Cheeky Pint · Nov 10, 2026 · 52m · 43m saved
With Nik Storonsky, Co-Founder and CEO of Revolut
Revolut signs up about 100,000 customers a day, up from probably 1 to 10 a day when it started. Nik Storonsky, co-founder and CEO of Revolut, told Stripe co-founder John Collison on Cheeky Pint that the company had no serious growth budget until 2022.
Most of the roughly 50 digital banks that tried a lending-led model failed under UK and EU rules on interchange and credit rates. Revolut makes its money from subscriptions and fees instead, and Nik wants lending kept to a small slice of the balance sheet.
"If you look at tech business multiple, you can usually get like 40-50 PE. In the banking business, you'll be lucky if you get 10 PE." — Nik Storonsky
Nik built Revolut from a multi-currency card that charged no foreign-exchange fees. He now runs a process that has funded roughly 100 product bets, and every new one is measured against them.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 52 minutes of audio, 9 minutes of reading.
Here are the 9 insights that matter.
Key Takeaways
Revolut's lending target is under 10% of the balance sheet, with the rest securitized
Nik puts tech businesses at 40–50x earnings and banks at about 10x
Every new product is ranked against about 100 earlier bets at the same age
The top quartile gets more teams and the bottom quartile is shut down
A product that grows slowly in its first 12 months almost never takes off later, in Nik's experience
Revolut's cohorts show negative churn: monthly actives can rise from 60 to 65–70 out of 100 after two years
A credit-card-led US product will compete with the Amex Platinum and Chase Sapphire cards
Revolut's AI-driven venture arm has made 40–50 deals in 2–3 years, and Nik ranks it in the top 3–4% of funds
An IPO around 2028 depends on the US launch and on market conditions
1. Growth Came From Product
Nik never optimized for scale directly. Revolut started with a multi-currency card that charged no foreign-exchange fees, and it grew by shipping products that solved a customer's problem from start to finish.
Revolut went from a handful of daily signups to about 100,000 a day by building product
"I was never optimizing to get scale quickly. I was just working on the product and then solving problems end-to-end. Initially when I started, we had probably 1–10 customers per day... Now we have about 100,000 customers joining every day." — Nik Storonsky
Growth was organic for about seven years. Business accounts showed the pattern could repeat: that product now onboards about 1,500 new customers a day, and 70% of them arrive without paid marketing.
