Antoine Le Nel, CGO @Revolut: How Revolut Launch and Grow Products & Why CAC is a BS Metric | E1216

if you're a good product manager you don't need an AB test you should be able to know what is the right product I think the less you believe in the better it is I have no belief in anything there's no CAC discussion at re we only talk about Roi because if you talk about CAC you'll always acquire the worst cohorts I think the idea of localization is completely overrated growth is a bidding war right it's a bidding war it's about whether you're able to beat above everyone else ready to go [Music] Antoine I am so

excited for this first thank you so much for joining me today thank you for having me now we have many mutual friends mostly also hailing from your start at King so I want to start with that when you look at the insanely successful growth of Candy Crush what did King do well that was instrumental to the success and growth I think first of all everyone thinks that was um a huge amount of luck I think the idea that what king did really well I think they've tested extensively everything so it was a volume game you

know at some point and I think they understood they understood that super quickly saying you need to try as much as you can at some point something will pick up you know and I think they did that super super super well and I think then there was this super fastpac I remember we were launching a game like I mean every quarter pretty much we were launching aame game and not every all of them were successful but just like the pace at which we were producing games releasing the games and so on I think we did

that super super well the thing you have to get very good at though is cutting when you see the data isn't showing signs how long is enough data or how much data is updated to know that it wasn't working I think that's the thing that's probably has changed over time at King I think at the beginning we were catching things very quickly and I think as as time went we started to wait longer and long oh you know what give it another chance give it another chance give it another chance you know and I think

I think that's that's the whole point on when and that's how you probably can measure the agility of the organization is how quickly you kill projects ver how many more chances you giving to them so if testing and speed of iteration and testing was something that you did very well what was something that King really messed up it's definitely the most data driven organization I've ever been in um in the sense that really data was driving the organization not just so if you take the thing literally the company was driven by data I think it

was so powerful that and worked so well that at some point we just went way too far in the sense that for example when we were launching games sometimes we were probably looking more at the data than the game itself you know it's like you can have meetings and then you just look at the numbers and you're like well you is that wrong well I mean that's the big difference for example with revolute I think we're a lot more product driven which means we spend more time looking at the product then looking at the data

is the data not an input exactly it's an input it is an input but it is not the I mean at at King it was at some point it was the the only decision maker you know that's it you know it's it was very black or white you know and the data was was the decision maker and I think we we pushed it probably a little bit too far in this in this space and not spending maybe the right amount of time on on the user experience and not just the the quality of of the

product it itself you know if you were to say between Art and Science growth like numbers ratio what is it for you 50/50 7030 I mean it product and growth is very different all right so I think uh product should be more about art and a bit less about science when growth should overrate on science in terms of Performance Marketing I spoke to many from King and they said you got to ask him what did he learn about Performance Marketing and it's ations first of all Performance Marketing mastering Performance Marketing is a huge gives you

a huge competitive Advantage because it is a complex thing and if you do it really well it makes a huge difference you know to your to your company growth so that is the power of Performance Marketing and the Performance Marketing is it's very deep you know and and and I don't know many people who know all of it how have you seen that change over time cuz when you were doing that at King in the early days versus today day when it's so much more polluted crowded expansive how's it changed well it has changed a

little bit but not so much fundamentally it is still the same game it's still a bidding war you know uh now it's true it's getting a little bit more complex because you're losing some attribution and so on so you need to be a little bit smarter in your measurement framework so but you just need to I mean you reinvent yourself every other year you have to reinvent the whole measurement framework and so on but at the end of the day the game is still the same game you know it is the same it's the same

beating War you just have Impressions you need to go to the highest beater and that's it you know that's what the game is so you have you know King as we said that incredibly iterative data driven culture data driven company to the extreme what's the biggest difference between King and revolute I think that's what it is I remember you know so I came from a place at King where we were we were later from a maturity perspective you know like I mean we had launched many games and so on the business was doing fantastic and

we were more in an optimization place where I remember at some point were running like maybe a th000 Ab test in parallel and so on it's like like it was it was a machine you know the the machine was really optimizing everything and I remember when I arrived at Revue there was not much a testing and for me I was like shocked at it I was like what I mean like you got to do that and then what I realized is that you know there's a good reason as well why you don't want to do

ab testing the first thing um product I mean uh product managers they they uh they do AB testing to get an idea of what the right product is if you're a good product manager you don't need an a test you should be able to know what is the right product the second reason is because at revolute we wanted to do like 10x everything is 10x and so you don't need a Navy test to measure a 10x you know you do it you see goes up it's good you know and the third reason is that AB

testing increasing your type to Market because if you AB test you first need to do your ab test then you see which one wins and then you launch and then I mean when I join a Revol most of the time was like no I mean you just you know you'll see you know you'll see if it works you know you just you just get there you know while while at King I remember it was I mean you were AB testing every single week on this small element what if we change just this or just that

and then you had multivariate testing and everything was super super super optimiz and so on but it's not at the same we're not in the same place from a life cycle perspective you know it was much later I mean we'll get there you know at some point at at revolute when it would be more about optimizing than creating when we were just chatting before you said that being a revolute is like founder mode on steroids I think was your description why so I mean we have a great team of Founders that are heavily involved in

in the business uh which really is giving the um it's giving the tempo you know the momentum to to to the whole to the whole company uh with the exact same approach and the exact same mindset from since day one you know uh and and I think that's quite remarkable the the consistency of the approach 10 years after launch you know still the same still the same mindset and so on and I think that's extremely powerful well it's interesting beforehand you said the real question with founder mode is actually how long you can keep it

up yeah and saying how Nick's dedication today is just as much as it was when you joined absolutely is incredible but I don't think people will actually ask the question of the the sustenance of the founder mode today we are building a growth Engine with revolute I mean the numbers are just insane and it seems to be getting quicker yeah it is it is it is it is can we just start there I spoke to so many people investors in the business and they're like it's meant to slow down they're getting faster and better how

I mean the thing with with what we build so we build an engine which is a combination of many many things meaning there's no because you have two types of growth you have the growth that are made of let's say launch let's say marketing campaigns and uh like some coup you know like you make a big marketing coup you know and then you get the spike and so on there's none of that at revolute you know I mean if anyone I mean you're probably going to ask me what is the one thing you know that

really worked at rev I can't tell you you know it's a combination of so many things in the growth engine and because they all add up when you look at the growth of revolute it's just very steady and it's steady and it's accelerating uh week after week you know we just monitor every week week the acceleration keeps on going just because the engine gets more and more optimized you know as we are progressing and and and for now we definitely don't see the limit even in our matu markets you know which is quite crazy your

product velocity is insane how do you have such high product velocity I think because we are able to um so the organization is very very flat all right um and we are making sure that um every team is uh as self-sufficient as possible you know and that's what really build the agility you know if you're if you're self-sufficient in building what you have to build you just go you know with with with it and we run more quarterly cycles and so on and we have a very high very high Pace but because there's no interdependencies

between the different things that we build at the end of the day we are splitting the companies as many startups as possible you know I know like big organizations who say oh you know those are silos people are not collaborating etc etc you know you need to always find the right balance between coordinating things while giving the right amount of focus I think that's what we we we're doing pretty well at revolute where every team has a huge amount of autonomy and of focus to really go very fast in what they do when one's not

working do you cut it do you give it more time what does that look like no we cut quite fast we cut quite fast yeah yeah when something is not working what did you try that didn't work as planned and you cut and what did you learn well so I mean on the marketing side um we've been uh uh there's been some some campaigns for example that we've been running in some in some countries where we've been using some creatives that were quite um generic and after two weeks we saw it was a disaster and

we just cut it off you know we don't wait for the campaign to uh to finish you so like you know what this is just not happening this is just this is there's no way this will this will pick up and you just cut it you know while maybe in other places you would just have continued and say you know what we're here and then we'll do the retrospective at the end of it say no I mean it's not working it's not working you just cut it you know and fine your TV campaign That was

supposed to run let's say for three months well after two weeks it's just not working you just cut it and then you move on you know it's fine you mentioned kind of growth engine when you started that on like what enables revolute to continue growing so fast what actually is a growth engine I know it sounds strange but we often hear it what does that actually mean so a growth engine is where um uh where you have multiple components that all play together I give you I'll give you a very simple example I look at

it quite um uh the famous full funnel you know that that everyone says so you have the upper funnel the mid funnel and the lower funnel and the growth engine is when you manage to get those three elements working together you know so at the end of the day the growth engine is when you make sure that you have the lower funnel that works like a fishing net grabs all the conversions that ultimately mid and upper funnel are feeding you with you know so and that's where all of that works in P in perfect synchronization

so that at the end of the day it's all being grabbed by the by the by the lower funel so that is that is the engine when then you find the right balance between those different elements that optim the the overall uh the overall the overall thing what is the right balance well it depends on the maturity of the market uh I mean I think the more mature the more you will be able to do some upper funnel the less mature the more you focus on the on the conversion on the conversion itself so it

all it's there's no one truth you know it's uh it evolves you know it's a living animal you know what's the hardest thing about constructing a growth engine it is the measurement framework that's for sure you know uh you live in a world especially in Tech where people do things that they can measure right there's always this bias you know there's always this bias and at the end of the day your competitive Advantage will always come from your ability to measure more than your competitors because then suddenly you're going to do that so for example

at King what we cracked we cracked the TV measurement framework way before everyone and therefore we were the only company running TV what do you mean you crack the TV measurement framework so we were able to have some some good level of attribution of between TV and the downloads and to get to be able to really know um how much we could attribute to our TV activities and and and because we managed to get that then we were one of the very first companies to actually make to make that work which this is a very

good example the other good example uh is IOS Performance Marketing on iOS after scan and you have companies that know how this works and therefore they can measure it and therefore they can scale and you have all the other ones that I mean are really struggling and so at the end of the day they spend maybe two three times more on Android versus iOS you know which is a nonsense you know when should you start thinking about building a growth engine at the very very very beginning all right at the very very beginning because you

know what you what because the growth engine is not only paid marketing you know I include Varity you know VAR the the whole variety aspect is part of the growth it's part of the growth engine this is the even below the lower funnel you basically high verality so you need to build to build this the this block super super early on and then you start going into the lower funnel and then you and then you and then you go up given virality baked in should growth teams be part of product teams should they be stand

that is a very good uh a very good question I think the way I like it um I like it to work is that the product team builds the build the the variety engine and um growth operates it so you build something that is um that you can um parameter you know with parameters and then you let growth playing with it you know because uh usually growth will have better analytical framework to measure the ROI and the efficiency of it a while product will have a better product vision and ux aspect into building it so

they build the experience and growth operates it what are the most common ways that growth engines break down I think it's when you start um bringing a little bit of belief I think the less you believe in the better it is you know I have no belief in anything you know I have no belief in anything you're so French but like it's it's true you know because what does that mean have no belief in anything well I don't necessarily believe more in brand than in influencers than in this and so on you know I mean

I mean whatever works works for me you know and uh and I think there there are some people that believe in things and then you know what formula one it got to work we got to be on a Formula One Wing it got to work it's like why yes maybe I don't know sure yeah fine but like you see like this is I think this is where it starts to break down is when you come up with just like but this kind of goes against everything that we're told of like the courage of your conviction

and being opinionated and standing for something and playbooks the I mean the value of experienced operators is they bring a Playbook Antoine so they know what works yeah but you see for example I mean I've so I've brought my playbook from King to revolute but I've significantly changed it what did you change most well so for example the upper funnel I was never a big fan of a perel I thought that was very difficult sorry I'm really naive I'm a v c for a living what what is in the upper funnel that's uh the brand

marketing let's say so the brand marketing I was not sure about what that was bringing and so on neither is the brown marketing team hoping no one notices uh and um and then I came I came at revolute and we did not start it at all with any brand marketing and so on and now and now we're testing it we're doing more of it and it really works what do you work necessarily at do you know it works and do you know what bit works yeah yeah yeah I know I mean it really works it

really works but but the hard thing is do you know whether it's being on a billboard or being on an F1 car that works because the attribution is limited how do you know it works so because we um uh you have multiple ways to look to look at it so what we do in airport which is pretty cool is that so we do the advertising on jet Bridges and so on you know if you if you've been to Rome airport and so on for example we've launched something really cool there but next to it we

put vending machines so you have vending machines in the airport to collect your revolute card so you just go on the vending machine you press the button and you just get the card you know so it's Anonymous I mean unlink card you just take it you scan the the the the QR code creates the account and then the the card is automatically linked and that then I can really link all my activities and get a huge Roi from what I do wow I mean that's yeah that's pretty good for attribution it's pretty cool right but

it's the same you know like as well we do a lot of um we do some influencers and so on you know but like what matters is how you manage your attribution you know and I think we're pretty good at at getting the attribution done and knowing what works what doesn't work many things don't work and then but at least I know what works and what doesn't work what's been the biggest flop like oh I think I mean we've been quite lucky um I mean there's been some influences that just didn't work at all like

I mean it was the early days and we tried to to to to do something that we thought was cool and so on I think doing some Big Brand campaigns uh with um with some let's say some celebrities that just not necessarily um super good with social media let's put it this way uh that just doesn't work you know so it's you you just learn you know you just learn that that is hilarious okay so what did you change then from the King Playbook you said there about kind of apple funnel and I interrupted you

saying what is the upper funnel what did you change from that Playbook with King to revolute yeah so investing more in this uh in this in this brand campaign was was the big thing and really identifying the ability that the brand marketing can improve your conversion metrics I think that was that was quite that was quite an Insight which has worked which has worked really well and this that is making us uh do uh do do more of it can what's in the mid funnel this is where I mean at least the way I I

see I look at it it's the place where you can um you can run some level of attribution but uh you have a strong uh Halo because of the high reach that you get and you can develop as well some deeper content so Performance Marketing is basically banners and or super short videos you know like six seconds and so on so you don't really build anything in terms of uh let's say product awareness brand uh uh consideration like cability and so you don't build any of that so what you say is that you you do

you do play the full right away you play the full funnel because you have a big branding impact but you are ringue generator right away you know which is the exact opposite as the formula one thing where there's no Revenue there's nothing you know it's like it's pure brand and so on but and that's what I call a bit mid funnel it's activities that help you do a bit of everything like suddenly you do some brand but as at the same time you do conversion and you drive and you drive Revenue you know so you

kind of take it all and then sorry lower funnel lower funnel is what specifically it's mostly like Performance Marketing Affiliates uh the referal program you know and stuff like that you know this is where you really drive and you have a full attribution meaning you know exactly what you pay for and so in growth teams are that people who are specialized in each segment do you expect people to be skilled at all three no no no no I'm a strong believer of specialist uh that people should be experts in what they do and generalist uh

markes are um are are good in managerial positions but not at doing things necessarily you know and that's why we have people who are experts in mid funnel experts in lower funnel experting up per funnel and so on but very very few people have another site of of of all of it very few people when you start a new market I think one thing that people don't see enough is just I mean ravalo is crushing internationally crushing when you start a new market does that whole funnel start again like what does that growth plan look

like yeah you start from scratch you start from scratch again and so on and uh do you notice it gets easier to acquire customers with each subsequent Market or not well it all depends on how connected is the market with the previous ones like you know like for example if if tomorrow I was to launch I know in Taiwan it would be difficult you know like things will take more time it all depends on the on the on the type of market and the proximity with where revolute is because obviously our brand is getting bigger

and International N and so on so there are some Market where we're not in but we already we already have some awareness you know you said the Brand's getting bigger it definitely is does CAC get lower over time as brand amplifies Word of Mouth increases or does it get higher as you saturate target market and you move to the fringes of your ICP well I think it's actually both so so because it's exactly that it's exactly that it's really those two you have those two factors playing against each other and it's about which one is

stronger than the other and then uh and then unfortunately it really depends on the market you know so some markets the brand is becoming so big that actually you start getting more organic and it's becoming like super organic and then the the the the growth and J is fitting itself and then it just goes While others and it's linked as well to the amount of competition that you have in the market where actually because you have um a diminishing return curve where it suddenly gets more expensive expensive to get the next one and the next

one and the next one so I think it really depends on the on the competitiveness of the market I I think the other thing that's so smart though it's like there's less of a focus or Reliance on CAC if you can expand the other end of the funnel which is your L TV yeah I mean that's why I I mean I don't believe in CAC you know like and that was the first thing that yeah yeah I mean that's the first thing that I brought from King because at King we never talk about CAC you

know why this is all most growth teams and marketing teams talk about I yeah but there's no CAC discussion at we only talk about Roi because if you if you only if you talk about CAC you'll always acquire the worst cohorts because you just always go downhill you know so what I've done by I mean arriving at revolute is that I increase C significantly but I improveed Roi significantly too so because what you realize is that you're not here to get the cheapest users you're here to get the best users and sometimes you you got

to pay more you know and you need to get you need to get as granular as possible and you may have some channels you know I don't know like for example Tik Tok and so on where you I mean the the maybe the the cohorts you get from there are not as good as what you can get for example from Instagram or other places so the cak is irrelevant C is irrelevant you know because I if I was to give CAC targets then we would only do maybe Tik Tok for example and that doesn't make

any sense right because I I won't get my I won't get get my a ey so so we never look at KAC is that hard for a team to adjust to uh no I don't I mean I I don't think so I mean it's uh it's only about it's only about you have to stomach that for a while which is kind of interesting cuz you have to accept paying higher cxs without seeing the higher Roi for a little bit of time yeah but I mean the thing is because because because we go gradually you know

I mean like like very quickly if you build good analytical models you know very quickly whether the cohost you're acquiring are the good ones how do you know I mean and that's why the growth is exponential because today I know a lot more than a year ago or than two years ago so my models are better so I know better where the good Cort are and how much I'm ready to pay are those models transferable on a country bycount basis yeah yeah they are really yeah I mean why I mean why would London versus Birmingham

be closer than London versus Paris there's no reason because I mean we the the country definition Beyond language is completely arbitrary sure I didn't know if like London versus Brazil could be different Brazil has very different ways of paying for things they have different ways of bulking payments yeah I mean that's fair that's fair you adapt your model depending on the product that you sell you know we're not selling the same product necessarily in the same market so you can cut it down at the product level but then at the end of the day if

it's a debit card it's a debit card and if it's FX it's FX how do you choose which markets to go to well we want to be everywhere so you know it's just like I like like the objective for us is to be in every single Market you know so we don't really I mean we don't say we want to be there and not there no we want to be everywhere so we just take the list and we try to see which ones are probably easier quicker and so on but at the end of the

day we want to be we want to be everywhere which Market was the worst or hard first and what did you learn from it I think it's interesting because I had the same I mean if I park China obviously which is a is a very different Market it's quite a difficult one I can imagine yeah it's not an easy one to get your hands around when yeah it's only a billion to come on NE found mod so so let's park China you know for for for for a second and you see that's that's the thing

um that I've seen as well at uh my experience at King was the most important I think the idea of localization is completely overrated I don't believe in localization that we saw in in um in at King it was the same creative working globally everywhere with one exception Japan Japan is different I have to say Japan is a different Beast you know so but the rest is the same you know it's one Global Market you know and I think that the the the consumer interest what people are clicking on is the exact same thing right

I mean I I mean I'm being a bit extreme obviously provocative here but like what I mean is that the extra uh performance you would get by being a lot more localized is not worth the effort and that's what we're seeing I mean like I mean at King and we see that the same you know at at revolute I mean we became number one in Romania and Norway with the exact same strategy the same I mean the same thing you know like and people say h it's Europe yeah but I mean if you've been to

Romania and Norway you would realize it's not exactly the same culture in the same country you know in many in many ways so yeah that's a bit people say the most important thing for revolute to prove out is its ability to be the primary account and the percent of primary accounts is still low how do you think about focusing on that versus being everywhere to everyone the strategy at revolute it's it's very simple you know obviously we want people to use us as a primary bank but we don't need to do we don't need everyone

to do it now you know it's a journey you know that's that's that's the big difference with let's say any other Banks when you decide to move uh from HBC to Barclays well you make uh you make a conscious decision that I'm moving there while revolute we're more we're like a snack you know so so you you want to take a bite you know so you try revolute and then maybe because you go on holiday you know and you need a car to go on holiday okay fine then you come back from holiday and say

oh well you know maybe I want to do a bit of uh trading and stuff you know I buy some ETFs and so so then you buy some ETFs so oh then I mean that's a bit of savings okay maybe I can put a bit of savings and then uh but I'm going to use it every and so and then and then you go little by little and then you reach a point may I mean for some people it can take six months for some people it can take three years and so on and you

say you know what I actually I have everything I need here you know and then I'm moving there you know so I'm not say I mean it's pretty much what happened to me actually and I started buying crypto rute I started trading on revolute and then I saw actually the interest rate options that you guys had on the premium premium I was like oh [ __ ] that's pretty good yeah yeah yeah so it's not I mean and that I think that's the but that's a really interesting change in the adoption of bank accounts totally

totally totally you don't we're not asking people say hey change Bank you're like encouraging promiscuity yeah but come and try us but you know come and try us you know have a try I mean you don't like it don't I mean it's fine just use it maybe when you go on holiday and that's fine you know that's fine and then maybe at some point I'll be able to convince you with some specific product some specific anything that ultimately will take you there but like the idea is not to say okay by age2 2025 everyone will

have to be a primary no everyone takes at at your own pace you get there you know and and and and it's fine I think some people were kind of critical about crypto and what it did to numbers how do you think about that and response to that when they were like oh it caused a big spike the revolute dived into crypto yeah what's wrong with a spike I'm not going to try I everybody is happy with a spike right it's good I mean I think I mean crypto is it would be very oblivious to

say that crypto is not part of the financial world you know it is it is a core component you know of a financial products you know today and and as revolute we have the objective to be the One-Stop shop for any type of financial product you you got to have you got to have that so what's the Northstar metric for you then when you look at the numbers when you look at the analytics what's the like are we doing a good job determinant all right well we look at we look at uh three things i'

say obviously so the first thing is the volume of users you know that we're getting the second thing is the ROI at which we are acquiring them what's the payback what is the in in in months um and the last one is out of the people that are with us I mean bit on that Journey you know that I was explaining I mean how are they're progressing towards becoming being a primary user payback wise how's that changed over time it doesn't necessarily change um I think it's um I think again it it all depends on

on the it's a market by market thing in some ways but we are we're very standardized so it's very stable it's very stable we haven't changed much what's the hardest thing about your Ro to St Antoine it's a bit what I was saying about the living animal of the growth engine you know because so I mean we've built an engine that is working today but it doesn't mean that it's going to work forever you know so you need to progressively evolve it Pieces by pieces and that's very difficult you know when you know something works

and you need to keep iterating so that you make sure it keeps working and you keep being one step ahead of everyone you know and that's I think that's difficult you know it's a it's always this idea you know of the getting eaten from the back you know and you and and and you and you realize really late that actually you're gone you know and I think staying on top of it even though it's working really well never be compant about the success we have we rarely look back at revolute like um we we're never

happy about our success you know it's very rare we reach our targets you know we never reach our targets you know because our targets are much greater than what we that what we're achieving so I think it's do you think Founders today set targets the right way yeah I think so you do yeah I think so I mean I don't know old if you never set if you never set targets that can be hit does it not just lead to bad morale at the end of the day you know between the way this works and

the way Google does okas you know where we know I mean okas I mean you know the theory about AAS you should always be around 70 80% of achievement it's the same the same thing you know so you need to be ambitious but realistic so reaching 80% of your target that's good so but you know you said there about kind of making sure that you're not the cow that gets eaten from behind how do you do meetings with the growth team like what does that look like is it like a weekly brainstorm where like you

throw [ __ ] at the wall and get creative how does that look in terms of the ideation amongst the growth team yeah well we have a very it's extremely standardized extremely processed you know as everything at at Revol so we have a uh we work on weekly Cycles all right so in the growth team we have I don't I think it's 20 25 different teams you know 20 25 different teams yeah yeah yeah because we work as a matrix you know so you have the channel people and then you have the local people and

all of those are teams you know and then we run uh so I run weekly Business Review you know for all those teams so I meet all the teams every week um and those are mostly uh so obviously we review numbers but it's more like problem solving sessions you know we bring a problem and we try to solve it together there and then and then they have a week they solve it and then we we reiterate the week after we reiterate we reiterate I think the power of a very short Cycles is that there's no

time wasted in in presenting it's quite interesting because in the sense that if you had a meeting on I mean only once a month and so on you would actually spend I mean I mean we know how teams are you know they spend the the last two three days you know just preparing the presentation for the EXA it's a waste of time such [ __ ] while when you run it every week you're like I'm not I mean they're not preparing the meetings so you just start the meeting so okay so where are we at

and so on you know you prepare a lot less you know the the meeting and you just you just bring the the J board then you just bring the dashboard and you just you just look at it and then you just try to solve the problem you know with no specific preparation and then you iterate you iterate you iterate and then you get very regular feedback so you don't get surprised like you work on something for a month and then you get at some point say no that's not the right direction you need to go

so you course correct things very very quickly how many of these meetings do you have by 20 25 a week yeah 20 to 25 a week and they're half an hour each yeah you must be like constantly in these meetings yeah but then I I have only I don't I don't have adoc meetings so there's already a meeting for every topic so if you want to talk about something there is already a meeting for you to talk about it you know it's not like those agendas that look very different every week you know like my

agenda looks exactly the same I probably have my agenda until the end of year and mid next year and so on it's already set I know exactly what I'm going to do and then you just repeat repeat repeat repeat what do you still do in your agenda that you do not like doing I think I would have cut them already if it was if it was the case what's your favorite thing in your agenda I think those meetings I love those meetings you love those meetings because it's really problem solving you know it's really open

discussions you know with everyone and how many people are in the team on the other end well it depends depends on on but between 10 and 40 wow that's a lot how how do you do like Idea sythesis Idea discussion I mean [ __ ] you've got 40 people at sometimes on a call you know as well that's those meetings are important especially when we are remote working uh because it helps connecting you know we're connecting to uh to each other and it's the place where you drive the culture you know because even though you

may not participate in that meeting you see how it's happening you know you see the expectations you know you understand what we're trying to achieve and how we're trying to deliver and so on so it's a great way for you to understand how things how things are working are you able to be fully honest and true with all 40 oh yeah yeah yeah oh yeah yeah they can tell you yeah yeah I'm very I'm very transparent I think that's the power of of revolute and and that's the same I mean with Nick and so on

I mean like we are we are working in full transparency there's no surprising a r really Nick so indirect uh because if you take a decision and the decision is no uh and then and then you can appeal in a way you know to try to negotiate to make it yes like every companies do you know and then and then and then you add up time you add up those adoc meetings oh let's do another meeting to to really look at it and then do another one and so no if we say yes it's yes

if we say no it's no and then we move on and there are some Force positive you know into it you know there are definitely some Force positive where we may say yes and it should have been a no and we said No it should have been a yes so I'm not saying it's perfect it's not perfect at all you know but but at least we move a lot faster you know and yes there are there there's some cost in terms of false positive but it's a lot more it's a lot more powerful I was

thinking to Gustav at Spotify who's the CPO of spotify and he says you know talk is cheap so we should do a lot more of it and it's you know the power of debate and discussion in teams and it's just the flip side of this which is nope it's black or it's yeah because you don't add up time you go quicker and then yeah you not lose creativity no because you iterate so much that you create more you know like for example if I need to do uh if I need to do an ad but

then if I spend three months talking about it instead of a week well I might only run two ads a year Well if I only talk about it for a week I can run four a year so I can iterate more you know what I mean so I think yes maybe the Inception time is shorter much shorter you know so maybe yeah there's less uh uh discussion bouncing back and so bouncing IDs and so on uh but because you do a lot more at the end of the day you get you get more stuff done

I think from a creativity perspective it still works how do you think about revolute us the US is always the big Golden Nut crack everyone's tried it how do you think about how to crack the US yeah I mean obviously it's a different it's a different Market it's a lot more credit focused compared to Europe which is a debit is it's mostly I mean it's a bit more debit debit focused um it's interesting you know because when you look at it even local fex they're not that big no I mean your chime is probably one

of the biggest I mean yeah I mean cash up is but it's not that big you know when you consider the size of the US you know the size of poor I mean chime you know is probably a quarter of the Enterprise value of of revolute now it's funny I mean I I I think there is um a negative correlation between the maturity of the economy and uh and the penetration of fintech you know like take the other example uh Germany Germany like like like like there's no I mean like the penetration of Fitch is

Germany is extremely low extremely low you know as as well while why is that while if you look at the penetration of fintech in India or in Pakistan or in in some places in Africa in Indonesia and in all those places it's like way more mature you know you have a lot more you know from a ption perspective why you know it's a bit like um in telecoms you know in telecoms where the um uh the penetration of Mo of mobile actually went super high because ultimately what they did the jump generation they never built

any ADSL cable etc etc you know it's like you know what screw it we just jump L to the Next Generation you mentioned kind of the global element there of you know Taiwan and Indonesia and then Germany um you live in Barcelona and you have a remote team you very much believe in the power of remote teams y can you unpack that for me why so so not everything is good about remote first of all uh that that and that what's bad about remote what bad I mean like the human the the the human contact

you know I think as well I mean at some point you need to you need to be with people and so on especially when you're early on in your career and so on for some people it just doesn't doesn't work you know be alone at home and so on and I I really respect that and I think that's something that how often do you get together now once a year once a year yeah yeah okay so we do once a year meetups that's uh frequent that's really good for the loneliness pandemic well done Antoine um

so we have uh once of your meetups and that's the downside what what what why do we think it's great you get a lot more efficient in the way you're running meetings meetings are a lot more efficient when you run when you when you run things when you run things remotely meaning you can actually have meetings of 15 minutes or 30 minutes you know it works you know a meeting of 15 minutes remotely works in the real world it doesn't work a meeting of meeting of 15 minutes uh which means you have a lot more

efficiency you know in in this the second aspect I feel like it's a great equalizer uh versus physical meetings in the sense that dominant people get uh flattened out you know in a way by the video conference system you know what I mean like for example I do have I know I have a dominant nature where I sit in the room matters you know what I mean and then the presence you can have physically you know in a meeting room matters you know so in a world where um uh uh cuz we talk a lot

about diversity and so on I think the the the diversity aspect that is a bit overlooked is introvert versus extrovert and I think in the world of remote I think it gives a much stronger chance to introvert people more introvert people to have deeper impact in meetings compared to in real life you know like the system into where you raise a hand to talk while you can't you don't really raise a hand in a physical meeting you know like some people just don't get the opportunity to say what they want to say in a physical

meeting you know because it did not happen you know people people tend to cut off each other etc etc so sometimes the dynamic can be quite quite polluted while when you on the video conference you know like just raise you press the button to raise the hand and then people will let you you know uh speak in a very polite way and so on so I think that works really well I think that is that is that is the best invention for that I think I really think so do you not think that we need

to develop some social skills and say I'm so sorry Anan do you mind if I just jump in here actually I was thinking this like I think we we but it's not easy for everyone to say that no but you learn and you grow and you you that's how you do it it's like anything you learn by doing and we are creating an escape valve for people to not learn and actually the lessons for everything in life is in the cracks me and you come out of a customer pitch okay what say and on the

tube home you're like what did you notice about that what did we do well what did we not do well you never have the postm modems in a remote world ever well yes and no so because the way we work the postmortem because I so I have all my business review as I was mentioning but then I have the same ones as one ones with the lead of every single of those Business Review that I use as feedback session of the previous Business Review but then you got 50 meetings a week yeah so ultimately you

know it's it's a loop where I use Business Review where um I give a lot of my inputs you know in a way but I use my one ones to receive the feedback from what we talked about and that's this way I have a touch Point pretty much every other day with all my team leads etc etc you know whether it's in a meeting or whether it's in 101 and then we close the loop so that we do have the feedback loop you do with the lead but the 10 people beneath them who are all

work but they do the same on their side at their level you know and you think that's the same yeah I mean that's the objective yeah because is it right after the meeting as it's every week it's either before or after you know it's like because if it's one or two day before one or two day after it's like it's more you don't see as before or after it's just a cycle you know it's like it's like always on so then you you so you get always the feedback loop was in a problem solving interview

well it's it's like a case study you know we tell you okay I have this problem in our cas I mean it can be a marketing campaign etc etc and uh uh and then we ask the candidate what do you think the problem is and how would you solve it and so on so and has nothing to do with what you've done or seen in the past but it's more about how do you decompose and simplify the problem because at the end of the day every problem is quite simple you just need to slice it

at the right level of granularity so that suddenly a big problem just becomes 10 small problems and then you solve them one by one and then you get there you know and you don't try to find the Miracle Solution by being Einstein and super complexified no I mean there's no there's no need for that you know just do it simple do it keep it simple what are the biggest mistakes that you think people make in hiring in growth I think they hire uh generous people to run stuff so they end up running many things in

a pretty average way so it's better to do less and deeper than try to have a lot of breath and do many things in a just okayish way I think that's and then they higher growth managers which I I have no idea what a growth manager is they manage growth yeah but like yeah but what is growth what is growth is it variety is it Performance Marketing is it some brand marketing aspect what is it is it pricing is it well I mean you can do anything you know you said what is growth you know

when we Ching before you mentioned 10x or 100x the thing I'm never sure about with growth is like is growth's role let's try this big picture new product that's going to change reval forever or is it let's iterate on all of these little things that combined will add up to a big thing yeah so it's definitely the second one I'm a huge advocate of the second one I give you a very simple analogy you know look at uh you and Bol everyone remembers you and bolt all right uh but he was not winning by much

he was not winning by 10x he was winning by aund of a second and so on because he was able to optimize the departure this etc etc so he was not 10x better than everyone but at the end everyone thinks he was 10x better than you see what I mean and it's because growth is a bidding war all right it's a beating War it's about whether you're able to beat above everyone else you know on all the different channels you know at the end of the day so the question is how are you able to

be above everyone and how do you optimize every every single step so that you're the winner takes it all in growth The Winner Takes it all and that's why it's ultimately because you optimize every single part of either the funnel either the creative either your biding strategy Etc ET is every single element that's like small increment of 1% here 2% there etc etc that add up to put you on top of the waterfall and to take it all so people are wrong to think then that it is these kind of moonshot bats to dis Grace

I think so uh totally they fish for for the moonshot and so on while actually it's just down there being excellent in the execution in everything you do at the lowest level of grar and once you have everything that's why you know what I was saying if someone asked me what is the success of revolute it's a million things what if you not optimized with revolute yet that you need to optimize I think we're still very much at the beginning of uh um uh building our uh brand marketing I think we're still a very young

brand and I think that's that's probably the biggest work that we have ahead of us is to find the right way to position uh the brand and inspire people I think that's that that's the biggest what does great brand mean to you so first of all about brand uh the question is where does brand fit is brand a marketing thing or a product thing you know because a lot of people think about brand on marketing and I give you two examples out of sample of two which is king and revolute the brand was much bigger

before a single dollar of marketing was spent right so the brand had nothing to do with marketing I was a huge brand before putting any any Penny do not argue that it's both and I'll take yeah I'll take the iPod okay it's the way that it was boxed the way that it felt the scroll wheel the white silver the product but it was also the Brilliance of a th000 songs in your pocket the white background the beautiful pictures it was a combination that made it pop yeah yeah yeah I think it's um I think it's

in between I think in the early days it's definitely more a product thing and then it becomes with maturity a bit more of a marketing thing but I think we take too much of a shortcut putting brand in marketing and saying well you know what brand is marketing problem I think it's not about as you said is the user experience you know it's like how the product make you feel you know and so on and then what marketing does marketing is just an amplifier or a catalyst into it you know we just try to amplify

whatever it makes you feel I just make it bigger you know feel it more and so on but at the end of the day it's still the product that is starting the journey the brand journey is starting there what brand do you respect most today and why them I mean you mentioned Apple I mean obviously Apple is is a great brand because they've done uh uh they've done something that is quite amazing I mean apple and as well some of the luxury Brands like Lou Von and so on which is quite amazing that they've developed

a luxury positioning for Mass Market you see say Louis V is actually challenged most because of that I would say they have failed which is a bold statement but they have now gone so low and Tred to be so Mass Market that they've lost the high end Chanel is the best yeah yeah sh sh and Hermes are are fantastic transcend age and geography yeah absolutely absolutely but apple is the same in a way you know apple is super premium you know it's it's a luxury product let's face it I mean look at the price of

those of of those 3,000 for laptops it's like I remember when they were like 600 Quid yeah but yeah but and phones back in the days were not paying for they were part of your subscription but it goes back to the ROI though of like the phone has become so much more important it is your viewing device your TV in many respects your subscri your bank so the ROI to your point has gone up so much of a phone that the willingness to pay £600 yeah okay yeah yeah yeah but you know it's a new

I mean it's like a month of salary you know that's what it is can you imagine you know that's that that's what it is so I think that's that is i that's a month of salary but but it's it's crazy it's crazy no I I I totally agree with you and get you there is there anything that you think people [ __ ] up with brand like what are you watching out for yeah I think the the biggest [ __ ] up that I see is um especially more in the early days of startups is

that you have um you can you can hear Founders that say oh my product is great but then marketing is rubbish because they don't let people know how great my product is and I have no brand awareness so I need to invest in the brand and so on to to boost my growth and I I always reply well if your product was so good people would know about it you know you believe if you build it they will come I think investing in brand in the early days is the worst decision you can make because

you should just put it all in product early yeah you put in product and then you drive conversion and so on but starting building like top of the funnel and trying to build brand and so on in the early days I think it's a mistake I think it's a mistake so and and saying that what is hindering your growth is is your brand awareness I think is I think it's a massive I think is a mistake you know like there is a correlation between brand awareness and product penetration but you need to think about where

the causality is is your penetration driven by brand awareness or is your brand awareness driven by product penetration and in the early days I think the cality is the other way around and then at a later stage you can start because you need to open the funel and so on because you need to go into new segments because once you've highly penetrated one segment you need to go to another segment and then you can start using some brand marketing and so on to build something a bit different to continue the growth I think in the

early days actually your brand awareness is driven by your product penetration and not the other way around what product did you think would have the most impact that in the end ended up having the least I think I mean we launched the uh the the the the crypto exchange was a great was a great product I mean it's doing good but I did not really I mean it did not necessarily pick up the way we wanted uh yet but uh maybe yeah does anyone use the airport lounges yeah that works that works especially now as

part of the you know with the ultra uh subscription Ultra is like the premium PR this is like the 600 Quid a year one yeah yeah this is working that's working yeah that's working yeah I got one yeah especially I mean UK France and those markets it's working really well the best thing that you get from it well you get so you get this but as well you get better interest rates as well on some of your saving accounts you get uh a free subscription to to ft to uh to other type of services I

mean if you like playing chess chess.com platinium is coming for free and so on so get a lot of add-ons on top on top of that it's all for 600 qu a year all for 600 qu a year no but I mean I hope you got a lot of cash in your account cuz the interest premiums going going have to be big for that one but you get now as well we've launch ref points you know the Loyalty program you know which is giving you miles and so on and it's almost I mean it's much

stronger once you I mean depending on which plan you're on and that drives a lot of loyalty if work with Nick now for a number of years what makes him so good it's his uh resilience it's his ability to focus and it's his ability to uh really he has really the the he mastered the helicopter view where he's flying around everything and then when he sees the problem he lands and he LS you know and then he cracks it you know and then he goes deep deep deep deep deep and then once it's solded takes

off again flies around sees where there's another problem lands dig dig dig fix it and then starts again and that's and and keeps on going how have you changed as an operator working with him so well I've taken his approach of managing uh of managing my teams you know what what we what we said about beating them weekly yeah I mean like like the whole problem solving thing you know the whole we are all here to solve problems I'm not here to he I mean I'm not going in meetings to hear how good you're doing

which is what most meetings are about in corporate in the corporate world you know you get you bring the exact so that you do a nice presentation about how good your latest campaign was and then you move to the next one and then at the end I mean the Diary of an exac is just everyone is like wow we're amazing and so on and that's really not that is yeah of course it's important to see what's working well but I really want to know where the problems are and trying we can find a solution collectively

you know into into solving it you know I think that's that's the thing that is is very very powerful I love that okay listen I could talk to you all day so I'm going to do a quick firearm with you I say a short statement you give me your immediate thoughts that sound okay okay that's right so what tactics and growth have not changed over the last 5 years I think Performance Marketing is still the key what tactics have died to death I think Varity is a lot more difficult than what it used to be

I think people are less Keen to share compared to before before they were more keen on sharing to everyone I think it's a little bit different nowadays true iOS changes have made that tougher and they going to continue to make that tougher has Tik Tok made virality easier yeah but by I mean like me telling you what to do you know and so on you know through not just word of mouth but through that it's a bit more difficult what is the biggest mistake Founders make when hiring growth teams they hire generalist to do a

bit everything they should focus you've got a growth leader he comes to you and says Antoine I'm starting my new role tomorrow as head of growth what do you advise them the day before they start build the analytical framework before you start spending anything what would you most like to change about the world of growth I would change uh platforms that on the idea of uh I think there is a lot of [ __ ] on um on privacy where they use as well sometimes this pretext to just reposition their platform as a brand platform

and because it's brand just spend whatever you want and you don't track anything and it's better for them I think it's buit an ultimate one what product does revolute not have today that you would love to have well we're working on it I want mortgage you want mortgage wow that would be [ __ ] cool do you have student loans not yet that would be cool that would be really cool that would be really cool I agree is mortgages and student loans a game changer I think oh for sure 100% because whether you sell it

or not it's a huge perception shift are you worried that the banking license will inhibit speed I mean we're working with different banking license you know across the world we got the the one in Mexico and so on it's just business as usual uh final one what company growth strategy have you been most impressed by outside of revolute I would have said revolute I think new bank is doing really good why because they've managed to go very very very deep in a huge Market you know and I think that's uh that's quite remarkable what they've

done it's really really cool and now now they on Mexico they they are getting some some very nice growth but what they've done in Brazil is truly impressive listen and one I would love doing this thank you so much for putting up with my Prime questions and you've been amazing thank you