Revolut is hiring founders for its fintech startup pod shop
Pod shops in the hedge fund world can be lucrative. Independent teams of varying sizes run their own "mini hedge funds"; those that do well thrive and those that don't are disbanded. Revolut is engaged in the fintech equivalent of this strategy, where small pod-like teams work on product 'bets.' It's hiring proven entrepreneurs to make them.
Revolut is currently searching for some more of these 'entrepreneurs in residence.' The digibank is looking for people with multiple years of experience as a founder, preferably backed by a notable VC firm, with experience of building teams of ten or more. Revolut wants these entrepreneurs to "identify, launch, and scale new products (new bets) at 10x speed."
What are 'new bets' at Revolut?
Speaking on the 20VC podcast late last year, Revolut CEO Nik Storonsky revealed how Revolut handles these 'new bets.' Storonsky said, "if you look at the past three years, we've launched, I think, 27 bets." He said five of those have worked out great, five haven't worked at all, and the other 17 or so are "somewhere in the middle."
If a product idea is approved to become a bet, a team of roughly ten is built, then given a year and half to get the product up and running, usually costing ~£2.5m. These teams have a PnL that they manage and, if they manage it well, they're able to hire new teams to build new features for the product. Storonsky said his current favourite bet is in equity capital markets.
If a bet is one of the many in the middle, Revolut doesn't scale the team, but it may bring in new leadership to revive it. The entrepreneur in residence listing says that new hires will either build a new bet from scratch or "[lead] the turnaround of an existing non-performing bet."
Revolut decides which of these bets to pursue via a committee "of people who've done it before." These entrepreneurs in residence, in addition to leading one of those bets, may end up on the committee too. Storonsky isn't keen on red tape, however, and bets don't need unanimous approval; he says that Revolut will still launch bets even if the committee is "mixed."
Revolut's head of new bets is Emil Urmanshin. He founded Roomp, a tech startup for the hotel industry, as a fresh graduate, then joined Revolut's CEO office three years later in 2019. Urmanshin, now a partner at the bank as of this January, said via social media that the fintech "started hiring ex-founders 6 months ago and our first two team members are already leading new verticals with $100m+ gross profit potential." Storonsky said on the podcast that the money generated by this portfolio of bets is "just amazing. It's exponential."
When teams at Revolut grow, they grow quickly. UK CEO Francesca Carlesi told Bloomberg today that, in the eight months since it acquired a UK banking license, Revolut's UK banking team has tripled in size to 100+ people, and will double once more to 200 people by the end of the year.
Revolut declined to comment.
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