Revolut's formula for high performance: Georgian Andrei, GM at Revolut People

0:00Scaling Europe:Hello and welcome back to the Scaling Europe show. I'm Seb Johnson. Thank you for following along. Today we've got a great conversation from our time at Slush and the conversation is supported by Databricks, whose unified platform power source on everyone's FY2026 target, becoming a truly AI-driven company, and Harmonic. Harmonic is the startup discovery engine used by leading VCs across the world to find their fun returners. Check them both out. Thank you. Hello and welcome back to the Scaling Europe show. We are in a snowy Helsinki this morning. I'm joined by Andre, the GM of Revolut People.

0:32Scaling Europe:Revolut People is one of the breakout products of Revolut, alongside many other phenomenal breakout products. Andre joined Revolut seven years ago when they were still at 150 employees. So we're going to be talking about the journey from being an early Revolut employee to leading Revolut People now and that product and kind of the problems that they solve. So thank you for joining me. I'm glad to be here. Can you talk a bit about your role, Revolut People, what it is and kind of the problems that you solve? Yeah, so my mission started about seven years ago, as I was telling you. I started on this journey to help Revolut build a more meritocratic framework when it comes to performance management.

1:12Our mission was very simple. I joined the company when we were a startup. We had about 100 people or so. and our CEO felt like the culture was diluting, people were not working on the right things, we weren't getting the right talent coming into the company. So it just felt like the company was not really continuing in the same path that they started in our very early days as a startup. So our CEO, he had an Excel sheet, he had everything lined up there and he was trying to do a sort of performance management process. And, you know, one day he realized the Excel sheet is not going to do it. It's not going to scale, right?

1:57So we basically went on the market, checked, okay, can we find a tool that can do this thing? And we realized, no, a lot of tools were focused on storing data, just allowing you to, like, put some data there and run some processes. but they weren't advising you on how you should do it. There was no framework on how performance management should be done. So, you know, classic Revolut, we just try to do it our way, right? So we try to disrupt that part as well. So after many years of research, iterations and so on, we built a performance management team who researched this subject very, very well.

2:43So we looked into all sorts of external organizations and we got people into to try to research this and Basically, we ended up coming we ended up building a framework for performance management and then building a product to make that framework happen and That's my role as part of Revolut. I'm the general manager of Revolut People. Revolut People is the platform which implements this particular performance management framework for success. Now we are selling this to other companies. Our mission is very simple. We want to replicate the Revolut success in other companies, especially around Europe.

3:21So as I was telling you, I'm very passionate about this idea of helping Europe become a tech hub more than the other competitor areas on the planet. so I think Revolut has the recipe for it and now we're trying to replicate the recipe with other companies.

3:43Scaling Europe:Amazing. I want to pick up on two things that you mentioned because you said you went to the market and you saw that there were data tools but they didn't have the guidance or the support to coach other companies how to run performance management well. Can you talk on how do you solve the data issues? How did you go from spreadsheet data to like a robust data infrastructure that kind of scales for your company and everyone else? And then can we talk about what value do you provide on the sort of like the performance management advice coaching stuff as well? Yeah, I think those are two very good questions.

4:17So just to pick on your first question about the data and then we can talk about the advice if you want. I think, you know, the whole framework that we have is based on three pillars. And you saw it in our presentation and I'll explain it just briefly for your audience. It's very simple. There are three pillars. It's all about working on the right goals. So the first problem I identified was that people were not maybe really working on goals that were aligned with the business. So the first thing is alignment on goals. Making sure that everybody works on things that are beneficial for the strategy of the company.

4:54And this is the Revolute secret if you want. As soon as we introduced this, we saw higher engagement towards the right things, and that pushed the company forward faster. So that's the first pillar. And goals, you were asking about the data. Our goals are mostly hard metrics. So we pick the problems that we want to work on, and then we try to quantify them. So it needs to be hard data, it needs to be a KPI, a metric. And then you actually see them in the product. They are updating in real time. So for example, a simple metric like number of active users in the system. That's something that updates every day.

5:30So when you wake up in the morning, you start your day, you look at the metric, it has updated. So you can see if you're on track, if not. Yeah. So that's like the first pillar. The second pillar is about skills. So to achieve goals, you need the right skills. Right? So and you need to be in the right team. I was just talking about the idea of putting the right people together with complementary skills. Because as a football team, if you have a team of Messi's, they are not going to win anything so it needs to be okay Messi is a good player in his position we need other good players in their positions and that's how we end up with the best team so that's the idea of the skills that's the second pillar the third pillar is about values in Revolut we are very very focused on our values and values is all about behaviors how people behave and we believe that by having the right values you can acquire the right skills and you can achieve the right So these are the three pillars that we use.

6:24We measure this during the performance review. We try to make it as objective as possible. There are all sorts of things that we added to increase this objectivity, including AI. Like we try to extract data from certain tools and summarize what someone worked on and how well they achieved certain things. Summarizing certain meetings and using the feedback from there and so on. So we try to make it as objective as possible. not take is a hundred percent objective in this world we live in but we try to make it as objective as possible when it comes to the advice that's a very interesting question so although we the framework is baked into the product itself so when you buy the product you buy the framework pretty much we also offer a playbook so and this is what quantum light which is Nix VC found also worked on so for companies who are just starting out and maybe they feel like okay we are not maybe ready to jump into that and we don't yet have a philosophy as i said or a system to implement in the product they can just start with that and there's a set of like rules on how to build a company if you want the revelant way right like how to replicate that that recipe

7:37Scaling Europe:pretty much so yeah amazing and and what kind of led to you know the decision as you know one of the preeminent global fintechs to build an HR product? Yeah. How did that come about? We get this question a lot. I think I would say there are two main reasons, if you want. There are many reasons, but there are two main reasons why. I think the first one is what I just mentioned, and we were talking about this earlier. I feel like Europe is very underestimated in terms of its capability as a, you know, when I say Europe, I'm talking not only about the European Union, I'm talking about the continent in general.

8:23Yes. It's very underestimated in terms of, like, its capability to generate, you know, great companies and great technology in general. Like, we have the education for it, we have the people for it, We have everything we need. I think what's missing though is the culture. So of course, people mention Silicon Valley and the US culture. And that's something that we miss as well. Like the way companies run in Europe is slightly different. The work culture is different and that makes quite a big difference. So we have the capabilities, we're just missing this philosophy in terms of how things should be done.

9:06And getting back to your question, why did Revolo do this? Because we realized that very early on. Nick realized that, okay, there is a problem of culture as well. So how things are done in Europe, it's just not going to work for us. It's not going to cut it. So we came up with our own culture and our own, you know, we combine certain, if you want European ideas with certain things from the US. We put different cultures together and we got to this recipe, which is like, if you want, it's, you know, the ambition and the drive and the entrepreneurial spirit that you have in the U.S. adapted for the European market.

9:46And now we just want to, like, help other companies be productive because obviously we want to operate in a very successful environment and we want every company to be successful so we can work with them and build even more ambitious products and greater things. And that's number one. We simply want to give back to the European market, if you want, in terms of how performance should be done, how should you run your company, how to replicate this success by following the recipe. The second one is also that we think that one day we will have, and this is kind of a more exciting subject, One day we think we're going to have, if you want, a Revolut workspace similar to Google workspace, or if you want to call it a Revolut business suite of products.

10:38And I think Revolut people is a component in that. And you've heard maybe Nick in other presentations talking about his vision to connect the ecosystems, to connect retail with business. And I think this product has a key role to play there. We do HR management as well. and we do payroll reporting. We integrate with payroll processing tools. One day we dream about having an end-to-end flow where the money flows from a business account into a retail account and it could follow the path of payroll as well. So that's something that potentially we look into doing in the future. So I think, you know, the first thing is like achieving this vision of making Europe, you know, like helping Europe be more productive in terms of its capability to produce great technology companies.

11:29And the second is this synergy between the business products.

11:32Scaling Europe:Yeah, to build the full suite, the full stack of cross-vertical, no longer just fintech, but yeah, everything. Nobody can do that if you think about it. This is going to be our unique value proposition. The idea that you buy one system that can do all things, right? You onboard your people today, and at the end of the month, you click a button, and you can pay your people with Revolup for Business. You can process payroll, you can do everything. So this is something that I'm very passionate about, and I think that we can offer, we can give the market something that cannot be done by any other company.

12:07Yeah, amazing.

12:08Scaling Europe:You mentioned that the cultural differences, some of the things that you borrowed from the U.S. can you talk about what those kind of like maybe two or three of the major things that you think cultural aspects of a business that european tech companies should adopt i think um you know i'm not sure that was the intention like i'm not sure maybe nick could say no there is nothing from there or so on but my perception like um you know working with um uh working revel for seven years and seeing other companies from silicon valley and so on and I can see some parallels there. I can see some similarities.

12:44And you mentioned what are a few things that, you know, I think European companies should implement. I think, you know, the first one is this drive for this entrepreneurial spirit is very important. This is something the U.S. has and we don't really have. And I think it comes from their history as well, being a colonial power and, you know, having a lot of people who pretty much left their lives in Europe mostly, but other places as well, left their lives behind to move to a completely new place. Yes. That risk-taking is very important. Yeah. So I feel like in Europe we play things safe sometimes.

13:28So make sure that you calculate the risks is very important, is the main thing. And then I think the other things are, when you take risks, you're gonna fail sometimes and that's okay i think the idea is like how fast can you get up and how fast can you iterate right yeah so the idea is like we try to get things perfect but in reality and this is a role in product management in general like the the faster your iterations the faster you can like adapt with a with a flow of water if you want the the faster you're gonna get to success so your ability to like try things fail and iterate afterwards is very important is another one I would say and I think just to get it back to what I'm doing and to give an advice from from my area which I guess I'm more qualified to give than the others is I think our culture around talent management and performance management specifically is very different in Europe in US yeah I think people in Europe are very used to like a very stable environment where you know nothing can happen nothing can change and you're safe and and i can understand that but in the same time um you know getting stuck in this comfort zone is what kills a lot of a lot of innovation in europe i would say um you have countries with so many regulations in terms of um how for example you know like in some countries you can be in probation for three months in other countries You can be in the probation period for six months and so on.

15:01And then it makes it very difficult for companies to... Scale. Hire people and retain the best talent and hire the best talent and make sure they keep high-performing teams. So I would say if I could talk with some of these people from the European Commission, I don't know who makes the rules on this stuff. I would suggest that I think it's good to have laws to protect employees, but you also have to think about protecting companies, right? As I said, talent density, so how many strong performers you have in your company is a stronger indicator for success. So making sure you have legislation in place that protects the employees but doesn't harm the company's capability to retain, hire, and keep the best talent, I think that's very, very important, I would say.

15:54So these are maybe three things that I would say. Amazing.

15:56Scaling Europe:Well, thank you. I assume we've got time for today. But thank you so much for joining me. It's been great chatting. Thank you very much.