Revolut 如何培养世界级产品经理:本地 CEO 模式、原始智力与打造令人惊艳的产品
How Revolut trains world-class PMs: The “Local CEO” model, raw intellect & building wow products
Talent Selection: Intellect & Drive
Dmitry Zlokazov: Everyone is striving for talented, skillful, smart people. Revolut values way more raw intellect and this unquenched hunger to build things rather than experience.
Meet the Guest
Lenny Rachitsky: I hear one of the ways you approach early products differently is you guys invest a lot in actually making it good.
Dmitry Zlokazov: It’s not getting traction. Is it because the underlying idea is wrong? Or maybe your product just sucks? By forcing everyone to build a product that people will love, we kind of cut out this part of uncertainty. We can cut down the product in terms of functionality to just most critical features, but we will never compromise on the quality and UX and the aesthetics.
Companies Breeding the Best PMs
Lenny Rachitsky: Is there anything that you’ve figured out about just how to set up new products for success?
Origins of Revolut
Dmitry Zlokazov: If something is 99% done, it’s closer to 0% rather than 100%.
Scaling the Company
Lenny Rachitsky: Today, my guest is Dmitry Zlokazov. Dmitry is global head of product at Revolut, which is a finance super app offering customer savings and checking accounts, crypto, investing, joint accounts, even mortgages. Not only was it last valued at over $60 billion, but in the research that I’ve been doing into which companies hire and incubate the best product managers, Revolut was right at the top alongside Palantir and Intercom. And so in our conversation, we dig into what Revolut has learned about producing and hiring great product leaders, including a focus on ownership, having people solve really painful and complex problems while making the experience wow and lovable by users. Also indexing towards hiring really smart and driven people early in their career versus people with a ton of experience in the space and so much more. If you’re looking for a job that will accelerate your product career or want to help your product team level up, this episode is for you.
If you enjoy this podcast, don’t forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. Also, if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter, you get a year free of Linear, Superhuman, Notion, Perplexity, and Granola. Check it out at lennysnewsletter.com and click bundle. With that, I bring you Dmitry Zlokazov.
There’s also Stripe’s Optimized Checkout suite, which is a plug-and-play super optimized payment flow that natively supports over 100 global dynamic payment methods. There’s also a product called Link, which is an accelerated checkout experience built specifically to increase your checkout conversion. Every single one of the Forbes top 50 AI companies that have a product in the market today use Stripe to monetize it. Half of Fortune 100 companies use Stripe. $1.4 trillion flows through Stripe annually, which is equivalent to over 1% of global GDP. Use Stripe to handle all of your payment-related needs, billing, manage revenue operations, and launch or invent new business models. Learn more at stripe.com. Dmitry, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.
Dmitry Zlokazov: Hi, Lenny. I’m happy to be here.
Three Types of Product Leaders
Lenny Rachitsky: As you know, I’ve been doing a bunch of research into which companies hire and create the best product managers, and I’ve been triangulating this across a bunch of different data points. I’ve been looking at which companies alumni product managers get promoted most when they leave the company, become chief product officers at the highest rate when they leave the company, become the first PM at a startup, also start their own companies. And when I triangulate it across all these different data points, there’s three companies that are kind of sat at the top, you guys, Revolut, Palantir, and Intercom.
Clearly you guys are doing something really special. I don’t think a lot of people, especially in the US know a ton about Revolut, and so I’m really excited to have you here. I’m really excited to basically extract as much wisdom as I can from you about what you guys have figured out in helping in hiring and training product managers. So I want to actually start with giving people a slight understanding of what is Revolut. I think a lot of people in the US especially don’t know much about it. So what’s the simplest way to understand what you guys do?
Dmitry Zlokazov: Revolut challenges banks in 50 different countries and it all started 10 years ago in London. So maybe let me give you a bit of a context, especially for someone based in the US, it’s important to understand that European banking landscape is very diverse. In the US if you travel from state to state, things are different, but for example, you always pay in US dollars, right? In the UK you pay in British Pound. If you travel to mainland Europe, you will pay in Euro, but if you go to Switzerland, you’ll pay in Swiss francs. If you go to Sweden, you’ll pay in Swedish Krona and so on and so-and-so. Overall, there are 25 different currencies and every time you were traveling and paying in a different currency, banks were charging you exorbitant fees on top of terrible foreign exchange rates, and that’s when Revolut launched as a multi-currency card and people loved it.
They loved that Revolut was saving them 50 or 100 euros, but even more so they loved the transparency and simplicity of the product and that’s why when we started rolling out more and more products based on those principles, they were quickly getting trust of people. They were quickly getting traction. So that’s how P2P transfers appeared, and then frictionless crypto buying and withdrawal to a bank account appeared. And then more and more products created products, savings products and so on.
Deep Details and Big Picture
Lenny Rachitsky: Awesome. And then just to give people a few kind of scale of the company, how many employees are there roughly? I think the last valuation something around 60 billion. I don’t know if you can even comment on that, but just what are some numbers real quick for people to understand the scale of the company at this point?
Dmitry Zlokazov: The headcount is not something we’re trying to increase, to be honest. Actually Revolut tries to stay as lean as possible, but I think it’s just that our appetite for growth is so big that I think we’re currently at maybe 6 or 7,000 employees.
Obsession with Wow Products
Lenny Rachitsky: Wow. Okay, cool. So let’s get into what you’ve learned about building an amazing product team and also hiring an amazing product team. So first of all, you call your product managers product owners, and when we were chatting through initially it was like, “Oh, I see. It’s just like a big scrum business,” and they just have all these product owners who many times on this podcast people have talked about that’s not actually a product manager, but that’s not at all how you work. So in this context, product owner’s an actual owner. Talk about just the story behind why you call your product managers, product owners.
Overlooked FinTech Experience Details
Dmitry Zlokazov: Yeah, it’s not a scrum term for us, it’s just our take on emphasizing how ownership is important, really. So product owners are central to the company and its growth. They are end-to-end responsible for the product, for this part of the business, and for their customers to be happy. And for that, they do really everything. They run the teams, they define which roadmap we need to build to improve certain business metrics, and they also contribute to high-level company strategy, but then most importantly, they execute on it relentlessly and they are ultimate responsible for the product to be shipped and achieve results.
Executing the Wow Factor
Lenny Rachitsky: There’s always this term of mini-CEO, PM as a mini-CEO, and it feels like in your context, that’s actually what you try to do with your product team is they’re essentially mini-CEOs. They have a lot of power. I think engineers, designers report to them. Is that right?
Dmitry Zlokazov: Yeah, correct. Well, I prefer to say local CEO.
Founder Reviews Every Screen
Lenny Rachitsky: Local CEO. Okay, let’s talk about that. Yeah, yeah.
Dmitry Zlokazov: Yeah, but that’s true. So the way we operate, we have these fully cross-functional teams, meaning they’re staffed with all necessary functions, engineers data, analysts, designers, operational managers and so on. And we also operate in metrics. So everyone has a line manager and a functional manager. So product owner is always the line manager for everyone on the team, meaning product owner defines what they need to do, but then functional managers, they define how these things are need to be built and essentially with the right level of quality and so on.
Hiring UX-Focused Product Leaders
Lenny Rachitsky: I love this because it’s so fun just to learn about such different ways of operating. Another fact that I saw is that there’s two types of product owners. There’s kind of like a UX product owner, and then there’s a different like technical product owner.
Dmitry Zlokazov: We actually have three.
Successful Internal Transitions
Lenny Rachitsky: Three.
Dmitry Zlokazov: And the third type becomes increasingly more important. So the first type is UX product owners. Then there are technical product owners, and then there are data science product owners. So UX product owners are the ones who work on consumer facing part of the product. Usually they have a great taste for things and they understand what constitutes UX that will work and which things will not work. So they also have this expertise in the industry. Then tech product owners, they are the ones who delve deepest into details. Usually those are former engineers who grew into making decisions and driving business. And the data science product owners are usually former data scientists who decided to grow into management positions, but they’re still very hands-on.
And you know what? There are way more things that are common to each of these three specializations. So what we see sometimes is people just shifting them because I would say that what defines the specialization is probably 5, 10, 15% while 85 to 90% is common to each one of them. And those things are, so first of all, being a great problem solver and have a great linear thinking, but also have a creative approach towards nonlinear problems. Then building this context for customer and building empathy towards customer and translating it into the team.
Then going down to details very, very deep because in our domain there are no obvious things and you need to get to the root cause of the problem really, really deep to understand what will work and what will not work. And that means that you also need to be quite technical, even if you are an expert, you still need to often go as deep as sitting with engineers and reading code. And then I would also emphasize the importance of business acumen because we tend to measure and quantify product performance a lot. And you need to understand, okay, what things will we build that will drive eventually that business metric and that target?
Direct Connection to Customers
Lenny Rachitsky: So I love this idea of the product owners having to go really deep. I think a lot of people hearing this, they think they can go deep, go deep, really understand the details of what they’re working on. I’m curious if there’s an example that’s illustrative of just what you actually mean here.
Dmitry Zlokazov: For example, 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 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 of just a few people who need to scope everything and do it at the scale of 50 countries. 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 best process to do it, and then we went back up on top level and we said, okay, but 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 assay needs, what people do we need to hire and how soon do we need to start doing that before we want to launch a new country. Then, so it’s not only going deep, but also being flexible and doing this switch between zooming in very deep and then raising on the level of helicopter view and then understanding, okay, so this seems very, very complex in details, but then when you zoom out, 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.
Intellect and Drive Over Experience
Lenny Rachitsky: 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 of 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 own a lot and are essentially GMs 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 is there anything else just kind of along those lines as I say that you think is important?
Unconventional Team Management
Dmitry Zlokazov: I would probably add an obsession with building wow product.
Lenny Rachitsky: Wow. W-O-W?
Autonomy and Scalability
Dmitry Zlokazov: W-O-W.
Revolut’s Product Landscape
Lenny Rachitsky: Cool.
Dmitry Zlokazov: 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 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 in reducing clicks and optimizing finals, 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 for the product to look great and feel great. And I hear this a lot from our customers, like the app is something they really love and it helps them solve their problems. It’s at least one of the ingredients of the company’s success.
And I think people that work at Revolut, they built habit of paying attention to these small nuances, small details that make the product lovable. And then second is handling this context because 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. 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.
The Recruitment Process
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay, cool. So we have three bullet points 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?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 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, and having end-to-end responsibility for products. And usually they’re the ones who build it from zero and then they’re growing and developing this product. And then another thing is that company is very flat and hierarchy is very flat. We still have our founders, Nick 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 increment has team achieved in the last week, but also get steering from founders, which is super valuable.
Essentially founders of the company, they still review a hundred percent of screens that are being shipped and everything that you will see in the app pass this review. And there are a lot of eyeballs that were 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.
How New Products Succeed
Lenny Rachitsky: That seems to be a consistent theme in products that are incredible is the founders are deeply involved in the experience and review everything. How many product owners are there at Revolut? Just to give people a sense by the way?
Dmitry Zlokazov: Oh, I’m afraid to say it’s already more than 150 people, maybe 170.
No Rough MVPs, Just Polish
Lenny Rachitsky: Cool. 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 today, is their previous role usually a product manager at another company?
Dmitry Zlokazov: Yes, 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 and having the 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.
Advantages of Ecosystem Integration
Lenny Rachitsky: What percentage of your product owners come from internal transfers from other functions?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 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 a 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.
Forging Excellent Product Leaders
Lenny Rachitsky: So the other company on the list of top three companies that produce and hire the best PMs, according to the research I’ve done, Palantir. I just had someone that was at Palantir for a long time and we talked about exactly all the same questions. And interestingly so far we have kind of these three bullet points in terms of what product owners within Revolut get to do. There’s a lot of ownership, there’s a lot of depth and complexity, and there’s a lot of focus on wow lovable products. So interestingly at Palantir also tons of ownership, also tons of depth and complexity. The other ingredient that I want to ask you about is they also have this concept of a forward deployed engineer where they put an engineer in the office of the company they’re building the product from, they sit there building it for them with them.
And so there’s a lot of skills built in terms of understanding customer problems, talking to customers, getting empathy building, things like that. Is there anything you guys do or focus on around just like talking to customers, the way you approach having your product owners work with customers, understand problems, things like that that might be helpful for people to hear?
Driving Hard and Clearing Roadblocks
Dmitry Zlokazov: For us, it’s a bit easy to reach out to customers simply because the customer base is so big, it’s more than 50 million people and usually we ourselves are power users of the product. We receive our salary into Revolut and then we spend with Revolut, our friends the same. So it’s like a no-brainer to talk to people continuously and even if you are not proactive in it, they will reach out. If you have a problem in the product, I guarantee that we know about it very, very soon. We’ve also built tools for product owners and designers to have an easy access to a panel of users via different tools so that they can just start an interviewing process or a survey or a test of different designs in a few clicks.
For me, it was very important to build this direct connection to customers because when you delegate such an important thing as customer research and collecting their feedback to someone, you will get a refined filtered version. You won’t get these nuances of how people describe things, which emotions they feel like and so on, and where they think stuck. It’s very easy to lose all those important bytes of information in this process. So I’m a strong believer that it’s very important to have direct communication channel to customers.
Core Traits Valued in Hiring
Lenny Rachitsky: As you describe this, it’s funny how you guys are at the extreme opposite end of the spectrum from Palantir in terms of how easy it is for you to get feedback. They build stuff for the government and for Airbus where employees would never use a product like that or need a product like that. You guys are getting paid in Revolut using Revolut to pay for things and constantly in the product. And so I could see why there’s less of a need for something like a forward deploy engineer. Okay, amazing. Let’s talk about hiring then. Is there anything unique about how you approach hiring, sourcing, looking for people, what you look for in people that you think might be contributing to your alumni being so successful down the road?
Journey to Joining Revolut
Dmitry Zlokazov: I think everyone is striving for talented, skillful smart people and experienced people. Revolut values way more raw intellect and this unquenched hunger to build things rather than experience. So let me maybe bring an example. Imagine we saw this, you hire a great experienced professional with amazing regalia of achieving a lot of things, but then what I see in product, the adoption curve is usually longer than in other functions because product owners by definition are the ones who are the experts in that domain and in all those intricacies of how product is built and how it’s used. So what we see from these professionals is they still take a lot of time to ramp up and sometimes they also take time to adapt to new culture or worse, they just rest on their laurels. But you already have super inflated expectations and usually their compensation is by the way, quite high and which adds up to these expectations. And I myself, after conducting maybe 400 or 500 interviews with product owners at Revolut, I also see this.
Unfortunately, professionals with a lot of years of experience from established companies, they don’t have this strong urge to change status quo, which by the way will require toil, tears, and sweat. And that’s why even if a candidate doesn’t have a lot of years of experience, but they love building things, they’ve done it, they worked with engineers maybe by the way, maybe in their own startup or one of the best profiles that I’ve seen is a tech co-founder. So I think that’s probably the best way to boost career is to go and found something work in a startup, build things yourself or with a very small team, work in all different areas because in startup you have to work in all different areas. And then these kind of people, they really thrive at Revolut and even if they don’t have a lot of years of experience, they actually attack a specific problem.
They have a sense of what can cause customer pain, and they are very fast moving to solve it quickly and then that’s how they get appreciation from everyone around. The team starts respecting these people because they solve some specific problem and then they take another problem, they solve it and then they take another and that’s how they grow in the company.
Where Products Fail
Lenny Rachitsky: Essentially what I’m hearing is you hire kind of more junior or super high raw, intellect driven, passionate, how do you describe, hungry people? And this explains why so many people get promoted so much more that leave Revolut because they start their earlier in their career and you help them learn all these skills, ownership, depth, understanding, working in complex environments, building amazing products. So this all makes a lot of sense. Is there anything you figured out about where to find these people? Because this is the dream, hire amazingly smart people that are super driven that nobody knows about yet and then make them awesome. Have you found anything about where to source and find these folks?
Rapid Fire Questions
Dmitry Zlokazov: So the way we work, we have a weekly catch-ups with the recruitment team. So essentially they are also a team that runs in sprints. So every sprint we define what do we want to focus on, which areas, which companies. One of the great sources is actually looking into products and apps that we love ourselves. So if someone built a great product, then it’s likely a high performer. So usually we provide some great products in specific areas that are more important for us to the sourcing team and they just try to source targeting those companies. It could be also different areas. It could be even schools, like good schools. And so it varies from sprint to sprint.
Lenny Rachitsky: That makes sense. Gokul had this really good piece of advice, I think it was on the podcast, if not he tweeted about it, where you look at there’s successful companies, but then there’s also what function in that company is the key to their success. And so you want to go like a company A for sales, company B for customer support, company C for design. And so it sounds like that’s kind of the way you guys think about it a little bit. Yeah, very cool. Okay. I love how we’re uncovering and we’re uncovering this mystery.
Let me go in a different direction and see if there’s more to learn here. When it comes to running your teams, is there something that is kind of fairly contrarian in how you approach running the product team that is maybe not how other companies operate that you think is key to your success?
Dmitry Zlokazov: I’ve changed in how I operate after I joined Revolut probably because Revolut is a founder-led company and probably it’s because it’s self-led, and also because my role is quite spread across many things. So my role at Revolut is leading product function across company, but also leading retail, which is a core part of Revolut business. And it’s very easy to be spread thinly across all those domains and catching up with 50 or 70 projects that are being executed simultaneously, which would mean that you will just spend your entire week just catching up on statuses, not really adding value to anyone, but it’s also scary to not do it because what if there are some things going wrong and you won’t be able to stop it or steer in a better direction.
So I think that’s why also a lot of managers, especially in senior positions, they kind of stay high level and they don’t go very deep into details. But how we did differently at Revolut is to go very deep into details. We take maybe 7 or 10 projects which are most impactful for customers right now. And we go super deep into them, really, really deep sitting with engineers like reading code level and understanding, okay, how it’s built exactly and what’s the underlying issue. And you could think that, okay, but what about others? Let’s say 50 or 60 items that are being executed. But the thing is that it actually, it’s counterintuitive, but it works really well because first of all, teams, they talk to each other, there are formal and informal ways of communicating through meetups or just meeting in the office and they know which areas are being scrutinized right now and which team is being scrutinized.
And it also gives information on what are the current priorities in the company. But in addition, it’s signaled to other teams that if they are not proactively executing things on the expected level, paying attention to all the details and being meticulous in all those details, especially in quality, they will be the ones that will be reviewed to a such deep level, next phase, next cycle. So as a result, it also builds a great discipline. And since Revolut is such a high concentration of very ambitious people who thrive for being best versions of themselves and grow, and it’s very important for them to prove that they can deliver great things and build next great company. As a result, they do everything to operate autonomously. And when you start diving deep into details, you see that everything is fine, you see their modus operandi and you can understand, okay, if this team is on good track or not on good track. And if it’s not on good track, it means that it probably will be one of your next areas as of focus.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay. So what I’m hearing is you said there’s 50 to 60 things kind of projects being built at once.
Dmitry Zlokazov: Maybe closer to a hundred, actually.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay. Okay. So there’s like a hundred things happening at any point like features being built, products being launched, and this is you and the founders choose 7 to 10 to focus on, or is it just you?
Dmitry Zlokazov: No, it’s just me.
Lenny Rachitsky: Just you. Okay. And by the way, do you have a leadership team that you’re a part of with a design lead or is it just you basically at the top?
Dmitry Zlokazov: So the way it’s structured, my responsibility is a product function. We also have a head of design function. It’s also part of my team, but then all the other functions, they are separate like engineering and data function, and all of them report directly into a CEO.
Lenny Rachitsky: Got it. Okay. So out of a hundred things you choose, here’s the 7 to 10 things I’m going to go deep on. These are the things that matter most to the business that if they don’t go well, it’ll have the most downside. And then you basically said you sit next to the engineers, you get really involved in every detail.
Dmitry Zlokazov: Yeah, correct.
Lenny Rachitsky: Awesome. Okay. That is definitely counterintuitive. We had Brian Chesky in the podcast and the way he approached this problem is he just cut down how many things happen at Airbnb because he wants to be involved in everything. And so I think it’s cool to hear a different approach where we can still do a lot of stuff, but I’m going to choose, I’m going to go deep on the things that matter most.
Dmitry Zlokazov: No, I think we’ll never cut down things, it’s just the appetite for growth and also entrepreneurial approach in the company is so high that we’ll never allow ourselves to give up on some great opportunities, but also this approach is way more scalable. So while leadership and obviously founders themselves keep everyone accountable, go deep into details, it doesn’t mean that they micromanage everyone. That’s actually a very important thing. So the ideal position for any product owner is to be fully autonomous. And again, it doesn’t mean that you will never be challenged, but if when you’re challenged, you can show all the logic behind decisions you’ve made behind the roadmap. And even if metrics are not yet there, you will still let’s say have this credit of trust to keep building things the way you want to build them. Eventually, yeah, you will be presenting the outputs of your activity on these weekly product reviews, but again, it’s not a micromanagement either. It’s more like, let’s say a last line of control to make sure that what we’re building all makes sense and that’s value and is thoroughly thought in all details.
Lenny Rachitsky: And then you said still every screen that is shipped, the founders review at some point, so it’s not like someone’s shipping stuff without the founders seeing it in some form.
Dmitry Zlokazov: Yeah, yeah, exactly. They have a full overview over everything, but also it allows us to build so many things because there is actually little micromanagement. If founders had to be involved into everything, they had to cut things down. But by giving people autonomy, they actually boost company growth. And as a result, I think Revolut is a strong outlier in the industry in terms of how many products being shipped and how fast they shipped. Another thing here is what I mentioned previously is us investing heavily into platform so that every solution is scalable from the get go so that we don’t have any custom solutions. And for example, take our credit team, they ship new products like loans or credit cards in the country literally every month. And it is just maybe 300 people. And I think that a credit division in an incumbent bank is maybe 2 or 3000 people building just credit products for a single country.
And our team is building it for 50 countries. And yeah, it’s enabled through this approach with platforms which we build on top of small lean teams which are fully equipped with necessary functions and also have autonomy in defining what they’re building and the flat hierarchy with everyone being accountable and founders having direct view of everyone and intervening if necessary.
Lenny Rachitsky: I’m going to give people a list of the things you guys do. I didn’t do this at the beginning because it would take too long, but you talk about all the products you’re building and all the things that’s going on. So I have a list here. It’s probably incomplete, but just to give people a sense, so you guys have credit cards, debit cards, savings accounts, multi-currency accounts, domestic international transfers, joint accounts, minor accounts for less than 18 years old, stock trading, cryptocurrency purchasing, loans. Is there anything big I missed?
Dmitry Zlokazov: I mean, some of those things are a huge by itself, let’s say stock trading. It’s not just stocks, it’s also ETFs, bonds, and we’re working on tax efficient accounts in different countries and crypto. We also allow staking crypto for example, we have on-ramp, off-ramp products, we have acquiring products. On credit, we have loans, we have a buy now per later product, we even launched mortgages. We launched first mortgages in Albania recently.
Lenny Rachitsky: And then all of these across 50 different currencies and countries.
Dmitry Zlokazov: Yeah, 50 different jurisdictions each with its own regulation, with its own requirements.
Lenny Rachitsky: Oh, boy. It’s a good example of Paul Graham has this concept of schlep blindness or schlepping where people want to avoid hard problems, but that’s where the big opportunities are, solving really gnarly, painful problems. And that’s basically what you guys did.
Dmitry Zlokazov: Yeah, that’s one of the things that excites me maybe the most at Revolut. The market is so big and there are still a lot of very inefficient players, and as a result, customers have a lot of problems that are unsolved. While we grow insanely and I think will soon be… When I joined, we had maybe just slightly north to 20 million customers. Now we are 50 million customers. Soon we’ll be at 100 million customers. The degree of surrounding each customer with the ecosystem of our products extends a lot. So they become more and more people start using Revolut as their main bank account. They start receiving their salary into Revolut, holding their savings into Revolut because they love the product more. And so we can easily do another, I don’t know, 2, 3X, 4X in customer base growth, but we can also do another 10X growth in how actively these people are using the product. So it’s let’s say what, 30, 40X to current, 45 billion valuation. Right? So it’s a like a trillion-dollar company easily.
Lenny Rachitsky: And on that note, I mean what I’m hearing is it’s still a good time to join. There’s a massive upside. So I know you guys are hiring, we’ll just note that real quick. You’re hiring product owners and a bunch of other roles, I imagine?
Dmitry Zlokazov: Yeah, yeah. Well, as someone who owns the product function, I’m especially interested in product owners obviously, but we hire a lot of roles. I think we have maybe 3 or 400 open positions currently.
Lenny Rachitsky: Oh my God. Okay. I want to talk a bit about new stuff that you work on. So new products that you decide to invest in. Is there anything that you’ve figured out about just how to set up new products for success? Because a lot of the stuff we’ve been talking about is staying on top of stuff that you’re iterating on and making better. What have you learned about just helping new products succeed?
Dmitry Zlokazov: Yeah, so we launched quite a few products that you actually maybe wouldn’t expect from a bank starting with crypto that was insanely successful, but also non-financial services like booking a hotel through Revolut app, our loyalty program, rev points, which is sort of disrupting European market where people don’t get great benefits from spending with card. In the US you can easily get, like what? 2% cashback with a credit card or in some sort of point. In Europe they don’t have it. And we are actually the first to build a program on card spend rewarding people with really meaningful or monetary rewards. In the manner that I described. We understood, okay, what’s the recipe of this success to then scale it and reproduce? So we built a new bets framework and essentially everyone can come up with a new idea. It could be a product owner, but it could be anyone, and they need to show some key important things which you usually can expect from a startup like market is there, business case is there.
We know that we can do it way better than competitors leverage and for example, some things that we have obviously some concepts of product and then what customer problem we’re solving and so on. And there is very little bureaucracy, again, thanks to having founder hands-on, we can easily get a green light on anything, start launching it quickly. What we do is assemble same lean team with just a few people to build first version and then iterate and iterate. And the main thing here is to build first version very quickly to get feedback, but then not scale it before you polish the product. But then after we make sure that all metrics are fine, retention is great, we start scaling it. And the good news is that it can be instantly multiplied by our 50 million customer base and get great traction. So for example, one of the products that you mentioned, joint accounts essentially an account that you could have with a significant other one was one of the recently launched feature and it grew significantly and now it has over a million active users.
Lenny Rachitsky: I hear one of the ways you kind of approach these early products differently is you guys invest a lot in actually making it good and not just like a scrappy MVP. Does that ring a bell? Does that resonate?
Dmitry Zlokazov: Indeed, that’s what I may be meant by keeping your first version narrowed down to a small user base. But even in this case, we still make sure that the product is well. So no one is excluded from this requirement of building a super polished product. It takes time, but it pays off. The thing is that when you launch a scrappy version and it’s not getting traction, how do you know? Is it because the underlying idea is wrong or maybe your product just sucks and you need to improve it? So by forcing everyone to build a product that people will love by building a wow product, we kind of cut out this part of uncertainty. So bottom line, we can cut down the product in terms of functionality to just most critical features, but we will never compromise on the quality and UX and the aesthetics.
Lenny Rachitsky: An interesting advantage you guys have that I’m realizing as you talk is most of the stuff you launch is stuff that is clearly something people will want because it’s stuff that they get other places, but they get the advantages of it being integrated into all the other features and products you have. So it’s like a cryptocurrency product. It’s kind of like, okay, yeah, people would love a great cryptocurrency product built into this or joint accounts. So there’s almost like a benefit of just like, okay, the people will want this, now let’s just make it work really well with everything else we got and not hurt. You almost don’t need to be the best at every product, although it sounds like you still try to be the best.
Dmitry Zlokazov: But we must be the best. Yeah, a hundred percent.
Lenny Rachitsky: But there’s also, if you don’t have the best joint account, but all the other stuff is awesome, people are like, “All right, it’s fine. It just makes my life easier.” But tell me what I might be missing because-
Dmitry Zlokazov: So I think there are those kind of table stakes that we’re building that anyone would expect from a bank. For example, savings account, right? It’s just a basic thing that if a bank is not providing savings account, you wouldn’t even consider it. But then we make sure that our rates are very competitive, if not the best. Then we make sure that there is no bad UX. Some banks, for example, they don’t allow you to withdraw instantly and there are delays or they don’t pay interest on daily basis. We will never do that. We will allow you if you want to move money out, you will be able to do it. You won’t lose any interest. And interest is being paid daily and this is a fully flexible product. And then on top of it, what I would call maybe some delighters is we will allow you to open the savings account in many currencies.
So we want to add different currencies because now interest rates are going down, so people might find it valuable to open a savings account in, for example, I know in Europe, Swedish Krona interest rates are higher than Europe, but it could be even something like Brazilian Real with 12% interest rate versus 2 or 3% on euros. And then as the cherry on top, there is this all that in an amazing, you have very smooth, you can set custom wallpapers, you can set goals, you can automate a spare change towards your savings and all those features. So there is an underlying basic fundamental layer that where you need to be just on par with competition, but then there are a lot of things on top that just make people love your product way more. And obviously there are a lot of synergies in between those things. So yeah, thinking of crypto, you can just receive crypto on your wallet and then you can just instantly convert it to cash on your account or just spend it with your card. How amazing can it be? Just buy a coffee with Ethereum.
Lenny Rachitsky: I love that. Okay, let me take this opportunity to try to summarize what I’ve learned from you so far in terms of what you guys have figured out about creating incredible product leaders. They go on to do wonderful things and basically one of the top three most successful companies at this. So there’s kind of these two buckets as I talked to you and the Palantir guy, there’s kind of like the hiring piece and then there’s what you do to help incubate this kind of forge for incredible product leaders. So in what you do internally, kind of the four bullet points I’ve got here is give people a lot of ownership. They’re essentially GMs of the product, the feature.
There’s a lot of focus on depth and complexity and getting really good at solving really gnarly problems. And then there’s a focus on building wow products, amazing lovable products that have a very high bar. And then there’s kind of a subtle point that I think is probably impactful here is just working closely with detail-obsessed founders or product leaders like you and learning from you all and just seeing the value and impact of being super detail oriented. On that bucket, is there anything else that you think is super core that I missed before we get to hiring?
Dmitry Zlokazov: Yeah, I would just maybe highlight the aspect of this going deep into details. There are two main streams. First is let’s say being technical, understanding how underlying systems work, but second is also building empathy towards customers. Understand the possible contexts and making sure that your product will satisfy each one of them.
Lenny Rachitsky: That’s a great point. So it’s actually understanding the bare metal of what is happening and how it’s possible, and then making the experience as simple and wowable as possible.
Dmitry Zlokazov: There is also a third aspect, but it’s a boring one and it’s complying with all possible regulations and making sure that your product will satisfy the regulator, but it’s also an important part of the job.
Lenny Rachitsky: What I get from that is just building patience with all-
Dmitry Zlokazov: I would say it’s actually being able to unblock your team and that sometimes require product owners to steam roll changes because it also means that you could easily get stuck with a lot of people just looking into each other and thinking, “Okay, can they approve it? Can they not approve it?” We try to innovate on it. We try to automate as many things as possible. We use even AI models for that, but it also requires a product owner to be able to get things done, just getting people down to consensus and understanding how your stakeholders, how to get them to the necessary decision and then blocking UTM so that eventually the value is shipped to customers.
Lenny Rachitsky: Awesome. So essentially it’s just getting done, plowing through blockers, dealing with many stakeholders.
Dmitry Zlokazov: Yeah. That’s always the most important.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay. That’s a great addition. I could see why that would be really helpful for folks that are trying to get ahead in their career. And then on the hiring piece, what you look for is raw intellect, drive hunger, passion essentially. Those are the first two. And then interestingly, non-senior, not people with a ton of experience in the problem space, more so focusing on intellect and hunger. Is there anything else in that bucket that you think is important that leads to people being really successful?
Dmitry Zlokazov: Most importantly, it’s again, getting things done, getting your hands dirty, and great product owners are very hands-on. They don’t think of themselves as managers who just give tasks to people and wait them to complete it. They just go and get things done and they understand that most important things they will likely have to do themselves, and they understand that there needs to be relentless focus on execution, and if something is 99% done, it’s closer to 0% rather than 100%.
Lenny Rachitsky: Whoa, say more there. Is the kind of insight there is just things seem like they’re 99% done, but they’re actually very far from being done?
Dmitry Zlokazov: Sometimes the product is built, but then product owners are the ones who also make sure that, for example, customer care team or sales and marketing team are using it to a full extent because without it, it could be just another useless feature, and no one knows about it.
Lenny Rachitsky: That is super cool. I like that mentality. Let me ask you something completely different. What’s kind of the story of you landing at Revolut? I know you had to move your family. It was a whole adventure.
Dmitry Zlokazov: My journey into Revolut actually coincided with me moving to the UK, so it was a completely new environment for myself. It’s a huge stress load for the brain as well. And it’s not only about using the other side of the lane on the road in the UK, but also it’s a lot of things, for example, in the industry, some concepts that I’ve never heard about, and actually I’ve never worked at FinTech before, so I also changed the industry. So it was a complete turnaround for me and for my career, but I was very determined and excited about it because everyone who I’ve been talking to, they were saying Revolut is like it’s top talent is at Revolut, all best product people are at Revolut, and I really wanted to be part of this great team.
Eventually it actually appeared to be advantageous for me because I also had this fresh view on things and even in the Revolut app, which is actually way, way better than other banks products. But even there I found some things that for me, because of this lack of context, they were not intuitive and I worked hard with the team to change that.
Lenny Rachitsky: Okay, great. I’m going to take us to recurring segment of the podcast. I’m going to take us to Fail Corner. So in Fail Corner, the idea here is people come on this podcast, they share all these stories of success, everything’s always going great, but in reality, things don’t often go great, and there’s a lot of things that don’t go right. Is there a story you could share where things went wrong in your career, where you failed with a product you were building or a moment in your career where things were looking really bad?
Dmitry Zlokazov: I think the most spectacular failures is probably were on the earliest stage of my career, which I studied back at university and maybe in my second year of university I started building some things, different startups, and one of them was actually a product that makes me proud even now because it was like what, 15 years ago? So 2010, meaning still no one really had even iPhones back then and me and my friends, we started building a website that allows people to buy tickets to the cinema so that they can skip the line so they don’t need to come in advance to select best seats and they can just buy a ticket online and go to the seats directly. Something that today seems as a commodity. Back then no one had it.
People were using pieces of paper and we built an end-to-end system because not only we needed to build a website, but we also needed to build hardware to scan those tickets, for example. And to have these tickets in digital format, we needed to hack SMS standard because again, people didn’t have smartphones. They had these Nokias and we were sending images, QR codes inside an SMS, which is like a hack of the standards in a way. And then we were scanning those things with our own devices and we built our own devices with scanners, and we actually created these beautiful devices made from stainless steel, which looked really nice inside the cinema halls.
And I remember how I was excited about it with my friends. We were like, “What an amazing thing.” It’s like, look, we are bringing future here, but we actually spent all our investment on this hardware and we were expecting that everyone will just rush into using our system. But it was a very low share of customers who started buying tickets online because people were not ready for it, which was growing quite slowly. And eventually we had to close it because we simply ran out of money because we spent all of it on this hardware without any proven business model. So something that currently looks like an obvious mistake back then, we were just enjoying building a product that we would love to use ourselves, which I think is the right principle, but it also was a very painful lesson. You need to stay lean, you need to validate things before you scale them. You need to think way more about the run rate of your business. So there were a lot of painful lessons for me. Since then, I also try to avoid working with hardware.
Lenny Rachitsky: I was just going to say that’s a common challenge for startups trying to get right into hardware, although I wouldn’t be surprised now if Revolut launches something another product, and this is a new product line of Revolut now that you’ve had that experience.
Dmitry Zlokazov: We launched a POS terminals required.
Lenny Rachitsky: All right, there we go. Dmitry, before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else that we haven’t touched on that you think might be really helpful for listeners to hear? Maybe a last wisdom nugget that you haven’t already shared, or even just something to kind of double down on that you’ve already shared?
Dmitry Zlokazov: No, I think that it was an amazing chat and thanks, Lenny. We covered a lot of different topics. I would just maybe summarize that if you’re excited to build certain things, never hesitate to do it. The best way to do it is probably your own startup, and it also what will give you the steepest possible learning curve, but then if you want to join a company, try to choose the one that has the highest entrepreneurial spirit and that will allow you to work as closer to a mode of a founder as you possibly can.
Lenny Rachitsky: That’s a recurring theme in these conversations I’m having with companies that produce the PMs that have the steepest career trajectory. And so that advice is exactly what I’m taking away from this too, assuming you want your career to accelerate really quickly after you go work at this company. Okay, Dmitry, with that, we’ve reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready?
Dmitry Zlokazov: Yes. Let’s go.
Lenny Rachitsky: Here we go. Okay. First question, what are two or three books that you’ve recommended most to other people?
Dmitry Zlokazov: The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. Actually read it quite some time ago, but I found myself recommending it to other product managers most often. It’s actually illustrative that to be a great product manager, someone needs to strive to being a great CEO. And besides this book emphasizes the importance of building systematic solutions and scalable solutions, which is critical for scaling a company. Also being honest on how important it is to grind stuff. And then second book is, I read it more recently, Build by Tony Fadell. I was really inspired by this one, especially given how I appreciate how it’s not easy to build hardware and what Tony was describing there is just super exciting and inspiring. And also I think that there are different archetypes of product managers. There are people who tend to disrupt things more. Personally I think about myself as a builder, so Tony’s principles that he highlighted in the book that they resonate with me a lot.
Lenny Rachitsky: I’m trying to get Tony on the podcast. If anyone listening knows Tony Fadell and can nudge him, “Hey, say yes to Lenny,” that’d be great. I’ve been in touch with his team, but he’s not doing podcasts right now, but I’m trying to get him on. Okay, moving on. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show that you’ve really enjoyed?
Dmitry Zlokazov: I think the last movie I watched was Oppenheimer and I really liked it. I always love watching biopics. I think they give kind of a perspective and let you think about things in perspective.
Lenny Rachitsky: Is there a favorite product you recently discovered that you really love?
Dmitry Zlokazov: Manus is a great thing.
Lenny Rachitsky: The AI agent?
Dmitry Zlokazov: Yeah. Yeah. It’s just like I was super impressed how… I was mesmerized. It’s so autonomous and smooth, and I just spent a few hours vibe coding and I created this JavaScript app that sends me a rare English word every day to learn and remember, and it worked, and I was just amazed.
Lenny Rachitsky: What’s a word you learned?
Dmitry Zlokazov: Ineffable. It was the yesterday’s word.
Lenny Rachitsky: I love that. It’s still going. That’s great. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to, you find useful in work or in life?
Dmitry Zlokazov: I love this phrase. I think Eisenhower said it, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” It’s like we often say how important it is to be flexible and agile and adjust to change in circumstances, but it doesn’t allow us to actually not have a plan at all. It’s important for us to remember that we always need to think many steps ahead and while being flexible, we also need to think things thoroughly.
Lenny Rachitsky: Final question. For folks that are maybe checking out Revolut for the first time that want to play with it or already users. What’s the most underrated feature? What’s something that you think people should check out maybe they’re not aware of, or even just like a UX, I don’t know, animation, something fun that people may not know about?
Dmitry Zlokazov: The thing that is not yet widely used, but I really loved it, is what we call a wealth protection. So if you go to settings, you can enable a limit for any transfers outside of Revolut. If you want to do a transfer above this limit, you’ll have to do a selfie check, which is our proprietary technology. We do a video selfie here. It allows us to make sure that it’s you, no one else is doing the transfer, and it’s actually almost as smooth as face ID and the way the team built it is really great. I’m really proud of those guys.
Lenny Rachitsky: Dmitry, you guys are doing something very special. I really appreciate you spending so much time with me chatting through all the things you guys have figured out. I think this is going to help a lot of different companies level up the way they think about product and for people to join Revolut that want to experience this and accelerate their career. So thank you for being here. Two final questions. Where can folks find you if they want to reach out and how can listeners be useful to you?
Dmitry Zlokazov: I think the best way is to find me on LinkedIn and yeah, I would be happy to receive a note from anyone on how we can improve the product and any feedback on the product. And also if you know someone who can be a great fit to Revolut after you’ve listened to what I’ve told, then yeah, I would be grateful for that as well.
Lenny Rachitsky: Awesome. You’re about to get a flood of applications. Get prepared. Dmitry, thank you.
Dmitry Zlokazov: Yeah, Lenny, thanks a lot. It was amazing time. Thank you very much.
Lenny Rachitsky: Same. Bye everyone.
Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.
Glossary
| English | 中文 |
|---|---|
| Chief Product Officer | 首席产品官 |
| delighters | 惊喜功能 |
| forward deployed engineer | 前沿部署工程师 |
| functional manager | 职能经理 |
| GM (General Manager) | GM |
| joint accounts | 联合账户 |
| line manager | 直线经理 |
| local CEO | local CEO |
| mini-CEO | mini-CEO(此处保留原文,因已作为专有比喻使用) |
| new bets framework | 新押注框架 |
| P2P transfers | P2P 转账 |
| PM (Product Manager) | 产品经理 |
| power user | 重度用户 |
| Product Owner | 产品负责人 |
| quality gates | 质量门禁 |
| Rev Points | Rev Points(Revolut 忠诚度计划名称,保留原文) |
| schlep blindness | 吃苦盲区(Paul Graham 的概念,指人们倾向于回避困难问题的认知偏差) |
| table stakes | 基础必备功能 |
| wealth protection | 财富保护 |
Reformatted by reformat_english.py
Revolut 如何培养世界级产品经理:本地 CEO 模式、原始智力与打造令人惊艳的产品
Dmitry Zlokazov
这是第 1/10 片,当前内容仅包含章节标题,无可翻译的正文内容。待后续片段提供后继续翻译。
访谈实录
人才选拔:才智与驱动力
Dmitry Zlokazov: 每个人都在争夺有才华、有技能、聪明的人才。Revolut 更加看重的反而是纯粹的智力和那种不可遏制的建造欲望,而不是经验。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我听说你们在早期产品上的做法有所不同,你们在真正把产品做好这件事上投入了很多。
Dmitry Zlokazov: 产品没有获得吸引力,是因为底层的想法有问题?还是因为产品本身做得太差?通过迫使每个人打造用户会热爱的产品,我们某种程度上排除了这种不确定性。我们可以在功能上精简到只保留最关键的功能,但我们在质量、用户体验和美学上绝不妥协。
Lenny Rachitsky: 关于如何让新产品走向成功,你有没有总结出什么经验?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 如果一个东西完成了 99%,那它离 0% 比离 100% 更近。
嘉宾介绍
Lenny Rachitsky: 今天的嘉宾是 Dmitry Zlokazov。Dmitry 是 Revolut 的全球产品负责人,Revolut 是一款金融超级应用,提供储蓄账户、支票账户、加密货币、投资、联名账户,甚至还有抵押贷款。它最近的估值超过 600 亿美元。而且在我研究哪些公司能够招聘和培养最优秀的产品经理时,Revolut 和 Palantir、Intercom 一起排在最前面。所以在我们的对话中,我们深入探讨了 Revolut 在培养和招聘优秀产品领导者方面的经验,包括对责任感的重视,让团队解决真正棘手复杂的问题,同时打造让用户惊叹和喜爱的体验;以及在招聘时更倾向于选择职业生涯早期非常聪明和有驱动力的人,而不是在行业内有丰富经验的人,还有更多内容。如果你正在寻找一份能加速你产品经理职业发展的工作,或者想帮助你的产品团队提升水平,这一集就是为你准备的。
(广告段落已跳过)
哪些公司培养最优秀的产品经理
Lenny Rachitsky: 如你所知,我一直在研究哪些公司招聘和培养出最优秀的产品经理,并且从多个不同的数据维度进行了交叉验证。我关注的是:这些公司的产品经理离职后获得晋升的比例最高、成为首席产品官的比例最高、成为初创公司第一位产品经理的比例最高,还有自己创业的比例。当我把所有这些不同维度的数据综合起来看,有三家公司稳居榜首:你们的 Revolut、Palantir 和 Intercom。
显然你们在做一些非常特别的事情。我觉得很多人,尤其是美国的人,对 Revolut 并不太了解,所以我非常高兴你能来。我非常期待从你这里尽可能多地挖掘关于你们在招聘和培养产品经理方面的智慧。所以我想先让大家稍微了解一下 Revolut 到底是什么。我觉得很多人,尤其是美国的人,对它了解不多。那么用最简单的方式来说,你们做的是什么?
Revolut 的起源
Dmitry Zlokazov: Revolut 在 50 个国家挑战传统银行,这一切始于 10 年前的伦敦。让我给你一些背景,尤其对于身在美国的人来说,理解欧洲银行业的多样性很重要。在美国,你从一州到另一州,情况会有所不同,但举例来说,你始终用美元支付,对吧?在英国你用英镑支付。如果你去欧洲大陆,你用欧元支付;但如果你去瑞士,你用瑞士法郎支付;去瑞典,你用瑞典克朗支付,诸如此类。总共有 25 种不同的货币,而每次你在旅行中用不同货币支付时,银行除了糟糕的汇率之外还会收取高额的手续费,Revolut 正是在那时以多币种卡的形式推出的,人们非常喜欢。
他们喜欢 Revolut 为他们省下 50 或 100 欧元,但他们更喜欢的是产品的透明和简洁。正因如此,当我们基于这些原则推出越来越多产品时,很快就赢得了人们的信任,迅速获得了市场吸引力。P2P 转账就是这样出现的,然后无缝的加密货币购买和提现到银行账户也出现了,接着越来越多的产品被创造出来——储蓄产品等等。
公司规模
Lenny Rachitsky: 太好了。为了让大家对公司的规模有一些概念,大概有多少员工?我记得最近的估值大概在 600 亿左右。我不知道你能不能谈这个,但快速给几个数字让大家了解一下公司目前的规模?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 员工数量其实不是我们想要增加的东西,说实话。实际上 Revolut 尽可能保持精简,但我们对增长的渴望如此之大,我想我们目前大概有六七千名员工。
Lenny Rachitsky: 哇,好的。那我们就来聊聊你们在打造卓越产品团队和招聘卓越产品团队方面的经验。首先,你们把产品经理叫做产品负责人(Product Owner),我们最初聊的时候我觉得,“哦,我明白了,就是一个大型的 scrum 企业”,他们有所有这些产品负责人——在这个播客上很多人谈到过,产品负责人其实并不等同于产品经理。但你们的工作方式完全不是这样的。所以在你们的语境中,产品负责人真的是字面意义上的”负责人”。聊聊你们为什么把产品经理叫做产品负责人的故事吧。
Dmitry Zlokazov: 是的,对我们来说这不是一个 scrum 术语,这只是我们强调”ownership”重要性的一种方式。产品负责人是公司和其增长的核心。他们对产品、对这部分业务、对客户的满意度端到端地负责。为此,他们真的什么都做。他们管理团队,定义需要构建怎样的路线图来改善特定的业务指标,他们也参与制定公司高层战略,但最重要的是,他们毫不松懈地去执行,并且对产品交付和达成结果承担最终责任。
Lenny Rachitsky: 一直有这样一个说法叫”mini-CEO”,产品经理就像 mini-CEO。感觉在你们的语境里,这确实就是你们在产品团队中试图实现的——他们本质上就是 mini-CEO,拥有很大的权力。我想工程师、设计师都向他们汇报,对吗?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 对的。嗯,我更愿意称之为”local CEO”。
Lenny Rachitsky: Local CEO。好,聊聊这个。
Dmitry Zlokazov: 嗯,确实如此。我们的运作方式是,拥有这些完全跨职能的团队,意味着团队配备了所有必要的职能——工程师、数据分析师、设计师、运营经理等等。同时我们也采用矩阵式管理,所以每个人都有一个直线经理和一个职能经理。产品负责人始终是团队中每个人的直线经理,也就是说产品负责人决定需要做什么,而职能经理则决定这些东西应该如何构建,本质上就是确保达到正确的质量水平等等。
三种产品负责人
Lenny Rachitsky: 我很喜欢这一点,了解如此不同的运作方式真的很有意思。我看到的另一个事实是,产品负责人有两种类型——一种是 UX 产品负责人,另一种是偏技术方向的产品负责人。
Dmitry Zlokazov: 其实我们有三种。
Lenny Rachitsky: 三种。
Dmitry Zlokazov: 而且第三种正变得越来越重要。第一种是 UX 产品负责人,然后是技术产品负责人,再就是数据科学产品负责人。UX 产品负责人负责产品面向消费者的部分,通常他们对事物有很好的品味,理解什么样的 UX 会奏效、什么不会。同时他们在这个行业也有专业经验。技术产品负责人则是那些深入到最细节的人,通常是前工程师,成长起来后开始做决策、推动业务。数据科学产品负责人通常是前数据科学家,他们决定转向管理岗位,但依然非常贴近实操。
而且你知道吗,这三种专业化之间共同点远远多于差异。我们有时会看到人们在它们之间转换,因为我觉得决定专业化方向的大概只占 5% 到 15%,而 85% 到 90% 都是共通的。这些共通点包括:首先,成为一个出色的问题解决者,具备良好的线性思维能力,同时对非线性问题也有创造性的应对方式。然后,为客户建立上下文理解,建立对客户的共情,并将其传达给团队。
深入细节与全局视野
然后是需要深入到非常非常细的细节,因为在我们这个领域没有什么是显而易见的,你需要真正深入到问题的根因才能理解什么行得通、什么行不通。这意味着你也必须相当有技术能力,即使你是专家,也经常需要深入到和工程师一起坐下来看代码的程度。此外我还要强调商业嗅觉的重要性,因为我们非常倾向于大量地度量和量化产品表现。你需要理解,好吧,我们要构建哪些东西最终才能驱动那个业务指标和目标?
Lenny Rachitsky: 我很喜欢产品负责人必须真正深入这一点。我觉得很多人听到这个,会觉得”我也能深入,深入,真正理解自己工作内容的细节”。我很好奇有没有一个例子能说明你在这里到底是什么意思。
Dmitry Zlokazov: 举个例子,为了在每个开展业务的国家提供尽可能好的产品,我们需要获得必要的牌照。在欧洲,这意味着我们需要开设欧洲银行的本地分行,比如法国分行、德国分行或意大利分行。开设分行需要完全符合所有必要的监管要求,需要向各个监管机构和政府部门报告必要的客户数据,需要注册本地支付系统。这些事情中的每一项内部都嵌套着大量项目。我们只有一个非常精简的团队,几个人就需要把所有事情规划清楚,而且要覆盖 50 个国家的规模。所以我们的做法是在每个项目中深入到很细的层面。比如我们在爱尔兰开设了分行,在荷兰开设了分行。
然后我们逆向推导出最佳流程是什么,接着回到顶层,说好吧,在大规模执行时理想的框架是什么?然后我们把它形式化为一个真正的流程——一个算法式的流程,包含步骤、质量门禁和评估需求,需要招聘什么样的人,在想要进入新国家之前多久就需要开始做这些事情。所以这不仅仅是深入,还要保持灵活性,在深入到极细的细节和上升到直升机视角之间来回切换,然后理解——好吧,这在细节层面看起来非常复杂,但退后一步,我们怎样才能简化它,围绕它构建一个可扩展的稳健流程?这是我们需要大量去做的事情。
“Wow”产品的执念
Lenny Rachitsky: 随着我们的对话进行,我一直在跟踪我认为是什么让你们这里走出去的产品负责人、产品经理如此成功。到目前为止,我觉得可能有几个因素在起作用。第一就是他们对自己构建的东西拥有极高的 ownership,这培养了创办公司和在其他公司成为领导者的能力。所以你们的这些产品负责人真的拥有很多东西,本质上就是他们所负责产品的 GM。然后就是这种深度和复杂性,你必须真正擅长深入理解一个问题。我能想象这些人后来去别的地方也会从事类似的工作,因为他们花了大量时间在这方面,或者他们就是变得非常擅长处理复杂的、多层嵌套的问题。那么在我说的这些之外,还有什么你认为重要的?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 我可能会再加一条——对打造”wow”产品的执念。
Lenny Rachitsky: Wow?W-O-W 的 wow?
Dmitry Zlokazov: W-O-W。
Lenny Rachitsky: 酷。
FinTech 中被忽视的体验细节
Dmitry Zlokazov: 我认为在整个金融科技领域,这通常是人们最容易忽视的部分,但在 Revolut,我们对它投入了极大的关注。当你在应用中进行交易或转账时,不仅流程要非常快、费用要非常低,这一点很重要,我们同样非常重视应用的外观与手感——它够不够流畅、流程有没有摩擦。我们不仅投入精力减少点击次数、优化最终流程,还想让用户感受到我们是真的在乎他们。我们想让用户感受到我们热爱自己的客户,并为此付出了额外的努力,让产品看起来出色、用起来舒服。我经常听到客户这样说——这款应用是他们真正喜欢的东西,能帮他们解决实际问题。这至少也是公司成功的原因之一。
我认为在 Revolut 工作的人养成了一个习惯——关注那些让产品变得讨人喜欢的小细节、小讲究。其次是处理上下文的能力,因为有很多细节需要深入,同时还有很多不同维度上的细节需要兼顾。我认为这种在大脑中保持大量上下文、考虑二阶效应、从多个角度审视问题的能力,也是人们在 Revolut 通常会锻炼到的一项重要技能。
如何让 “Wow” 落地
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的,酷。那我们总结一下优秀产品经理/产品负责人应该具备的三个要素。关于这个 “wow” 的部分,我很喜欢。你们是怎么把它变成可操作的东西的?我猜很大一部分在于招聘那些在这方面非常擅长、并且重视打造讨人喜欢的产品的人。你们有没有什么流程来确保发布的产品确实是 wow 的、是让人喜爱的?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 要理解 Revolut 的运作方式,需要知道两件事。第一,我们以小型精干的团队运作,负责打造产品,正如我提到的,对产品拥有端到端的责任。通常他们从零开始构建,然后持续成长和发展这个产品。第二,公司非常扁平,层级非常扁平。我们的创始人 Nick 和 Vlad 仍然非常亲力亲为,深入到每个产品和业务的每个部分的细节。每周他们都会与每个团队进行产品评审,让每位产品负责人有机会直接向 CEO 和 CTO 展示团队在过去一周取得了什么进展,同时也能从创始人那里获得指导,这非常有价值。
创始人亲自审查每一个界面
实际上,公司的创始人仍然会审查 100% 即将上线的界面——你在应用中看到的一切都经过了这道审查。有非常多双眼睛在仔细审视,思考所有可能的边界情况和需要注意的细节,确保每一位客户在这个产品、这个流程中都能感到满意。
Lenny Rachitsky: 那些产品体验极佳的公司,似乎都有一个共同点——创始人深度参与体验设计并审查一切。顺便问一下,Revolut 有多少位产品负责人?给大家一个概念。
Dmitry Zlokazov: 呃,恐怕已经超过 150 人了,也许 170 人。
招聘 UX 型产品负责人
Lenny Rachitsky: 跟我预期的差不多。你刚才说有三种类型——工程型、传统产品经理型、数据产品负责人型。那么当你们现在招聘 UX 型的产品负责人时,他们之前的角色通常是其他公司的产品经理吗?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 是的,但我觉得不一定要是非常有经验的产品经理。甚至可能更重要的是要有那种构建东西的渴望,以及原始的智力素质。我们一直在努力寻找具有这些内在特质的人,而不是招聘那些经验丰富但对构建东西不那么兴奋的人。
内部转岗的成功路径
Lenny Rachitsky: 你们的产品负责人中,有多大比例是从其他职能内部转岗过来的?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 这是一个相当大的比例,而且顺便说一下,他们最终往往都非常成功。这是一种正向的自我筛选——意味着某个人已经在另一个角色中取得了成功,所以文化匹配有保证,领域知识也有保证,然后他们只需要继续成长。通常可能是运营经理或工程师,他们逐步成长为管理团队的人,所以这是一条非常成功的路径。
与客户的直接连接
Lenny Rachitsky: 在我研究得出的最擅长培养和招聘顶级产品经理的前三家公司中,另一家是 Palantir。我最近刚好和一位在 Palantir 工作了很长时间的人聊过,我们讨论了完全相同的问题。有意思的是,到目前为止我们总结了 Revolut 的产品负责人需要具备的几个要素:大量自主权、深度与复杂性、以及对打造 wow 级讨人喜欢产品的极度关注。有趣的是,在 Palantir,同样是大量的自主权,同样有大量的深度和复杂性。另一个我想问你的要素是,他们还有一个”前沿部署工程师”的概念——把工程师放在客户公司的办公室里,坐在那里和客户一起构建产品。
因此在理解客户问题、与客户沟通、建立共情、实际动手构建等方面,他们培养了大量技能。你们在这方面有没有什么做法或侧重点——比如产品负责人如何与客户合作、理解问题之类的——可能会对大家有所启发?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 对我们来说,接触客户相对容易,因为客户基数太大了,超过 5000 万人,而且通常我们自己就是产品的重度用户。我们的工资发到 Revolut,日常消费用 Revolut,身边的朋友也一样。所以持续与人交流几乎是不需要动脑筋的事,即使你不主动去做,他们也会主动找上门来。如果产品出了问题,我保证我们非常非常快就会知道。我们还为产品负责人和设计师构建了工具,让他们可以便捷地接触到用户面板——通过不同的工具,只需几次点击就能启动访谈流程、问卷调研或不同设计的测试。
对我个人来说,建立这种与客户的直接连接非常重要。因为当你把客户研究和收集反馈这样重要的事情委托给别人时,你得到的是经过加工和过滤的版本。你得不到那些细微之处——人们怎么描述事物、他们感受到什么情绪、他们在哪里觉得卡住了。在这些环节中很容易丢失那些重要的信息片段。所以我坚信,拥有与客户的直接沟通渠道非常重要。
招聘理念:智力与渴望优于经验
Lenny Rachitsky: 听你这么描述,挺有意思的是,你们和 Palantir 在获取反馈这件事上恰好处于光谱的两端。他们为政府和空中客车构建产品,员工永远不会使用也不需要那种产品。而你们的工资发到 Revolut,日常消费用 Revolut,时刻浸泡在产品里。所以我理解为什么你们不太需要前沿部署工程师这类角色。好,那我们来聊聊招聘。在招聘方面,你们在寻访人才、筛选候选人、看重哪些特质上有什么独特的做法,让你觉得这可能是你们的校友后来如此成功的原因?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 我觉得每个人都在追求有才华、有能力、聪明且有经验的人。Revolut 则更加看重原始智力以及对构建事物那种永不熄灭的渴望,而不是经验。我可以举个例子。想象一下,你招了一位经验丰富的专业人士,履历辉煌,取得过很多成就,但我观察到在产品领域,他们的上手适应期通常比其他职能更长,因为产品负责人本质上需要在业务领域和产品构建与使用的所有细节上成为专家。所以我们看到这些专业人士仍然需要很长时间来进入状态,有时他们还需要时间适应新文化,更糟的是,他们直接躺在功劳簿上。但你对他们的期望已经被推得很高了,而且通常他们的薪酬也相当高,这进一步加重了期望。我自己在 Revolut 面试过大概 400 到 500 位产品负责人之后,也清楚地看到了这一点。
遗憾的是,那些在成熟公司积累了多年经验的专业人士,缺少这种改变现状的强烈冲动——而这恰恰需要汗水、泪水和辛劳。正因为如此,即使一位候选人没有很多年的经验,但只要他热爱构建东西,他动手做过,他和工程师合作过——也许是在自己的创业公司里——我见过的最好的画像之一就是技术联创。所以我认为这大概是加速职业发展最好的方式:去创立点什么,在创业公司工作,自己或在非常小的团队里构建产品,涉猎所有不同的领域,因为创业公司里你不得不什么都做。这类人在 Revolut 真的如鱼得水,即使他们没有很多年的经验,他们也会直扑一个具体的问题。他们对什么会引发客户痛点有直觉,行动非常迅速地去快速解决它,然后借此赢得周围所有人的认可。团队开始尊重这些人,因为他们解决了某个具体问题,接着他们拿下另一个问题,解决它,再拿下下一个——他们就是这样在公司里成长起来的。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我听下来基本上是,你们倾向于招聘更偏初级但原始智力极高、充满热情、极度渴望的人。这也解释了为什么从 Revolut 出来的人能获得那么多晋升——他们更早开始职业生涯,你们帮助他们学会了这些技能:责任心、深度、理解力、在复杂环境中工作、构建优秀产品。这一切都说得通。你在去哪里找这些人方面有什么发现吗?因为这是所有人的梦想——招到极其聪明、极度自驱、还无人知晓的人才,然后把他们培养成顶尖选手。你们有没有找到什么 sourcing 的方法或渠道?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 我们的做法是,每周和招聘团队做一次同步会。招聘团队本质上也是一个以 sprint 方式运作的团队。每个 sprint 我们定义要聚焦的方向——哪些领域、哪些公司。一个非常好的渠道,实际上是去看我们自己喜欢的产品和应用。如果某人打造了一款出色的产品,那他大概率是一个高绩效者。所以通常我们会把特定领域中一些优秀的产品提供给寻访团队,他们就针对这些公司进行 sourcing。渠道也可以是其他方向,甚至可以是学校,好的学校。所以这因 sprint 而异。
Lenny Rachitsky: 这很合理。Gokul 有一条非常好的建议——我想他是在播客上说的,如果没有的话就是他发过推文——就是你要去看,成功的公司当然值得关注,但还要看那家公司的哪个职能是其成功的关键。所以你应该去 A 公司找销售人才,去 B 公司找客户支持人才,去 C 公司找设计人才。听起来你们在某种程度上也是类似的思路。很好。
逆势而行的团队管理方式
接下来换个方向,看看还能学到什么。在团队管理方面,你们在运作产品团队时有没有什么比较反主流的做法——和其他公司不太一样,但你认为是你们成功关键的?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 加入 Revolut 之后,我的运作方式发生了改变,大概因为 Revolut 是一家创始人领导的公司,也可能因为它自我驱动的文化,同时我的角色本身横跨很多事情。我在 Revolut 的角色是领导全公司的产品职能,同时还要领导零售业务——这是 Revolut 的核心业务。在这些领域中很容易被摊薄,需要同时跟进五六十甚至七十个正在并行推进的项目。这意味着你可能整个星期都在同步状态,实际上没有给任何人增加价值。但不去跟进又很可怕——万一有些事情出了偏差,你却无法及时阻止或引导到更好的方向呢?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 所以我觉得这也是为什么很多管理者,尤其是高管,倾向于停留在高层,不深入细节。但我们在 Revolut 做法不同——我们会深入到细节中去。我们会选取当前对客户影响最大的 7 到 10 个项目,然后深入其中,真的是非常非常深入,跟工程师坐在一起,看到代码层面去理解——好的,这到底是怎么构建的,底层的问题是什么。你可能会想,那其他项目呢?那些正在执行的 50 或 60 个项目怎么办?但事实是,虽然这有点反直觉,但效果非常好。首先,团队之间会互相交流,有正式和非正式的沟通方式——比如技术交流会或者在办公室碰面。他们知道目前哪些领域正在被深入审查,哪个团队正在被审查。
同时这也向其他团队传递了一个信号:公司当前的重点是什么。此外,这也向其他团队表明,如果他们不能主动以期望的水平执行、不能关注所有细节、不能在这些细节上一丝不苟——尤其是在质量方面——那他们就会成为下一阶段、下一个周期被深入审查的对象。因此,这也建立起了很好的纪律性。而且 Revolut 汇聚了大量非常有野心的人,他们渴望成为最好的自己、不断成长,对他们来说非常重要的是证明自己能够交付出色的成果、打造下一家伟大的公司。结果是,他们会尽一切努力实现自主运作。当你开始深入细节时,你会发现一切正常,你能看到他们的运作方式,就能判断这个团队是否走在正轨上。如果不在正轨上,那它很可能就是你下一个需要重点关注的领域。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的,所以我的理解是你说大概有 50 到 60 个项目在同时推进。
Dmitry Zlokazov: 实际上可能接近一百个。
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的,好的。所以随时大概有一百件事情在进行——功能在开发,产品在发布。那这 7 到 10 个重点是你和创始人一起选的,还是只有你?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 不,就我一个人选。
Lenny Rachitsky: 就你一个人。好的。另外顺便问一下,你上面有一个领导团队吗?有设计负责人之类的,还是基本上就你一个人在顶层?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 结构是这样的:我的职责是产品职能。我们还有一个设计职能负责人,也是我团队的一部分。但其他所有职能是独立的,比如工程和数据职能,都直接向 CEO 汇报。
Lenny Rachitsky: 明白了。好的,所以从一百件事情中你选出来——这 7 到 10 个是我要深入的。这些是对业务最重要的事情,如果进展不顺,负面影响最大。然后你刚才说你会坐在工程师旁边,真正介入每一个细节。
Dmitry Zlokazov: 对,没错。
Lenny Rachitsky: 太棒了。这确实是反直觉的。我们之前请过 Brian Chesky 上播客,他解决这个问题的方法是直接减少 Airbnb 同时进行的项目数量,因为他想参与所有事情。所以我觉得听到一种不同的方法很酷——我们可以同时做很多事情,但我会选择那些最重要的事情去深入。
自主性与可扩展性
Dmitry Zlokazov: 不,我觉得我们永远不会减少项目。公司对增长的渴望以及创业精神是如此之强,以至于我们绝不会放弃一些很好的机会。而且这种方式的可扩展性强得多。所以虽然领导层,显然也包括创始人自己,会让所有人负责、深入细节,但这并不意味着他们在微观管理每个人。这一点非常重要。对任何产品负责人来说,理想的状态是完全自主。再次强调,这不意味着你永远不会被质疑——但当你被质疑时,你能展示你在决策和路线图背后的所有逻辑。即使指标还没有到位,你仍然会有这种信任额度,继续按照你想要的方式构建产品。最终,你会在每周的产品评审会上展示你的工作成果,但同样,这也不是微观管理。它更像是最后一道控制线,确保我们构建的东西都是合理的、有价值的、在所有细节上都经过深思熟虑的。
Lenny Rachitsky: 然后你说每一个上线的界面,创始人都会在某个节点进行审核——所以并不是有人在创始人看不到的情况下就把东西发布出去。
Dmitry Zlokazov: 对,没错。他们对所有事情都有全面的概览。但也正是因为几乎没有微观管理,我们才能构建这么多东西。如果创始人必须介入每一件事,他们就不得不削减项目。而通过给予人们自主权,他们实际上加速了公司增长。结果是,我认为 Revolut 在行业内是一个明显的异类——无论是发布的产品数量还是发布速度。这里还有一点我之前提到过,就是我们大力投资平台建设,使每个解决方案从一开始就具备可扩展性,这样我们不会有任何定制的孤立方案。比如拿我们的信贷团队来说,他们几乎每个月都在推出新产品——贷款或信用卡,覆盖不同国家。而这个团队大概只有 300 人。我认为传统银行的信贷部门可能是 2000 到 3000 人,只为一个国家构建信贷产品。
而我们的团队要覆盖 50 个国家。是的,这得益于我们通过平台构建的方法——在小型精干的团队之上构建平台,这些团队配备齐全所需的各种职能,同时在定义自己构建什么方面拥有自主权,加上扁平的层级结构,每个人都对自己负责,创始人能直接看到每个人的工作并在必要时介入。
Revolut 的产品版图
Lenny Rachitsky: 我来给大家列一下你们做的事情。我没在一开始列出来,因为那会花太长时间,但你们谈到正在构建的所有产品和正在进行的各种事情。所以我这里有一份清单,可能不完整,但让大家感受一下——你们有信用卡、借记卡、储蓄账户、多币种账户、国内外转账、联名账户、18 岁以下的未成年人账户、股票交易、加密货币购买、贷款。还有什么重要的我遗漏了吗?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 这些里面有些本身就非常庞大,比如股票交易。不只是股票,还包括 ETF、债券,我们还在不同国家开发税务优惠账户。加密货币方面,我们还支持加密货币质押,我们有入场、出场通道产品,我们有收单产品。信贷方面,我们有贷款、先买后付产品,我们甚至推出了房贷。我们最近在阿尔巴尼亚推出了首个房贷产品。
Lenny Rachitsky: 然后所有这些都覆盖 50 种不同的货币和国家。
Dmitry Zlokazov: 对,50 个不同的司法管辖区,每个都有自己的监管要求和规定。
Lenny Rachitsky: 天哪。这是 Paul Graham 那个”吃苦盲区”(schlep blindness)概念的绝佳例子——人们倾向于回避困难的问题,但最大的机会恰恰就在解决那些真正棘手、令人痛苦的问题上。而你们做的基本上就是这件事。
Dmitry Zlokazov: 对,这可能是 Revolut 最让我兴奋的事情之一。市场如此庞大,仍然有大量效率低下的参与者,结果是客户有很多未被解决的问题。我们正在疯狂增长,我认为很快就会……我加入时,大概只有略多于 2000 万客户。现在我们有 5000 万客户,很快就会达到 1 亿。围绕每位客户构建产品生态体系的深度也在不断扩展。越来越多的人开始把 Revolut 当作他们的主银行账户——工资直接打到 Revolut,储蓄也放在 Revolut,因为他们太喜欢这个产品了。所以我们的客户基数轻松就能再增长两倍、三倍、四倍,而这些用户使用产品的活跃度还可以再增长十倍。也就是说,相比目前 450 亿的估值,大概还有 30 到 40 倍的空间,对吧?所以这轻轻松松就是一家万亿级别的公司。
招聘
Lenny Rachitsky: 说到这里,我听到的是现在加入仍然是个好时机,有巨大的上行空间。我知道你们在招人,简单提一下——你们在招产品负责人和其他很多岗位,对吧?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 对,对。作为负责产品职能的人,我当然尤其关注产品负责人,但我们也招聘很多其他岗位。目前大概有 300 到 400 个开放职位。
新产品如何成功
Lenny Rachitsky: 我想聊聊你们做的新东西,也就是你们决定投入的新产品。关于如何让新产品获得成功,你们有没有总结出什么方法论?因为我们刚才聊的大多是怎么在现有产品上持续迭代、做得更好。关于帮助新产品成功,你学到了什么?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 我们推出了不少你可能不会期望一家银行去做的东西,比如加密货币——取得了惊人的成功——还有一些非金融服务,比如通过 Revolut App 预订酒店,以及我们的忠诚度计划 Rev Points,这在欧洲市场可以说是颠覆性的,因为欧洲人在刷卡消费时通常得不到很好的回馈。在美国,信用卡轻松就能拿到 2% 的现金返还或积分。在欧洲没有这个东西。而我们实际上是第一个基于刷卡消费构建奖励计划的,给人们真正有意义的、实质性的奖励。按照我刚才描述的思路,我们思考了:好的,这些成功的配方是什么?然后能不能规模化、复制?于是我们建立了一套”新押注”(new bets)框架。本质上,任何人都可以提出新想法——可以是产品负责人,也可以是任何人——他们需要展示几个关键要素,这些是你通常对一家创业公司才会期待的:市场是否存在,商业案例是否成立。我们知道自己在这一点上能比竞争对手做得好得多——这就是杠杆。此外,还有一些我们显然已有的产品概念,以及我们在解决什么客户问题等等。这里的官僚主义非常少,再次感谢创始人的亲力亲为,我们可以轻松获得任何项目的绿灯,迅速启动。我们的做法是组建一个精简的小团队来构建第一版,然后不断迭代。这里最关键的是:快速构建第一版以获取反馈,但在打磨好产品之前不要急于规模化。等我们确认各项指标没问题、留存率很好之后,再开始规模化。好消息是,一旦规模化,它可以瞬间被我们的 5000 万客户基数放大,获得很强的吸引力。比如你提到的联合账户——本质上是和另一半共同持有的账户——就是最近推出的功能之一,它增长非常快,现在已经有超过 100 万活跃用户。
不做粗糙 MVP,追求打磨品质
Lenny Rachitsky: 我听说你们在早期产品上的做法有一个不同之处——你们会投入大量精力把它做好,而不是做一个粗糙的 MVP。这个说法准确吗?你能展开讲讲吗?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 确实如此,这大概就是我刚才说的把第一版限定在小范围用户群里的意思。但即便如此,我们仍然确保产品是过硬的。没有任何人可以豁免于”打造高度打磨产品”这一要求。这需要时间,但会有回报。问题在于:如果你发布了一个粗糙的版本,它没有获得吸引力,你怎么判断?是因为底层想法本身就不对,还是因为你的产品做得太差、需要改进?通过强制每个人都打造一个用户会喜爱的产品——一个让人”哇”的产品——我们消除了这部分不确定性。归根结底,我们可以在功能范围上缩减产品,只保留最关键的功能,但我们绝不在质量、用户体验和美学上妥协。
生态整合的优势
Lenny Rachitsky: 听你讲的时候我意识到你们有一个有趣的优势:你们发布的大部分产品,显然都是人们想要的东西,因为这些东西他们在别处已经有了,但在你们这里获得的好处是它们与你们所有的其他功能和产品整合在了一起。比如加密货币产品——人们当然希望有一个好的加密货币产品内置在里面;联合账户也是。所以你们天然就有一种优势:人们会想要这个,现在你们只需要让它和其他所有东西很好地配合就行。你们几乎不需要在每个产品上都是最好的——虽然听起来你们仍然在努力做到最好。
Dmitry Zlokazov: 但我们必须是最好的。对,百分之百。
Lenny Rachitsky: 但同时,即使你的联合账户不是最好的,但其他所有东西都很棒,人们也会说,“好吧,无所谓,它让我的生活更方便了。“不过请告诉我我可能忽略了什么——
Dmitry Zlokazov: 我认为有一些我们正在构建的”基础必备”功能,是任何人对一家银行的基本期待。比如储蓄账户,对吧?这就是一个基本的东西——如果一家银行不提供储蓄账户,你甚至不会考虑它。但在此基础上,我们确保我们的利率非常有竞争力,甚至是最好的。然后我们确保没有糟糕的用户体验——有些银行,比如,不允许你即时取出资金,会有延迟,或者不按日计付利息。我们绝不会这样做。如果你想把钱转出来,你可以做到,不会损失任何利息。利息按日支付,这是一个完全灵活的产品。然后在这一切之上,我称之为”惊喜功能”的层面——我们允许你以多种货币开设储蓄账户。
Dmitry Zlokazov: 所以我们想添加不同的货币,因为现在利率在下行,人们可能会觉得开设某种外币的储蓄账户很有价值,比如我知道在欧洲,瑞典克朗的利率比欧元区更高,甚至可以选择巴西雷亚尔,利率高达12%,而欧元只有2%到3%。然后作为锦上添花,整个体验非常流畅——你可以设置自定义壁纸,可以设定储蓄目标,可以把零头自动转入储蓄账户,还有各种这样的功能。所以底层有一个基础必备功能层,你需要做到与竞争对手持平,但在上面有很多东西能让人们更加热爱你的产品。显然,这些东西之间还有很多协同效应。比如说到加密货币,你可以在钱包里收到加密货币,然后即时转换成账户里的现金,或者直接用卡消费。这有多酷?直接用以太坊买杯咖啡。
卓越产品领导者的锻造之道
Lenny Rachitsky: 我太喜欢这个了。好,让我借此机会尝试总结一下目前从你这里学到的,关于你们如何培养卓越产品领导者的经验。他们后来都做出了出色的成绩,基本上你们是这方面最成功的三家公司之一。在与你和 Palantir 的那位交流之后,我发现大概有两个方面:一是招聘环节,二是你们内部如何孵化、如何锻造出卓越的产品领导者。就你们内部做的来说,我整理了四个要点:第一是给予人们极大的自主权,他们本质上是产品或功能的 GM。
第二是深度关注复杂性和难题,真正擅长解决那些非常棘手的问题。第三是致力于打造令人惊叹的产品,那些让人爱不释手的产品,标准非常高。第四个可能比较微妙但我认为影响深远——就是与像你这样对细节极度关注的创始人或产品领导者密切合作,从你们身上学习,亲身体会极度注重细节所带来的价值和影响力。在这一块,在我进入招聘话题之前,你觉得还有什么核心要点是我遗漏的吗?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 我可能想强调一下深入细节这个方面。主要有两个方向。第一个是具备技术能力,理解底层系统是如何运作的;第二个是建立对客户的共情,理解各种可能的使用场景,确保你的产品能满足每一个场景。
Lenny Rachitsky: 说得好。所以实际上是要理解最底层到底发生了什么、技术上如何实现,然后再把体验做得尽可能简单、令人惊叹。
Dmitry Zlokazov: 还有第三个方面,但比较无聊——就是遵守所有可能的监管规定,确保你的产品能满足监管机构的要求,但这也是工作的重要组成部分。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我从中感受到的就是要培养耐心——
强力推进与扫除障碍
Dmitry Zlokazov: 我觉得与其说是耐心,不如说是能否为团队扫除障碍,而这有时候需要产品负责人强势推动变革。因为这也意味着你可能很容易陷入僵局——很多人互相观望,想着”他能批吗?他不能批吗?“我们在这方面尝试创新,尽可能自动化流程,甚至使用 AI 模型来辅助,但同时也需要产品负责人有能力把事情做成——让各方达成共识,理解利益相关方的诉求,知道如何推动他们做出必要的决策,然后扫除障碍,最终将价值交付给客户。
Lenny Rachitsky: 太棒了。所以本质上就是把事情做成,冲破阻碍,应对众多利益相关方。
Dmitry Zlokazov: 对,这永远是最重要的。
招聘中看重的核心特质
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的,很好的补充。我能理解为什么这对想要在职业上有所突破的人非常有帮助。然后在招聘方面,你们看重的是原始智力,以及内驱力、渴望,本质上就是热情。这是前两点。有意思的是,你们不看重资深背景,不要在那个领域有大量经验的人,而是更关注智力和渴望。在这个方面,你觉得还有什么重要因素能让人真正取得成功吗?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 最重要的,还是把事情做成、亲自动手。优秀的产品负责人非常亲力亲为。他们不把自己当成只给团队派任务然后等待完成的管理者。他们自己下场把事情做成。他们明白最重要的东西很可能需要自己亲自做,他们理解需要对执行保持不懈的专注,而且如果一个东西完成了99%,那它其实更接近0%而不是100%。
Lenny Rachitsky: 哇,展开说说。这里的洞察是不是说,很多事情看起来已经完成了99%,但实际上离真正完成还差很远?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 有时候产品已经建好了,但产品负责人还要确保,比如说客服团队或者销售和市场团队能够充分利用它,因为如果没有这一点,它可能只是又一个没用的功能,没人为此买单。
Lenny Rachitsky: 这太酷了。我喜欢这种心态。
加入 Revolut 的历程
让我问你一个完全不同的话题。你是怎么来到 Revolut 的?我知道你搬了家,带着家人,是一段不小的冒险。
Dmitry Zlokazov: 我进入 Revolut 的旅程恰好和我搬到英国是同时发生的,所以对我来说是一个全新的环境。这对大脑来说也是巨大的压力负荷。不仅仅是英国要在道路的另一侧开车,还有很多其他事情,比如在行业中,有些概念我从未听说过,而且实际上我之前从未在金融科技领域工作过,所以我也换了行业。这对我来说和我的职业生涯都是一次彻底的转变,但我非常坚定且充满热情,因为每个和我交谈过的人都在说 Revolut——顶级人才都在 Revolut,最优秀的产品人都在 Revolut,我真的很想成为这支伟大团队的一员。
后来事实证明这对我来说反而是一个优势,因为我对事物有了新鲜的视角,甚至在 Revolut 的应用里——虽然它已经远远好于其他银行的产品——但即便在那里,我也发现了一些东西,因为缺乏先入为主的认知,它们对我来说不够直观,我和团队一起努力改变了这些。
失败角落
Lenny Rachitsky: 好的,接下来我们进入播客的固定环节——“失败角落”(Fail Corner)。在失败角落中,我们的想法是:人们来这个播客分享的都是成功故事,一切都很顺利,但现实中事情往往不会那么顺利,有很多事情会出错。你能不能分享一个你职业生涯中出问题的故事,一个你在做产品时失败的经历,或者职业生涯中某个看起来很糟糕的时刻?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 我觉得最惨烈的失败大概都发生在我职业生涯的最早阶段。我在大学的时候就学了这些,大概大二的时候开始做一些东西,各种创业项目,其中一个产品到现在都让我感到骄傲,因为那大概是——多久了——十五年前?2010年,那时候甚至还没什么人有 iPhone,我和朋友们开始做一个网站,让人们可以在线购买电影票,这样就不用排队了,不需要提前到影院选好座位,直接在网上买票,到场后直接去座位就行。这在今天看来是再普通不过的事,但那时候根本没人做过。
人们当时还在用纸质票,而我们构建了一个端到端的系统,因为我们不仅需要建网站,还需要制作扫描票据的硬件。为了让票据以数字形式呈现,我们需要 hack 短信标准——同样,人们还没有智能手机,用的是那种诺基亚手机,我们把二维码图片通过短信发送,这在某种意义上是对通信标准的 hack。然后我们用自己的设备扫描这些东西,自己制造了带扫描器的设备,而且我们其实做了非常漂亮的不锈钢设备,放在电影厅里看起来真的很棒。
我记得当时我和朋友们多么兴奋。我们觉得:“太了不起了。“就像,看吧,我们把未来带到了这里。但实际上我们把所有投资都花在了硬件上,我们以为所有人都会争先恐后地使用我们的系统。但实际上开始在线购票的顾客比例非常低,因为人们还没准备好接受这种方式,增长相当缓慢。最终我们不得不关停,因为我们钱花光了——把所有钱都投在了硬件上,却没有任何经过验证的商业模式。这在现在看来是一个显而易见的错误,而当时我们只是沉浸在打造一款我们自己想用的产品之中。我觉得这个原则本身是对的,但这也是一个非常痛苦的教训。你必须保持精益,在规模化之前必须先验证。你需要更多地思考公司的资金消耗率。所以对我来说有很多痛苦的教训。从那以后,我也尽量避开涉及硬件的工作。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我正想说,这是创业公司直接进入硬件领域的常见挑战,不过以你现在的经验,如果 Revolut 推出什么新产品、开辟新的产品线,我也不会感到意外。
Dmitry Zlokazov: 我们已经推出了 POS 终端,这是必需的。
Lenny Rachitsky: 瞧,果然来了。Dmitry,在我们进入非常精彩的快问快答环节之前,还有什么我们没有聊到、你觉得可能对听众很有帮助的内容吗?也许是最后一个你还没分享过的智慧 nugget,或者对已经分享过的内容再强调一下也可以?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 没有了,我觉得这是一次非常棒的对话,谢谢你,Lenny。我们涵盖了很多不同的话题。我只想总结一下:如果你对打造某些东西感到兴奋,永远不要犹豫。最好的方式可能就是自己创业,那也会给你最陡峭的学习曲线。但之后如果你想加入一家公司,尽量选择创业精神最浓厚的、能让你尽可能接近创始人模式工作的那一家。
Lenny Rachitsky: 这在我与那些培养了职业轨迹最陡峭的产品经理的公司对话中,是一个反复出现的主题。所以这个建议恰恰也是我从中得出的结论——前提是你希望自己的职业在加入这家公司后能快速加速。好的,Dmitry,接下来我们进入非常精彩的快问快答环节。准备好了吗?
快问快答
Dmitry Zlokazov: 准备好了。开始吧。
Lenny Rachitsky: 来吧。第一个问题:你向别人推荐最多的两三本书是什么?
Dmitry Zlokazov: Ben Horowitz 的《The Hard Thing About Hard Things》。其实挺早之前读的,但我发现自己最常把它推荐给其他产品经理。这本书说明了一点:要成为出色的产品经理,就要努力成为出色的 CEO。除此之外,这本书强调了构建系统性方案和可扩展方案的重要性,这对公司规模化至关重要。同时也诚实地指出了死磕事物的重要性。第二本书是我最近才读的,Tony Fadell 的《Build》。这本书让我深受启发,尤其是考虑到我很清楚做硬件有多不容易,而 Tony 在书中描述的一切都非常令人兴奋和鼓舞。另外,我认为产品经理有不同的原型,有的人更倾向于颠覆现有事物。就我个人而言,我把自己看作一个建设者(builder),所以 Tony 在书中强调的那些原则与我产生了强烈的共鸣。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我正在努力邀请 Tony 上播客。如果有听众认识 Tony Fadell,能帮我推动一下,跟他说”Lenny 的邀请,答应吧”,那就太好了。我已经和他的团队联系过了,但他现在不做播客,不过我还在争取。好的,继续。你最近有没有特别喜欢的电影或电视剧?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 我看的上一部电影是《奥本海默》,我很喜欢。我一直很喜欢看传记片,我觉得它们能提供一种视角,让你从更宏观的角度思考问题。
Lenny Rachitsky: 有没有你最近发现的、非常喜欢的产品?
Dmitry Zlokazov: Manus 是个很棒的东西。
Lenny Rachitsky: 那个 AI agent?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 对,对。我就是超级印象深刻……我完全被迷住了。它如此自主、如此顺滑,我就花了几个小时 vibe coding,做了一个 JavaScript 应用,每天给我发送一个冷门英语单词来学习和记忆,居然真的能用,我简直惊叹不已。
Lenny Rachitsky: 你学到了什么词?
Dmitry Zlokazov: Ineffable。是昨天的词。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我太喜欢了。它还在运行呢,真棒。你有没有一个经常回想的、在工作或生活中觉得有用的人生座右铭?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 我很喜欢这句话,好像是 Eisenhower 说的:“计划毫无价值,但做计划是一切。“我们经常说要灵活、敏捷、适应环境变化,但这并不意味着我们完全可以不要计划。重要的是要记住,我们始终需要多想几步,在保持灵活的同时,也要深思熟虑。
Lenny Rachitsky: 最后一个问题。对于那些可能是第一次体验 Revolut、想试试看的用户,或者已经是用户的——你觉得最被低估的功能是什么?有什么你觉得大家应该去看看、但可能还不知道的东西,甚至只是一个 UX 动画之类有趣的小细节都可以。
Dmitry Zlokazov: 有一个还没有被广泛使用、但我非常喜欢的东西,我们称之为财富保护(wealth protection)。如果你进入设置,可以为任何 Revolut 外部转账设置一个限额。如果你想进行超过这个限额的转账,就需要做一次自拍验证,这是我们自有的技术。我们会拍一段视频自拍。这让我们能确认操作的人是你本人,没有其他人在做这笔转账。它实际上几乎和 Face ID 一样顺滑,团队把它做得非常棒。我真的很为这些伙伴们感到骄傲。
Lenny Rachitsky: Dmitry,你们做的事情非常特别。我真的很感谢你花这么多时间和我聊你们摸索出来的这些东西。我觉得这会帮助很多不同的公司在产品思维上更进一步,也会吸引想要体验这些、加速职业发展的人加入 Revolut。所以谢谢你来这里。最后两个问题。如果大家想联系你,去哪里找你?听众怎样才能帮到你?
Dmitry Zlokazov: 我觉得最好的方式是在 LinkedIn 上找到我。我很乐意收到任何人的留言,告诉我们如何改进产品,或者任何关于产品的反馈。另外,如果你在听完我说的这些之后,认识某个非常适合 Revolut 的人,那我也很感激。
Lenny Rachitsky: 太棒了。你马上要收到一大波申请了,做好准备吧。Dmitry,谢谢。
Dmitry Zlokazov: 嗯,Lenny,非常感谢。这段时间很棒。非常感谢你。
Lenny Rachitsky: 我也是。大家再见。
感谢大家的收听。如果你觉得这期节目有价值,可以在 Apple Podcasts、Spotify 或你喜欢的播客应用上订阅。也请考虑给我们评分或留下评论,这真的能帮助其他听众找到这档播客。你可以在 lennyspodcast.com 找到所有往期节目或了解更多关于这档节目的信息。下期再见。
术语表
| 原文 | 中文 |
|---|---|
| Chief Product Officer | 首席产品官 |
| delighters | 惊喜功能 |
| forward deployed engineer | 前沿部署工程师 |
| functional manager | 职能经理 |
| GM (General Manager) | GM |
| joint accounts | 联合账户 |
| line manager | 直线经理 |
| local CEO | local CEO |
| mini-CEO | mini-CEO(此处保留原文,因已作为专有比喻使用) |
| new bets framework | 新押注框架 |
| P2P transfers | P2P 转账 |
| PM (Product Manager) | 产品经理 |
| power user | 重度用户 |
| Product Owner | 产品负责人 |
| quality gates | 质量门禁 |
| Rev Points | Rev Points(Revolut 忠诚度计划名称,保留原文) |
| schlep blindness | 吃苦盲区(Paul Graham 的概念,指人们倾向于回避困难问题的认知偏差) |
| table stakes | 基础必备功能 |
| wealth protection | 财富保护 |
此文档由 AI 分片翻译(translate_long_document)