00:12:57 · Dmitry Zlokazov
[00:12:57] S0: to provide the best possible product in every country of presence, we need to have necessary licenses. In Europe, it means that we need to launch local branches of our European bank. For example, a branch for France, a branch for Germany, or a branch for Italy. To launch a branch, you need to fully comply with all necessary regulation. You need to you need to report necessary data on customers to various regulators and authorities. You need to register with local payment systems. And each of these things, they have a lot of projects nested within. We have a very lean team, just a few people, who need to scope everything and do it at the scale of, like, of 50 countries. Right? So the way we do it is we go very deep on example of each of these projects. For example, we launched a branch in Ireland. We launched a branch in Netherlands. Then we reverse engineered what was the the best process to do it. And then we went back up on top level, and we said, okay. But what's the what's the ideal framework of doing it at scale? And then we formalized it into a process, really like an algorithmic process with steps and quality gates and SMEs and, like, which... What people do we need to hire and how how soon do we need to start doing that before we want to launch a new country. And then so it's not only going deep, but also being flexible, you know? And, like, doing this switch between zooming in very deep and then raising on the on the level of of helicopter view, and then understanding, okay. So this seems very, very complex in details. But then when you zoom out, like, how can we simplify it and build a robust process around it, which is scalable? And that's something that we have to do a lot.
00:15:05 · Lenny Rachitsky
[00:15:05] S1: As you're talking and we go through this chat, I'm keeping kind of track of what I think is most contributing to your alumni product owners, product managers becoming so successful. So a couple things so far that I think are probably contributing to this is one is just having a lot of ownership over what they're building, which leads to building skills to start companies and become leaders at other companies. So these product owners that you have are just, like, own a lot and are essentially GMs of the... Of whatever product they're working on. And then there's this depth and complexity where you have to really get good at understanding a problem really deeply. I imagine many of these people go on to work on something like that later somewhere else because they've spent all this time, or they just get really good at dealing with complex, many layered problems. So Yeah. Is there anything else just kinda along those lines as I say that that you think is important?
00:15:54 · Dmitry Zlokazov
[00:15:54] S0: I would probably add an obsession with building Wow product. Wow. W o w. W o w. Cool. And, you know, I think in fintech overall, this is probably the most neglected part usually. But it's also a part that we at Revolut we pay enormous attention to. So it's not only... You know, when you when you do a trade in the app or when you send money, it's very important for it to be very fast and cheap process for you so that you don't pay a lot of fees. But we also pay a lot of attention to look and feel of the app, and how smooth it is, and how frictionless the process. Not only we invest into reducing clicks and optimizing funnels, but we also want people to feel that we really cared about them. We also want people to feel that we love our customers and we applied extra effort to... For the product to look great and feel great. And I hear this a lot from our customers. Like, the the the app is something they really love, and it helps them solve their problems. It's at least one of the ingredients of of the company's success. And I think people that work at Revolut, they built habit of, you know, paying attention to these small nuances, small details that make the product lovable. And then second is handling this context because, you know, like, it's a lot of details where you need to dive, but there are also a lot of dimensions where you need to dive into different details. Right? And I think this ability to keep this large context in your mind and consider second order effects and view subjects from multiple angles, I think that this is also a very important skill that people usually train at Revolut.
00:18:04 · Lenny Rachitsky
[00:18:04] S1: Okay. Cool. So we have three three bullet points on the on the ingredients of great product managers slash owners that you guys incubate. On this Wow piece, which I love, how do you operationalize this sort of thing? I imagine a big part of it is hiring people that are really good at this and value building lovable products. Is there any way you kind of have a process around making sure the things you ship are wow and lovable?
00:18:27 · Dmitry Zlokazov, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:18:27] S0: Two things that you need to understand about how Revolut operates is that we operate in small lean teams that are tasked to build products. And as I mentioned, like, and having end to end responsibility for products. And usually, they're the ones who build it from zero, and then they they they grow in and develop in this product. And then another thing is that company is very flat, and hierarchy is very flat. We still have our founders, Nik and Vlad, very hands on, going down to details for every product and every part of the business. And every week, they have product reviews with every team, giving an opportunity to every product owner present directly to CEO and CTO and show what team... What what increment has team achieved in the last week, but also get steering from founders, which is super valuable. So essentially, founders of the company, they still review 100% of screens that have been shipped. And everything that you will see in the app, this this past this review, and there are a lot of eyeballs that were, you know, scrutinizing this and thinking of all possible edge cases and nuances that we need to consider to make sure that every single customer will be happy in this product, in this flow. [00:20:02] S1: That seems to be a consistent theme in products that are incredible, as the founders are deeply involved in in the experience and review everything. How many how many product owners are there at Revolut? Just to give people a sense, by the way. [00:20:15] S0: Oh, I'm afraid to say it's already more than 150 people, maybe 170.
00:20:15 · Dmitry Zlokazov, Lenny Rachitsky
[00:20:15] S0: Oh, I'm afraid to say it's already more than 150 people, maybe 170. [00:20:20] S1: Cool. That's that's what I would expect. And then you said that there's kind of these three types. There's kind of like the eng type, the PM traditional type, and there's the data product owner. When you hire the UX type of product owner, do they... Is their previous role usually a product manager at another company? Yes. [00:20:38] S0: But I would say that not necessarily it's a very experienced product manager. Well, maybe even it's way more important to have this hunger for building things, you know, and having a raw intellect. And we always try to find people with these intrinsic traits rather than hiring people who are very experienced, but maybe are not super excited about building things. [00:21:13] S1: What percentage of your product owners come from internal transfers from other functions? [00:21:18] S0: It's a quite substantial part of product owners who eventually become very successful, by the way. So it's like a positive self select. So it means that someone already succeeded in another role. So it's a guaranteed culture match. It's guaranteed domain knowledge. And then they simply grow. Usually, it could be operations managers or engineers. They grow into someone who now manages the team. And that's why it's a very successful path.