20VC: $0-$260M in Revenue in Three Years: How We Did It | You Need to Work Weekends to Win — Most Founders Aren't Ambitious Enough | The Revolut Playbook: Speed, Urgency, Extreme Ownership, and Zero Excuses with Alan Chang @ Fuse Energy

I have interviewed 1,000 entrepreneurs over 10 years. Nik Storonsky and our guest today are the two best that I have interviewed. Joining the show today; Alan Chang, Co-Founder and CEO of Fuse Energy. Alan has scaled Fuse Energy from $2M in revenue in the first year, to $20M the second year to now $400M in the third year. Like Netflix beat incumbents to own media, Revolut beat incumbents to own banking, Fuse will beat incumbents to own energy. Prior to founding Fuse, Alan was one of the first three hires at Revolut where he played a crucial role alongside Nik (Founder) in scaling the company to over $75BN valuation. AGENDA: 00:04:00 — The interview process that led to the $150M pay packet 00:05:05 — The moment I knew Revolut was going to be a $TRN company 00:06:10 — How Revolut drove speed and urgency in their teams 00:07:35 — Biggest lesson from Nik Storonsky @ Revolut 00:09:40 — If you want to build a generational company, you cannot have work-life balance 00:11:40 — What I disagreed with Nik @ Revolut on most 00:13:35 — Is Nik right that Revolut should have got a banking licence earlier? 00:15:05 — The green movement and the idea of "using less" is BS 00:22:55 — Why China is the shining light for regulation to follow 00:33:00 — What Nik at Revolut taught me about ownership and excuses 00:34:50 — The signs of truly top performing people in a team 00:36:55 — We do not have enough ambitious founders — we need to do more, not focus 00:39:55 — You need to work weekends to win 00:43:50 — Every single year we 10x revenue — now at ~$400M 00:44:35 — Why Eastern European engineers are the best Items Mentioned in Today's Show: Try NEXOS. AI for yourself with a 14-day free trial: https://nexos.ai/20vc

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  If you have a gun pointed to your head today, would you have done more? If the answer is yes, that means you're not doing a good job. There's nothing wrong with wanting work-life balance. But I think the only way to build a generational company is like very, very strong work ethic. I I I just don't see any other way to do it. Excuses don't matter. If you're a leader of an area in the company, excuses don't matter. If you succeed, you get all the praise. If you fail, you get all the blame. And it does not matter why you failed. We increased our revenue 10x every year since inception. The first year was two million pounds, second year was twenty pounds. And then this year, we're going to end at over two hundred pounds.

• 0:37Harry Stebbings?

  Simply put, I have interviewed a thousand of the best entrepreneurs over the last decade. And two stand out above all others. Nik Storonsky, founder at Revolut, and then our guest today, Alan Chang. Alan is the co-founder and CEO of Fuse Energy, where, check this out. Every single year, he has scaled revenue 10x. The first year, two million, the second year, twenty million, and the third year, two hundred million. So like Netflix beat incumbents to own media, Revolut beat incumbents to own banking. Fuse will beat incumbents to own energy. I think three of the most important categories that technology can own.

• 1:19Harry Stebbings?

  Prior to founding Fuse, Alan was one of the first three hires at Revolut, where he played a crucial role alongside Nik in scaling the company to an over seventy-five billion dollar valuation. But before we dive into the show today, as an investor, I'm always on the lookout for tools that really transform how I work. Tools that don't just save time but fundamentally change how I uncover insights. That's exactly what AlphaSense does. With the acquisition of Tegus, AlphaSense is now the ultimate research platform built for professionals who need insights they can trust, fast. I've used Tegus before for company deep dives right here on the podcast. It's been an incredible resource for expert insights. But now with AlphaSense leading the way,

• 2:00Harry Stebbings?

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• 2:44Harry Stebbings?

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• 3:29Harry Stebbings?

  Tech leaders set policies and oversee usage. Business teams get the models they actually need. It's not about stopping innovation, it's about enabling it safely. Try nexos.ai yourself with a 14-day free trial at nexos.ai/20vc. Our link is in the description. While Nexo helps you run faster across revenue workflows, Vanta makes sure your security and compliance can keep up. Security and compliance done wrong is a giant headache. Security and compliance done right, though? Well, that's Vanta. Vanta helps you earn trust and speed up growth. No spreadsheets required. For startups low on time and resources, Vanta becomes your first security hire,

• 4:11Harry Stebbings?

  using AI and automation to get you compliant fast and unblock really big deals. And if you're big enterprises, Vanta is your AI-powered hub.

• 4:20Harry Stebbings?

  For compliance and risk, bringing together data from across your business and automating workflows so you can prove trust at any moment. Vanta scales with you at every stage. That's why top companies, from startups like Cursor to enterprises like Snowflake, choose Vanta. Do security and compliance right. My listeners can get $1,000 off Vanta by going to vanta.com/20vc. That's vanta.com/20vc for $1,000 off Vanta. You have now arrived at your destination. Alan, dude, I am so looking forward to this. So I have you to thank for hiring my chief of staff because we were sitting in a cocktail

• 5:05Harry Stebbings?

  bar in London and you were helping me hire. And I was like then, holy shit, this guy is brilliant and I need to do a show with him. That was three years ago. So thank you so much for doing this with me.

• 5:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, thanks for having me.

• 5:17Harry Stebbings?

  I think a really interesting one to start with is you're a fricking machine. And I just want to understand, when we look at like transformative moments, one of the most transformative early moments you was getting the job with Nick and with Revolut. Can you just take me to that? And Saka actually said I had to ask this one. He was like, you've got to start with how he actually got the job. How did you get the job with Nick? And what did that look like?

• 5:39Speaker 00

  At the time, I just graduated and I was just perusing on the Facebook group, like it was called London Startups. And I saw this job post, Revolut. And I was like, okay, I have no idea what this company does. But I was looking for fresh guys. I was like, okay, I applied and Nick replied within five minutes. I was like, oh, wow, that's very quick. And then he asked me to come for a face-to-face interview the next day. So I came for an interview and he asked me a bunch of physics questions. I was like, I didn't realize I was applying for a physics job. And he offered me a role right after the interview. I said yes and that was it. That was like the fastest interview process I've ever had.

• 6:14Harry Stebbings?

  What was the position and what size and scale was Revolut then?

• 6:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, so at the time, in terms of full time, it was Nick, Vlad and two other full-time engineers and that was it. So it was just hot desking. Job was just, it was called operations analyst, but effectively the first three months was doing customer support.

• 6:34Harry Stebbings?

  When did you realise that this was going to be a massive 100 billion dollar company?

• 6:39Speaker 00

  So at the time, Revolut was in a coworking space called Level 39.

• 6:43Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, I remember this.

• 6:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, and so Level 39 is, yeah, for those who don't know, it's basically a giant startup coworking space with maybe over 200 startups. And Revolut was the only team that worked past 7pm on the weekday. So after 7pm, the whole floor is dead. It was also the only team that worked on the weekends. So when I realised that, you know, I knew there was something special. The second moment was, I asked Nick, like, what's your ambition, like, what keeps you motivated? And at the time, he's, you know, worth quite a bit of money already, so, you know, what drives him, right? And he told me he wants to beat JP Morgan. So that's the second moment I realised this is going to be a massive company.

• 7:24Harry Stebbings?

  What do you think you guys did really right really early on that led to such success early?

• 7:31Speaker 00

  So at the time, when we got started, there were basically three players. There was Revolut, Monzo and N26.

• 7:37Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  And for the first two years, at least from the outside, it feels like neck to neck, right? It wasn't clear who the winner was. But for me, it was crystal clear, right? It was crystal clear who's going to win. And the reason why is because it's just the team's ambition and execution, right? Because ultimately, if you ask the same teams at the time, like, basically the product roadmap, almost everyone would tell you basically the same. There wasn't any differentiation in product roadmap. But what differentiated between, you know, us and everyone else was basically ambition and the speed of execution. And that was it.

• 8:10Harry Stebbings?

  How do you move so fast? What is your biggest lessons on how to create speed of execution within teams? I want this internally, you've met my team here, you see it. How do I encourage this urgency and speed of execution internally? And how do you do it?

• 8:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I think have small teams operating in the independent units and give them very clear goals. Let them execute. And what you should do is monitor those teams. If they do well, let them be. If they don't do well, replace the team.

• 8:38Harry Stebbings?

  What did you learn from Nik about managing people and people's performance?

• 8:42Speaker 00

  It's all about results. I think Nick's made this analogy before. There are three types of people in the world. There are people who can self-identify the target and shoot and hit the goal. Then there are people who can't identify targets, but if you point, they shoot and they hit the goal. And the third type of people, which is neither, right? You want to maximize the first and second group of people. And you want ideally the first and second type of people leading teams. And basically, the throughput of your company is basically some of the number of people in the first and second bucket.

• 9:14Harry Stebbings?

  When you bring those people together and you grow very fast, what was the most significant breaking moment in the early Revolut days? And what did you learn and take from it?

• 9:24Speaker 00

  I'll say the get shit done culture, the best way to build something great very, very fast. And it's something I talk on board, but I even amped it up even more.

• 9:34Harry Stebbings?

  How do you amp it up more?

• 9:36Speaker 00

  Putting even more intensity, right? Just driving a lot of urgency within the company. Always keep people on their toes.

• 9:42Harry Stebbings?

  How do you always keep people on their toes? Is it pushing them in terms of their goals? Is it pushing them in terms of the hours and the work and the intensity? What is it?

• 9:51Speaker 00

  Oh, in terms of results, right? Or lack thereof. I always emphasize like we're not moving fast enough. We could be doing more, but we're not. And for example, I told the team last year, our execution was maybe four out of 10, right? And we need to get a 10 out of 10 and we're not passing.

• 10:06Harry Stebbings?

  What was the problem there and how did you fix it?

• 10:08Speaker 00

  The problem was speed of execution. We were too slow. We wanted to ship a bunch of things and we didn't, right? Things were delayed.

• 10:15Harry Stebbings?

  When were you off-target in execution with Revolut? And what did you learn from that?

• 10:20Speaker 00

  I think we were off-execution maybe every year. I think the mindset should be, I think you need to be best versions of yourself. So you always need to review, okay, in the past week, in the past month, what could I have done better? Maybe more extreme analogy, right? Like I used to ask my team at Rev, if you have a gun pointed to your head today, would you have done more? If the answer is yes, that means you're not doing a good job.

• 10:43Harry Stebbings?

  There will be people who say, I also have a family, I also have other parts of my life. And I get this a lot. I'm sure you've probably seen because you're socially aware. But like 996, I've been chastised for, actually including by some of your investors at Balderton. Interesting. They would say it's not work-life balance. And I could always say, yes, I could have done more, but I have other parts of my life. How do you respond to them?

• 11:06Speaker 00

  Don't join Fuse. That's okay. Like I I I totally respect what people want, you know, like nine to five job, right? There's nothing wrong with wanting work work life balance. But I think the only way to build a generational company is like very, very strong work ethic. I I I just don't see any other way to do it.

• 11:22Harry Stebbings?

  When you look back now, Revolut is known for its intense culture as well. That's where I think you've learnt a lot of this. Where was the Revolut culture amazing that you've really taken from it? And where was it actually, I'm glad that we left that behind and it wasn't helpful?

• 11:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think Revolut's culture of never settle, like in terms of speed and quality is something I took over. Like Revolut had a lot of cultural values and and to be honest, like I think it's a bit too many for me. I always forget all of them.

• 11:51Harry Stebbings?

  How many does it have?

• 11:52Speaker 00

  From memory, it's six.

• 11:53Harry Stebbings?

  How many should you have?

• 11:54Speaker 00

  I think one.

• 11:56Harry Stebbings?

  What's your one cultural value?

• 11:57Speaker 00

  So never settle. It's the one that resonated with me the most.

• 12:01Harry Stebbings?

  Do you apply that to all parts of life? And what I mean by that is, you know, one of the heads of a firm recently said to me, and it's one of the biggest firms in the world, but I do wanna keep this one private because they'll always fucking kill me. They said, how you do anything is how you do everything. Like if we have mistakes in a memo, that says that we're not thinking clearly and we're not putting the work in. And I actually didn't really agree with that. I think you have to pick your battles and choose where to be all in. How do you think about that never settle? Cause sometimes it's okay to settle on eighty percent for a junior account manager in whatever. Do you know what I mean?

• 12:33Speaker 00

  I I agree with that, yeah. I think you have to pick your battles for sure. Ultimately, like you need to identify the most important roles in the company and never settle on those roles. But the roles that matter less, I think it's perfectly okay to settle.

• 12:45Harry Stebbings?

  When you're building Revolut with Nick and the team, what was your biggest disagreement with Nick? And and how did that play out?

• 12:51Speaker 00

  I'll say the overuse of KPIs. Cause ultimately, there are things you should measure, you know, which tells you the health of that team, how well they're doing. And you should hundred and do that. But then, once you start incentivizing against that, teams find ways to game it. Nick is a super numbers driven guy, right? And I think that worked very well in in a large part. But I would say not everything should be a KPI.

• 13:14Harry Stebbings?

  What shouldn't be a KPI and what shouldn't? How do you determine that?

• 13:18Speaker 00

  Like when you start incentivizing a metric, you need to think about, okay, what are the second order consequences? Right. Let's take a very simple example. Let's say, let's take a recruiter. If you give a KPI to a recruiter, let's say on hires per month, what they might start to do, because the bonus depends on it, is trying to convince hiring managers to lower the talent bar. And I've seen that happen before. That's actually not what the company wants, right? What the company wants is actually keep the talent bar high. So instead, they try, you know, some recruiters that really want to chase the bonuses, they, they try and negotiate with hiring managers, try and convince them, this is the best you're gonna find, you're not gonna find someone better, et cetera, et cetera.

• 13:51Harry Stebbings?

  When we look at outcomes, I think so much of Revolut's success has come from product diversification and the testing that you guys did internally. When I interviewed Nick, the thing that struck me was, he said about the 26 product experiments are being run internally at the same time. That was a really interesting way to approach company building to me that no one had ever talked to me about before. What did you learn from that? What are your takeaways from seeing that you've applied to Fuse?

• 14:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think product diversification is so important. I mean, let me give you like one example of why that was so important. So during the COVID lockdowns, the interchange revenue, so you know, revenue from people spending on cards, especially abroad, went basically near zero. However, there was a lot of stimulus checks, right, from the COVID times, and the stock market was booming, and the crypto market was booming. So whilst the interchange revenue went down, the, you know, trading revenue went up. So it kind of offset each other. So that's a great example where diversification actually helped make the company's revenues much more resilient.

• 14:49Harry Stebbings?

  Do you think you should have gone for the banking license earlier? Nick's publicly said that he thinks he should have done. But when you look there, I think your product diversification was enabled by your not having the banking license earlier where Monzo did.

• 15:00Speaker 00

  Actually, I think the product diversification could have happened even if Revolut got the banking license earlier. I think Nick is totally right. The issue is like the bigger you get, the, I guess, more scared the regulators are of you. Because if you succeed, they have no upside. They don't get a bigger bonus. But if you fail, like, they might lose their jobs. So they're incentivized to be risk averse as opposed to risk neutral, right? Whereas what's best for the economy is actually risk neutral regulators.

• 15:26Harry Stebbings?

  When was the first time that you really felt incumbents and regulators were aware of how successful you were becoming?

• 15:33Speaker 00

  I still don't think they realise. I still don't think the incumbents have woken up yet.

• 15:38Harry Stebbings?

  Oh dude, they have.

• 15:39Speaker 00

  They have?

• 15:39Harry Stebbings?

  They have. I'm sorry, I spoke at one of the incumbents' events recently and like pretty much the only thing that was discussed at their away day is Revolut.

• 15:48Speaker 00

  But what have they done about it?

• 15:50Harry Stebbings?

  Well, the trouble is they can't, and that's why you bet long on Revolut. And I am trying to buy every fucking Revolut share I can at a good price because honestly, the structures, the comp bands that they have, the policies that they have means that they can't do it. It's almost like they know the challenge, but they are unable to fight against it. And no one has ownership. It's a hundred year old bank. As a hired CEO who's been paid five million a year for five years, he honestly, if he bounces, he'll go back to Marbella, to the family home and it'll be fine.

• 16:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe. Talking about it and doing something about it is very different.

• 16:24Harry Stebbings?

  Do you think it's important to have an enemy in a startup? Whether it's Revolut and banks, whether it's Fuse and traditional incumbents, is that important?

• 16:32Speaker 00

  I think it's important to have a common goal. For example, at Fuse, our common goal is like no trade-offs. Looking back like last twenty years, right? Like this like green movement, basically telling people to use less, right? So you had politicians that says you shouldn't, you should drive less to work, you should turn heating on less often, you should fly less, you should do less of everything in order to save the environment. And then you have energy prices slowly creeping up over the last twenty years as well. It's basically trade-offs and I think that's totally wrong. It's actually moving in the completely opposite direction, right? It's, we should be using more energy. There's actually a very strong correlation between how much energy you use per capita and quality of life, right? And if you look at the Americans, right? Americans use almost eight times more

• 17:16Speaker 00

  energy than Europeans and look at the quality of life.

• 17:19Harry Stebbings?

  But you're saying the American quality of life is better than ours?

• 17:22Speaker 00

  For sure. Think about the average American home, right? They have a large detached house, big driveway, several cars, big backyard, maybe a swimming pool, maybe a sauna and maybe a jacuzzi. And that's like, you know, middle class. Like we're not talking about like ultra wealthy. Americans, even if you look at like the wealthy Brits living in London.

• 17:40Harry Stebbings?

  But I mean, that but that's bluntly built on a an infrastructure of credit and borrowing that they are unable to afford. Which you see in bluntly debt and borrowing levels in the US on the consumer side being harder than they've ever been. Whilst at the same time respectfully, dude, their food supply chain is completely fucked unless you're on either coast. And the quality of their food is shit and manufactured.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  Uh, that's that's also true, but if you look at the average cost of an American home, it's relatively affordable.

• 18:05Harry Stebbings?

  So what do we take away from that?

• 18:07Speaker 00

  I think the takeaway is like you can you can have it all three ways, right? You can have low cost energy. You're gonna have more energy and you can have lower carbon energy at the same time.

• 18:17Harry Stebbings?

  People often talk about the energy crisis that we're in today, and energy is now one of the hottest topics. When people say like, it's a quarter to midnight, it's a minute to midnight. How close are we to an energy crisis? Is it a minute to midnight? Are we far away? What does that look like?

• 18:33Speaker 00

  I think we're in an energy crisis already. In the whole developed economies, UK is in the deepest trouble. So if you look at energy consumption per capita in the last twenty five years, UK has dropped twenty five percent. In US, it's been flat. In China, in the same period of time, it's gone up by seven times, seven times in the same period of time. And energy prices have gone up, price volatility has gone up, everything is trending in the wrong direction.

• 18:55Harry Stebbings?

  And what's the cause of that? Can you just help me answer? You know, I was talking to one of the biggest um kind of data infrastructure providers the other day. And they were like, listen, the reason we're not in the UK is because like as a percentage of revenue, energy is sixteen percent of our revenues in the UK. Whereas comparatively elsewhere, it's three to four percent. Why is that? Why are we so bad?

• 19:13Speaker 00

  Two reasons. The first reason is overregulation. It's very hard to build anything in the UK, like physical or otherwise. Let me give you an example, right? So we're trying to build a power plant in the UK. And, you know, one of the things the council have a complete discretion over is, you know, planning, especially around environmental impact. So we had to do, you know, wintering bird surveys, right, over several winters. So how that works is you hire a guy with a clipboard and they count number of birds in the winter. And until that survey is done, you can't build. So that's one example where, you know, it's so hard to build something physical in Britain. Right now, I can tell you, if you speak to any of the infra capital providers, they want to deploy a lot of capital to building infrastructure. So the problem is not capital. The problem is it's very, very hard to build. So that's the first reason.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  The second reason I would say is the quality of companies operating in this space is not very sophisticated. Like a lot of these existing energy companies, they are not technology driven at all. They're very old school, so pen and paper spreadsheet based companies that are incredibly inefficient. Now, there's not much I can do about regulation, but I think we can for sure build the best version of, you know, best energy company using the latest technology.

• 20:24Harry Stebbings?

  Who is in charge of the regulation? Is this Ed Miliband and the energy?

• 20:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's it's Ofgem, it's Desners.

• 20:31Harry Stebbings?

  And when we compare that to the US, do they not have the same regulatory compliance issues? That say California does, which is why they failed so woefully on their expansion of the railway systems that they wanted to build out?

• 20:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, to be clear, I think US also share a lot of the similar problems to the UK to a lesser extent. And also depends on what state you're talking about. For example, in the state of Texas, like where, you know, a lot of people say it's the home of energy. It's much easier to build compared to the UK.

• 20:58Harry Stebbings?

  When you think about energy, the energy crisis today, what does no one know that everyone should know? I'm very naive on energy. It's not my business. It's not where we invest traditionally.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  So first of all, there's no such thing as harm some renewable. Just think about when the sun is shining, solar is generating. And obviously, sun is not shining all the time. For wind, it's the same, right? When wind is blowing, you get wind energy, right? Wind power. However, they are extremely correlated to each other. What that means is even if you overbuild solar and wind, it's never possible to cover harm some of the time to be harm some renewable. Because they're highly correlated. So in certain hours, you get abundant of solar wind energy, but certain hours, you basically get near zero energy, even if you overbuild. Now, you can argue, okay, you can put storage in, but right now, most batteries are sub two hours.

• 21:48Speaker 00

  So they're actually batteries are so way too expensive for us to use to store, you know, days or even weeks without, you know, solar wind energy. So any energy company that's claiming that harm some renewable is a complete lie. They're simply buying renewable certificates to claim that harm some renewable, and it's completely false. Let me give you like a proof point of why this is completely false. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the gas prices shot up, but the energy companies are. Offering hundred cent renewable energy tariffs also went up. How is that possible if it's hundred cent renewable, right? I mean, it's the first thing. Second thing, most people don't understand is power is not fungible across time and space. You have a lot of power, for example, wind power in north of Scotland, that are being told to turn off.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  Because the power is not getting to where it needs to be. People are not using energy when a wind is blowing. And it's also not going to where it needs to be, which is, you know, the big demand centers like like London. Because the grid is not set up to do that. So yeah, these are two biggest misconceptions in energy, I would say.

• 22:49Harry Stebbings?

  If you were in charge of the UK's energy policy program, what would you do differently that we're not doing today?

• 22:57Speaker 00

  I would deregulate building anything physical. I will make it so easy for anyone to build. Number two is I'll delete all subsidies of any kind.

• 23:06Harry Stebbings?

  Why?

• 23:07Speaker 00

  Because the goal for energy should be as low cost as possible. A subsidy basically means it's actually not profitable to build this project. But because the subsidy is now profitable, think about who takes that burden of that higher energy cost? It's ultimately the ratepayers, right? It's it's you and I, it's everyone. So actually, it doesn't make sense. So I'll delete all subsidies and let the free market do its thing. If it's profitable to build it, people will build it. If it's not, don't.

• 23:34Harry Stebbings?

  When we look at energy regulations, infrastructure, policy, which country do you think stands out as an exemplary that we should follow?

• 23:42Speaker 00

  China.

• 23:43Harry Stebbings?

  Why is that?

• 23:44Speaker 00

  Just look at the energy price. If you look at the what the Brits and Europeans pay in terms of, you know, cost per kilowatt hour. It's roughly twenty five to thirty dollars cents. In the US is ten to fifteen dollars cents. In China, it's eight dollars cents. If you look at energy per capita, US hasn't grown in the last twenty five years, it's been flat. In China, it's gone up by seven times. And if you look at the build out in China, right, they have truly vertically integrated energy companies run by the state. From generation to the grid and distribution. And, you know, whilst, you know, in the West, like there are people debating, oh, is renewables better? Is, you know, oil and gas better, you know, then there's like, it's becoming like a very political thing. In China, they build everything. In China, they deploy more solar than all Western economies combined.

• 24:30Speaker 00

  In China, they deployed more gas, more coal, more grid. They've laid more cables of grid than all Western economies combined. So they're just building everything. Clearly, they understand the importance of energy costs and they're just building everything. I think that's a model economy we should follow for energy policy.

• 24:47Harry Stebbings?

  Do you stand by the belief that we're all in the same WhatsApp groups and everyone says, ah, but the level of talent coming out of Imperial and Cambridge and Oxford, absolutely, we can parallel the US. Do you stand by that on talent levels in the UK?

• 25:01Speaker 00

  I think talent levels in the UK is good. Ultimately, high education, like I personally receive high education in the UK. I think it's world-class and ultimately, this is the key ingredient to build anything successful. Although, short-term, I'm bearish on the UK, but long-term, I'm bullish.

• 25:17Harry Stebbings?

  What makes you bearish right now in the UK?

• 25:20Speaker 00

  Current government's heading in the wrong direction. We need deep deregulation, so it's easy to build. And there's a lot of talk about growth, but it's just talk and no action.

• 25:30Harry Stebbings?

  Respectfully, I don't know how you can be bearish in the short-term and bullish in the long-term. Like, when you look at the cyclical structural decline that we're heading into, that is multi-decade, actually, and it's very difficult to reverse out of. So with respect, I don't know how you can be long-term bullish but short-term bearish.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  I think a lot of people with common sense are realising we're in a bad situation. What makes me optimistic is because when I speak to people, there is some common sense. Hopefully, those people with common sense will elect a more sensible government in the future that will do the right thing.

• 26:02Harry Stebbings?

  With respect, do you think that's actually a fair assessment, though? I mean, right now, it looks like Nigel Farage and Reform will be that government. And actually, when you look at populace and the UK populace, transparently, it's not the intellectual Matt Clifford that is the average person on the street.

• 26:17Speaker 00

  I think what's key is the next government, because ultimately, I think deregulation is, you just need a will, like a very, very strong will to do it. As long as, you know, the following governments can attract a top team around them and being advised the right regulations to look at and the delete or reform. I think we could do it.

• 26:39Harry Stebbings?

  Do you feel you have a political party home today? I feel kind of politically lost, if I'm honest, which is like it used to be a kind of conservative. Now I don't feel any particular allegiance to conservatives under Cammy, to be honest. But I don't feel particularly strong belief in Nigel Farage and Reform. I think Labour's terrible, but I don't feel like I have a political home like I used to.

• 27:00Speaker 00

  I wanna make sure there are people who are competent to lead the country, right? I wanna make sure the most competent individuals are leading countries regardless of party.

• 27:09Harry Stebbings?

  Who would you most like to see?

• 27:10Speaker 00

  Matt Cliffe is a pretty good choice. I'm probably in the same camp as you for now.

• 27:15Harry Stebbings?

  We said about talent in the UK. One thing that's always very hard with talent is detecting it. And part of that is the interview process. And you helped me again, you know, hi, I'm my chief of staff even. When you look at green flags in interview processes that excite you, what are some of the best signals that one can give in an interview process?

• 27:34Speaker 00

  Basically, when I when I explain to the candidate, you know, about what we're trying to build at Fuse ambitions, how I wanna be a number one energy company in the world, the hard work that requires to build it. Like what I usually see is like the body language, right? As well as the facial expression, like are they leaning in or they're leaning out? And you wanna be hiring people who are leaning in.

• 27:52Harry Stebbings?

  I don't like bouncers either. You know, when you look at someone's CV and it's like one year, one year, one year.

• 27:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's that's also not great.

• 27:58Harry Stebbings?

  Anything else where you're like, eh, not great? Fluffy CVs for me. Like, okay, you're hiring a marketing manager. I wanna see I increased MQLs by thirty eight percent. I did that through these three core channels. I learnt this about Facebook advertising, but then it's saturated when we hit expand. I'm like, oh, very detailed, like clear attribution led data.

• 28:16Speaker 00

  I I'll say very long CVs is bad. Yeah, I think it should be maximum page. Like if Elon Musk can fill, put a CV in one page, so could you. Yeah, it reminds me of like, you know, like your first ever CV, right? And you're trying to fill the page and you couldn't think of anything to put. And you're like, put your like special skills like Microsoft Word.

• 28:36Speaker 00

  It's got that type of vibe, right?

• 28:37Harry Stebbings?

  Professional tiddlywinks player, other hobbies skiing, art, I fucking hate art. Yeah, I totally agree with you. Okay, so we have that. How do you structure your hiring process? I'm always looking to be better at hiring. How do you structure it? And what would be your biggest advice to me on how I should optimize mine?

• 28:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think first define the skill sets you you need, right? So for example, for a software engineer, it could be coding skills, system design, problem solving, and as well as culture fit. So we basically find, okay, who's the best coder in the company? Who's the best assistant design? And then we assign those people to assess those skills individually. And then at the end of the process, they kind of gets a grade, right? For every single step, if they are above a certain threshold, then we we we offer. And that's also how we decide on how how much we offer, right? So as a company, we don't actually use any comp bands. We simply look at the grades and the higher the grade, the higher bid. Because ultimately, we're buying skills.

• 29:37Harry Stebbings?

  Wow, so sorry, this is really interesting. So you will essentially say, okay, we are looking for a software engineer and we need, I don't know, you choose your language, whatever we're going for, we need X language. And then you will rank them out of 10 on that one core skill. And then you will assign them a salary as a result of them.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  Actually, we don't even look at language. So although our whole backend is in Python, we will hire any backend developer, even if they know nothing about Python. So it's a coding challenge in the language of the choice. It's system design, which is about how you architect the whole system. Problem solving, which is have they successfully solved the problem in the past, whatever that is, as well as culture fit, right? And basically, if they get, let's say, straight A's in every single one, we bid a very, very high offer.

• 30:19Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, they are a seven out of 10. Should you just not hire them? Like, should it not be like an all in? We should give them the top whack or don't hire them at all?

• 30:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, so our our threshold is we will hire anything above a B. If you get straight Bs, you still get an offer, but the offer will be much lower. And it could be below what you're making today. If you have a better offer elsewhere, like, good luck to you.

• 30:43Harry Stebbings?

  Why would you do that? That feels like to me like in venture, it's like a nah deal like.

• 30:48Speaker 00

  Well, ultimately, like to be clear, B is so pretty good. A is like exceptional. So B is like, this is where we've where the bar is, right? And I would say like that you can still be a very solid performer if you're if you're B. The difference between the straight B candidate and straight A candidate is simply compensation. And for a straight A candidate, we have made offers that are, you know, much higher than what they make today. And even if we know that, that's okay, because we want to make sure we're a no brainer for you, such that you will never think about leaving.

• 31:17Harry Stebbings?

  How fast do you know when someone's not very good?

• 31:21Speaker 00

  A month, two months.

• 31:22Harry Stebbings?

  Do you pull the cord that quick?

• 31:24Speaker 00

  We always give them a verbal warning first.

• 31:27Harry Stebbings?

  When you give a pip, does it ever actually get better?

• 31:30Speaker 00

  Well, we don't really have formal pips. I don't believe in pips.

• 31:33Harry Stebbings?

  Why?

• 31:34Speaker 00

  I think it's a waste of time. I just give them a warning because most people we hire, they're already self aware, right? Of where they fall short, even before we have the verbal warning, they kind of know they're falling short already. And yeah, basically, the formal warning is simply, look, we're giving you one more chance. If you don't improve, you're out.

• 31:52Harry Stebbings?

  When you look back, when you made a missed hire, what did you not see that you should have seen?

• 31:57Speaker 00

  I used to overvalue IQ, then to put enough weighting on deeply caring.

• 32:03Harry Stebbings?

  Can you explain that?

• 32:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, so what you want to do is hire someone who really deeply cares about the company and about the mission. Right? Someone who would stay up late to fix this bug or stay over the weekend to get this new feature shipped. Even if you hire someone very, very intelligent, but they just don't care, it's also not going to work out.

• 32:24Harry Stebbings?

  Is that not a game of luck in some ways? When you hire someone, you've never met them before, they're young, you have very little data on them. You don't actually know if they're going to give it deal and work through Christmas to get that deal done, to get that project off the line. Is it not a game of luck?

• 32:41Speaker 00

  It's not a game, look, there are, there are questions you can ask. So I usually pitch them, pitch them about the company, telling, okay, like, we wanna be a number one to company, blah, blah, blah, right? I, I explain to them, look, you have many, many choices, right? You're obviously very, very talented engineer, you have many choices, you can work at any startup you want, any tech company you want. Are you really sure this is what you wanna do, right? It's gonna be very tough, there'll be tough times, you know, you have to constantly balance between shipping new features, fixing bugs, improving scalability of the platform, like, why do you wanna do this to yourself? Like, why are you sure you wanna do this? And if they say, oh, I'm not sure, depends on the pay, blah, blah, blah, that means they're not up for it.

• 33:20Speaker 00

  If they're leaning and they tell you, okay, I've been so bored at my corporate job, this is something I've been looking for, you know, for a very long time, like, I'm in, then you know, right? Now, obviously, they can lie, right? But most, I would say, from my experience, they don't.

• 33:34Harry Stebbings?

  Any big red flags around people and their title expectations? I wanna come in, but I wanna be a head of product, is that okay? Or is it a, no, no, no, come in and earn the right? Any lessons around title and how they feel about title?

• 33:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, we've never given a head of position to anyone we've hired. We've only given to it based, based on performance.

• 33:55Harry Stebbings?

  In, in terms of internal promotion?

• 33:57Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 33:58Harry Stebbings?

  Anyone's salary, where it's like, hey, listen, I'm being paid X at my current job, I need that to make this worth my time?

• 34:05Speaker 00

  Actually, for us, their expectations don't really matter, it's about their performance. Either interview performance or performance in the company. And we will pay you top of market if you perform very well.

• 34:16Harry Stebbings?

  What non-obvious behavior do you not tolerate, even if they're really high performers?

• 34:21Speaker 00

  So I remember back was when I was at Revolut. I was explaining to Nick, I, I, I actually forgot what, what, what it was, but, you know, I failed at something. And I was trying to explain to him why I failed. Then Nick sent me this article, right? It was about jobs, explaining the difference between a janitor and a VP. So the story goes, if the janitor fails to collect the trash because the locks in the office was changed. Jobs would say, okay, that's irritating, but that's acceptable because you're the janitor. Somewhere between a janitor and a VP, reasons stop mattering. So every single time when one of the leaders at Fuse explains to me why they failed and they couldn't hit their own goal, I send them this article.

• 35:01Harry Stebbings?

  So can you just help me understand what the takeaway from that is? It's like, you know what, it doesn't fucking matter why you failed. The point is you failed in the expansion.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 35:09Harry Stebbings?

  What do you take from that? Like excuses don't matter?

• 35:12Speaker 00

  Excuses don't matter. If you're a leader of an area in the company, excuses don't matter. If you succeed, you get all the praise. If you fail, you get all the blame. And it does not matter why you failed.

• 35:22Harry Stebbings?

  Do you worry that you're ever too harsh on people? I get told I am. I don't care about your excuses. I care about outcomes. And people say that I'm too harsh, I'm too direct. Do you worry?

• 35:32Speaker 00

  I don't care what they think.

• 35:34Harry Stebbings?

  And you don't worry about them leaving? Because like for my best performers, for your use, where Nick at Revolut is saying that to you, Nick should be terrified that you leave. You're a core part of that business. I want to protect you and look after you. And when you say, dude, there's a lot of reasons why, I don't know, Poland didn't work in the expansion and da, da, da, da. Okay, Alan, like you're my guy. I'm here for you and thank you for explaining that to me. I want to protect my best performers.

• 36:00Speaker 00

  Well, I would say, I don't think that's protecting, right? That's just hiding, you know, information from your best performers, right? Ultimately, your best performers, like they're, they're smart, they're hardworking, they're not dumb, right? And initially, I took that feedback to heart and I was resisting at first. I thought it was unfair, right? But then I thought more about it and it made me a better person, right? So I thank him for, for sending me the article. What, what I found is like usually top performers internalizes negative feedback very well. They take negative feedback to heart and they find ways to improve. If there are people who don't take negative feedback well, I don't think they're top performers.

• 36:35Harry Stebbings?

  What was the bit of feedback that you found most hard to take?

• 36:38Speaker 00

  You you have to assume the person giving you negative feedback have the best intentions for you. And once you realize that and it's nothing personal, you can take all negative feedback, even if it's very harsh.

• 36:48Harry Stebbings?

  Was there a bit of feedback that you found the hardest to give?

• 36:52Speaker 00

  No, it's very important you have you create a culture of truth seeking. And the truth is very ugly, might hurt someone's feelings, you should still say it because it will make that person better.

• 37:02Harry Stebbings?

  Is there anything that you shouldn't say because it ultimately doesn't make them better?

• 37:06Speaker 00

  Well, if I keep giving negative feedback to a person and they haven't improved, then I I just stop bothering. They can leave the company.

• 37:13Harry Stebbings?

  Do you think there's a bit of a culture of fear around you? Like, if you look, again, I love Nick and I think he's a phenomenal leader and one of the greatest founders that I've ever interviewed, ever. And I've done a thousand founder interviews, but I mean, that's not, I don't know whatever the right term, let's not shy away from it. People are scared of him. Is it bad to have a fear-based leadership?

• 37:32Speaker 00

  What matters is people need to feel like they can speak the truth.

• 37:36Harry Stebbings?

  And you do with Nick?

• 37:37Speaker 00

  Yes, I tell him if I think it's a bad idea, I tell Nick, that he can disagree with me. And sometimes I change his mind, sometimes I don't, but I do tell him the truth.

• 37:46Harry Stebbings?

  What specific decision on product or strategy do you think moves the needle most with Revolut? Was there one, like, we have to go into crypto, we have to go into stock trading, we have to do X country, we have to invest in X?

• 38:01Speaker 00

  No, because the answer is we need to do everything. Yeah, I think as we build a company, we realize there's so many opportunities and we just need to pursue all of them.

• 38:10Harry Stebbings?

  That advice is completely counter what every founder is being told, that you need to focus. You need to create a product for a very specific customer base. And you need to deliver that excellent experience and focus, focus, focus. There's so many shiny objects, you can't pursue them all.

• 38:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:25Harry Stebbings?

  That advice is completely counter that. What would you say to them listening who are now confused?

• 38:30Speaker 00

  I I actually think there are not enough ambitious founders out there. Because ultimately, the the the throughput of the company, like, how many parallel work streams you can take at a given time is dictated by number of great leaders you have in the company. And the zero-sum mindset would be, okay, I only have that many leaders in the company. In some cases, it could just be the founders themselves, therefore, I'm just going to pursue these things. The expansionist mindset would be, I need to hire more leaders in my company so I can pursue more. Right? So I'll argue we're in the business of expanding things. So rather than you try and play the zero-sum game, you should try and figure out ways to. You know, hire more leaders so they can pursue more.

• 39:08Harry Stebbings?

  What does your direct report structure look like? Jensen has popularized the having fifty and being so involved in the minutiae of a larger amount of the business in terms of surface area. To what extent do you agree with that versus the delegate to fantastic leadership like you kind of mentioned there in terms of increasing surface area?

• 39:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I'd say, yeah, I I think I've made direct reports. I I don't know how many. I I would probably lean towards what Jensen's doing because ultimately I I don't even think with them, think of them as direct reports, right? I think of them as, you know, going back to self-guiding missile analogy, right? You don't need to manage those people, like you discuss and you debate about the target, right? But once you both agree on a target, then that's it, right? You don't really have to manage them. You just monitor and make things okay, but that's about it.

• 39:55Harry Stebbings?

  Talking about monitoring and management, your offices are in Canary Wharf, not the obvious place for startups in London. Shoreditch, kind of most famous silicon roundabout. Why are you in Canary Wharf?

• 40:06Speaker 00

  So first of all, it's it's probably the only place in London where you can keep expanding offices, right? So you can keep upgrading offers without incurring a big penalty in a lease. Second reason, it's it's far away from the party, you know, there if you if you if you work around here, it's a there's this thing going on this bar, right, or this this club, right? Um, I think there's too much going on in West London, too many distractions. What's in care of that? There's nothing going on. It's just work and nothing else, so.

• 40:32Harry Stebbings?

  Do you not think that, like, I live here, but I'm fucking disciplined? I don't go to parties. I don't drink. I I don't do anything but work in gym.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 40:39Harry Stebbings?

  Is that not the secret to being a great entrepreneur? Discipline?

• 40:42Speaker 00

  I think so, but I'm talking about other people in the team.

• 40:46Harry Stebbings?

  Hmm.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  You know, it's like if you see a, you know, a full bar downstairs, I think you're tempted, right? You might, oh, I'm gonna, you know, pop down for a pint, right?

• 40:55Harry Stebbings?

  Do you expect people to work weekends?

• 40:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, I I'd say like, as I said before, like, this is very hard, like, this only way to do it. Like, we we're going against big, big, big energy companies with, like, huge balance sheets, you know, billions in revenue. Only way to win is with much more balance sheets, much less cash, much less resources is work ethic.

• 41:15Harry Stebbings?

  And work ethic gets you a long way. In the early days, you built the MVP with just a million bucks, right? But before any outside funding. Can you just talk to me about that? And what you advise founders on MVPs and going to V1 with minimal resources, having done that?

• 41:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, so at the time, we wanted to build a full stack energy company and we're a million bucks. So what we need for full stack energy company, we need power generation, we need a license, we need someone to help us guide through regulation. We need a qualified trader, so you need to be qualified to to trade energy. And we also need a qualified electrician. So we found a single wind turbine in north of Scotland that the seller's willing to sell for seven hundred and fifty K. We found a license for seventy five K. We convince the former CEO of Ofgem to become an advisor with just equity and no cash. My co-founder Charles became a qualified trader and electrician. So we acquired all the skills and assets we need to build a MVP full stack energy company.

• 42:16Speaker 00

  So my advice is I don't think you need a lot of capital. You don't need a huge C round to get started.

• 42:22Harry Stebbings?

  If you can, why don't you? There's so much venture money, so dude, if you can, why don't you?

• 42:27Speaker 00

  I think you could. If you could, you should.

• 42:30Harry Stebbings?

  But you could. Anyone would have written you, like, you could say, I'm doing a fart app. I'll give you ten million bucks.

• 42:38Harry Stebbings?

  The disgraceful thing about you, Alan, is I would have given you money for almost anything but this. And this is like my biggest lesson and mistake. I listen to you and I just die inside, honestly. I do also remember, dude, you had the token element, which just, it was hard to digest.

• 42:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:55Harry Stebbings?

  We chatted about when you were racing your first round. And one of your investors said that I had to ask you, no, wasn't it? It was actually Antoine. He said, is it true that you rocked up to Balderton with your Ferrari parked outside? And then stroll in and say, I'm going to raise a sixty million dollar seed round?

• 43:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's some truth to that, yeah.

• 43:14Harry Stebbings?

  How did it go down?

• 43:15Speaker 00

  I think it went pretty well.

• 43:16Harry Stebbings?

  You raised seventy eight in the first round.

• 43:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think they they really, really like the concept. And I think what they realize is is a pretty good strategy. And I I realized after the, you know, a lot, a lot of the investments, because they made so much money from the rebel investment. They just keep investing X rebel teams.

• 43:34Harry Stebbings?

  Is there anything that you would do differently about the early rounds of funding with the benefit of hindsight that you have today?

• 43:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think raise at too low price.

• 43:43Harry Stebbings?

  Could you have raised it higher?

• 43:44Speaker 00

  Could have.

• 43:45Harry Stebbings?

  Why didn't you?

• 43:46Speaker 00

  So we had a we had a price in mind.

• 43:48Harry Stebbings?

  What was the price?

• 43:49Speaker 00

  It was roughly where we were at, about one forty, actually. We had an oral agreement with Boratton, we'll take the we'll take the term sheet, but we haven't signed the term sheet yet. And then later, there was another investor that came that came and said, I will offer you a higher term sheet. We said no, because we already agree with Boratton, we'll take the term sheet.

• 44:07Harry Stebbings?

  And you regret that?

• 44:08Speaker 00

  No, like I would say, I I regret saying yes, it's too early, because we could have raised at better terms.

• 44:14Harry Stebbings?

  So what would you advise founders on the back of that?

• 44:17Speaker 00

  Like, ultimately, I would say the I underestimated the value of the company at the time. Because I didn't realize, you know, investors put such a high price on it. I'll say wait for a bit longer. At the time, it was like effectively the second term sheet we had. By the same time, like I I I believe like, if you say you're gonna do something, you should do it. And that's why we we took Boratton's term sheet, even though we could have received a better one.

• 44:41Harry Stebbings?

  You raised a recent round, seventy at five billion.

• 44:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:45Harry Stebbings?

  That that's often what's referred to as a suicide round, which is like a very high price with not actually that much money going into the business.

• 44:53Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 44:54Harry Stebbings?

  Why is that a good round for the company?

• 44:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, so the company is doing over four hundred million revenue, annualized revenue.

• 45:01Harry Stebbings?

  Four hundred million?

• 45:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, and.

• 45:03Harry Stebbings?

  Wh- when was day one revenue? What's that slope?

• 45:07Speaker 00

  So in terms of financial year, we increased our revenue ten X every year since inception. The first year was two million pounds, so about three, just start with three million dollars. Second year was twenty pounds, so roughly twenty five, twenty six. And then this year, we're gonna end at over two hundred pounds, so yeah, roughly two sixty.

• 45:28Harry Stebbings?

  You can't tell that is again.

• 45:30Speaker 00

  We'll try.

• 45:32Harry Stebbings?

  Where do you think you will land? If me and you have a bet, okay, and we'll sit here next.

• 45:35Speaker 00

  I mean, like, our, our, our business plan is much less than ten X, right, for next year.

• 45:40Harry Stebbings?

  Is it five X?

• 45:41Speaker 00

  Something around there, but we'll, we'll, we'll still shoot for ten.

• 45:44Harry Stebbings?

  What would be the biggest barrier to you hitting a billion? Like, there's one reason, what is it?

• 45:49Speaker 00

  I think it's speed of hiring quality engineering. That, that's the biggest barrier. It is not capital, it's quality engineering.

• 45:55Harry Stebbings?

  Why do you like hiring Eastern European engineers?

• 45:58Speaker 00

  Because culturally, they, I think they favor technical education and they have very strong work ethic.

• 46:05Harry Stebbings?

  With the success that you've had, dude, what have been your biggest reflections on how you think about your relationship to money?

• 46:12Speaker 00

  For me, obviously, money is great, but beyond levels of personal consumption, and I personally don't spend that much money. I think it becomes a means to an end.

• 46:20Harry Stebbings?

  Can I be blunt and ask you, what is that level? And this is for me. I'm not sure what that is. I don't want to be on the hedonic treadmill, but I do think about that.

• 46:30Speaker 00

  Honestly, I think anything, I'd say numbers probably like five, five, I think is enough.

• 46:35Harry Stebbings?

  Do you remember when you made your first real money?

• 46:37Speaker 00

  I do remember, yeah.

• 46:38Harry Stebbings?

  How did it feel?

• 46:39Speaker 00

  It felt surreal. My Revolut account went from no money and it won thousand X overnight.

• 46:46Harry Stebbings?

  Did you sell much of your Revolut?

• 46:48Speaker 00

  No, only for personal consumption. I'm still very bullish on the company.

• 46:52Harry Stebbings?

  How big can Revolut be? I often, like, say publicly, it's like easily a two fifty billion dollar business without the US. With the US, it's a five hundred billion dollar business.

• 47:02Speaker 00

  I think it'll be trillion dollar company.

• 47:05Harry Stebbings?

  Do you think he'll be able to crack the US?

• 47:06Speaker 00

  If someone's gonna do it, it's Nikola.

• 47:08Harry Stebbings?

  At what price would you start to sell?

• 47:10Speaker 00

  A trillion.

• 47:13Harry Stebbings?

  What does no one know about having money that people should know about having money?

• 47:17Speaker 00

  I think it buys you time, actually buys you quite a bit of time back.

• 47:22Harry Stebbings?

  Where do you spend to save time?

• 47:24Speaker 00

  I think having an assistant helps you save a lot of time, like, so you don't have to do, waste a lot of time doing a lot of chores, travel. I think flying a coach just kills your, I think it just wastes two days. I think it's worth flying business. You know, you can work in the plane and not feel terrible, you know, the day after, right? You know, traveling better, eating better, and not wasting time on things outside of the business, you could buy, buy a lot of time back.

• 47:50Harry Stebbings?

  Does it change your relationship, personal relationships?

• 47:53Speaker 00

  Maybe for the better, right? So you stop thinking about price tags, which is good, right? You just go wherever you want, eat wherever you want. So I think it does help in a positive way. But yeah, but also then you need to think like who your friends truly are, right?

• 48:07Harry Stebbings?

  Have you ever had that question?

• 48:09Speaker 00

  Luckily, all my existing friends have not changed how they treat me after some success. But I have had a lot of long time from, you know, people I went to school with.

• 48:20Harry Stebbings?

  Dude, I wanna ask a quick fire answer. I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts.

• 48:25Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 48:25Harry Stebbings?

  So what investor do you not have that you would most like to have?

• 48:29Speaker 00

  One person, you.

• 48:33Harry Stebbings?

  Do you know what's really hard about what I do?

• 48:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:35Harry Stebbings?

  Is that I'm friends with the greatest founders.

• 48:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:39Harry Stebbings?

  And in a lot of cases, like Eve invested in Project Europe and I have the joys of like knowing you. And it really is a joy.

• 48:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:46Harry Stebbings?

  And it's like, what the fuck? Why am I not invested in these companies? I have this with like Matty at Eleven Labs. I'm just like, oh. It almost happened too early for me. Does that make sense? It's like I became friends with these people and had the chance to invest.

• 48:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:59Harry Stebbings?

  When I was a kid.

• 49:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:01Harry Stebbings?

  And I didn't know what I was doing.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:02Harry Stebbings?

  And had I had that now, it would have been very different. But it is like, rank these in order of importance, luck, talent and timing.

• 49:11Speaker 00

  I think timing, talent, luck.

• 49:13Harry Stebbings?

  Why timing first?

• 49:15Speaker 00

  I think if you get the timing wrong, even if you're the best team in the world, you're not gonna make it. For example, I don't think Fuse could have been built 10 years ago. I think Fuse is only possible because the requirements have changed, right? Because the renewable penetration in the grid is so high. And the skills you need to, the ability to manage renewables is so different to how we used to generate and consume power. If you look at Revolut, Revolut was only possible because of the EMI license. And the EMI license was created just a couple of years before Revolut was founded. I don't think Revolut would be possible, you know, 10 years before, you know, 2014. So I do think timing matters. And then the second thing is talent, like I think these are two prerequisites.

• 49:57Speaker 00

  So if you have good timing, if you have good talent, I think luck will also come.

• 50:01Harry Stebbings?

  What's been the hardest decision you've made in your career?

• 50:04Speaker 00

  Probably leaving Revolut.

• 50:06Harry Stebbings?

  Did you wanna stay to IPO?

• 50:07Speaker 00

  I do, I do. Like ultimately, like it's.

• 50:10Harry Stebbings?

  Do you remember telling Nick?

• 50:12Speaker 00

  I remember.

• 50:12Harry Stebbings?

  Can you just tell me that?

• 50:14Speaker 00

  It was a very, very hard moment and he asked me, are you sure three times? And I said, I'm sure, uh, three times.

• 50:23Harry Stebbings?

  Where were you? What time of day was it?

• 50:25Speaker 00

  It was, uh, I think it was a Friday afternoon. It was actually the same meeting, main meeting where you did a podcast with Nick.

• 50:31Harry Stebbings?

  Wow.

• 50:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was that room.

• 50:33Harry Stebbings?

  What did he say? Cause respectfully, a lot of people have come and gone from Revolut.

• 50:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:38Harry Stebbings?

  But you were his guy. Was he visibly shocked?

• 50:41Speaker 00

  I don't know. He, he, he has this emotionless reaction. Um, yeah, he just asked me, are you sure?

• 50:48Harry Stebbings?

  Did he invest in Fuse?

• 50:50Speaker 00

  Yes, in the most recent round.

• 50:52Harry Stebbings?

  In the most recent round?

• 50:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:53Harry Stebbings?

  Is it still open?

• 50:57Harry Stebbings?

  I can't believe, I said this to Massey the other day. I said, I can't believe we're still not invested. We, I'm just paying any price. I'm just pissed off.

• 51:06Harry Stebbings?

  That's amazing. What's, you said downstairs, being CEO is not all it's cracked up to be. Why is it not all it's cracked up to be being CEO?

• 51:13Speaker 00

  I mean, I think there are pros and cons. I think the pros, like at Revolut, I, I can basically get to pick the role I wanted, right? The problems I wanted to solve. But now I, I give that opportunity to other leaders within the company. That means by definition, I, I don't get to choose the things I do.

• 51:28Harry Stebbings?

  What are you not doing today that you would most like to be doing?

• 51:32Speaker 00

  I would love to go much deeper on, on engineering, on hardware, like go into like very low level details.

• 51:39Harry Stebbings?

  How big is the biggest incumbent in the space?

• 51:42Speaker 00

  So you have the power incumbents and then you have the big oil majors, right, incumbents. If you look at big oil majors like Shell, they make a billion revenue a day approximately.

• 51:53Harry Stebbings?

  How big can Fuse be?

• 51:55Speaker 00

  I think we could be bigger than Shell.

• 51:57Harry Stebbings?

  How much is Shell worth?

• 51:58Speaker 00

  I think it's worth just enough of three hundred billion dollars, but it's on the London Stock Exchange. So there's a, I think a discount.

• 52:05Harry Stebbings?

  How the fuck does that, I'm sorry, they do a billion in revenue a day?

• 52:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:09Harry Stebbings?

  And they're worth less than their annual revenue then?

• 52:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think if they were listed in the US, they'd probably be worth more.

• 52:15Harry Stebbings?

  Would you list in the US?

• 52:16Speaker 00

  If we ever list, I think it'll be the US, yeah.

• 52:18Harry Stebbings?

  Would you list?

• 52:20Speaker 00

  I personally don't see a need to. There's a lot of liquidity in the private markets and obviously there's additional overhead being listed company like. Like, the only reason I see listing as a, as a real need is if the liquidity dries up in the private markets.

• 52:34Harry Stebbings?

  Do you let team members sell?

• 52:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:36Harry Stebbings?

  Revolut was very tight on any secondary sales. It was like incredibly guarded subject. Are you the same or are you a little bit looser?

• 52:44Speaker 00

  Well, I'd say like, we do want to create liquidity opportunities for employee stockholders. And, you know, sometimes people need to buy a house, you know, buy a car, they need to, yeah, some liquidity is helpful.

• 52:54Harry Stebbings?

  Final one for you, dude. I like to end on a tone of positivity and optimism. What excites you most in the next 10 years?

• 53:00Speaker 00

  We love to build a world where power is so cheap and abundant that any builder, AI or otherwise, don't even think about power anymore and they can just build more and economies start growing again as a result. That'll be great.

• 53:16Harry Stebbings?

  Alan, I so appreciate you. I think you're one of the great entrepreneurs in the UK. I'm going to pass to you about investing. And I so appreciate our friendship. So thank you so much for doing this with me, dude.

• 53:26Speaker 00

  Oh, thanks for having me.

• 53:29Harry Stebbings?

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• 55:00Harry Stebbings?

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