How Revolut trains world-class PMs: The “Local CEO” model, raw intellect & building wow products

Dmitry Zlokazov is the head of product at Revolut, the $45 billion fintech giant operating in over 50 countries, serving more than 50 million customers, and producing some of the world’s top product leaders. Dmitry shares his hard-won lessons, contrarian org design principles, and day-to-day practices that power Revolut’s relentless shipping velocity, culture of ownership, and unparalleled “wow” product experience. What you’ll learn: • Revolut’s unique organizational approach, where “product owners” manage cross-functional pods as “local CEOs,” with genuine end-to-end ownership and hiring/firing power • How a radical, ultra-flat structure enables more than 150 product owners to maintain founder-level quality and velocity across dozens of parallel launches • How Revolut maintains quality while shipping hundreds of features across over 50 countries • Why Revolut favors “raw intellect and hunger” over experience, and how internal transfers (including ex-engineers and ops managers) become the company’s most successful product leaders • How Revolut’s founders review every single UI shipped, and why this founder detail obsession scales rather than limits innovation • Their framework for launching new products—from ideation, validation, and first user cohort to rapid “algorithmization” and scaling across countries • The importance of treating products that are 99% done as closer to 0% done, vs. 100% done Transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/ho... This entire episode is brought to you by: Stripe—Helping companies of all sizes grow revenue: https://stripe.com/ Where to find Dmitry Zlokazov: • X: https://x.com/Dzlokazov • LinkedIn:   / zlokazov   Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • X:   / lennysan   • LinkedIn:   / lennyrachitsky   In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Introduction to Dmitry and Revolut (03:41) Revolut’s unique approach to product management (06:58) The role and responsibilities of product owners (09:28) Types of product owners at Revolut (15:50) Building “wow” products (25:00) Hiring practices (31:33) Managing teams and projects (41:07) Revolut’s diverse product offerings (44:40) Scaling new products successfully (52:10) Attracting top talent (58:43) Failure corner (01:02:49) Lightning round and final thoughts Referenced: • Revolut: https://www.revolut.com/ • Intercom: https://www.intercom.com/ • Palantir: https://www.palantir.com/ • Which companies produce the best product managers: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/wh... • Which companies accelerate PM careers most: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/wh... • Deliver WOW to our customers: https://www.revolut.com/blog/post/del... • Nik Storonsky on LinkedIn:   / nstoronsky   • Vlad Yatsenko on LinkedIn:   / yatsenko   • How Palantir built the ultimate founder factory | Nabeel S. Qureshi (entrepreneur and writer, ex-Palantir): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/in... • Gokul Rajaram on designing your product development process, when and how to hire your first PM, a playbook for hiring leaders, getting ahead in you career, how to get started angel investing, more: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/go... • Gokul Rajaram on X: https://x.com/gokulr • Brian Chesky’s new playbook: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/br... • Schlep blindness: https://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html • Revolut Launches RevPoints Loyalty Programme, Turning Daily Expenses into Exclusive Rewards: https://www.revolut.com/news/revolut_... • Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/ • ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/ • Figma: https://www.figma.com/ • Oppenheimer: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15398776/ • Manus: https://manus.im/ • Eisenhower quote: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11... • Wealth protection: https://help.revolut.com/help/securit... Recommended books: • The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business when There Are No Easy Answers―Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship: https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-Abo... • Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making―Personal Journey from Product Designer to Mentor: https://www.amazon.com/Build-Unorthod... Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected]. Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.