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)
Dmitry Zlokazov is the head of product at Revolut, the $45 billion fintech giant operating in over 50 countries, serving more than 50 million customers, and producing some of the world’s top product leaders. Dmitry shares his hard-won lessons, contrarian org design principles, and day-to-day practices that power Revolut’s relentless shipping velocity, culture of ownership, and unparalleled “wow” product experience.
What you’ll learn:
- Revolut’s unique organizational approach, where “product owners” manage cross-functional pods as “local CEOs,” with genuine end-to-end ownership and hiring/firing power
- How a radical, ultra-flat structure enables more than 150 product owners to maintain founder-level quality and velocity across dozens of parallel launches
- How Revolut maintains quality while shipping hundreds of features across over 50 countries
- Why Revolut favors “raw intellect and hunger” over experience, and how internal transfers (including ex-engineers and ops managers) become the company’s most successful product leaders
- How Revolut’s founders review every single UI shipped, and why this founder detail obsession scales rather than limits innovation
- Their framework for launching new products—from ideation, validation, and first user cohort to rapid “algorithmization” and scaling across countries
- The importance of treating products that are 99% done as closer to 0% done, vs. 100% done
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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:
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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
