The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): How Revolut Acquired Their First 10M Users

Episode: 20Growth: How Revolut Acquired Their First 10M Users
Date: June 21, 2024
Host: Harry Stebbings
Guest: Val Scholz, Former Head of Growth @ Revolut

Episode Overview

In this deeply insightful episode, Harry Stebbings sits down with Val Scholz, who led growth at Revolut through their rocketship journey from 0 to 10 million users. The discussion offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at Revolut’s product and growth playbook, from engineering viral referral loops to hiring practices, designing scalable systems, and building a product-driven, high-performance culture. Val provides tactical, data-driven strategies, lessons from big wins and failed experiments, and honest advice for founders and growth leaders aiming to build category-defining companies.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. How Val Entered Growth and the Early Days (04:16 – 05:18)

• Background: Val started as a software engineer, learning about SEO through a friend, which gradually pulled him into growth/marketing roles. Early projects included finding creative ways to generate traffic, such as promoting mind maps externally.

2. Growth at Revolut: Focus and Referrals (05:18 – 09:46)

• Strategy Over Tactics:
  • “It's a lot better to do one thing, but do it really well than doing 10 or 100 things at the same time.” (Val Scholz, 05:27)
• Referral Playbook:
  • 90% of Revolut's B2C customers were acquired via referrals.
  • Product optimized so a new user could sign up and transact within 5 minutes, maximizing the likelihood they'd immediately evangelize Revolut to others.
• Speed and Loop Engineering:
  • The exponential power of referrals depends on time-to-invite: “If on average, I bring three people in, but it takes three years, it's really slow...If you get three people in every three minutes, you grow a lot faster.” (Val Scholz, 06:16)
  • Revolut focused on accelerating how fast new users would refer peers. At one point, they had to cap growth to avoid scaling issues.

3. Optimizing Onboarding and Use Cases (07:41 – 10:25)

• Uncovering Pain Points:

  • User drop-off wasn’t due to dissatisfaction, but because many saw Revolut as a "travel card." Users lacked a daily use case.
  • Solved by reframing the product as everyday banking and fixing technical onboarding blockers (e.g., identity verification, funding wallets in countries like Italy).

• Referral Incentives Evolution:

  • Early growth had no monetary incentive — just free Revolut cards.
  • “We were always quite cash-stripped… so we had to become creative on how we could still give value.” (Val Scholz, 10:01)
  • When cash incentives were added, higher amounts yielded better CPA, but keeping CAC low was key (about £9 at Revolut; compared to traditional banks at £250).

4. Product Expansion and Differentiation (10:40 – 13:45)

• Founder's Unique Insight:
  • Revolut’s genesis: Nick, a trader, frustrated by high FX fees when converting money abroad (“Banks basically ripped him off…”).
• Cross-selling Approach:
  • Used popular features (FreeFX) as acquisition drivers, then cross-sold new products (crypto, stocks, business banking) to an existing base.
  • Released premium/metal cards early on — “People wanted a bank card that actually looked like an iPhone... it was an ego thing.” (13:20)
  • Demand for premium cards massively exceeded expectations, with lengthy waitlists.

5. Growth Experimentation: What Worked and Didn’t (14:07 – 17:47)

• Experimentation:

  • Tried cafeteria card handouts at tech firms—hard to measure, so moved on quickly if results weren’t evident.
  • YouTube influencer marketing worked well — calculated cost per acquisition based on channel math, doubled down on anything with clear uplift until supply exhausted.
  • Monetization and LTV: Early UA modeled on cohort retention curves, focusing on recurring engagement with everyday use cases (direct debits, savings).

• Be Data-Informed, Yet Actionable:

  • “You have your typical rates, like what's your subscription rate?...then you test 3, 4 in different niches and see basically what works.” (Val Scholz, 15:49)

6. Diversification and Channel Strategy (17:47 – 22:24)

• Build Software that Does Your Marketing:
  • “Build software that does marketing for you... it scales exponentially...you need less people to get bigger results.” (Val Scholz, 17:47)
• Examples:
  • Paid marketing loops (PayPal, Uber), viral content/user-generated content platforms (YouTube, Pinterest).
  • SEO/content clusters: Canva dominates high-intent searches by massive in-house content creation and dynamic landing pages.
• Diversification Timing:
  • Double down on the first successful channel; be cautious diversifying too early as it increases noise and makes accurate attribution harder.

7. Hiring and Building the Growth Team (22:24 – 32:40)

• When to Hire Growth Leaders:
  • “A head of growth makes sense once you demonstrate product market fit.” (Val Scholz, 22:48)
  • Prefer to grow ambitious, unproven talent internally—“rough diamonds”—rather than hired ‘growth veterans’ (few want to do it twice, it's a seriously intense job).
• What Makes Great Hires:
  • Don’t just test on conversation—“Do they understand deeply, did they really drive results?”
  • Key qualities: smart, driven, ambitious, hungry; “We can teach skills, but not attitude or mindset.” (Val Scholz, 26:38)
  • Look for hard evidence of impact, fast learning, preferably a technical background (e.g., computer science).
• Testing & Onboarding:
  • Take-home tasks based on hard, real-life challenges (“...as hard as possible and as close to reality as possible.” 30:17)
  • Hiring signals: look for structure, problem-solving, progress from feedback—not perfect solutions.
  • Quick gut sense if it’s not working (“If I can't make it work after four weeks, yes [I let them go].” 31:59)

8. Culture: High-Performance, High-Pressure (32:40 – 36:40)

• Environment:
  • “Revolut is like that company that's at the 0.01%...It’s like a SpaceX or Facebook...it's more cutthroat. Like either you perform, or you’re out.” (Val Scholz, 32:42)
  • Perfection and speed in execution are core values—“Anything you do is perfectly executed at all times at the maximum speed.” (Val Scholz, 45:37)
• Feedback/Iteration:
  • “The more cycles you have, the faster you learn.”
  • Weekly reviews optimal for learning speed; direct exec/founder involvement accelerates team development.

9. Founder Impact and Leadership (36:17– 38:28)

• Nick’s Approach:
  • Deep involvement (80+ weekly 1-on-1s)—transformation through “intense” feedback cycles, truth-seeking, and logical rigor.
  • “You can always go to Nick and say ‘look, that's wrong, here's the data’…he’d listen and change his mind if persuaded.” (Val Scholz, 37:19)
• **Culture of ‘Truth’ over ego—relentless pursuit of best answer, rapid iteration.

10. Scaling Pain and Systems Breaking (38:28 – 41:08)

• Hypergrowth:
  • Teams scaling from 2 → 150 in 9 months, whole systems rebuilt every few months.
  • “Everything breaks...the way you communicate doesn’t work anymore...we couldn’t upgrade to a bigger database anymore...” (Val Scholz, 38:38)
  • Referral campaigns could 32x new users in 3 days—created huge operational bottlenecks (KYC, support) requiring temporary shutdowns.

11. Data Strategy and Analytics (41:08 – 43:23)

• Conventional vs. Centralized Data:
  • “Most companies use event-driven infra (Mixpanel/Amplitude), but that’s not your source of truth.”
  • Built a central warehouse combining all sources (transactions, marketing) via UserID, enabling full-funnel, cross-channel economics and insight.

12. Best/Worst Growth Decisions (43:23 – 44:01)

• Best:
  • Launching free card referral campaign: “Generated 180,000 signups in a week; prior weekly run rate was 10,000.” (Val Scholz, 43:26)
• Worst:
  • Building P2P payments for customer acquisition—“didn’t do anything.” (44:01)

Notable Quotes

• “You want to go in a market where you don’t have competition...The best founders, they find these markets, they find these unique insights.”
  — Val Scholz, 00:00 & 47:11
• “The bigger you get, the easier you get disrupted…You want to go in a market where you don’t have competition.”
  — Val Scholz, 47:11
• “It's a lot better to do one thing, but do it really well...”
  — Val Scholz, 05:27
• “Build software that does marketing for you. It scales exponentially.”
  — Val Scholz, 17:47
• “Hiring: you can teach skills, but not attitude or mindset.”
  — Val Scholz, 26:38
• “Anything you do is perfectly executed at all times at the maximum speed.”
  — Val Scholz, 45:37

Timestamps for Major Segments

• Val’s entry into growth: 04:16 – 05:18
• Referral strategy deep dive: 05:27 – 09:46
• Onboarding and use case discovery: 07:41 – 10:25
• Product expansion and innovation: 10:40 – 13:45
• Growth experiments and influencer playbook: 14:07 – 17:47
• Scaling and failures with growth loops: 38:28 – 41:08
• Data infrastructure: 41:08 – 43:23
• Lessons on hiring and culture: 22:24 – 36:40
• Best/worst decisions: 43:23 – 44:01
• Advice for underdog founders: 47:11 – 48:33

Memorable Moments

• Explosive Impact of Referrals:
  Rolling out referrals in Romania spiked daily new users from 2,000 to 64,000, overwhelming KYC and support.
• Product-Led Community Pressure:
  “At some point, it becomes uncool if you don’t have Revolut… group pressure to get Revolut.” (19:22)
• Hiring for Hunger:
  Val's preference for younger, less-experienced hires with exceptional drive—a self-replenishing talent pool prepared to work extraordinary hours.
• Culture as High-Performance Sport:
  “Either you perform or you’re out... There’s a reason why they are elite clubs.” (32:42)
• Market Selection As Strategy:
  Outpacing Monzo by targeting Poland and Romania where no challenger banks were present.

Final Rapid-fire Lessons (44:06 – 50:11)

• Founder Mistake: Not using your own product daily.
• Dangerous Growth Myth: Can’t build true product-led business starting with paid channels.
• AI’s Impact on Growth: Short-term increase in spam, outbound automation; sustainable value will return to fundamentals.
• Changing Minds: Val questions whether the internet as we know it will even exist in 20 years if ‘robots’ become our real-world interface.
• Underdog Advice: Win markets with little/no competition—leverage unique insights and execute where the giants are absent.

Featured Company Shout-outs

• Nubank is praised for its stunning 90%+ retention and unique product-market fit in Brazil—“their product is so sticky, it's insane…they have like 100 million active users.” (Val Scholz, 48:40–49:43)
• Revolut vs. Monzo: “Monzo’s just a modern bank. Revolut is a financial ecosystem.” (45:06)

Summary for Founders and Growth Teams

Revolut’s pandemic growth wasn’t magic; it was rigorous focus on:

• Engineering lightning-fast, easy referral flows,
• Building truly differentiated product features,
• Relentlessly hiring for hunger and raw ability over traditional experience,
• Constantly reinventing systems to match scale,
• Putting world-class founder talent at the heart of daily iteration and review,
• Entering markets where competition and noise were low, and
• Letting data drive all decision-making—building the infrastructure for it even if it’s technically tough.

If you’re a founder or growth leader, ask yourself:

• Are you making referrals truly seamless?
• Are you focusing on markets where you can be 10x better?
• Are you hiring for attitude, not just CV?
• Is your culture more sport or science?
• Are you really collecting and acting on deep product and funnel data?

This episode is a masterclass in modern fintech growth—worth both detailed study and repeat listening.