How Revolut trains world-class product managers: The “local CEO” model, raw intellect over experience, and a cultural obsession with building wow products | Dmitry Zlokazov (Head of Product)
Dimitri Zlokhazov, Global Head of Product at Revolut, shares how the company cultivates top product leaders by emphasizing ownership, deep problem-solving, and building "wow" products. He discusses Revolut's unique hiring strategy, focusing on raw intellect and hunger over extensive experience.
Deep Dive Analysis
11 Topic Outline
Introduction to Revolut and its Global Scale
Revolut's Unique Product Owner Role and Responsibilities
Three Types of Product Owners at Revolut
The Obsession with Building 'Wow' Products
Revolut's Contrarian Hiring Philosophy
Direct Customer Connection and Feedback
Dmitry's Deep-Dive Management Approach
Revolut's Diverse Product Ecosystem and Growth Ambition
Framework for Launching New Products Successfully
Lessons from an Early Career Product Failure
Lightning Round and Final Advice for Product Leaders
5 Key Concepts
Product Owners (Revolut context)
At Revolut, Product Owners are central to the company's growth, holding end-to-end responsibility for their product, business metrics, and customer satisfaction. They function as 'local CEOs,' running cross-functional teams, defining roadmaps, contributing to high-level strategy, and relentlessly executing to ship products and achieve results.
Wow Product Experience
This concept emphasizes Revolut's deep attention to the look, feel, smoothness, and frictionless nature of their app and processes, beyond just speed and cost. The goal is for customers to feel genuinely cared for, with extra effort invested in aesthetics and user experience to create a lovable product.
Raw Intellect and Hunger
Revolut's primary hiring criteria, prioritizing intrinsic traits like a strong urge to build and solve problems over extensive prior experience. This approach seeks individuals who are highly excited about creating, fast-moving to address customer pain, and thrive in autonomous, high-growth environments.
Schlep Blindness
A concept describing the tendency to avoid difficult or 'gnarly' problems, thereby missing significant opportunities. Revolut actively embraces complex challenges, such as navigating diverse country regulations and payment systems, viewing them as key areas for massive growth and disruption.
99% Done is Closer to 0%
This mentality stresses that a product is not truly finished until it's fully integrated, supported, and understood by all relevant internal teams (e.g., customer care, sales, marketing) and is delivering its intended value to customers. It underscores a relentless focus on execution beyond merely building core features.
8 Questions Answered
Revolut is a finance super app that challenges traditional banks in over 50 countries, offering services like savings and checking accounts, crypto, investing, and mortgages, initially launching as a multi-currency card to save users from high foreign exchange fees.
Revolut utilizes small, lean, fully cross-functional teams led by 'Product Owners' who are end-to-end responsible for their product as 'local CEOs,' with engineers, data analysts, and designers reporting to them for task definition.
Revolut has three types of Product Owners: UX Product Owners (focused on consumer-facing design), Technical Product Owners (deeply involved in technical details, often former engineers), and Data Science Product Owners (hands-on with data, often former data scientists).
Revolut's founders, Nick and Vlad, remain highly involved, reviewing 100% of all shipped screens weekly, providing direct steering to every product team, and meticulously scrutinizing details for all possible edge cases.
Revolut prioritizes raw intellect and an unquenched hunger to build things over extensive experience, often finding success with internal transfers (e.g., operations managers, engineers) or tech co-founders from startups.
Senior leaders, such as Dmitry, select 7-10 of the most impactful projects to deep-dive into (even to code level), which signals company priorities and fosters discipline across other autonomous teams, who are aware they might be next for an in-depth review.
Revolut employs a 'new bets framework' where anyone can propose an idea with a strong business case and customer problem. They form a lean team to build a highly polished first version for a small user base, ensuring it delivers a 'wow' experience before scaling it across their extensive customer base.
Dmitry learned that investing heavily in hardware without a proven business model and sufficient customer readiness can lead to failure, highlighting the importance of staying lean, validating ideas, and carefully considering the business's run rate before scaling.
16 Actionable Insights
1. Empower Product Owners as GMs
Give product owners end-to-end responsibility for their product, business metrics, and customer happiness, as this fosters skills crucial for starting companies and leading other teams.
2. Master Deep Problem Solving
Train product managers to delve very deep into problem details, even reading code, and switch between zooming in and out, to simplify complex issues and build scalable processes.
3. Obsess Over “Wow” Product Quality
Pay enormous attention to the look, feel, smoothness, and frictionless nature of the app, as this makes the product lovable and helps cut out uncertainty about product traction.
4. Prioritize Raw Intellect & Hunger
Hire individuals with raw intellect and an unquenched hunger to build things, even if they lack extensive experience, because they are more likely to drive change and thrive in a fast-paced environment.
5. Founder-Led Product Reviews
Have founders review 100% of screens being shipped weekly to scrutinize details and ensure every customer will be happy, providing valuable steering and maintaining a high-quality bar.
6. Strategic Deep Dives for Leaders
As a senior leader, choose 7-10 most impactful projects to go “super deep” into (even to code level), as this sets a standard for meticulous execution and builds discipline across other autonomous teams.
7. Direct Customer Communication
Build direct communication channels to customers (e.g., easy access to user panels for interviews/surveys) to capture nuances, emotions, and unfiltered feedback that might be lost in delegated research.
8. Build “Wow” MVPs Quickly
For new products, assemble a small, lean team to build the first version very quickly, but ensure it’s “wow” and polished, not scrappy, to eliminate uncertainty about whether lack of traction is due to the idea or poor quality.
9. Get Things Done Relentlessly
Adopt a hands-on approach, understanding that the most important things often require direct action and relentless focus on execution, recognizing that “99% done is closer to 0%.” This includes ensuring customer care and marketing teams fully utilize new features.
10. Found a Startup for Steep Learning
To boost your career and achieve the steepest possible learning curve, consider founding your own startup, as it forces you to work in all different areas and get things done.
11. Invest in Scalable Platforms
Invest heavily in building a scalable platform from the get-go, avoiding custom solutions, to enable small, lean teams to ship new products rapidly across many jurisdictions.
12. Unblock Teams by Driving Consensus
Product owners should be able to unblock their teams by driving stakeholders to consensus and getting necessary decisions made, ensuring value is shipped to customers.
13. Source from Loved Products/Companies
When sourcing talent, look into products and apps you love, as people who built great products are likely high performers; also target good schools.
14. Promote Internal Transfers
Encourage internal transfers from other functions (e.g., operations, engineering) into product roles, as these individuals often have guaranteed culture match and domain knowledge, leading to successful product owners.
15. Utilize Wealth Protection Feature
Enable the ‘wealth protection’ limit in Revolut settings for transfers outside the app; if a transfer exceeds this limit, it requires a video selfie check, adding an extra layer of security.
16. Embrace Planning, Not Just Plans
Remember the motto ‘Plans are worthless, but planning is everything,’ emphasizing the importance of thinking many steps ahead and thoroughly planning, while remaining flexible and agile to changing circumstances.
5 Key Quotes
Revolut values way more raw intellect and this unquenched hunger to build things rather than experience.
Dmitry Zlokazov
If something is 99% done, it's closer to 0% rather than 100%.
Dmitry Zlokazov
So essentially founders of the company, they still review 100% of screens that are being shipped.
Dmitry Zlokazov
By forcing everyone to build a product that people will love, we kind of cut out this part of uncertainty.
Dmitry Zlokazov
Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (quoted by Dmitry Zlokazov)
3 Protocols
New Bets Framework for Product Launch
Dmitry Zlokazov- Anyone (product owner or other) can propose a new idea.
- Proposer must demonstrate key elements: market existence, a solid business case, competitive advantage (leveraging Revolut's assets), and the specific customer problem being solved.
- Obtain a quick green light for the idea, facilitated by hands-on founders.
- Assemble a small, lean team to build the first version of the product.
- Iterate and gather feedback, but do not scale the product before it is fully polished and delivers a 'wow' experience.
- Ensure all relevant metrics (e.g., retention) are positive and the product meets the high-quality bar.
- Scale the product, leveraging Revolut's 50 million+ customer base for rapid traction.
Deep Dive Management Approach (Dmitry's Method)
Dmitry Zlokazov- Identify 7-10 of the most impactful projects for customers at the current time.
- Go 'super deep' into these selected projects, including sitting with engineers and understanding details down to the code level to grasp underlying issues.
- Use this deep involvement to understand the team's modus operandi and ensure quality.
- Signal current company priorities to other teams through this focused attention.
- Foster discipline across all teams, as they understand that if they are not proactively executing at the expected level, their project might be the next area of deep leadership focus.
Revolut Branch Launch Process (Algorithmic Framework)
Dmitry Zlokazov- Go very deep on an example of a specific project, such as launching a bank branch in a particular country (e.g., Ireland, then Netherlands).
- Reverse engineer the most effective process from these successful examples.
- Zoom out to a helicopter view to identify the ideal framework for scaling this process across multiple jurisdictions.
- Formalize the process into an 'algorithmic' framework, including detailed steps, quality gates, Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and staffing requirements (e.g., who to hire and when to start before a new country launch).