4 Ingredients to Becoming a Tech Unicorn from Revolut
What does it take to build a tech unicorn worth over 1 billion dollars?! What a cliché question! The Internet is full of articles from tech gurus and bloggers giving you killer advice for your startup. We don’t claim to know the answer (frankly, nobody knows), but we asked Europe’s freshest fintech unicorn, Revolut.
Revolut provides an app that replaces traditional banking and in only 2 years they reached 2 million customers, $1.7 bn valuation and even got Zlatan excited. The best part – they spent nothing on marketing. As a Startup Grind friend, you can order a free Revolut card with this link — it usually costs about 6EUR
So how did they do it? We asked Andrius Biceika, their Head of Business Development during the Startup Grind fireside chat in Oslo and he highlighted 4 ingredients. Here they are:
1. A “special forces” team
It cannot be said enough: Team is the key element! Imagine a Special Forces squad going on a mission. They don’t have a single doubt about their purpose and goal. They all feel responsible for the success of the mission and they trust each other like they trust themselves. Those elite soldiers are trained like no others and will eat dirt just to see the mission accomplished. That’s the perfect metaphor for your startup team. Keep it in mind when hiring…
And one more thing: you won’t become a Navy Seal just because you think startups are “kinda’ cool”, you’re given the latest tools, and you get to brag about doing something meaningful. As an employer, make sure to filter the committed doers from the “I just want to try this startup thing for a while” people.
2. Hard work
We hope you know this by now, but startup life isn’t going to improve your work life balance. Lori Greiner nailed it saying that entrepreneurs are willing to work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week. Revolut’s founder Nikolai Storonsky comes from investment banking and is no stranger to long hours, being quoted “I can’t see how work-life balance will help you to build a startup”. However, while Silicon Valley garage startups tend to move away from round-the-clock hackathons once they get their Series A, the atmosphere in Revolut is slightly different. With +12 hour workdays (yeah, take that, Tim Ferriss!), they claim that every additional hour contributes exponentially to the team knowledge and is therefore justified.
“I can’t see how work-life balance will help you to build a startup” Nikolai Storonsky, Revolut Founder & CEO
You might agree or disagree with this (here in the Nordics I guess it’s the latter), but that’s how these guys managed to reach unicorn status. With Elon Musk as a leadership hero for Nikolai, this does not come as shock at all, so roll up your sleeves and start hustling because that might be the secret sauce.
3. Speed
All those hustling hours need to generate fast growth, otherwise it’s all smoke in the wind. The only way a startup with no cash and limited resources can have a shot at outcompeting (or if you prefer: disrupting) an established corporation is by moving FAST.
Check the app of your local bank (if they even have one) and see how many releases it had in the past year. Revolut had 50! Almost one per week! This is the kind of startup mentality that allows you to test, iterate and test again.
Growth alone is not that big of a deal. Any idiot can grow in an industry with some momentum. But in order to dominate your market and steal users/customers away from your competition, you need to innovate 10 times faster than them.
4. Motivation
This is another one that should be high up on the priority list for any CEO and founder: How to motivate that kick-ass team to work with passion. There is not one right answer here, but we wanted to hear Revolut’s version of it:
It’s all about seeing happy users when using the product. It’s all about knowing how much money you saved them by offering a no-hidden-commission product. And not the least, seeing the company doing well (💰💰) makes it as fun as riding a unicorn.
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To wrap up, building a successful tech company is tough and, in all fairness, there is a certain degree of luck involved. However, taking advice from those who made it should at least increase your odds.
Tell us whether you agree or disagree with this list. Meanwhile we will keep bringing successful entrepreneurs to tell their personal stories and give advice during our fireside chats.
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*Sergiu Maznic is Chapter Director at Startup Grind Oslo.
Startup Grind is a global startup community designed to educate, inspire, and connect entrepreneurs. We host monthly events in more than 350 cities and 120 countries featuring successful local founders, innovators, educators and investors who share personal stories and lessons learned on the road to building great companies. Our monthly fireside chat interviews, startup mixers and annual conferences provide ample opportunities to connect with amazing startups and the people behind them, tap into a strong support network, form meaningful connections and gain inspiration for the startup journey ahead.
