive well we

launch things for everyone is negative we would don't launch if uh there is a mixed opinion we still launch how many bats do you have running at a time uh 20 plus and parall 20 plus bets if you look at the last three years we launched I think 27 bets okay so you have 20 plus bets running at once and then what percent make it so usually so out of 27 B that we launched uh last two and a half three years like amazing worked probably say five um five six didn't work at all and

the rest is just you know somewhere in the middle but if you look at the whole portfolio how much money it generates it just amazing it's exponential okay so with the five six and because the five that work you're like great let's give them more money with the you kind of scale it up how much more money do you do you give them all the same does it uh the way it works so you got a team then they launch it and uh you you look at how much money they generate after they launch the

product month one month two month three month four you canar with other bets when he launched it and then say top 30 40% if if you have no growth stick or you just allow them to hire additional team than additional team so one team becomes two teams three teams and account Department okay so we have that what about the and so there are the five that work the five six in the middle are really hard because you don't want to waste money There's an opportunity cost to those people what do you do with the ones

where it's like so you don't scale it right so you still have only one team working it for for those bets really scaling up producing a lot of money you you add more people to work on kind of uh new features for this particular product which one of these bets today are you most excited about I like actually eim it work pretty well for us eim yeah it's it's a very nice product I think it's the best in the market now it's a beautiful products I that yeah yeah so it's super easy you know compared

to all other kind of standalone all there are the winners obvious like do they always just go up and to the right or does it take time for you to build conviction in what you like uh surprisingly they like on month one month two month three they always you know go up so you don't have dosable this do they present to you like 27 bets at one time how do you manage that hierarchy of information decision making so we we just build a nice tracking system right so we have our Juro obviously tracking every single

bed then everything FS into dashboard as well so just open the dashboard and you see the list of un beds the list of beds that are being cooked another 20 which stage are they like you know they being developed are they at hour kind of approval process um when you see how much gross profit each B generates and so on and so forth so it's pretty Visual and very clear it's is going to sound so random but Ben Affleck gave a speech the other day about AI in movies and he said that art is knowing

what to build and craft is knowing when to stop which I thought was a really nice description of abundantly the importance of Simplicity do you worry that with so many bats you lose Simplicity and you get overcrowding uh you need to solve this problem through interface so interace this super simple right so you need to show uh the right product at the right time uh if you look at the car right car has you know a lot of functionality but then it's it's pretty simple right and then on top of it you got electric cars

like screens I mean if you think about functionality of the car there's a lot of there right but then it's it's very simply buildt so you just drive where you want you play music when you want and so on so the same with banking product and ultimately people need a lot of products but then if you uh position everything in a very simple way then there is no problem which product would you most like to do that you haven't done uh private bank I think it'll be pretty cool to build a private bank agreed why

haven't you done it I think it was too early uh now we have a lot of customers and a lot of customers actually have a lot of balances with us uh some of them have you know Millions on our accounts uh so I think it's time to build the private banking for people with a lot of liquid so we have revolute today what does revolute look like in three years time both from a product and from a business perspective so three years time would love to be uh probably Al in 50 markets uh to be

where are we stay how many we live in uh 39 now okay yeah so we want to be a number one in uh say 90% of this Market in ter of growth how many are we number one in today I think we're number one in 19 or 20 19 20 and uh basically fully localized as a bank and say 40 markets so providing local accounts or local credit cards uh local payment methods um loans and so on so just be uh as competitive as as local banks or even you know more competitive so that's a

goal and then hopefully to have a um I'll would say 30 to 40 million dtive people so now we're around 10 million dtive people so we have that in three years which Market is the most important you I think in three years a little bit too early for us to win so yeah maybe if we win uh every single uh large Market in Europe so top top 10 10 markets in Europe yeah okay top and then so right now we have our penetration of market share say inde depends from 5% to something 70% on average

I was at 10% so if we manage to go from 10% to 30 40% uh market share in our top 10 markets so that will be already probably 4X business compared to what it is now do you think the market makeup of banking will fundamentally shift in the Next Generation and what I mean by that is I saw actually you again talk with Martin and you said about the huge fragmentation in the banking Market do you think that will continue or do you think we will see a lot more concentration with fewer bigger players yeah

I think because of um uh different regulations different markets all the banks are very local right because it's very hard to kind of you know build a bank in one country and then scale it outside without proper Tech so I think we have as a company we have a unique opportunity to actually scale and build a glob bank across many many markets purely because Tech allows us to do it if you think about it similar um similar picture was in a venture business right so when the Venture business started you have a lot of you

know VC funds focused on the us some VC funds focused on Europe a lot VC funds focused on Asia and so on it's very very similar to banking as well and so we move into a world of globalized banking players who own blly much largely I think what time in five years time you you'll see much less number of Banks and there few Global players Nick what needs to change in the business before you go public I me the reality we already run a business with a public company we're just not public company so we

we run everything because we're a bank uh so we need to have even stronger controls compared to public companies so why would you want to go public you know we saw data bricks do this secondary transaction I think yesterday it was six to 8 billion of liquidity to investors and to employees you know obviously rev publicly done the second why why would you want to well we still have a lot of VC investors right but sooner or later we'll want to uh kind of you know sell the share Holdings and the return money to investors

uh so I think public markets allow you to to have more liity compared to just private markets there's no way this is going to get capped in but I have to ask it sure would you list in London or at Le in London um I mean Pro problem with UK is if you think about UK versus us or UK is much more liquid right and then uh trading in US is free right if you look at trading in UK you always uh buy a St tax which is 0.5% so I 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 right so like it's it's just not AAL and so you would list in the US look I'm I consider AAL person right that's what I can answer so unless I have you know better product from UK then yeah if I get a better product from UK I would list in UK but so far if you just compare this products I mean

one is far compared to the other how do you respond to the suggestions that you've moved to Dubai well I I do spend sometime in Dubai uh every year so with L team there plus we're getting licenses uh but no I don't be permanently in Dubai is the culture different across the world when you go to different offices around the world is revolute a monoculture or are they actually very different independent cultures our culture is the same across all OES so people are smart people are hungry people working hard people want to achieve things that's

common across all the cultures can I ask you one on we mentioned the liquidity to ambassadors earlier you've been unbelievable at maintaining a really tight control of your cat um where other Founders haven't buy what have you done to maintain such good control of the cap table control it on the water in preventing secondaries preventing private transactions preventing side deals yeah just because uh again it's pretty obvious for it soon as you don't have control so them every time when you try to raise a primary around you're competing with all these early investors who want

to sell at a large discount because I mean they made so much money and they're okay to exit you know as soon as possible because they they make like I don't know like Tex H right and it actually prevents company to to raise primary as a result because uh because they really kind of in heading the company we had to put all these controls in place in terms of competitors you really respect around the world who do you most respect and why then well uh like obviously if I look at competition uh new bank is

is amazing what they do um well country is also great right there's no competition there and the rates are high and credit card have you know very high rates as well uh so I think you know new bank is very strong um then U I think GP morgam you have very good team in us so as a bank very strong well if if you look at Asia right it's a bit different Dynamic so got companies like witch out so they're very strong I mean reality there are like many good companies and which would be a

harder market for you to win us or Asia I think Asia what why well because they don't allow You Bing licensees right CH you get it it's also a fundamentally different UI that they used to I mean it's an entirely new product Paradigm that you have to engage with culturally it's not nearly as aligned as us and UK so I I totally get that you must have Quantum Light neck yep so yeah letbe just spend one minute and splaining what Quantum Light is so basically because I was raising money so many times done like seven

or eight times and like almost every time I experienced uh some very negative experience for example I think it was 2019 uh I agreed the sheet with investor I think it was like s billion valuation and then next day Market dropped 10% dropped 10% then temp was withdrawn and then it became like 5 billion or whatever um then uh like even recently like you know secondar that were done we kind of you know agreed everything with all investors and then uh there was like you know Market drop then luckily it went back but we had

some investors you know with drawing term shets or like when I was raising money uh for for Sera like no one didn't no one wanted to invest I spent like you know four five six months going through every single investor then saying them that's okay it's really great business they looked at my unit economics and unit economics was negative of course it was negative because you know I just started right it's a volume game anyway what I learn that uh a lot of investors they are a following the crowd very often and be they very

uh emotions driven right sometimes they like the F sometimes they don't like the F they don't like the F best it's not very scientific uh so two years ago I st up effectively a small team of data scientists and data Engineers who collected a lot of data on startups and then would train machine learning models um on the startups selecting the best startups then the machine learning model actually amazingly outperforms 95% of vs out there on on back test and uh that's how I started this business so fly I have an independent uh Team of

20 people who are building polishing uh data science models and then models give you a list of companies where to invest uh and then we just go to this company and this where's the entry point cuz you need to have enough Ser okay so you need to have enough data so series B okay so you can select the best companies better than the bests fine cool um generally though if you can select them better and there's data for that the winners are more obvious yeah and so if the winners are more obvious selection is one

thing but winning is another how do you think about winning when there's five others and you've got Sequoia and you've got index and you have all the pretty and the real is not that straight forward right if if you look at companies that uh model select and there we have we tested probably like 300 plus features right then we selected now like best 25 which statistically give you signal right whether to invest in the company or not so the features are like obviously very important who are investors who is a lead and the the data

the lead so we we actually track Ira for every single fund and then based on this Ira it's an input in the model the model kind of selects whether invest or not then who is the founder did they have IR of seen funds no we would track Ira on kind of on the fund level for for for each inest and then if we see a good investor with good investing it's obviously like a positive signal right anyway model takes say 25 features one of the features who investing which is dynamic evaluation quality of employees quality

of founder whether they understand indication not education age is important as well why is age important what do you find about age well it's uh if you look at statistics so 2025 is actually quite negative like 2 is negative um then uh 25 to 30 is is okay 30 to 35 is the best age after 35 I mean there is a clear negative correlation with the success so sweet sport is 25 to 35 for Founders that's Ser be okay so we have 25 to 35 you said education there and you said investing education earli is

is important why do you think it's so important and do you think our current education system does it right well uh I just look at the data right and then at studs and then statistics clearly show that uh top universities uh stem degree have a much more positive correlation with the success of the company U and uh obviously it's not for like any other professional there but particularly for startups I mean it is important F basing starts which was the hardest funding round to raise you mentioned earlier that you know the series a for example

you spent five months on which was the hardest round to raise I think first one was very hot um the first one every single one was easy easier than I think 2019 or well we we we started Rising 2019 we closed I think in February or in January 2020 just before Co we were very lucky but it took time to close it big was that round so relation was 5 billion which dropped from some oh wait you did it at five yeah we did it at five noice yeah yeah wow yeah okay so how much

did you raise at five then I think it was three car does that work because as a relationship it kind of dam like I'd be damaged if you tried to haggle me down because the markets are moving like how I mean look in then there it's business right for them it's business for me and uh yeah I me we just move on who's your favorite investor I have few favorite I mean I you know fantastic investor stud you like from index you know very smart uh John tcv very smart as well Mickey which you spoke

with from Ribbit you know very good has your definition of success changed nothing think if you define success or by kind of you know percentage of goals that you reached that's it's very simple right if your goal is I don't know to be happily married with kids and then you reach it you're 100% successful right if your goal is I don't know make more money you haven't reached it then you're not it's pretty simple definition does money make you happy neck I don't think money makes you happier I think money is just additional instrument that

you can use in order to achieve certain goals what are the thing you know achieve today that you most want to achieve well I haven't w US market right I think it's very important to take this box especially for European startup for sure I'm totally it's always the opposite right us companies they they always win Europe and uh I almost never seem exceptional so I think it'll be very cool to take this box listen I want to move into a quick fight round so I say a short statement you give me your immediate thoughts does

that sound okay y so what do you believe that most around you disbelief I think uh majority of people believe that uh Balanced Life allows you to be happy and achieve your goals I think in reality disbalanced life allows you definitely to achieve your goals so more kind of imbalanced you are more focused on your goals sacrificing everything else more likely you will succeed these goals and you know there's a high chance will also bring you happiness what period of revolutes growth have you been most imbalanced every year it's very imbalanced right so it's yeah

it became much more structured much more kind of you know Frost the drill on and I get it D but you you you're very thin You're athletic you look fresh you're not losing sleep you're doing Fitness yeah talk to me what does next day look like because I I have so much pressure right you know like a lot of 99% of time is it's a lot of pain right because reality what happens is even if you have organization um then all the unpleasant problems with no one else soles and it goes into me and I

ended up doing all this you know shitty jobs solving problems that you know no one else wants to solve or can't solve and it's it's pretty unpleasant so 99% of time is not really pleasure a lot of pain a lot of pressure stress and in order to keep calm you know Under Pressure obviously you need to have a lot of energy and then in order to have a lot of energy need to build your lifestyle in the way that brings you a lot of energy right so it's obviously a lot of spots you know like

what time doesn't it get up in the morning I mean depends in which country I am right because uh the way I manage the business I I work one two three months from different countries from different offices and depends which time zone I am right for example if if I'm in UK like probably I wake up you know 6:30 you know like sometimes you know a train in the morning uh sometimes not uh but then I start 8:30 9:00 a.m. if I'm somewhere in uh kind of Asia right then I start in a bit later

or much later but then I work till you know 11:00 p.m. um if I'm in the US then I need to start there early I can s working which friend investor do you most respect and learn from just learn from not like your favorite like you go out for like holidays with like you actually learn from first schol when you're in trouble well I I I call people who have done similar things in the past right so who built very L businesses so I got a couple friends who build very L business businesses and uh

some of them they never used VCS and uh they they just print c those businesses so I think you know in some ways they're much better compared to me what would you do if you knew you wouldn't fail I would just keep trying things but I uh whenever I try things I I always think I will not fail what have you changed your mind on in the last 12 months like you know I spent 15 16 17 years in UK and London really became a home City for me but then when I started um kind

of working from different cities I realized you know there is so much more like in another cities in terms of know lifestyle WEA infrastructure that a lot of people because they stuck in one city living in one city they don't really see it and they they just become you very close-minded um I think when you kind of you know manage to work or leave in many many places then you you're much more openminded if you were starting revolute again today where would you you started us most likely yeah if you were advising a Young Person's

day coming out of University what advice would you give them on optimizing their career well I think they first need to really know what they like to do what they enjoy doing and uh just go into the area this area if you if you enjoy something I mean you definitely need to go there what consume a brand do you most respect I think Apple toce you why I think they built products they built Cool brand and uh they manag to stay outside of scrutin right because they they produce so much money they huge Monopoly they

uh charge a lot and they still a they kind of great company right you can be CEO of any other company for a day which company do you choose to be CEO of I would like to try something in uh biom medicine or genetics uh yeah that would be very interesting just alone because I know zero bothers pronouncement one what would you do differently if you were starting revolu again I would do everything faster and I would do everything much cheaper as well final one what question have I not asked that you think I should

have asked or you don't get asked often why do you do what you do people don't ask you why no not at all I'm very surprised no one ask well I it actually myself you know many many times and U I have two answers right because a uh like what else to do and uh um B I just need to do something right otherwise it's boring but do you have to have a passion for it too and you have to have a passion to changeing ecosystem in the industry yeah yeah for 99% listen Nick thank

you so much for doing this with me thank you for having me in the office and this has been so much fun thank you