Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

How Revolut trains world-class product managers: The “local CEO” model, raw intellect over experience, and a cultural obsession with building wow products | Dmitry Zlokazov (Head of Product)

May 15, 2025

Dmitry Zlokazov, Head of Product at Revolut, shares insights from his role at the $45 billion fintech giant. He discusses the innovative 'local CEO' model, where product owners drive cross-functional teams with true ownership. Dmitry highlights how their flat structure enables rapid product launches while maintaining quality. He argues that raw intellect trumps experience in hiring and explains their unique approach to product development, emphasizing the importance of seeing nearly finished products as still not ready for market.

01:10:02

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Dmitry Zlokazov

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Quick takeaways

Revolut empowers product managers by adopting a 'local CEO' model, fostering genuine ownership and autonomy in cross-functional teams.

The company's hiring philosophy prioritizes raw intellect and passion over experience to cultivate innovative product leaders early in their careers.

Revolut's product launch framework emphasizes quality and speed, focusing on creating polished initial versions that can quickly scale in response to user feedback.

Deep dives

The Value of Raw Intellect and Ownership

Revolut prioritizes raw intellect and a strong desire to build over extensive experience when hiring product owners. This shift in focus allows the company to cultivate a team of driven individuals earlier in their careers, fostering a sense of ownership and accountability. Rather than relying solely on seasoned professionals who may become complacent, Revolut emphasizes hiring those with a passion for problem-solving and innovation. This strategic approach contributes to the rapid development of product owners who excel in their roles and often become leaders in the industry.

Intro

4min

Revolut's Disruption of Banking

8min

Cultivating Effective Product Ownership at Revolut

17min

Deep Dive Management: Cultivating Excellence through Focus

6min

Dynamic Product Management at Revolut

23min

Lessons from Fail Corner

9min

Exploring Underrated Features and User Engagement in Revolut

2min

Dmitry Zlokazov is the head of product at Revolut, the $45 billion fintech giant operating in over 50 countries, serving more than 50 million customers, and producing some of the world’s top product leaders. Dmitry shares his hard-won lessons, contrarian org design principles, and day-to-day practices that power Revolut’s relentless shipping velocity, culture of ownership, and unparalleled “wow” product experience.

What you’ll learn:

1. Revolut’s unique organizational approach, where “product owners” manage cross-functional pods as “local CEOs,” with genuine end-to-end ownership and hiring/firing power

2. How a radical, ultra-flat structure enables more than 150 product owners to maintain founder-level quality and velocity across dozens of parallel launches

3. How Revolut maintains quality while shipping hundreds of features across over 50 countries

4. Why Revolut favors “raw intellect and hunger” over experience, and how internal transfers (including ex-engineers and ops managers) become the company’s most successful product leaders

5. How Revolut’s founders review every single UI shipped, and why this founder detail obsession scales rather than limits innovation

6. Their framework for launching new products—from ideation, validation, and first user cohort to rapid “algorithmization” and scaling across countries

7. The importance of treating products that are 99% done as closer to 0% done, vs. 100% done

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This entire episode is brought to you by Stripe—Helping companies of all sizes grow revenue.

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Where to find Dmitry Zlokazov:

• X: https://x.com/Dzlokazov

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zlokazov/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Dmitry and Revolut

(03:41) Revolut’s unique approach to product management

(06:58) The role and responsibilities of product owners

(09:28) Types of product owners at Revolut

(15:50) Building “wow” products

(25:00) Hiring practices

(31:33) Managing teams and projects

(41:07) Revolut’s diverse product offerings

(44:40) Scaling new products successfully

(52:10) Attracting top talent

(58:43) Failure corner

(01:02:49) Lightning round and final thoughts

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Referenced:

• Revolut: https://www.revolut.com/

• Intercom: https://www.intercom.com/

• Palantir: https://www.palantir.com/

• Which companies produce the best product managers: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/which-companies-produce-the-best

• Which companies accelerate PM careers most: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/which-companies-accelerate-your-pm

• Deliver WOW to our customers: https://www.revolut.com/blog/post/deliver-wow/

• Nik Storonsky on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nstoronsky

• Vlad Yatsenko on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yatsenko/

• How Palantir built the ultimate founder factory | Nabeel S. Qureshi (entrepreneur and writer, ex-Palantir): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-palantir-nabeel-qureshi

• Gokul Rajaram on designing your product development process, when and how to hire your first PM, a playbook for hiring leaders, getting ahead in you career, how to get started angel investing, more: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/gokul-rajaram-on-designing-your-product

• Gokul Rajaram on X: https://x.com/gokulr

• Brian Chesky’s new playbook: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/brian-cheskys-contrarian-approach

• Schlep blindness: https://www.paulgraham.com/schlep.html

• Revolut Launches RevPoints Loyalty Programme, Turning Daily Expenses into Exclusive Rewards: https://www.revolut.com/news/revolut_launches_revpoints_loyalty_programme_turning_daily_expenses_into_exclusive_rewards/

• Gemini: https://gemini.google.com/

• ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/

• Figma: https://www.figma.com/

• Oppenheimer: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15398776/

• Manus: https://manus.im/

• Eisenhower quote: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/11/18/planning/

• Wealth protection: https://help.revolut.com/help/security-logging-in/wealth-protection/what-is-wealth-protection/

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Recommended books:

• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business when There Are No Easy Answers―Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship: https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205

• Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making―Personal Journey from Product Designer to Mentor: https://www.amazon.com/Build-Unorthodox-Guide-Making-Things/dp/0063046067

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

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