竞争、强度与一家 1150 亿美元全球银行的构建｜Revolut 创始人 Nik Storonsky

简要说明Brief Description

Nik Storonsky 谈到了 Revolut 打造全球性银行的雄心、小型产品团队背后的运营纪律、银行牌照与客户信任、人工智能、招聘、资本配置、Quantum Light 以及营销。他解释了统一的技术平台如何支持国际扩张和未来的研究投入。Nik Storonsky discusses Revolut’s ambition to build a global bank, the operational discipline behind small product teams, banking licenses and customer trust, AI, hiring, capital allocation, Quantum Light and marketing. He explains how a shared technology platform supports international expansion and future research bets.

目录Table of Contents

• 来赴杰米·戴蒙的晚宴
  Coming for Jamie Dimon's dinner
• 打造覆盖100个国家的第一银行
  Building the #1 bank in 100 countries
• 为什么创始人胜过职业 CEO
  Why founders beat professional CEOs
• Revolut最大的错误
  Revolut's biggest mistake
• 为什么传统银行无法创新
  Why legacy banks can't innovate
• 像机器一样经营公司
  Running a company like a machine
• 像交易员一样加码赢家、止损输家
  Funding winners and cutting losers like a trader
• AI 如何改变 Revolut 的团队结构
  How AI is changing Revolut's team structure
• 管理50名直接下属，并快速推广创新
  50 direct reports and spreading innovation fast
• 招聘自主制导导弹
  Hiring self-guided missiles
• 资金过多会让创始人变得更弱
  Too much money makes founders weaker
• 欧洲的限制让 Revolut 学到了什么
  What Europe's constraints taught Revolut
• 为什么风险投资家就像足球啦啦队
  Why VCs are like football cheerleaders
• 创立基金，与风险投资机构竞争
  Starting a fund to compete with VCs
• 从零起步做营销，到收购欧洲的机场
  From zero marketing to buying Europe's airports
• 像全球科技公司一样资助登月式创新项目
  Funding moonshots like a global tech company
• 打造一台势不可挡的机器
  Building an unstoppable machine

来参加杰米·戴蒙的晚宴Coming for Jamie Dimon's dinner

好吧，我得让他们马上开始录制，因为刚才我们聊天的时候，我就想：“哦，我们今天肯定会玩得很开心。”我给我的伴侣 Rob 发了条短信。我说：“我觉得我和 Nik 要搞出一部杰作了，因为这些年来我一直听其他创始人提起你，说这家伙竞争意识超强，行动快得离谱，而且是个征服者。你能说说你怎么看待竞争，以及你想在这个世界上做些什么吗？”All right, I had to tell them to start recording immediately because even the conversation we were just having I was like, "Oh, we're going to have a lot of fun today." I text my partner Rob. I was like, "I think me and Nik are going to do a masterpiece cuz I've been hearing about you from other founders for years about like this guy's super competitive. He moves excessively fast and he's a conqueror. Can you explain like how you view competition and like what you're trying to do in the world?

说话者：我从6岁起就特别有竞争意识。所以，我一直都参加竞技体育，也参加各种竞赛型奥林匹克竞赛。对我来说，无论选择做什么，争当第一总是自然而然的愿望，对吧？比如，如果我选择玩一个游戏，我就一定要成为第一名。Speaker: I was extremely competitive since I was 6 years old. So, it was always in a competitive sports or competitive olympiads as well. And for me it was always a natural desire to be number one in whatever I choose to do, right? Like if I choose to play a game, I need to be number one.

所以如果我排第二，我就会特别恼火。我一直都是这种性格。And then I'm extremely pissed off if I'm number two. So, I always had this character.

说话者：你觉得这种竞争意识是来自体育运动吗？你当时参加什么运动？Speaker: You think the competitive drive came from sports? What sports were you playing?

说话者：我做过很多运动，比如游泳、拳击之类的。对，是小时候。我觉得这更像是性格和基因共同作用的结果。Speaker: I was doing a lot. I was doing kind of, you know, swimming, boxing, a lot of sports. Yeah, in the childhood. I think it's more like a character and genes combination that you get.

你知道，有些人竞争心极强，有些人则完全没有竞争心。You know, some people are extremely competitive, some people are not competitive at all.

说话人：那么，你怎么看待竞争？我听说……我们之前聊过这件事。有句引言特别搞笑，有人问你：“哦，你是……你想把这家银行拓展到美国，对吧？你这是要来抢杰米·戴蒙的午餐吗？”你回答：“我要抢他的晚餐。”Speaker: So, how do you look at the competition? I heard this We were talking earlier. It was one of the most hilarious quotes where somebody asked you like, "Oh, you're you want to expand the bank into the United States, right? And are you coming for Jamie Dimon's lunch?" And you go, "I'm coming for his dinner."

说话人：我的意思是，当时的想法是，你知道，午餐通常比较简单，而在美国，晚餐一般也比欧洲丰盛得多。所以，来吃晚餐意味着，你知道，不只是拓展零售业务，也包括企业业务。此外，投资银行业务也有可能，因为投资银行也可能被颠覆。Speaker: I mean, the idea was that, you know, lunch is always you know, something small and dinner is usually in US much larger than in Europe as well. So, like coming for dinner means, you know, not only going for retail business, but also for enterprise as well. Also potentially for investment banking because it's also possible to disrupt investment banks.

说话者：怎么说？Speaker: How so?

发言人：我的意思是，这件事仍然非常依赖人工，成本也依然很高。我的意思是，完全有可能把成本大幅降下来。为什么不呢？Speaker: I mean, it's still very manual, still very expensive. I mean, it's all possible to make it all much cheaper as well. Why not?

发言人：好，那你解释一下，因为我觉得很多听众可能不了解 Revolut 现在是什么样，也不清楚你们想往哪儿发展。你就说说你们在做什么吧，比如现在业务处于什么阶段，以及接下来打算怎么发展。Speaker: Okay, so explain cuz like I think a lot of people that are going to be listening to this don't like they don't they're not going to understand what Revolut is today and where you're trying to go. So, like explain what you're doing like the state of the business now and then what you're trying to do moving forward.

打造覆盖100个国家的第一银行Building the #1 bank in 100 countries

发言人：也许我可以从两年前我们起步时的情况说起。我们最初推出的是一张简单的银行卡，让你在国外消费时可以按银行间汇率结算，免去实际产生的银行手续费，还能享受优惠的外汇汇率。后来，我们逐步拓展到其他产品，包括信贷、财富管理、交易、加密货币和企业账户。我们还打造了许多非金融业务。Speaker: So, maybe I start with 2 years ago with what we started. So, I started with a simple card which allowed you to spend money abroad at interbank rates avoiding effective banking fees and with good effects rates. And then at later stage I expand into other products into credit, wealth and trading, crypto, business accounts. We also build a lot of non-financial business.

所以，如今我们已经成为一家大型数字银行，不仅提供银行提供的所有服务，还提供许多额外服务。例如，你可以通过我们预订住宿、购买 eSIM 等。So, the result now we are a large digital bank providing all the services that banks provide plus providing a lot of services on top of it. For example, you can book stays with us, you can buy e-sims and so on.

发言人：接下来，我们的目标是打造一家大型的全球性银行，在至少100个国家排名第一。这正是我们现在努力在做的事。目前，我们已经在大约30个国家开展业务，可能是38个国家。其中大多数国家，我们都拥有银行牌照。Speaker: And then the idea is to build a large global bank which is number one in at least 100 countries. And that's what we are trying to do now. So, right now we're live in 30 probably 38 countries. In majority of them we have banking licenses.

然后，我们正在逐步拓展新市场，我想说每一到两年新增10到15个市场。And then we are slowly expanding 10-15 new markets every I would say 1 to 2 years.

说话人：好，这又回到了我们刚才提到的这个国家是如何起步的。你特别有竞争意识。你会说一些这样的小句子，对吧？就像是你刚才随口抛出来的那些。Speaker: Okay, so this goes back to again we just hit on what how this country started. You're super competitive. You say these like little lines, right? That you're like you just dropped there.

但你就会说，哦，我想在100个不同的国家打造排名第一的银行。But like you just like oh, I want to build the number one bank in 100 different countries.

发言人：是的。Speaker: Yeah.

说话者：你明白，这话听起来很狂，也是一种雄心壮志。我不觉得你会随随便便地说，哦，对啊，我就想成为全球第一，你知道，在100个国家都排第一。你是真的这么想的。所以，聊聊这个吧：关于竞争，你内心是怎么想的？你又是怎么看待自己正在参与的这场游戏的？Speaker: You understand that's a wild like thing to say and an ambition. I don't think you say it casually like oh yeah, I just want to be 100 you know, top number one in 100 countries. Like you actually mean it. So, like go into like how this like what is your inner monologue in terms of like competition and how you view like this game that you're playing.

说话人：是的，基本上从心理上来说，如果我选择做这件事，对吧？正如我之前说的，我需要成为……领域的第一名。而现在，世界上有一个巨大的机会：我们有很多国家，每个国家又有 10、20、30、40、50 家银行。它们都非常分散。基本上，世界上有一个独特的机会，可以打造一家全球性银行，在每个国家都提供好得多的服务和产品，而且价格也优惠得多。Speaker: Yeah, basically mentally for me if I chosen to do this game, right? And as I said before I need to be a number one in And right now there is a huge opportunity in the world where we have many countries and then in each country have 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 banks. They're all very fragmented. Basically, there is a unique chance in the world to build a global bank which provides much better services and products at the much better price in every single country.

然后实际上，通过优化来与这些银行竞争，压低其产品价格、改善客户体验，同时也为客户节省时间，因为银行不再需要这么多实体网点，等等。And then effectively to optimize to compete with these banks to drive prices on their products down, to improve customer experience, to save customers time as well because you don't need all these physical branches for banks and so on.

说话人：你能多谈谈这种雄心，或者说你这种竞争心是怎么回事吗？它每天在你的生活中是如何体现的？比如说，你醒来时是不是心里只有一个强烈的愿望，就是要完成使命、取得成功？你会不会照着镜子对自己说：“我做得还不够。”?Speaker: Can you say more about this like this ambition or this like competitive drive that you have? So like how does it manifest in your life every day? Like you wake up with just like a burning desire to achieve mission success? Are you looking yourself in the mirror and just like I'm not doing enough?

比如说，发生了什么？我对你这个创业者本人很感兴趣，然后我们再聊聊这门生意，不过这部分对我来说真的很吸引人。Like what is happening? Like I'm interested in you the entrepreneur and then we'll talk about the business, but like this is a fascinating part for me.

说话者：嗯，基本上这是一门银行业务。我的看法是，如果我选择进入这个行业，那我就得做到行业第一。显然，世界上有数万家银行。做到第一意味着什么呢？就是在国家1、2、3、4等等国家都做到第一。假设有100个国家。Speaker: Well, basically it's a banking business and the way I view it, okay, if I chosen to be in this business, I need to be a number one in it. And obviously there are tens of thousands of banks in the world. And what it means to be a number one, okay, it means to be number one in country 1 2 3 4 and so on. Let's say it's 100 countries.

然后说到竞争，以及我如何看待竞争，老实说，我其实不太关注竞争对手。我更多关注的是自己，对吧？我会怎么做才能战胜自己，对吧？在竞争中胜过自己，想办法比自己更聪明。And then in terms of competition, how I look at competition, I mean to be honest I don't really look at competition. I look at kind of myself, right? And then what would I do to beat up myself, right? To outcompete, to outsmart somehow.

而且这个理念很简单，先生。你每天都要几乎做到百分之百。这样即使你输给竞争对手，也不能真的责怪自己，因为，好吧，你每天都尽了百分之百，对吧？所以我觉得，这种心态会帮助你获胜。And the philosophy is very simple, sir. Every day you need to be like almost 100% every day. And then even if you lose to competition, then uh you cannot really blame yourself because okay, every day you were at 100%, right? So I think you know that's a mentality that will help you win.

嗯，很可能。Uh most likely.

说话人：我很喜欢这个。你有没有和 Shopify 的创始人 Tobi Lutke 相处过一段时间？Speaker: I love this. Have you spent any time with Tobi Lutke, the founder of uh Shopify?

说话者：呃，还没有。Speaker: Uh no, not yet.

发言者：好吧。嗯，他上过这个节目。我们——我其实大概两周后就要和他一起录节目了。不过他说，他喜欢把自己看作一名公司掠夺者。Speaker: Okay. So uh he was on the show. We're I'm actually recording with him in like another like 2 weeks. But he says he likes to take the view that he's a corporate raider.

现在有人买下了 Shopify，那个人就是他。他就像是在说：“之前的管理层到底在搞什么？我基本上要怎么把这届管理层做的每一件事都改进一遍？”尽管他自己也是之前管理层的一员。That somebody now has bought Shopify, it's him, and he's like, "What the hell was the previous management doing? How would I basically improve every single element of what this previous management was?" Even though it also is him.

说话者：嗯。Speaker: Mhm.

说话者：嗯，所以你说的基本上是同一回事。就像是：“好吧，你确实无法控制竞争对手怎么做，但你可以控制自己怎么做。让我分析一下自己的表现，然后想想如果从外部来看，我该如何击败自己，你懂吧？”Speaker: Uh so you said basically the same thing. It's like, "Well, okay, you can't really control what your competitors do. I can control what I do. Let me analyze how I'm doing and then how would I beat me, you know, from the outside?

说话人：是啊，我们呃大概把它送掉吧。Speaker: Yeah, let's uh probably give it away.

为什么创始人胜过职业CEOWhy founders beat professional CEOs

发言人：你为什么觉得自己有机会成为第一？你觉得他们哪些地方做得不对，让你认为自己可以做得更好？Speaker: Why do you think you have this opportunity to be number one? Like what do you see that they're doing wrong that you think think that you can do better?

说话人：他们当中很多人都不是创始人。这是第一点，对吧？所以他们最多也就待三四年。他们只是拿奖金，仅此而已，然后可能会优化某些均等性指标。Speaker: A lot of them they are not founders. That's number one, right? So they are only for 3 4 years at best. They just collect their bonuses and that's it for it and then they might, you know, optimize certain parity metrics.

但这样一来，他们就不算是真正的 10 倍人才了，对吧？所以他们确实是 10 倍人才，只不过实际上在那里待上三四年，就是为了拿奖金。结果，他们并不需要做大胆的决策，总是采取守势。But then they are not really 10x people, right? So they are and they just there for their bonuses effectively for 3 4 years. As a result, they don't really need to do bold decisions. They always play in defense.

他们从不打进攻。我风格不一样，对吧？所以，没错，我当然也会防守，但我总是在想：好吧，我还能多做些什么，对吧？我还能进入哪个行业？They never play in offense. I have a different style, right? So yes, of course I play defense as well, but I always think okay, what I can do more, right? Which industry I can get?

比如我可以推出什么产品之类的。所以你知道，我总是在不断鞭策自己，逼自己做得更多。Like which product can I launch and so on. So it's like, you know, always pushing myself, pushing myself to do more.

发言者：你为什么认为与非创始人竞争很重要？Speaker: Why do you think it's important that you're competing against non-founders?

说话者：我的意思是，不用和创始人竞争，竞争起来要容易得多，对吧？如果我要和所有银行竞争，而它们又都由创始人主导，那么结果就是，我们现在应该都会有好得多的产品。实际情况并非如此，对吧？Speaker: I mean, it's much easier to compete not against founders, right? If I would be competing with all the banks and they were all founder-led, as a result, we would all have, you know, much better products by now. That's not what's happening, right?

说话人：请进一步谈谈，在你看来，创始人和职业 CEO 之间有什么区别。Speaker: Say more about the difference between in your perspective between a founder and a professional CEO.

发言人：嗯，职业经理人最终的目标并不是改善组织，对吧？他们最终的目标是保住自己的职位。所以从定义上说，他们会做出对公司而言并非最优的决策。因为他们会把自己和公司看作两个不同的实体，对吧？Speaker: Well, professional CEOs, ultimately their goal is not to improve organization, right? Their ultimate goal is to protect their job. So they, by definition, they make suboptimal decisions for the company. Because they think about themselves and they think about the companies as two entities, right?

我把自己和公司看作一个整体，对吧？就像我做的所有事情都是对公司有利的，而且我从来不会试图把对我有利的事情和对公司有利的事情区分开。呃，这两者本来应该是不同的。对我来说，它们是一样的。I think about myself and as a company as one entity, right? Like I do everything what is good for the company and I never kind of try to diverge myself what is good for me. Uh this should be different to what is good for the company. For me it's the same.

所以我和公司完全一致。So I have like 100% alignment with the company.

说话人：是的，我听你说过类似这样的话：你的整个生活就是工作。你有 99.5% 的时间都投入到打造自己的事业上，对吗？Speaker: Yeah, I heard you say something like your entire life is work. It's like 99.5% of the your time is dedicated to your built to building your business, correct?

发言者：是的，是的，是的。另外，当我们与监管机构沟通时，他们都觉得，嗯，你知道，增长之类的想法不太好，等等。Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Also, when we when we speak with regulators, they're all are kind of yeah, but you know, growth or it's not a good mentality and so on.

而我的回答非常简单：每当你作为监管者认为我承担了过度风险时，那就完全错了，对吧？因为我是唯一一个有动力让这家公司取得成功并生存下去的人，对吧？这意味着，与职业 CEO 或专业董事会相比，我实际上不会去冒愚蠢的、过度的风险。And then my answer is very simple. Every time when you think as a regulator that I'm excessive risk taker, it's completely wrong, right? Because I'm the only one motivated for this company to succeed and to survive, right? And that means I'm actually not going to take stupid excessive risk compared to professional CEOs or professional boards.

说到底，根本没有什么公私分明。我最讨厌大家都说：“哦，这只是生意，不针对个人。”对创始人来说，根本就没有这种事。Speaker: Cuz there's no separate This is what I hate when everyone's like, "Oh, it's just business. It's not personal." It's like no such thing with founders.

说话者：嗯。嗯。Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.

Revolut 最大的错误Revolut's biggest mistake

发言者：所以，另一个让我开始了解你时感到意外的地方是，你最初的目标似乎是不受监管。你还说过，这是你犯过的最糟糕的错误。能谈谈当时发生了什么，以及你是如何吸取这个教训的吗？Speaker: So, this is another thing that surprised when I started reading about you was originally you set out to like not be regulated. And there was something about you saying this is like the worst mistake you ever made. Can you talk about what happened and how you learned this lesson?

发言人：是的，基本上，我们拥有了 700 万客户之后才申请银行牌照。嗯，与拥有数百万客户的实体相比，零客户的实体风险更低。而在监管机构眼里，你就会显得风险大得多，对吧？因为对他们来说，把牌照发给一家零客户的公司要容易得多，毕竟它在三四五年后可能还是零客户，对吧？如果你把银行牌照发给一家拥有五百万到一千万客户的公司，结果出了什么问题，那就……对吧？Speaker: Yeah, basically when we got 7 million customers and then we applied for banking license, uh the entity with a zero customers is less riskier compared to an entity with a millions of customers. And then the regulator's eyes, they become, you know, much more riskier to you, right? Because for them it's much easier to give a license to a company with a zero customers because maybe they will have zero customers in 3 4 5 years time, right? If you give her a banking license to a company with 5 10 million customers, and something goes wrong, right?

那么我的监管机构就会被、被、被责怪。Then my regulator will be to be to be blamed.

发言人：你们之前为什么没有受到监管？申请银行牌照时，业务处于什么状态？此前你们在做什么？Speaker: Why were you not regulated before? What was the state of the business when you applied for the banking license? What were you doing before?

发言人：嗯，我们只是拿到了电子货币牌照和支付牌照。所以，我们当时在……Speaker: Well, we simply got e-money license, payment licenses. So, we were on

说话者：只是转移资金。Speaker: just moving money.

发言者：许可证限制宽松得多，是的。Speaker: much lighter licenses, yes.

发言人：好的。Speaker: Okay.

发言人：是的。当时的想法是，申请银行牌照要花三四年才能拿到，而电子货币牌照一年内就能拿到。所以，显然，作为创始人，你希望把事情做得更快。这就是我们选择申请电子货币牌照的原因。Speaker: Yeah. And then the idea was banking license back then was 3 4 years to get, while e-money license you can get within 1 year. So, obviously as a founder, you want to do things faster. So, that's why we went for e-money license.

然后我们获得了很多客户，接着我们转而申请银行牌照，后来几乎就成了……因为我们的规模非常非常大。呃，我想在英国历史上，呃，从来没有发生过这种事：一家在英国拥有七八百万客户的公司申请银行牌照。And then we got a lot of customers, and then we moved to banking license, and then it became almost because we were very very large. Uh, I think in history of UK, uh, it never happened before that uh, a company with uh, 7 or 8 million customers in UK applied for banking license.

说话人：那么，这个过程很困难吗？当时发生了什么？Speaker: So, is that difficult process? Like what happened?

说话人：呃，我们花了差不多，呃，5年才在英国拿到银行牌照。是的。Speaker: Uh, it took us almost uh, 5 years to get a banking license in UK. Yeah.

说话人：好，那么如果重来，你之前会有什么不同的做法？你会尝试……我觉得你表达的意思是，监管不是护城河。这个词不太对，但实际上让自己受到监管有很大的好处。是这样吗？Speaker: Okay, so what would you do differently before? You would have tried it like what you I think the way you put it is like regulation is not a moat. That's not the right word to but it's like there's a huge benefit to actually getting yourself regulated. Is this correct?

你是这么想的吗？Is this the way you thought about it?

说话人：这就像是，嗯，建立一家大型企业有利也有弊，嗯，这是必须的，对吧？嗯，因为，嗯，如果你真的想和银行竞争，就需要，嗯，赢得客户的信任。他们需要把工资存进来，也需要把自己的大量财富存进账户里。Speaker: It's like uh, there are pros and cons uh, to build a large business uh, it's a must, right? Uh, because uh, if you want to really compete with banks, you need to get uh, trust from customers. They need to put salaries in. They need to put a lot of their wealth in their accounts.

他们需要开始和你一起交易股票、呃，ETF 等等。所以他们需要信任你，而在他们看来，呃，我的意思是，他们信任银行。They need to start trading stocks with you uh, ETFs and so on. So, they need to trust you and then in their minds uh, I mean they trust banks.

发言人：你认为美国那些类似的公司在这件事上做错了什么？Speaker: What do you think the American like companies are doing wrong about this?

发言人：要打造一家规模非常大的企业、占据很大的市场份额，这根本行不通。所以我认为，在美国，很多公司比如 Chime、Cash App，呃，大约十到十二年前起步时都很简单。它们都从未申请过银行牌照。我认为这是个大错误。Speaker: To build a very large business to capture large market share, it's just unavailable. So, I think in US uh, a lot of companies started like Chime, Cash App, uh, it was simple before 10 12 years ago. They all never went for banking license. I think it's a big mistake.

所以，他们永远无法发展成一家大型企业，因为So, they could never become a large business because

发言者：不过，请解释一下为什么没有它，他们就无法发展成一家大型企业。Speaker: Explain why they can't become a large business without it though.

说话人：只是因为他们不是银行，对吧？他们可以瞄准某些细分受众、某些客户群体，比如低收入人群之类的。但他们永远无法触及优质客户群体，对吧？而且没有银行牌照，他们永远无法成为一家提供优质银行账户服务的银行。Speaker: Just because they are not a bank, right? They can target certain uh, niche audience, certain cohorts of customers I don't know the low income and so on. But they can now never go to prime audience, right? And they can never become uh, a prime bank account without the banking license.

发言者：但你为什么认为这就意味着他们只能是一家小公司呢？Speaker: But why do you think that relegates them to being a small company?

发言人：嗯，只是因为，呃，没错，早期采用者——占总人口的 10% 到 20%——会尝试使用它们。也许它们会从早期采用者推广到他们的朋友、家人，再加上大概 2%，也就是总人口的 4%。而你想达到的是 40%、50%、60%、70%。例如，在爱尔兰，我们的市场渗透率达到了 80%。Speaker: Well, just because uh, yes, early adopters 10 to 20% of population will try them. Maybe it will go from early adopters to their friends, family and another like you know, 2% so 4% of population. While you want 40, 50, 60, 70%. For example, in Ireland we have our 80% market penetration.

所以，五个里有四个是“是”。So, four out of five Yes.

说话人：五分之四的成年人使用呃 Revolut 账户。Speaker: Four out of five adults use uh, Revolut accounts.

发言者：好吧，这是怎么发生的？Speaker: Okay, how did that happen?

发言人：慢慢来。呃，我认为这是多种因素共同作用的结果：竞争，加上银行状况很差。他们只有四家银行，而且都很糟糕；此外，爱尔兰是个很小的国家，还有很多人生活在爱尔兰境外。所以我认为，所有这些因素加在一起，最终让我们占据了80%市场中的80%。Speaker: Slowly. Uh, I think a combination of uh, of competition, very bad banks. They have only four banks which are bad, plus a very small country with a lot of people living outside of Ireland as well. So, I think all together it led to us being 80% of 80% of the market.

如果看其他市场，比如英国，我们的渗透率约为20%。法国是20%，西班牙，呃，还有几个市场的渗透率是30%、30%、40%。所以，正如爱尔兰所显示的，达到60%、70%、80%是有可能的，但前提是它要成为一家银行。If you look at other markets, for example, in the UK, we're about 20% penetration. France is 20%, Spain uh several markets are 30 30 40% penetration. So, it is possible to go to 60 70 80 as Ireland shows, but for it to be a bank.

为什么传统银行无法创新Why legacy banks can't innovate

发言者：所以我很好奇，当你们进入一个新市场时，你说这里的银行都不怎么样，竞争也不充分。那么你们看到他们做错了什么？Speaker: So, I'm very curious like when you're going into a new market and you said there's just bad banks, just like low competition here. Like what are you seeing that they're doing wrong?

说话者：嗯，他们陷入了一种僵局，管理层都是极度厌恶风险的职业经理人。因此，他们完全没有创新的意愿。嗯，然后，呃，所有资源都花在保护现有的一切上，对吧？比如，你可能有一个非常老旧的第三方传统核心银行系统。Speaker: Well, they're stuck in limbo of professional management who are extremely risk-averse. As a result, there is zero lack of zero intention to innovate. Um and then uh all the resources spent on uh protecting what they have already, right? So, for example, you can have a very old legacy third-party core banking system.

显然，你需要把它换成自己的方案，或者换成某个新的服务提供商。但银行管理层永远不会这么做，因为这会带来风险，对吧？毕竟你得迁移客户，谁知道会不会出什么问题。而且他们从来不愿意冒险，对吧？所以，这就是问题所在。Obviously, you need to change it to your own or to some new provider, but then banking management will never do it because uh it introduces risk, right? Because you need to migrate customers, you know, something might go wrong. And they're they never take a risk, right? So, that's the problem.

此外，呃，因为他们很多人都不是技术出身，所以他们确实不太懂怎么做很多技术方面的事情。因此，对他们来说，默认选择就是不为监管机构做任何事；而对于传统银行来说，在一个缺乏某些技能——也就是某些技术技能——的行业里，做任何事都是有风险的。银行业涉及的，呃，不只是监管，也包括构建技术。我认为这些人在构建技术方面都很差劲。Plus, on top of it, uh because a lot of them are not technical, so they don't really understand how to do a lot of technical things. As a result, for them default choice is to uh not do anything for regulators and then for uh for legacy banks because doing anything is a risky in an industry where you lack certain skills, so certain technical skills. And banking is about uh it's not only about like regulation, it's also about building tech. And I think all these people are very bad at building tech.

发言者：所以，在你看来，你的优势之一是，你的竞争对手不是创始人，而是职业 CEO。职业 CEO 不懂技术，因此他们实际上无法发明新技术，也就无法创新。Speaker: So, one of your advantages as you see it is you're competing against non-founders. You're competing against professional CEOs and these professional CEOs are not technical. So, they actually can't invent technology, so therefore they cannot innovate.

发言人：而这正是你所抨击的。Speaker: And that's what you're attacking.

说话人：是啊，没错。他们根本就不会考虑打造产品，对吧？因为他们根本感受不到，也不用它。Speaker: Yeah, exactly. They just don't even think about building products, right? Because they just don't feel it. They don't use it.

他们不，他们不知道该怎么做。他们只是职业经理人。要打造一家成功的企业，这一点非常重要：显然，你得成为一名优秀的管理者，比如一位非常强势的管理者，关注很多细节，同时也要是一名优秀的产品人。要知道如何打造并推动产品。They don't They don't know how to do it. They're just professional managers. Thing is very important for to build successful business, you need to obviously go to be a great manager, like very tough manager, be very in details, and be very good product person as well. To know how to build and turn the product.

技术、监管、合规和人员齐聚一堂。这就像一台机器，对吧？有各种输入，然后整台机器应该产出正确的结果，也就是人们会使用的出色产品。Tech, regulation, compliance, people all together. It's like a machine, right? So, there are inputs and then the whole machine should produce you right output, which is amazing product that people use.

像机器一样运营公司Running a company like a machine

发言者：好，解释一下你是如何建造这台机器的。Speaker: Okay, explain how you're building this machine.

说话者：我的意思是，你得在脑海里大致想象一下，这台机器的输入是什么，以及你想实现什么？目标是什么，对吧？然后，嗯，输入显然就是你的组织、架构和人员。你如何构建产品，以及你想构建什么。Speaker: I mean, you need to visualize in your head kind of, you know, what are the inputs in this machine and what do you want to achieve? What are the goals, right? And then uh Inputs is obviously your organization, your structure, your people. How you build product, what you want to build.

然后，你实际上会看到整个结构如何运作、整个产品如何构建，而且你总会介入，对吧？如果出了问题，你就会调整机器的某些部分。比如，我们刚开始时，团队非常小，只有10、20、30个人。随着团队逐渐壮大，我们遇到了瓶颈，发展速度也慢了下来。And then you effectively observe kind of, you know, the whole structure working, the whole product being built, and you always interfere, right? If something goes wrong, and then you kind of change certain parts of the machine. For example, when we started, it was a very small team, 10, 20, 30 people. We hit a bottleneck when kind of team grow, but then speed slow down.

机器停止工作了，所以我做的就是确保我们有很多非常小的独立团队，让他们都在同一个平台上工作，对吧？这样一来，速度就提高了，因为大家的工作可以并行开展。他们使用相同的工具开发不同的产品和功能，而且彼此之间都相互独立。Machine stop working, so what I did, I just ensured that we have, you know, a lot of very small independent team who just work on the same platform, right? And then speed increased because people work was parallelized. So, they work on different products, different features using the same tools. And they were all independent.

但后来，我们又在法规合规方面遇到了瓶颈。于是，我又为公司补上了一项能力，也就是法规事务、政府事务等部门。他们必须交付特定成果。接着，我们又遇到了瓶颈：无法足够快地招到优秀人才。But then again, we hit bottleneck with regulation compliance. Again, I built another muscle in the machine, which is reg affairs, government affairs department, and so on. So, they had to produce in certain outcomes. Then we hit again a bottleneck with hiring fast enough good people.

再说一次，我们为招聘最优秀的人才设计了大量流程。Again, we build a lot of process for recruitment targeting the best people.

发言者：所以，它有点像是在循环往复，对吧？你构建一些东西，然后遇到瓶颈，对吧？你找出问题，解决问题，然后再来一遍。Speaker: So, it kind of, you know, moves in circles, right? You build something, then you hit a bottleneck, right? You identify the problem, you solve the problem, you go again.

发言者：所以现在，你其实是在给这台名为你公司的机器再增添一项技能。在创办 Revolut 之前，你做的是……你当时是交易员，对吧？Speaker: And so, now you're adding another essentially like skill to this machine that is your company. You were before you started Revolut, you were doing you were a trader, right?

说话者：是的。Speaker: Yeah.

发言者：我之前听你讲过你刚才描述的那种情况，就是好像你手上有——我甚至不知道该不该称它们为“押注”。比如你会有大约20个不同的想法，或者让一些小团队分别围绕这20个想法开展工作，对吧？同时推进。说说这些团队是如何组建的，以及你之前作为交易员的职业经历如何影响你创建和管理公司的方式。Speaker: I heard about what you just described before, where it's like you have a I don't even know if you call them bets. Like you'll have like 20 different ideas or like small teams working on 20 different ideas, right? At time. Explain how these teams are structured and like how your previous career as a trader influenced the way you're building and managing your company.

发言者：我认为，作为一名交易员，风险管理以及量化一切都很有用。呃，因为在银行或其他组织里，有幸也不幸的是，很多事情都是根据员工的直觉来评估的，而在很多情况下，这种直觉其实是错的，对吧？所以，为了正确评估哪些事情做了、哪些没做，你需要有衡量指标，也需要有 KPI。Speaker: I think what was useful as a trader was risk management and then quantifying everything. Uh because there are fortunately unfortunately in banks or in other organizations, um a lot of things uh evaluated based on their people's intuition, which in a lot of cases simply wrong, right? So, in order to evaluate correctly what is done and what is not done, you need to have a metrics, you need to have KPIs.

说话者：等等，你是说“笨”还是“做完了”？Speaker: Wait, are you saying dumb or done?

说话人：好了。好了。Speaker: Done. Done.

发言人：好的。Speaker: Okay.

说话人：完成了。完成了。Speaker: Done. Done.

说话者：好的。Speaker: Okay.

说话人：我不会说自己笨。Speaker: I'm not going to call myself dumb.

发言人：能够真正扼杀组织内部政治斗争的指标和 KPI，因为……你看，一切都透明，对吧？作为个人贡献者，作为管理者，你有没有达到自己的指标？有没有实现目标？对吧？为什么没实现？Speaker: Metrics and KPIs that actually kills politics within an organization because um Look, everything is transparent, right? You as an individual contributor, you as a manager, do you achieve your metrics? Do you achieve your goal, right? Why you haven't achieved it?

所以，你说什么都无所谓。我的意思是，客观数字是存在的。我认为把它作为机器的一部分非常重要。我在银行工作时，呃，他们其实并没有这个。So, it doesn't matter what you say. I mean, there are objective numbers. I think it's extremely important to have as a part of the machine. When I worked in the bank, uh they didn't really really have it.

所以，他们请了职业 CEO，之后组织内部又有很多政治斗争。我觉得人们经营普通企业的方式就是不对的。So, they had the professional CEO, then they had their a lot of politics within an organization. and I think it's just simply wrong how people run general businesses.

像交易员一样加码赢家、止损输家Funding winners and cutting losers like a trader

说话者：好，那就解释一下怎么设置这些小赌注。Speaker: Okay, so explain like setting these little bets up.

发言者：我是说，老实讲，这其实挺简单的，因为公司推出大量功能和产品时，我们一直都保持着很快的节奏。后来在某个时候，我决定在制定押注项目时建立一套规范，因为我们做了很多事情，却没有真正跟踪它们的表现。所以，我们只是建立了一个流程阶段：首先，要做出是否启动某个押注项目的决定。这个决定可以自下而上，也可以自上而下。Speaker: I mean, to be honest, it's pretty simple because we were always high velocity for the company when we release a lot of features, a lot of products. And then at certain point of time, I decided to install discipline in building bets because we're building a lot of things, but we were not really tracking how they were performing. So, we simply build there a stage of process when first there is kind of, you know, a decision to produce a bet. It can be bottom-up or top-down.

接下来会进行一次讨论，我们称之为委员会讨论，评估提出这项押注是否合理。如果最终做出决定，我们就为这项押注提供资金。因此，我们会组建一支最多由10人组成的团队，包括前端开发人员、后端开发人员、设计师、产品负责人，有时还会有数据科学家和运营经理。Then there is a discussion. Call it committee. Whether it makes sense to produce the bet and then if decision is made, we fund the bet. So, we separate a team of up to 10 people, front-end developers, back-end developers, designer, product owner, sometimes data scientist, operation manager.

然后，他们会在9到18个月内打造一款新产品。产品上线后，我们只看它的毛利增长情况。过去10年我们一直这么做，已经推出了大约50个项目。我们知道，表现最好的10个项目每月环比增长约10%到20%，并且连续每个月都能创造100万、200万、300万的毛利。And then they build a new product within 9 to 18 months. And then when they launch the product, we simply look at growth of the product in terms of gross profit. And because we've done it for last 10 years, we already have launched, say, 50 bets. And then we know that our top 10 bets, they grow, say, 10-20% month on month and they produce, I don't know, 1 million GP, 2 million GP, 3 million GP each month consecutively.

如果我们推出一项业务押注，后来发现它的历史表现位于所有押注的后25%，我们就会直接将其淘汰。因此，对于增长不快的业务，我们会严格执行纪律。而对于增长非常快的押注，我们则会加大投入，对吧？也就是为它们配备更多团队。And then if we release a bet and then we see that this bet is historically in cohort of bottom 25% of all the bets, we simply sunset it. So, we instill discipline when we're not really running businesses which are not growing very fast. And then bets which are growing very fast, we're actually doubling down, right? So, we give them more teams.

一个团队发展成第二个团队、三个团队、四个团队、五个团队，然后发展成一个部门，再到成为一条重要的损益线。所以，我认为这个过程就是非常有纪律性地不断筛掉那些行不通的事情。即便是我自己，在决定该开发哪些产品、不该开发哪些产品时，也不太相信自己的直觉，因为过去我经常判断错。我认为唯一可行的方法，就是采用一种完全算法化的方式，对吧？One team becomes second team, three teams, four teams, five teams, then becomes department, then becomes a major P&L lines. So, I think this process is just, you know, very disciplined to always filter out things that don't work out. Even myself, I kind of, you know, I don't really trust my intuition in terms of which products to build, which products not to build because historically I was wrong so times. And I think only approach which like completely algorithmic, right?

对最看好的项目继续投入资金，对表现最差的项目则在18个月内直接砍掉。Top bets you continue to fund, bottom bets you just cut like within 18 months.

说话者：你内心的交易者。Speaker: trader in you.

发言者：没错。Speaker: Exactly.

说话者：你说的很多内容让我想起贝索斯，以及他描述自己在亚马逊创建公司时所做的那些显然彼此不同的押注。他有句很精彩的话，大意是：“你得给那些有希望的火花浇上汽油。”所以，你的整套做法是要砍掉表现最差的部分，但对表现最好的那些呢？你们通常会把前10%划为一档吗？Speaker: There's a lot of what you're saying reminds me of Bezos and the way he describes this all these like obviously these disparate bets that he would place inside of Amazon when he was obviously building company. And he has a great line where he's like you need to pour gasoline on the promising sparks. So, your whole thing is I'm going to cut the bottom, but then the top performing would do you have a percentage of the 10% top? Usually

说话者：所有男性中最多有 25%。Speaker: up to 25% of all the guys.

说话者：好，然后你现在……我们知道了。Speaker: Okay, and then you're just now we know

说话者：我们把它放大。Speaker: We scale it up.

发言者：好，你们投入了更多的资金和资源。为什么在一开始、项目尚未经过验证时，将团队规模限制在 10 人很重要？Speaker: Okay, and you're dedicating a lot more money and resources. Why is it important at the very beginning before it's unproven to cap the team size of 10?

说话人：不一定是10个人。可能会多一点，具体取决于产品有多复杂，但一般来说不应该超过10个人。我想，作为一个经验法则，大概需要两三个后端开发人员。Speaker: It's not necessarily 10. Like it can be a bit more. It just depends how complex is the product, but it should not be more Generally, it should not be more than 10 people. I guess as a rule of thumb, okay, you need to probably two, three back-end developers.

你需要呃两名……在我们的情况下，因为我们也开发移动应用，你需要呃两到四名前端开发人员。所以，三到四名后端开发人员、一名产品负责人和一名设计师，这样总共就是10个人。You need uh two In our case, because we also produce mobile apps, you need uh two to four front-end developers. So, three to four back-end developers, one product owner, one designer, and it gives you 10 people.

AI 如何改变 Revolut 的团队结构How AI is changing Revolut's team structure

发言者：现在，AI 是否正在改变你组建这些团队的方式？Speaker: Is the way you're structuring these teams changing because of AI now?

说话者：是的，这确实是现在的一件事，我现在正试着改变这一点。因为我觉得过去十年里，我在如何领导人、如何围绕人的优势和劣势构建组织方面做了很多优化。比如避免政治纷争、设定 KPI，等等。但实际上，这不就是在回避人的弱点吗？而坦白说，有了 AI，结构需要成为……Speaker: Yes, that's actually um a thing now that I'm kind of, you know, trying to change because last 10 years I think I optimized a lot how you direct people, how you build organization around people, around their strengths and weaknesses. Like avoiding politics, putting KPIs, and so on. But, actually avoiding people's weaknesses, right? With AI structure needs to be a result of, to be honest with you.

我认为团队不应该再有10个人了。应该是两个人，最多三个人，因为一个，呃，一个开发人员可以做前端、后端，甚至也可以做数据科学。所以，应该看结果。I think the team should not be 10 people anymore. It should be two people, three people at best, because of one uh one developer can do front-end, back-end, can even do, you know, data science as well. So, it should be a result.

发言者：你能谈谈人工智能正在如何改变你经营公司的方式吗？Speaker: Can you give me a download of your thoughts about how AI is changing the way that you're running your company?

说起来，我觉得很多事情我们才刚刚起步。所以，我们已经将客户支持自动化了大约 90%，现在整个客户支持团队的工作有 90% 都实现了自动化。我们也在做同样的事。以前有五千多人，现在呃，少得多了。Speaker: Well, many things under I think we are just in the beginning. So, we automated customer support about some 90% of all customer support team is automated now. We're doing the same. Before it used to be 5,000 people plus, now it's uh it's much less.

显然，工程工作也实现了自动化。我们让工程师的效率提升了30%。翻译、呃，交叉销售现在也由大语言模型来完成。嗯，还有很多事情，但我认为我们的最终目标，至少目前对我们来说，是能够打造一个全栈式的 AI 员工。Obviously, engineering is automated as well. We increase speed of engineers by 30%. Translation, uh cross-selling as well done by uh LLMs now. Um a lot of things, but I think ultimate goal is uh at least a bit for us now is to be able to build uh like full-stack AI employee.

嗯，我觉得用我们现有的技术完全可以做到。所以，它并不是那种你告诉它要做什么、它就生成相应内容的聊天工具或类似界面。不，它更像是一位 AI 员工，可以和你一起参加会议，有自己的邮箱和 Slack 账号，可以访问所有内部后台系统，也能够实际完成工作。所以，我觉得这算是终极目标吧，不过我想，迟早大多数公司都会走到这一步。Uh I think it's completely doable with our current technology. So, it's not like uh chat tool or another like interface where you tell what to do and then it produces something. No, it's more like AI employee which can join calls with you, which have email, which have Slack account, which have access to all internal uh back office system, and uh can do work. So, I think that's kind of you know the ultimate goal, but I mean, sooner or later, you know, majority of companies will come to.

50 名直接下属，并快速推广创新成果50 direct reports and spreading innovation fast

说话人：是啊，你一直反复提到，呃，我不确定你有没有用“官僚主义”这个词。我觉得你没用，但你就是讨厌政治，想尽量减少那些东西。你更看重数据。你更像是那种只在乎结果的人：你说什么都无所谓，我们达标了没有？还在增长吗？Speaker: Yeah, you keep mentioning over and over again like uh I don't know if you use the word bureaucracy. I don't think you did, but like you hate politics, you want to minimize that. You want like data. You're much more like just I don't care what you say is like did we hit the numbers or not, and is this growing or not?

你们的组织架构是什么样的？你是不是有一大堆直接下属？比如 Alexander Wang 大概两周前还坐在那把椅子上，他有些离谱的[ __ ]，比如 200 个直接下属。What's your organizational structure? Do you just have a shitload of direct reports? Like Alexander Wang was sitting in that chair like 2 weeks ago, and he had some crazy [ __ ] like 200 direct reports.

说话人：嗯。所以，比如说，你们是怎么组织的？你们的组织架构是怎样的？Speaker: Yeah. So, like what's your How are you organized?

说话人：呃，我大概有 50、51、52 个。嗯，实际上我不只是……好吧，我会和我的直属下属沟通，但我也会深入沟通，对吧？我会一直沟通到项目中的一线个人贡献者。所以，我可以直接和设计师、产品负责人，还有开发人员交流。Speaker: Uh so, I have about 50 51 52. Um reality I'm not even speak Well, I speak with my direct reports, but I also give a deeper, right? I give it down to individual contributor in bottom projects. So, I can speak directly with designer, with product owner, with uh developer.

理念很简单，对吧？所以，每当你雇用一些呃聪明、能够自我引导的人，你其实不需要管理他们。你只需要给他们指明方向，然后确保大家步调一致。这简直像一场噩梦，对吧？Philosophy is very simple, right? So, whenever you hire uh smart self-guided people, you don't really need to manage them. So, you just need to show them direction, and then ensure that they're all synchronized. This is like a nightmare, right?

所以，你需要确保所有人都在使用相同的标准化设备，对吧？公司里也需要做到这一点。你不需要每个团队或部门都各自重新发明一遍轮子，对吧？或者各自打造自己的武器。So, you need to ensure that all people are using the same standardized equipment, right? That's what you need in the company as well. You don't need every single team or department to reinvent their own bicycles, right? Or their own weapons.

现在，必须采用同一套标准做法。之后，如果有人发明了某种额外的工具或手段，让我们能够进一步提速，我们就需要在所有团队和部门中统一采用。这正是我非常擅长做的事情。我很擅长支持某个团队或部门进行创新，然后把创新成果推广到整个公司。Now, it has to be the same standard approach. And then, if someone invents, you know, some additional kind of tool or additional instrument which allows us to move even faster, then we need to standardize it across all the teams and departments. And that's what I what I do very well. I'm very good at supporting innovation in one team or one department and then actually spreading it across the whole company.

发言人：你能举个例子，说明你是如何发现一项创新，并将其推广到其他部门的吗？Speaker: Can you give me an example of you spotting an innovation and spreading it through the other departments?

发言者：例如，最近在设计方面，我们一直使用 Figma。我注意到现在有一个团队实际上借助 LLM 更快地完成设计。他们不再直接在产品的某个界面中进行设计，而是把我们的设计系统以代码形式上传给 LLM，然后提示它根据我们的设计系统生成特定的流程。因此，整个设计不再只是 Figma 里的一个画板，而是变成了你笔记本电脑或模拟器上的实时界面。Speaker: For example, recently was we for design, we always used Figma. Right now, I spotted that one team is actually producing designs much faster using LLMs and then instead of actually designing in certain interface of the product, they simply uploaded our design system on the code level to LLM. And then, they prompt to produce certain flows based on our design system. As a result, the whole design is not really a frame in Figma, but it's like a live interface on your laptop or on your simulator.

所以，你可以点击各个元素进行操作，它们也会做出相应反应。不过最重要的是，和在 Figma 里制作画框或屏幕相比，你能快上三到四倍。现在我正把整套系统推广给所有设计师。So, you can click through things. It reacts and so on. But, the most important thing, you can do it three, four times faster compared to doing frames in Figma or screens in Figma. And then, I'm pushing the whole system to all designers now.

说话人：你有没有花过时间读一些关于过去的创业者的书之类的？Speaker: Have you spent any time like reading about like entrepreneurs like from the past at all?

发言者：嗯，当然。嗯。Speaker: Yeah, of course. Yeah.

说话者：比如说，你学习过的人当中，有没有哪位特别突出、让你敬佩？Speaker: Like anybody stick out that you admire you studied?

说话者：是的，当然。我读过关于亨利·福特的书。Speaker: Yeah, of course. I read books about Henry Ford.

说话者：我很高兴你提到了亨利·福特。你坐在那里谈论这件事，就好像你正在制造一台机器。你像是在观察机器各个不同部分的创新。我需要确保这些创新能够遍及整台机器。Speaker: I'm glad you said Henry Ford. You're sitting there talking about like you're building a machine. You're like observing these innovations in all different parts of your machine. And I need to make sure that it's spread throughout the this entire machine.

那就像亨利·福特、安德鲁·卡内基那样。他会周游世界。如今，显然我们的技术可以广泛传播，你知道，有人可以告诉你，你也可以在网上看到，诸如此类。但他得亲自去各地的工厂，因为那些工厂生产的是实体产品。That's like Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie. He would travel around the world. Now, we obviously our technology can proliferate, you know, somebody can tell you about it, you see it online, whatever. He'd have to like physically go and travel to the factories cuz they're building physical stuff.

就像是：“哦，等等，这个想法是在英国的，我想我要把它带回美国。”卡内基和福特也是这么做的。不过卡内基说的话听起来特别像你，他大概会说：“我不在乎这能不能让我们业务中1%的部分提升5%。只要有更好的做法，我们就会采用。”而且他当时的竞争对手通常都比较老派，不愿意投资技术。事实上，当他们发现他在这上面投入了那么多资源时，还觉得他简直疯了。可他经营公司长达30年，这反而让他获得了不断累积的优势，等到竞争对手想追赶时，已经永远追不上了。And like, "Oh, wait, this idea in Britain, I take I'm going to take it back to America." And that's the way he Carnegie Ford did this, too, but Carnegie specifically sounds exactly like you, where he's just like, "I don't care if it's a 5% improvement in 1% of our business. Like, if there's a better way to do it, we are going to do that." And he was moving against usually older competitors that would not invest in technology. And in fact, when they found out what he was spending so much resources on it, they thought he was [ __ ] crazy and actually gave him, cuz he ran a company for 30 years, it actually gave him this compounding advantage that by the time like his competitors could never catch up.

他领先太多了。不过，你刚才描述的想法，和卡内基的非常相似。He was like so far ahead. But it's like you were thinking very similar to Carnegie in what you were just describing.

发言者：我认为特别重要的是，你只是在打造一台运转更快、能够实现目标的机器。然后，如果你在机器的某个部分发现了创新，就需要尽快推广开来。Speaker: I think it's super important to you're just building a machine which moves faster, which achieves the goals. And then if you if you spot innovation in certain part of the machine, you need to spread it as fast as possible.

发言者：是的，所以你的意思是，你有点讨厌那些只会传达该做什么的经理，对吧？你已经把他们从公司里裁掉了？Speaker: Yeah, and so this idea that you kind of hate like managers that just pass along like what to do, correct? You've eliminated them from your company?

说话人：是的，没错。过去10年里我已经见过很多了。我只是说他们做的事情，好吧，他们从个人那里，从个人贡献者那里获取信息，然后把信息传递给，我不知道，利益相关者，对吧？我的意思是，他们的附加价值是什么，对吧？Speaker: Yeah, exactly. I've seen so many by now last 10 years. I just simply what they do, okay, they take information from their individual from individual contributors and then they pass it to I don't know, stakeholders, right? I mean, it's like what was what's their value add, right?

你改变了团队的方向吗？不，我是说，他们知道自己在做什么。好吧，你带来了什么创新吗？你是否找到了实现路线图最简单的方法？是吧？Did you change direction of the team? No, I mean, they know what they're doing. Okay, did you bring any innovation? Did you identify the easiest way to achieve the road map, right?

不，倒也不是。但我是说，你的工作到底是怎样的？就是，你知道，从他们那里拿到数字再转给我？我就是搞不明白。No, not really. But I mean, what's your job like, you know, just you know, taking numbers from them and passing them to myself? I just don't get it.

招聘自主制导导弹Hiring self-guided missiles

说话人：我听说你会精简团队。而且你们正在寻找我想你们称为自导导弹的东西。Speaker: You prune your team is what I've heard. And you're searching for I think what you call self-guided missiles.

发言者：是的，那些自我引导的人。Speaker: The self-guided people, yeah.

说话人：你想要的几乎就是一份创始人和员工表单？Speaker: It's almost like a founder and employee form is what you're going after?

发言人：我总是开玩笑说，你知道，自我驱动的人就像自导导弹，对吧？他们都是才华横溢的人，你甚至不需要告诉他们目标是什么。他们会自己确定目标，然后自己实现目标，对吧？所以他们就像能够自行识别目标的自导导弹。Speaker: I always joke that, you know, self-guided people are like self-guided missiles, right? So you got brilliant people, you don't even need to tell them what the goal is. They self-identify the goal and then they self-reach it, right? So they're like self-guided missile which also identify the goals.

然后，嗯，那些能力不错但不算出色的人，你只要告诉他们目标，他们不用经过任何反复沟通就能达成目标。普通人呢，你告诉他们目标之后，还得每周跟他们反复沟通，指导他们，告诉他们该做什么，然后他们才能达成目标，对吧？所以你得花时间管理他们。这正是我不想要的。Then um people who are good, but not excellent, you need to tell them the goal and then they're without any kind of iteration, they will reach the goal. Average people, you tell them the goal, and then you need to spend weekly iterations with them to direct them, to tell them what to do, and then they will reach the goal, right? So, you spend management time. That's what I don't want.

然后，呃，对于那些表现低于平均水平的人，好吧，你给他们设定了目标，嗯，也花时间陪他们，但他们很可能还是达不到目标，对吧？所以这是个问题。因此，要想让自己的直接下属尽可能多，你只需要尽量减少花在每个人身上的管理时间。And then, uh below average people, okay, you gave them the goal, um you spent time with them, and then most likely they will not hit the goal, right? So, that's a problem. So, in order for you to have as many direct reports as possible, you just need to minimize management time spent on each of them.

发言人：我们就假设你反正已经把所有表现低于平均水平的人都清理掉了。那你怎么识别表现一般的人？然后也把他们解雇吗？Speaker: Let's just assume you've gotten rid of all your below average people anyways. How do you identify the average people, and then do you just fire them as well?

发言人：是的，我确实如此。嗯，像我认识的很多非常优秀的高管一样，他们也为这个问题感到棘手。Speaker: I do, yes. Uh like a lot of people I know who are very good executives, they struggle with this issue.

发言者：你为什么认为他们会遇到困难？Speaker: Why do you think they struggle?

说话者：我觉得就是，你知道，他们更在乎体谅别人，而不是在乎赢。所以我觉得，如果你更看重输赢，对吧，那你对别人的同理心就会排在第二位，然后即使决定很艰难，你也会做出正确的决定。而那些比较有同理心、没那么执着于成为赢家的人，可能会优先考虑自己排第二、第三或第四，而不是优先考虑为团队招揽更优秀的人。Speaker: I think it's just, you know, they much more care about being empathetical to other people rather than caring about winning. So, I think if you're much more weighted in terms of winning, right, your empathy to other people is at second place, and then you will do uh right decisions even if they are tough decisions. And then, people who are kind of, you know, more empathetic and less uh attached to being a winner, then they might prioritize their being number two or number three or number four rather than uh prioritize getting better people in their team.

说话者：你听说过埃隆是怎么谈论这件事的吗？Speaker: Have you heard how Elon speaks about this?

说话者：不。Speaker: No.

说话人：所以，他会告诉那些人，呃，比如负责管理工程团队的人。他会说：“如果你的工程师喜欢你，那你就没做好本职工作。”他的理念就是这样。他会说：“我们是来赢的。我们是来达成目标的，至于大家感觉如何，完全是次要的。”Speaker: So, he would tell the people uh like the people managing the engineering team. He's like, "If your engineers like you, you're doing you're not doing the right job." And his whole thing was exactly that. He's just like, "We're here to win. We're here to achieve the goal, and then how people feel is like completely secondary to that."

发言者：是的，没错。Speaker: Yeah, exactly.

发言者：你更倾向于这样想吗？Speaker: That's more how you think?

发言者：我认为，无论你聘请高管是为了什么，都非常重要的一点是：你观察高管时，如果发现他们很受下属喜爱，那他们可能并不是合适的人选。我觉得最优秀的高管都很强硬，对吧？当然，他们也可能很受人喜欢，对吧？但受人喜欢从来不是高管的目标，对吧？目标始终是达成目标，同时尽可能少地投入资源。Speaker: I think it's very important whatever you hire an executive for, your observe executives uh like people who are very likable by their direct reports uh it they might not be the right people. I think the best executives there are they're very tough, right? Well, they might be likable, right, but then likable is never the goal for executives. right? is always to achieve the goal, right? With the minimum number of resources spent.

所以，他们是最棒的。So, they're the best.

说法也一样，因为我听你说过类似的话：你喜欢小投入，喜欢小投入带来的大成果。你刚才就说了类似的话，比如用最少的资源达成目标。Speaker: Same word with this cuz I've heard this like you like small you like large outcomes that come from small inputs. You just said something like that just now. Like achieve the goal with the minimum amount of resources.

说话者：是的。Speaker: Yeah.

说话人：所以，这有点像一种艺术——我知道你肯定不会觉得自己是艺术家。但你做的事情里确实有种艺术性：你不只是想赢，还想用正确的方式赢。你当然可以赢，但可能比别人多投入很多资源；而别人会想：“不，我想尽可能用最少的投入，取得最大的成果。”Speaker: So, it's like a almost like an art to like I know you don't think of yourself as an artist for sure. But like there is like an art you're trying to like it's not just you want to win, you also want to win like the right way. Where it's like you could win and you just expended way more resources than somebody else who's like no, I want to try to find the minimum input possible for large outcome.

发言人：对，没错。想想创始人、创业者以及优秀高管会做些什么，好吧，他们都有一个必须从头到尾达成的目标。这意味着，他们需要确定方向，也就是要去哪里，然后在这个方向上构建一些东西，同时尽可能少地消耗资源。Speaker: Yeah, exactly. If you think what founders do, what entrepreneurs do, what are like great executives do, okay, they have the goal they need to reach end to end. So, what it means, okay, they need to identify direction, where to go, and then they need to build something within this direction with a minimal number of resources spent.

资金过多会让创始人变弱Too much money makes founders weaker

说话人：不过，你觉得美国的创业生态系统里有很多浪费吗？Speaker: Do you see a lot of waste in the like the American entrepreneur ecosystem though?

说话人：我觉得钱是不是太多了？很多创始人觉得钱是免费的。在加州，钱可能真的几乎是免费的，因为你可以以高得离谱的估值融到大把资金，然后就只管花。所以我觉得，确实存在一种文化：人们试图用钱而不是动脑子来解决问题。Speaker: I think there is too much money, right? There are a lot of founders they think money is free, which is probably almost free in California because you can raise you know so much money at the ridiculous valuations, and then just spend. So, I think there is definite culture of uh trying to solve problems with money rather than with your brains.

发言人：向那些正走上这条路的年轻创业者解释，为什么这不是正确的做法。Speaker: Explain to young entrepreneurs that are going down that path why that's not the right move.

说话人：嗯，比如说，你做的是 B2B 业务，对吧？然后你就创办了一家公司，开始有了第一笔销售，最初比如说做到 100 万 ARR，接着你决定扩大规模，然后突然就决定聘请一位薪酬高昂的销售副总裁，他会再招聘大概 50 名销售人员来销售你的产品。你需要找到一种低成本销售产品的方式，建立一套系统，然后只要不断把更多员工投入这套系统，就能始终获得很好的投资回报。一开始就大举铺开，聘请一位薪酬高昂的销售副总裁，再让他招聘一支同样成本高昂的团队，这也是一种选择。Speaker: Well, for example, you're into B2B business, right? And then you kind of you know start up a company, you have your first sales, first say 1 million ARR, and then you decide to scale it, and then suddenly you decide to hire expensive VP of sales who will who will hire another like you know 50 sales people to sell your product. You need to find a way to start selling a product cheaply, build a system, and then simply feed additional employees into the system, so you always have you know great payback. Starting big, hiring you know very VP of sales who will hire also very expensive team or is a decision.

说话人：好吧，基本上他们就是取消了金钱方面的限制。因此，他们没有培养出这些限制所能锻炼出来的技能。如果你要在这套限制条件下生存下来，你就得真的有本事，真的有才华。Speaker: Okay, so essentially like they remove the constraint for money. Therefore, they're not developing the skillset that constraints make you. If you're going to survive under this set of constraints, you actually have to be good. You actually have to be talented.

你确实得善于变通。他们基本上是在靠砸钱来应付。这短期内可能行得通，但长远来看，他们会被像你这样的人打败。You actually have to be resourceful. And they're essentially papering that with money. And it might work for the short term, but long term they're going to get beaten by somebody like you.

说话人：我的意思是，如果我们处于同一个行业，那是的，就我想说，在美国很多情况下竞争并没有那么激烈，对吧？Speaker: I mean if we are in the same industry then yes, for what the I mean in many cases in US it's not that competitive, right?

说话人：等等，这说法可真够大胆的。你为什么会说在美国竞争没那么激烈？我觉得其他人可能会认为那里是竞争最激烈的环境。作为欧洲人，你怎么看？Speaker: Wait, that's a wild statement. Why would you say in the US it's not that competitive? I feel other people would feel it's the most competitive environment. What do you see as a European?

说话者：我的意思是，欧洲的竞争力更弱。Speaker: I mean the Europe is even less competitive.

说话人：是啊。所以你觉得它没有竞争力？Speaker: Yeah. So you think it's not competitive?

说话人：中国缺乏竞争力，是吧。所以中国实行的是“996”，对吧？即使你在欧洲很优秀，或者在美国很优秀，我是说，你怎么能胜过那些每周工作六天、每天从早上9点到晚上9点的人呢？而且他们接受的教育也非常好，尤其是技术教育。Speaker: China is not competitive, yeah. So China is 996, right? And then even if you are good in Europe or even if you are good in US, I mean how can you outcompete the people who work 9 to 9 6 days a week, right? Plus they have uh very good education, technical education.

所以这非常困难。我刚开始时，是在一个有140家公司的联合办公空间里起步的。五年之内，只有三家公司存活了下来。它们都在周末工作。So it's very hard. When I started I started in co-working space with 140 companies. Within a 5-year time only three companies survived. They all worked on the weekends.

十年内，140家公司中只有两家存活下来。所以我认为，如果想生存下去，周末工作是必不可少的，纯粹从统计数据来看。Within 10 years only two companies survived out of 140. So I think working on weekends is a must if you want to survive, purely statistically.

说话人：好吧，每周工作 7 天是一回事，但朝九晚九或朝十晚十——实际的工作文化到底是什么样的？Speaker: Okay, so working 7 days a week is one thing, but working 9 to 9 or 10 to 10, like what is it what is the actual culture?

说话者：嗯，我就是这么做事的，对吧？Speaker: Well, I work like that, right?

说话人：你是创始人。我不认识哪个创始人会说：“不，不，我在休带薪假。”我理解这一点。我说的是你的……Speaker: You're the founder. I don't know a single founder that's like no, no, I'm I'm on PTO. Like I understand that. I'm talking about your

说话人：呃，是啊，我的直属下属里，绝大多数人都是这么工作的，对吧？Speaker: Uh yeah, my direct reports like absolute majority of them they work like that, right?

他们可能在我直属下属的下属中，目标一致性会稍微差一点。不过我还是觉得，在所有欧洲公司里，我们大概是工作最努力的公司之一。而且如果把美国的公司也算上，我觉得我们也还是最努力的公司之一。Speaker: They might be like a bit less alignment in our for direct reports of my direct reports. But still I think out of all European companies we're probably one of the hardest working. And I think we are also one of the hardest working companies if you include US as well.

说话人：我想知道你怎么看那些……那些拥有这种加利福——加州科技文化和运作体系的创业者？你觉得他们做错了什么？你说钱实在太多了。他们没那么有竞争力。Speaker: I want to know what you think like the people the entrepreneurs that are that have this like Calif- California tech like culture and operating system, what think they're doing wrong? You said there's just too much money. They're not that competitive.

不，其他方面似乎都具备了。这里有一个生态系统，人才也非常优秀。你知道，这里有很棒的大学，还有很多外籍人士来这些大学求学。Speaker: No, everything else is seems there is there. There is a ecosystem. Talent is very good. You got, you know, great universities plus uh like a lot of expats, you know, coming to study in these universities.

人们相当勤奋。但这种文化就是，你知道，钱太多了，然后人们花钱——选择在这些问题上花很多钱，我觉得这是一种不好的文化。People are rather hard working. But the culture when, you know, there's, you know, too much money and then people spend choose to spend a lot of money on the problems, I think it's wrong culture.

说话人：因为他们并没有真正地解决问题，解决那个根本问题。Speaker: Cuz they're not solving actually solving the problem, the underlying problem.

说话者：我觉得首先这就是很大的浪费，而且你并没有真正成长为一名创业者。用钱把问题解决掉很容易。就是说，如果你有无穷无尽的钱，你只要把钱往这里、这里、这里砸。但这样一来，未来万一因为某种原因钱没了，你就没有做好准备。Speaker: I think it's just a lot of waste, number one, and then you're not really developing yourself as an entrepreneur. It's so easy to kind of, you know, close the problem with the money. If you have unlimited number unlimited amount of money, I mean, you just, you know, throw money here, here, here. But then you're not prepared for the future when, you know, for some reason money can disappear.

发言人：这个观点很有意思。你并没有把自己培养成一名企业家。Speaker: That's a very interesting take. You're not developing yourself as an entrepreneur.

发言人：是的。Speaker: Yeah.

欧洲的种种限制教会了 Revolut 什么What Europe's constraints taught Revolut

发言者：举几个你如何提升自己的例子。Speaker: Give me examples of how you developed yourself.

发言者：嗯，我们刚起步时，如果看这门生意的单位经济效益，毛利率实际上是负的。此后的三四五年里，毛利率一直为负，直到我们通过优化，将毛利率提升至最高 80%。再看看为什么会这样，对吧？在我们的业务中，与美国相比，欧洲的各方面限制都非常严格，监管也非常严格。Speaker: Well, when we started, if you look at the unit economics of the business, we really started with a negative gross margin. And the negative gross margin continued for next three, four, five years until we optimized it to up to 80% of positive gross margin. And then if you look at why is that, right? So, in our business, if you look at our Europe, everything is extremely capped and regulated compared to US.

例如，交换费率是20个基点，而美国是100%。大多数国家都对信用卡利率设定了上限。信贷额度非常有限，对吧？你实际上无法随意向很多人提供信贷。For example, interchanges 20 base points versus 100% in US. Credit card rates are capped in majority of countries. Credit is very limited, right? You cannot really freely give credit to many people.

由于欧洲各国的情况各不相同，实际在欧洲设立一家银行非常困难。即使你持有欧洲的银行牌照，也无法成为主要银行，因为监管规定不允许你发行本地账户，除非你在当地设立实体分行。It's very difficult to actually set up a bank in Europe given country by country because even if you have a banking license in Europe, you cannot be a primary bank because with regulation that's allow you to uh start issuing local accounts unless you start a local branch of the bank in that physical location.

发言者：我的意思是，假设你需要设立办公室、接入本地网络、遵守当地法规等等。这样一来，你就得逐个国家开展工作，这会耗费大量时间和资源，还要应对不同的语言。Speaker: I mean, let's say you need to have an office, you need to have local connectivity, local regulation, and so on. So, you go country by country and takes a lot of time, a lot of resources as well. So, different languages as well.

发言人：而这一切都得由你来完成。Speaker: And you had to do all of this.

说话人：是的，而且许多国家的劳动法都非常严格。美国就宽松得多，对吧？我的意思是，美国实行任意雇佣制。欧洲可不是这样。Speaker: Yes, plus very tough employment laws in many countries. And US is very easy, right? I mean, it's like employment at will. In Europe it's not like that.

所以，你在招聘时需要非常谨慎，得仔细挑选要招的人。所有这些因素加在一起，实际上营造了一种不太容易盈利的环境，对吧？在这样的环境中，创办公司也非常困难。可即便如此，我们还是算成功了，对吧？So, you need to be very careful how you hire, who you hire. So, all this together is actually producing environment which is not very profitable, right? And very difficult to build a company. And then even in that environment we kind of succeeded, right?

但后来我们成功了，因为我们花了很多时间、精力，还有很多脑力，去优化每一个问题。如果我在巴西、美国，或者墨西哥等其他国家经营同样的业务，某些方面会容易得多。看单位经济效益的话，发放信贷要容易得多。交换费并不会留存。But then we succeeded because we spend a lot of time and a lot of uh energy and a lot of uh kind of, you know, brain power to optimize on every single problem. If I was to have the same business in Brazil or like in US or maybe in other countries in Mexico, uh certain aspects would be much easier. If you look at unit economics, uh credit is so much easier to give. Interchange is not kept.

严格来说，欧洲这种艰难的环境其实，呃，教会了我们如何在一个非常……呃，某种程度上竞争激烈的环境中开展业务。你懂我的意思吗？Technically, this difficult environment in Europe actually uh taught us how to uh build business in a very uh kind of in a competitive landscape. You see what I mean?

发言者：好，所以如果你在这种非常艰难的环境中活了下来，现在你就拥有了那些没经历过这一切的人所没有的技能。接下来你要和他们正面竞争，比如在美国，那他们会很难与你竞争。你也会很难被他们打败，因为他们没有培养出同样的技能，也没有经历过你经历的那些事。Speaker: Okay, so if you were surviving in this very difficult environment, now you have the skill set that people that did not have to go through that, and now you have to compete head-to-head with them in let's say like America, they're going to be very hard to compete with. You're going to be very hard to compete with cuz they haven't developed the same skill sets and they didn't go through the stuff you did.

说话人：好的，这完全说得通。Speaker: Okay, that makes perfect sense.

为什么风险投资家像足球啦啦队员一样Why VCs are like football cheerleaders

说话人：你谈到了一些关于投资者的很有意思的观点，我想和你聊聊，因为这真的很重要。这个节目最初的理念就是，我觉得企业家是世界上最重要的人。我的意思是，有人有一个想法，起初它并不存在，而他们凭借决心、行动力，还有那股冲劲，把脑海中原本不存在的东西变成了现实。就你而言，你们已经进入了40个国家，或者类似的规模，有数千名员工，有多少客户？Speaker: You said some very interesting things about investors that I want to talk to you about because it's really important. This show, the whole idea was just like I think entrepreneurs are the most important people in the world. The idea that you know, somebody has an idea and it doesn't exist and they through determination, agency, you know, aggression, like they make something that didn't exist that started in their mind real. And in your case, you have, you know, you're in 40 countries or whatever the case is, thousands of employees, how many customers?

数千万？我是说，比如说，这是你当时有的一个想法，对吧？那时候你多大来着？二十多岁快到三十？是啊，简直不可思议。Tens of millions? Like, if from an idea that you had, you know, when you were what? In your late 20s at the time. Yeah, it's absolutely incredible.

我觉得这对我来说简直是个奇迹。不过，很多时候，创始人私下里谈论投资者时说的话，并不会公开说出来。我们之前聊到过这件事，因为我看到一段你的视频片段，你把投资者比作足球啦啦队。你能不能……你能解释一下为什么这么比吗？I think that's a miracle to me. And yet a lot of the discussion that takes place, that what founders say about investors in private, they do not say in public. And so, we were talking earlier because I saw this clip of you where you compared investors to football cheerleaders. Can you give Can you explain why you made that comparison?

说话者：嗯，基本上，呃，我之前给你讲过这个故事。所以，我对这家公司的印象是，12、13年前，嗯，那时候在欧洲和英国，融资环境非常艰难。简单来说，当时周围的风投并不多，更多的是私募股权投资人，他们非常激进，也极其注重法律条款。所以，要融到钱，你就得在股东协议里接受很多苛刻的条件，呃，比如清算优先权、董事会席位，还有削弱你作为创始人的投票权之类的。Speaker: Well, basically uh I gave you this story before. So, what I what I thought of the company was 12, 13 years ago, um back then in Europe and in the UK, it was extremely difficult environment to raise money. Simply, there were not that many VCs around and then there were all more like private equity guys, like extremely aggressive, extremely legalistic. So, to raise money, you had to sign a lot of bad conditions in your shareholder agreement, uh liquidation preferences, board seats, like, you know, reducing your voting rights as a founder, and so on.

所以，这些人基本上认为，公司某种程度上是因为他们才得以成立的，因为他们出资了。他们觉得自己理应分享公司成功带来的收益。比如说，我的公司有不少很早期就投资的投资者，抱的就是这种心态。我觉得这种想法大体上是错的，因为，呃，从有限合伙人（LP）那里拿到钱极其容易。So, these people basically think that because of them the company was kind of created because they gave money. And that they are entitled to less part of its success. So, that's the mentality of like you know quite a few investors that invested very early on like in my company for example. I think it's kind of largely wrong this mentality because uh getting money from LPs is extremely easy.

我也I also

说话者：等等，你刚才说要拿钱？Speaker: Wait, getting money you said?

发言人：从他们那里获得资金，因为他们的业务模式非常简单，对吧？好，他们有有限合伙人（LP），从他们那里筹集资金，然后投资初创公司，接着采用 220 的商业模式，对吧？所以，这比从零开始打造一家真正运营的企业容易得多。呃，因为他们从来不会拿自己的钱冒险，对吧？Speaker: Getting money from because their business is very simple, right? Okay, they have LPs, they collect money from them and then they invest in startups and then they have a business model of 220, right? So, it's so much easier compared to building a real operational business from scratch. Uh because they never risk with their own money, right?

他们其实不需要太努力工作。我的意思是，虽然存在竞争，但这种竞争程度刚好足以让他们拿到交易。所以我觉得他们的工作轻松多了。这是第一点。They don't really need to work hard. I mean, there is competition but competition is just enough for getting deals. So, I think their job is so much easier. That's number one.

第二点是，当时风投圈的竞争几乎没有现在这么激烈。那时候基本上有一种看法：我们作为风投会帮助你经营公司，公司会成功，因为我们会给你建议，告诉你怎么经营公司。但现实是，他们当中几乎没有人真正创办过公司，对吧？所以，他们只是从有限合伙人（LP）那里筹钱，把钱投到许多公司里；有时候他们会在董事会占有席位，有时候则不会。And then number two is uh back then there was you know almost no competition compared to what it is now in VC circles. And back then there was uh basically this opinion that we as VC will help you run the company, the company will be successful because we'll give you advice, you know, how to run a company. Reality like almost none of them they ever build any company, right? So, they just raise money from LPs, they invested their money in many companies and uh sometimes they have board seats, sometimes they don't.

拥有董事会席位并不会教你如何经营一家公司，对吧？你只是个观察员。因此，你会遇到这些权力很大的人，对吧？因为他们给你钱，还会在股东协议里附加一些条件。Having a board seat or doesn't uh teach you how to run a company at all, right? You are just an observer. As a result, you have all these people with a lot of power, right? Because they give you money, they put some conditions in shareholder agreement.

嗯，而且他们还有一种想法，觉得自己不能告诉你这个创始人该怎么做，对吧？据我的经验，这非常危险。过去我遇到过很多这样的情况：有些风投给出的建议对公司来说完全是错的。所以，我想给创业者的建议是，即使你从风投那里融资，也要非常重视股东协议，对吧？Uh and then they also have this mentality that they can't tell you what to do as a founder, right? And that's in my experience was very dangerous. And I had many cases in the past when certain VCs I mean, their advice was simply wrong for the company. So, I think you know my advice to entrepreneurs would be even if you raise money from VCs, try to pay a lot of attention to shareholder agreement, right?

然后要确保他们纯粹是财务投资者，没有权利——呃，没有投票权，也没有参与决策的席位。这一点非常重要。因为，呃，如果出了问题，对吧？实际上，你就等于有一群啦啦队员，他们看着比赛，然后又想自己上场打比赛，你知道，呃，而不是让专业选手来打。And then to ensure that they're purely financial players that have no right, uh no voting right, uh no seat at the table at decision-making. Super important. Because uh if something goes wrong, right? Uh you effectively have cheerleaders, if you know, who look at the match, and then they try to play this match, you know, uh instead of professional players.

所以这就是为什么，你知道，一个……And that's why, you know, a

说话者：总是灾难。Speaker: always disaster.

说话人：为什么你说他们给你的某些建议很危险？Speaker: Why do you say some of the advice they gave you was dangerous?

说话人：我的意思是，其中一条建议是：“好吧，你知道吗？你需要聘请有经验的高管。”你知道吗？不，这行不通。呃，我刚开始的头五年里，大概有五十多位经验丰富的高管，但我最后只留下了两位，对吧？Speaker: I mean, one of the advices was, "Okay, you know what? You need to hire experienced executive." You know what? No, it doesn't work. Uh when I started first five years, I had probably 50 plus experienced executives, I kept only two, right?

一年之内。就是行不通。为什么会这样？为什么有经验的高管，你知道，几乎从来都不会成功？Within one year. It just doesn't work. Why is that? Why experienced executives, you know, almost never works work out?

这和足球运动员是一样的，对吧？他们也有巅峰期。真的很像，他们有巅峰年龄。呃，这并不意味着他们变得没那么厉害了。我觉得是他们改变了自己的优先事项，对吧？It's the same as football players, right? They have their prime. Like really similar, there is a prime age, and uh like it doesn't mean they became uh less good. I think they changed their priorities, right?

另外，他们可能变得没那么优秀了。另外，情况变了，时代变了，竞争环境也变了。所以，过去表现优秀、你知道、有过往优秀业绩的人，呃，未来未必能在你的公司表现出色。这是第一点。Plus, probably they became less good. Plus, things changed, times changed, competition changed. So, people who were good before, who had, you know, past track record of being good before, uh they might not be good in your company for the future. That's number one.

这么想实在太天真了。其次，选择偏差也有负面影响，对吧？如果你认为那些特别优秀的人——比如说，我招聘时会看他们的成就记录，而且他们在职业发展方面需要跻身同侪中的前 1%。It's extremely naive to think so. And then, number two, there is also a negative for selection bias, right? If you think that people who extremely good, like for example, how I hire people, uh I look at their track record of achievement, and then they need to be top 1% of compared to their peers in terms of their career progression.

发言者：然后我会尝试在他们25岁、30岁时把他们招进来，让他们在 Revolut 沿着同样的轨迹继续发展。呃，每当你招聘有经验的高管时，实际上都会存在负向选择偏差，因为那些特别优秀的人已经取得了成就，对吧？呃，他们可能已经在经营自己的企业，或者退休了，或者在做别的事情。而那些职业发展从未如此迅速的人，被你聘为有经验的高管后，你知道，从定义上来说，他们不如那些职业发展极快、如今已经不在人才市场上的人。Speaker: And then I try to pick up them when they are 25, 30 years old, so they continue on the same trajectory in Revolut. Uh whenever you're hiring experienced executive, really there is a negative selection bias, because people who extremely good already made it, right? Uh and then they either probably running their own businesses, uh or they retired, or something else. And then people who never had this extreme career progression, who you hire as experienced executive, they just, you know, by definition less good compared to people with extremely fast career progression who already not in the market.

发言人：好吧，也就是说，根据你刚才所说，你发现他们给你的建议基本上完全与你本该采取的做法相反。Speaker: Okay, so you found basically the advice they gave you to be completely the opposite of what you should have been doing, based on what you just said.

说话者：对，没错。然后，很多建议都是，你知道，有些人觉得公司里某些人很优秀，是因为他们经验丰富。可我觉得我的想法正好相反。其中有个人其实是个相当不错的投资人，他当时逼着我开除我最优秀的员工，因为那人太强硬了。Speaker: Yeah, exactly. And then yeah, a lot of advice when you know, they think that certain people in the company are good because they're experienced. Well, I think I'm really opposite. And then one of them, he's actually quite a good investor, he was forcing me to fire my best person because he was too hardcore.

所以，这段关系很大程度上就是这样。So, a lot of this relationship is yeah.

说话人：这家伙得朝九晚五上班，明白吗？所以这到底是怎么回事？多跟我说说。你显然反抗了，那家伙也没被开除，后来发生了什么？Speaker: This guy needs to work 9-5, okay? So, how did this like tell me more about this? Like you obviously fought back, the guy didn't get fired, what happened?

说话人：我是说，当然，当然我没有解雇他。我说了不行，就这样。Speaker: I mean, of course of course I didn't fire him. I said no, that's it.

说话者：好吧，但就这些？还有那个家伙……Speaker: Okay, but that's it? And the guy

说话人：他确实把事情做到了极限。我是说，我们是好朋友。Speaker: He took it to the limit, yeah. I mean, we good friends.

发言人：你和投资者吵架了吗？发生了什么？Speaker: did you have a fight with the investor? Like what happened?

说话人：是的，我有一个，嗯。Speaker: Yeah, I have a yeah.

说话人：是啊。那么，你是怎么解决这件事的？你掌握着所有权力？当时到底发生了什么？Speaker: Yeah. And so, how did you settle it? You had all the power? Like what happened?

发言者：我和他吵了起来，然后，嗯，尽管他们之间发生过涉及许多投资者的冲突，但你知道吗？他们退让了。Speaker: I fighted with him and then yeah, even though they had a collision of, you know, many investors, but you know what? They step back.

说话人：好吧，那你是怎么让他们退后的？Speaker: Okay, so how did you get them to step back?

说话人：嗯，我觉得吧，我很早就意识到，很多风投其实并不擅长运营；如果他们手里有任何权力，实际上可能会对公司造成危险。所以每一轮融资，我都会把风投请出去。也就是说，两席我都拿了下来。所以现在董事会里没有风投。Speaker: Well, I think, you know, pretty early on I realized that like quite a few of VCs, they are not very operational and they can be actually dangerous for the company if they have any power. So, every single investment round I just, you know, remove VCs. So, took you know, both seats. So, now I don't have any VCs on the board.

我认为这是最好的做法。董事会里应该始终有企业经营者，而不是风险投资人——也就是那些真正创建企业、知道如何把事情做成的人。I think that's the best. You always need to have operators rather than VCs on the board, who people who actually build businesses, who know how to do things.

说话人：你的思维方式让我很想起 Uber 的特拉维斯·卡兰尼克。他上过这个节目，我觉得有一段视频片段——好像就是那段——获得了数百万、数千万的播放量，讲的就是他真的认为，对风投来说，只做到不造成伤害，标准就已经高得过分了。他说过类似这样的话：超过 90% 的风投，连不把事情搞砸都做不到。更别提……他说，他们甚至都帮不上忙。Speaker: Your mindset reminds me a lot about Travis Kalanick from Uber. He was on the show and I think he like one of the clips that went like got millions and millions of views was on this where he just actually thinks that like just doing no harm is an excessively high bar for a VC. He said something like over 90% of VCs, they can't even not [ __ ] things up. Not much to be He's like, not even be helpful.

他们就是忍不住要把事情搞砸。然后他说，据他的经验，只有大约1%的人真正帮得上忙。他会给所有创业者的建议——我记得他在节目里是这么说的——就是直接告诉他们：把钱给你，然后走人。这就是你的想法。They just can't not [ __ ] things up. And then he said like 1% in his experience have been actually helpful. And his thing would which he would tell all entrepreneurs, I think he said on the show, is just like, tell them to give you the money and go away. That's how you think.

发言人：我的意思是，还有一些关于……是的，确保股东协议，它们本身并没有任何权力。Speaker: I mean, also about some of the yes, ensuring shareholder agreements, they just don't have any powers.

说啊，我会让你变得富有——更富有。你只要别来烦我就行。基本上就是……Speaker: Yeah, I will make you rich richer. You just leave me alone. It's basically

说话者：是的。Speaker: Yeah.

创立基金，与风险投资机构竞争Starting a fund to compete with VCs

发言人：你还设立了自己的基金，我不知道该不该称它为风险投资基金。Speaker: You also set up your own, I don't know if you call it a VC fund.

发言人：是的，这是一家风投基金。所以，基本上……Speaker: Yes, it's a VC fund. So, basically

说话者：首先，它叫什么？Speaker: What's it called, first of all?

说话者：呃，量子之光。Speaker: Uh Quantum Light.

发言者：好的。Speaker: Okay.

发言者：那么Speaker: So

说话人：解释一下你在做什么。这挺有意思的。我现在才注意到这一点，因为你刚才分析问题的方式就像那些老牌银行一样。你就像是在说：“我不是……你看他们犯的那些显而易见的错误……”Speaker: Explain what you're doing. This is funny. I just picked up on this now because you were analyzing like the legacy banks. You're like, I'm not like look at all the all the obvious mistakes they're doing.

有些东西是从经验中学来的，对吧？那可是来之不易的经验。他们现在的做法说不通。我来给你展示另一种做法。Some of that came through experience, right? Hard-fought experience. The way they're doing it doesn't make sense. I'm going to show you a different way to do it.

发言者：是的，基本上这个想法是在我提出它的时候——我想应该是 2022 年或 2023 年——产生的。这个想法其实源于我个人的痛苦，源于我和一位投资者之间的一场争执。那位投资者其实是个非常有名的人物。他们进入了 Revolut，或者说投资了 Revolut。当时，呃，我想是在新冠疫情刚过之后，或者疫情期间，当时所有股票都在上涨，他们按 330 亿美元的估值进行了投资。Speaker: Yeah, basically the idea was in I think it was 2022 or 2023 when I came out with this idea and the idea came actually from my personal pain, from a fight with investor. It was actually one of very big names. They entered or they invested in Revolut. It was uh I think just after COVID or during COVID when all the stocks went up, they invested at 33 billion valuation.

所以，基本上，他们有合法权利，呃，不让我们修改股东协议，因为他们是最后一位投资者什么的。So, basically they had legal right to uh not to allow us changes in shareholder agreement because they were like, you know, last investor, blah.

说话人：所以，你和风险投资家有过不少糟糕的经历。你打算创立自己的风投基金。说说你的基金有什么不同。Speaker: So, you had a bunch of these bad experiences with VCs. You're going to start your own VC fund. Explain how your fund is different.

说话者：所以，基本上，我当时和人吵了一架，然后你知道，我气坏了，就想：你知道吗，在那行里我也得跟风投机构竞争，因为他们……Speaker: So, basically I had this fight and then, you know, I was extremely pissed off and I thought, you know what, I also need to compete with VCs in that business because they

发言人：实在太糟糕了，出于这种挫败感，我也创立了这只基金。基本上，我们的想法是，不依据人的判断来投资，而是依据科学和机器学习模型。第一是统计投资。第二，实际上是通过运营建议或我们制定的操作手册来帮助创始人，指导他们如何招聘员工、如何进行绩效管理、如何拓展产品，等等。Speaker: are so bad and out of my frustration I started the fund as well. And then the idea was basically to invest not based on a human judgment, but based on their science and based on their machine learning models. Statistical investment is number one. Number two, actually help with founders with operational advice or playbooks that we develop to travel how to hire people, how to do performance management, how to do product expansions, and so on.

最后，也帮助他们销售自己的产品，因为我们是一家大型企业，会从很多供应商那里采购。成为我们的客户也有助于他们向其他企业销售产品，或者向我们的客户，也就是为我们带来收入的客户销售。所以我认为，总体而言，再加上我个人的建议，显然也会有所帮助。And then finally, help them sell their product as well because we are a large enterprise, we are buying, you know, from a lot of vendors. And having us as a as a client helps to sell into other enterprises. Or potentially sell to our um our customers as well, our revenue customers. So, I think overall, plus my personal advice, obviously.

所以，总的来说，我觉得这个团队比那些纯粹的金融玩家——呃，风险投资机构——好得多。So, I thought overall the package was so much better compared to purely financial players, uh VCs.

发言人：你刚才也给出了个人建议。那么，你是在集中押注吗？你是一次做 20 笔或 50 笔这样的投资，还是把资金集中投到少数几笔上？Speaker: You just said your personal advice as well. So, like are you just making concentrated bets? Is this like another thing where you're doing 20 or 50 at a time, or you're just like concentrating money behind a handful?

说话人：呃，这对我们来说又是一项基于统计方法的投资。它基于机器学习模型。运作方式是，我们的模型会选出 30 到 40 家公司，在 2 到 3 年内进行投资，然后给每家初创公司投入等额资金。因此，我们最初设立的是一支创始人系列 B 基金。Speaker: Uh it's again a statistical investment for us. It's based on machine learning models. So, the way it works, our model selects 30-40 companies to invest over 2-3 years, and then puts equal amount of money in each in each startup. So, we started with a founder series B fund.

所以，它已经关闭了，资金也已全部投出。目前的 IRR 大约是 56%。So, it's closed. It's fully invested. It produced now like 56% IRR.

说话人：你们一开始大概有2.5亿，对吧？Speaker: And you started like 250 million or something, right?

发言人：我们的第一支基金从2.5亿起步，是的。所以现在的IRR大约是56%。我们现在开始投资第二支基金，规模是5亿。所以现在投的是C轮公司。Speaker: We started 250 million, yes, for the first fund. So, now it's like 56% IRR. We started investing in second fund now, which is 500 million. So, it's series C now companies.

同样，根据模型测算，回报也非常高。我认为按回报率算，它现在跻身全球前5%的基金之列。我们可能也会为后期阶段设立一只大型基金。Again, based on the model, also very high return. I think it's top 5% of funds in the world now in terms of returns. We'll probably do a large fund as well for late stage.

说话者：钱是从哪里来的？Speaker: Where's the money coming from?

发言者：嗯，LP不一样。一开始，我自己出资占20%。我投了20%或25%，剩下的来自其他创始人。到了第二支基金，我们也已经有不少机构投资者了。Speaker: Uh it's different LPs. So, initially I started 20% was my own money. So, I put 20% of it or 25% of it, and then the rest came from other founders. Second fund, we already got quite a few institutional players as well.

说话人：我从没听说过有人在建银行时拿自己跟 Meta 这种公司比。所以我马上就会聊到这一点。不过，你做事从来不会 [ __ ] 地敷衍了事，也不会只做得很小，对吧？你就是那种会说“好吧，我从250开始”的人。Speaker: I've never heard of somebody building a bank compare themselves to like Meta. So, I'm going to get into that in 1 second. But, you don't do anything like [ __ ] half-assed or like small, right? You're just like, "Okay, I started 250.

现在你只是要看看这件事能做到什么程度。”这会是那种，你知道，像文艺复兴科技那样的庞然大物吗？Now you're just going to see how far you can take this." This is it be like a, you know, a giant like Renaissance Technologies kind of thing?

发言者：嗯，显然，目标是在私募市场打造一家像贝莱德这样的大型机构。再说吧，看看我们能不能做到。但我觉得这个想法和做法是有道理的，因为你现在掌握了大量关于初创公司的数据，然后可以运用所有这些机器学习模型来识别最优秀的公司。而且这些模型相当复杂。Speaker: Well, obviously uh the goal is to build something large like BlackRock but in private markets. Again, we'll see if we if we if we get there. But I think idea and approach makes sense because uh like you now have a lot of data on startups and then you can apply all these machine learning models to identify the best ones. And then models pretty sophisticated.

比如，我们会关注他们的一个信号：谁投资了这家公司，谁正在投资。我们看的不只是投资这家公司的基金表现，还会深入到合伙人层面。然后我们也会看合伙人的年龄。你知道，当你观察合伙人年龄这类变量时，会发现一些非常有意思的事情。So, for example, one of their uh signals we look at we look at who invested in the company, who is investing. And we are look we are looking not only in the fund performance who invest in the company but down to the partner level. And then we'll also look at the age of the partner. And then there are you know, very interesting things when you look at uh these variables as age of the partner.

然后，你可能不太愿意投资那些由40岁以上的合伙人出资的公司。所以，最理想的群体是30到40岁、正在投资的年轻合伙人。他们最擅长识别优秀的公司。高管也是一样。And then you'd rather not invest in companies where partners who are investing uh are older than 40 years old. So, the best cohorts are 30 to 40 years old of young partners who are investing. They're the best at identifying good companies. Same as same as with executives as well.

是的，所以有一个特定的黄金年龄，是你需要关注的。再说，影响因素有很多，对吧？年龄并不是唯一的因素，对吧？不过，从统计学角度来说，这就是你需要关注的。Yeah, so there's a certain prime age when you what you need to look at. Again, there are many variables, right? The age is not only one thing, right? But uh statistically speaking, that's what you need to look at.

发言人：那么这是一家与 Revolut 独立的公司，还是它……Speaker: And is this a separate company from Revolut or is it

发言者：是的，这完全是独立的。Speaker: Yeah, it's completely separate.

说话人：好，所以这是完全独立的。还有其他人负责运营吗？Speaker: Okay, so completely separate. And you have somebody else running it?

发言人：是的。Speaker: Yeah.

从零开始做营销，到买下欧洲的机场From zero marketing to buying Europe's airports

说话人：好的。你刚才还提到，嗯，也会帮他们卖产品。聊聊早期营销的情况吧。我听说最初五年还是七年，你在营销上什么钱都没花。Speaker: Okay. You said something about um helping them sell uh their product as well. Talk about like the early days of like marketing. I heard you spent nothing on marketing for the first like five or seven years.

发言人：是的，最初七年完全是自然增长的。呃，再加上新冠疫情也来了。我记得 2021 年公司成立已经六七年了。呃，疫情冲击之下，我们的收入好像下降了 70%。那时候我们还没有涉足银行业务。Speaker: Yes, first seven years it was completely organic. Uh plus COVID also hit and uh 2021 I remember company was six, seven years old. Uh COVID hit and uh like our revenues went down I think 70%. And back then we were not in banking business.

我们当时还算是做电子货币，呃，配合旅行卡的业务。所以这和旅游业的关系非常密切。后来新冠疫情一来，呃，旅游业彻底消失了。所以我们得想办法活下去。We were still kind of you know, e-money with uh travel card. So, it was very heavily related to related with travel business. And then as COVID hit, uh travel business completely gone. So we had to survive somehow.

那段时间我们确实做了很多优化。We kind of optimized a lot during that time.

说话者：好吧，但你解释一下，为什么你决定开始开始花钱做营销？因为我去欧洲的时候，感觉你的广告铺天盖地。我到处都能看到你们的东西。现在跟你聊过之后，这一切就完全说得通了。不是那种“哦，对，我这儿做一点，那儿做一点”的情况。Speaker: Okay, but explain you why you decided to start to start spending money marketing cuz like I go to Europe and it's like I feel like I'm blanketed with your ads. I see your stuff everywhere. Now it makes perfect sense after talking to you. It's not like, oh yeah, I'm going to do like a little bit here, a little bit there.

一旦我发现某样东西管用，我就——你知道——基本上会对它采取焦土政策。It's just like once I find something works, I just you know, essentially go scorched earth on it.

说话者：是的，基本上我对营销的看法是，我其实做了六七年了。只是我当时没时间，而且我们的资源也不够。但后来我开始做这件事时，就深入钻研了很多。简单来说，我先从需要聘请什么样的人来运作一套完善的营销体系入手。Speaker: Yeah, basically the way I think about marketing is I actually done it for 6 years, 7 years. I just didn't have time plus we didn't have enough resources. But then when I started doing it, I went really really deep. So basically I started with who we need to hire to run a proper marketing machine.

不是东一榔头西一棒子，而是要讲科学，对吧？我们需要把钱投入营销，并获得合理的回报。然后我的想法很简单：哪些公司的营销支出最大？Not like here and there, but scientifically, right? Where we need to invest money in marketing with a proper return. And then my idea was very simple. Who are the companies with largest marketing spent?

哪些人会对营销支出极其谨慎？你知道，哪些领域的误差空间非常小？当时是游戏公司，对吧？游戏公司有很多营销支出都投在效果广告上。Who are extremely cautious with their marketing spent? Where is the you know, very low margin of error? And back then it was gaming companies, right? Gaming companies had their a lot of marketing spent performance ads.

因此，当时一些公司也开展了大量线上广告宣传活动。So then certain companies were also doing a lot of above the line campaigns.

发言人：游戏公司经营得好还是不好？Speaker: Are the gaming companies doing well or not?

发言者：游戏公司是全球营销支出最高的公司。因此，如果你看看它们的预算，营销支出轻轻松松就能达到十亿美元以上。Speaker: Gaming companies were the largest spending companies in the world on marketing. So if you look at their budgets, it could easily be you know, 1 billion plus on the marketing.

说话者：他们中有很多都去了 AppLovin。Speaker: lot of them were going to AppLovin.

说话人：是的。Speaker: Yeah.

说话者：而 AppLovin 今年的利润大概能达到 60 亿，所以他们经营得不错。Speaker: Which AppLovin's going to print like 6 billion in profit this year. So they're doing well.

发言者：太棒了。是啊。是啊。是啊。Speaker: like amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

所以最后我就，你知道，聘请了一位非常优秀的人，他后来开始在 Revolut 负责市场营销。然后我们也……等我们有了一个还不错的……So I ended up you know, hiring you know, extremely good person who started running marketing at Revolut. And then we also then once we had a decent

发言人：你继续说，我理解得对吗？你是在研究游戏公司如何做广告，还是只是想知道他们花了多少钱？Speaker: you go on, like am I understanding you're so you're studying how gaming companies are advertising or you just want to know what they were spending?

说话人：当时的想法是，哪些专业人士最懂得如何把钱花在营销上，对吧？接下来的设想是，这些专业人士会去游戏公司工作，因为我的预算最大。Speaker: The idea was who are the best professionals who know how to spend money in marketing, right? And then the idea is that these professionals will work in gaming companies because I have the largest budgets.

发言者：明白了。Speaker: Got it.

所以，这就是我怎么招到第一个——嗯，实际上是第二个人的。第一个我给开除了。他不太喜欢游戏。Speaker: So, that's how I got my first, well, actually second. First one I fired. He wasn't for big in gaming.

说话人：可能是 VC 的表亲。其实是雇了他还是什么的。Speaker: Probably VC's cousin. Actually hired him or something.

发言者：不管怎么说，我们在效果营销、LTV（生命周期价值）、回本周期这些方面都钻研得非常深入。最近我们也开始做一些相关的事，因为我们拿到了银行牌照。后来我们意识到——或者说我很早就意识到了——关键在于信任，对吧？如果你是一家数字银行，没有实体网点，人们也看不到你本人，那么从定义上来说，相比汇丰、劳埃德银行、摩根大通等银行，人们对你的信任就会少一些。那要怎么建立信任呢？又该如何有效地优化效果营销的投入呢？因为做效果营销时，你是按展示次数付费的，而现实世界里有很多广告位可以购买，同样能带来展示，但价格比数字世界便宜得多。Speaker: And anyway, we went very deep into, you know, performance marketing, LTVs, payback. And then recently we also started doing because we got a banking license and then what we realized, or what I realized quite early on, is all about trust, right? If you're a digital bank, you don't have branches, people don't see you physically, they trust you less by definition compared to HSBC, Lloyds, JP Morgan Chase, and so on. And then okay, how you build trust, how you arbitrage effectively performance marketing spend because in performance marketing spend you pay per impression and then there are a lot of spaces in physical world which you can buy who will which will also produce impression but at a much cheaper price compared to digital world.

比如说，我们现在可能已经买下了欧洲约 50% 的所有机场的广告位，对吧？也就是说，欧洲将近 50% 的机场现在都会有广告，对吧？还是因为简单的数学计算。人们一年会旅行多少次，对吧？So, for example, we bought probably now 50% of all airports in Europe, right? Like in almost 50% of airports in Europe will now have ads, right? Again, because of simple math. How many times a year people travel, right?

他们一年去机场多少次，我们能产生多少次曝光，成本又是多少，对吧？而且这里面存在与效果营销之间的套利空间。然后，我们也把类似的想法应用到实体世界的其他地方。比如，我们现在开始做传统网点的对应形式，也就是我们所说的“cold rev store”，对吧？How many times a year they're in the airport, how many impressions we produce, how much it will cost us, right? And there is arbitrage to performance marketing. And then similar ideas to other places in physical world. For example, we started now doing equivalent of legacy branches, what we call a cold rev store, right?

Rev体验。所以，我们在巴塞罗那开了第一家实体店。我们再次利用实体世界与数字世界之间的曝光量差异进行套利。因为每年有多少人经过我们的店呢？Rev experience. So, we set up first fresh shop in Barcelona. Again, arbitraging impressions of in physical world versus digital world. Because how many people pass every year our shop?

说话者：不过，这家店是什么店？Speaker: What is the shop though?

发言人：我的意思是，这更像 Revolut 的体验。它不是传统意义上的银行网点。你走进来，就能体验我们的所有产品，而且整个过程都采用非常现代的方式。Speaker: I mean, it's more like Revolut experience. It's not a real banking legacy branch. You come in and then you experience all our products. It's all done in a very modern way.

就像苹果那样的门店，不过是为 Revolut 开的。我们的想法是，借此让路过的人也能看到我们，并吸引他们进店。Like Apple type of store but for Revolut And then the idea is that we just generate impressions for people who which pass the street who come over as well.

说话者：很多公司都会在机场打广告。就像，哦，可能是在屏幕上放个什么东西，大概30秒之类的。也可能就一块广告牌。就像，你走——我走了大概两分钟，还是觉得自己像是被包围着。Speaker: Like a lot of companies advertise in airports. It's just like, oh, it's like something on the screen maybe for 30 seconds or whatever. It might be one billboard. It's like, you walk I'm walking for like 2 minutes and it's still I'm like enclosed.

感觉就像有个巨大的……我像是被 Revolut 广告包裹在茧里一样。那你又是怎么想到这个点子的？There's like a huge like a I'm in a cocoon of Revolut ads. And how did you come up with that idea too though?

说话者：只是买下整个机场。Speaker: Just buying full airport.

说话人：我想不出还有哪家公司做过这件事，我觉得这其实是个非常聪明的做法。更多人应该这么做。就像，我……你们确实在那儿。我可能不会用你们的服务，但我肯定知道你们的存在，也知道你们是做什么的。你们本质上是在追求无处不在——我走过机场时就在想这件事。Speaker: I can't think of another company that I've seen do this and I think like it's actually a really smart move. More people should do that. Like I'm There's it's I may not use your services, but like I definitely know that you exist and what you do. Like you essentially were aiming for ubiquity is the way like I was thinking about that when I was walking through the airport.

说话者：是的，在我看来，现在购买曝光量要便宜得多，相比实体世界和数字世界都是如此。Speaker: Yeah, in my mind the way I just see now paying for impressions much cheaper compared to in physical world compared to digital world.

说话人：就像为曝光量付费一样，因为，你知道，Speaker: just like paying for impressions though because like, you know,

发言人：我的意思是，也要建立信任。Speaker: I mean, building trust as well.

说话人：你。我觉得，信任这件事其实是最有意思的洞见之一，而且你今天讲了很多有意思的[ __ ]。但我觉得，关键在于它无处不在。它不只是一个标牌写着“你知道，这是 Revolut，这是我们的业务”，而是整个走廊里到处都是。Speaker: You I think the trust thing was actually one of the most interesting insights and you said a lot of interesting [ __ ] today. But like I think there's something about the ubiquity of it. It's not just one sign saying, you know, this is Revolut and this is what we do. It's like entire hallways.

就像你只是走着，而我被这些包围着。就像我在跟你说，我想不出还有哪家公司。那时候我甚至还没想到要邀请你上节目。我当时就觉得，这、这其实是个非常好的主意。Like you're just walking and I'm being surrounded by this. It's like I'm telling you I can't think of another company. This is before I even thought of having you on the show. I was just like, this is this is actually a really good idea.

像全球科技公司一样资助登月计划Funding moonshots like a global tech company

我不会就这么路过，却连这家公司存在都不知道。我最后想跟你聊的几件事之一，正好就涉及你这种宏大的野心。我觉得，那些之前可能不认识你的人，也能看出你特别好胜。我的意思是，我很喜欢你当时有点被风投惹火了，心想：“好吧，那我现在就得跟你竞争，因为你把我气坏了。”I'm not going to walk past this and not know this company exists. One of the last things I want to talk to you about goes right to this like grandiose like ambition you have. I think people that may not known you before this pick up on your super competitive. I mean, I love the fact that you were like kind of got pissed off at VCs like, all right, well, now I have to compete with you cuz you made me so mad.

嗯，不过我从没听说过还有别人在建银行。首先，你说确实不存在真正意义上的全球性银行，而你们想成为第一家。所以，我很欣赏这种雄心壮志。但接着你又拿它来比较，说我们想成为一家全球科技公司。Um but I've never heard anybody else building a bank. One, you said there's really no true global bank and you want to be the first one. So, I like the level of ambition. But then you compare just like we want to be a global technology company.

我记得你可能提到过几家公司，但我记得的那家好像是像 Meta 这样的全球科技公司。解释一下这一点。你正在打造的东西与……之间有什么联系？很多人可能会觉得，哪怕是一个很无聊的业务，你知道，银行业已经存在很久了，但你看待自己正在打造的东西，并不是这种方式。And I think you might have mentioned a few companies, but the one I remember was like a global technology company like Meta. Explain that. The connection between what you're building which may people think that maybe like even a boring, you know, business has been around for Banks have been around for a long time, but that's not the way you're you're viewing what you're building.

说话者：是的，基本上我们的想法和目标是，靠这项业务创造足够的现金流，从而能够为那些可能需要大量资金投入的重大项目提供资金，对吧？比如说，我也很想涉足大语言模型领域，构建我们自己的模型。事实上，我们已经构建了自己的交易模型，名为 Pragma。它也是大语言模型，但其 Transformer 是基于交易而非词语构建的。Speaker: Yeah, basically our idea and our goal is to generate enough cash flow from this business to be able to fund like really big bets which can consume a lot of capital, right? Like for example I would love to go into LLMs as well to build our own models and we in fact you know build our own transactional model called Pragma. So it's LLM but all transformer based on transactions rather than words.

发言者：但我甚至很想进一步深入，对吧？比如说，建设我们自己的数据中心，训练我们自己的模型，打造各种模型，也就是做比我们现在更深入得多的技术。但这需要大量投资，对吧？而且还需要很多现金流。Speaker: But I would love even to go deeper, right? To kind of to build our own data centers to train our own model all models to kind of you know to do a lot deeper tech compared to what we do now. But then you know it requires a lot of uh investments, right? And there a lot of uh cash flow.

说话人：所以，基本上就是要打造一家大型企业，让它产生足够多的现金流，从而能够资助某种——你知道的——登月式押注，而这些押注未必能在接下来的两三四年内带来损益。Speaker: So basically to build a large business so that it produce so much cash flow that it is possible to fund some kind of you know moonshot bets which might not necessarily produce P&L in the next two three four

发言者：五年。这些登月式押注与金融服务之类的领域无关吗？Speaker: five years. Are these moonshot bets unrelated to like financial services?

说话人：是的，很有可能。是啊，因为我的意思是，在金融服务领域，我们还能做什么呢？我觉得几乎所有东西都已经被发明出来了。Speaker: Yeah, most likely. Yeah. Cuz I mean in financial service I mean what else can we do? I mean almost everything is invented already.

所以说，归根结底，我们只是在重新打造传统金融产品，对吧？我们做的金融产品和其他产品一样，但成本低得多、体验也好得多。另外，我们还把它们整合到同一个品牌旗下、放进一个应用里，所以用起来非常方便。So we just like ultimately we're just rewriting legacy products, right? So we're building the same financial products but we are building them much cheaper and much nicer compared to all the ones. Plus we are putting them under one umbrella in one app. So it's all very convenient.

此外，我们还在此基础上进行创新，让它们彼此互联、相互通信。Plus we also innovate on top so they are all kind of you know interconnects with each other, talk to each other.

说话人：但归根结底，这还是老一套银行业务，只是换了种新方式，对吧？我真正喜欢做的，是跳出这个框架，然后做一些你知道以前没人做过的事情。Speaker: But ultimately it's is the same old banking but done in a new way, right? What I really love to do is to go out of it and then do something you know which was not done before.

发言人：在行业内部？Speaker: Inside the industry?

发言人：是的，所有行业都是如此。Speaker: In all industries, yeah.

发言人：所有行业吗？Speaker: All industries?

说话者：更像是在科技行业。Speaker: More like in tech industry.

说话人：你有没有公开分享过一些这种“登月式”的大胆想法，还是把它们留在公司内部？Speaker: Have you like shared publicly like some of these like moonshot ideas or you're like keeping inside the company like

发言人：目前，这些想法都只是存在我的脑海里。我知道我们没有足够的资源和时间来实现它们，但我希望你知道，三四五年后，我们可能就有足够的资源来实现它们。Pragma 是一个基于我们的交易数据训练出来的基础模型。作为一家搜索公司，我们每天有 3000 万笔交易。所以，我们有数十亿、数十亿笔交易。Speaker: For now or all these ideas I just have you know in my head and then I just know that we don't have enough resources and time to build them, but I hope you know in 3 4 5 years time we might have enough resources to build them. Pragma is a it's foundation model trained on our transaction data. As a search, we have 30 million uh transactions every day. So, we have billions and billions of transactions.

发言人：这样一来，就有可能基于交易数据训练 Transformer 模型，并将其用于几乎所有金融服务领域。例如，可以用于反欺诈、信用评估，也有可能用于投资等。Speaker: And then it is possible effectively to train a transformer based model on transactions and then use it in like almost any aspect of financial services. So, it can be anti-fraud model. It can be credit model. Potentially can be investment model and so on.

打造一台势不可挡的机器Building an unstoppable machine

演讲者：你们在这里推出服务时，我为什么要用你们的银行，而不是摩根大通之类的银行？Speaker: When you launch here, why would I want to use your bank as opposed to like JP Morgan?

发言人：所以，摩根大通是一家非常本土化的银行，为您提供美国银行账户和以美国为基础的产品。如果您有任何美国以外的业务敞口，我们就是您的银行合作伙伴，因为我们能为您提供摩根大通在美国为您提供的所有服务。除此之外，我们还提供所有全球资产。Speaker: So, JP Morgan is a very local. Gives you US bank account plus US based products. If you ever have a exposure outside of US, we are banking partner because we do everything what JP Morgan does for you in US. Plus on top of it we provide all the global assets.

您可以在我们这里开设全球账户。因此，身在美国的您也可以在欧洲、澳大利亚开设账户。您可以在所有国家之间即时转账，等等。You can have global accounts with us. So, being in US you can open account in Europe, Australia. You can send money instantly between all countries. And so on and so forth.

因此，我们不再为你提供本地金融产品和基于积分的本地福利，而是让你获得全球市场敞口。这是一个非常有利的定位。此外，我们的界面也好用得多，而且比摩根大通便宜得多。So, instead of giving you a local based financial products, local based benefits with points, we give you effectively global exposure. So, that's very good position. Plus on top of it is much nicer in terms of interface plus much cheaper compared to JP Morgan.

说话者：你赚钱的方式和他们赚钱的方式有什么区别？Speaker: What's the difference between that you make money compared to what way they make money?

发言人：与我们相比，他们更加专注于信贷业务；而我们则更加专注于订阅业务、交易业务以及佣金业务。Speaker: They are much more credit focused compared to us. We are much more subscription focused plus transaction business plus commission focused.

发言人：你们在信贷方面打算怎么做？是准备把这些都卖掉吗？Speaker: What are you doing on the credit side? Are you just selling all that off?

发言人：信贷只是常规产品，比如信用卡和贷款。至于是否将它们出售，目前还没有。Speaker: Credits are just standard products, credit cards and loans. Selling them off or not yet, no.

发言人：好的。Speaker: Okay.

说话人：因为它在我们的资产负债表中所占比例仍然非常小。Speaker: Cuz it's still very small portion of our balance sheet.

发言人：所以，你认为相较于传统银行，你们的优势在于更像一家科技公司。Speaker: So, you think your advantage relative to the legacy banks is you're more of a technology company.

发言人：我们的优势在于技术。再想想过去的银行，它们从一个国家扩张到另一个国家时，只是收购其他银行。因此，它们拥有许多系统，在许多国家也无法真正掌控任何东西来生成报告。从不同系统中提取数据要花几个月。Speaker: Our advantage is the tech. And then if you think about banks in the past, when they expanding country to country they just bought other banks. As a result they have many systems and many countries they don't really control anything to produce any report. Takes months to extract data from different systems.

我们的优势在于，我们刚刚在许多国家实现了一个系统、一套账本的标准化。从一个国家扩展到另一个国家时，我们不需要从头编写代码，只需配置软件即可。比如说，我们在英国开展客户 onboarding 时，只需设置相应配置，就能将 onboarding 流程改为适用于美国或墨西哥的版本，诸如此类。Our advantage is that we have just standardized one system one ledger across many countries. As we go from one country to another country we do not need to write things from scratch. We just configuration of our software. You know for example I'm boarding in UK we just selling configs to change onboarding to US or to change onboarding to Mexico and so on.

这样一来，你知道，它就成为了一个高度可配置的产品。我们不需要从头开始在另一个国家再建一家银行。显然，与在10个国家运营10家银行相比，维护它所需的人手要少得多。因此我们能够实现规模经济，以远低于其他银行的价格销售产品。So it becomes you know one product which is highly configurable. We do not need to build uh another bank in another country from scratch. As you do it you obviously need you know much less people to maintain it compared to 10 banks in 10 10 countries. As a result there is economy of scale so we can sell products much cheaper compared to other banks.

再加上整套组织经验，包括如何打造产品、如何做营销等等。这样你们进入任何一个新国家，都能把这些经验复制过去。我觉得随着时间推移，这会变成一台势不可挡的机器，对吧？因为与当地银行相比，它能以更优惠的价格提供更好的产品和服务。Plus the whole institutional knowledge how you build product how you do marketing and so on. So you reply the same knowledge in any new country. And I think you know with time it can become like unstoppable machine right because it provides a much better products and services at a much better price compared to local banks.

发言者：随着时间推移，我正在打造一台势不可挡的机器。以此收尾再合适不过了。感谢 Nik 拨冗参与，太棒了。Speaker: Over time I'm building an unstoppable machine. That's a great place to end. Thanks Nik for the time. It was awesome.