How Physics and Mathematics Shaped the Way Storonsky Thinks
Storonsky grew up in a family that valued education. His father was a researcher and his mother a teacher, and both pushed him toward a demanding schooling path in mathematics. He studied at one of Russia's top physics and technology universities, in the most difficult faculty there. He describes the effect of that training in two parts. Mathematics taught him abstract thinking and the habit of building systems rather than relying on human judgment and emotion. Physics taught him that almost anything is possible within the limits of physical law.
He says that twenty years ago he was mainly an abstract thinker. Today he still is, but he calls himself more practical. His test for a solution is simplicity. He prefers answers that are elegant and easy to explain, even when the underlying problem is complex.
For a founder, the useful point is the method. Writing down the system behind a decision tends to produce more reliable choices than reacting to how a situation feels.
Why a Gifted Student Chose Trading Over Academia
Storonsky wanted to run a business from the age of six. He grew up in the Soviet Union as it collapsed and watched new companies appear around him. He chose trading after graduating in 2007 because he loved markets and their complexity. His plan was to work in trading for about two years and then start his own company.
He does not frame the choice as purely financial. Money mattered, especially for a young man from a poor family, but the intellectual challenge of markets mattered as much. Prestige was also a factor. At the time, the best Russian graduates were offered jobs at investment banks and consultancies such as McKinsey and Bain, and tech was not yet a serious option. He went into trading instead.
When asked whether he would have stayed in trading had the 2008 crisis not happened, he said he would still have wanted to run a business. He dismissed a senior trading role at a bank as political and people-heavy, work he did not want.
“Smartness wins everything.”
Treating Risk Like a Casino You Own
Storonsky says trading gave him two lessons. The first is a strict attitude to financial risk. He saw many traders blow up because they took excessive risk or gambled. For him, financial markets were a casino, and he did not want to play in one. He would rather own the casino and understand how traders gamble there. As he put it, you either build the gambling company or you do not gamble.
This principle carried into how he runs Revolute. He treats exposure as something to manage deliberately, not a risk to accept by default.
Staying Flexible: Changing Your Mind Without Losing Direction
The second lesson from trading is flexibility. Storonsky argues that a trader must change opinions as new information arrives, sometimes several times a day. He sees many business people hold onto a view simply because they chose it earlier, and he calls that the wrong approach. If a market moves against a long position, you cut it and may go short.
He separates long-term direction from tactical moves. A company needs a clear long-term direction, but as information changes, leaders must be ready to turn sharply. The same applies to people: a hire that looked strong may not work out after three months, and the leader must be able to act quickly.
In his view, building a business systematically comes first. Managing it well then depends on choosing the right direction and switching instantly when the evidence says the current one is not working.
Early Years at Revolut: Survival, Not Certainty
Storonsky explains that his plan was never fixed by certainty. When he left banking to start his company, his mental safety net was simple: if the company failed, he could always find another job. That view made him unafraid to start companies, launch projects or change direction. He stresses that believing in yourself matters, and that failure is survivable.
He is clear that he was not convinced from the start that the business would work. The first two or three years were very hard. The company lost a lot of money, gross margins were negative and problems came daily. Every day was about survival: you fight problems, solve some, and hope there are fewer the next day. He still faces many problems today.
For founders, the passage is a reminder that early losses and difficulty are normal. It is also a reason not to quit at the first sign of trouble.
Why Storonsky Named the Company Revolut and Chased Each New Wave
The name Revolut came from an intention to create something revolutionary in finance. The domain was available, which made the decision easy. Storonsky then describes a sequence of waves: digital banking first, then crypto, then the metaverse, then AI.
His view of crypto is measured. The technology lets money move quickly and almost free to any part of the world, but governments impose restrictions, and the main use of crypto is speculation rather than payments. He built a successful crypto business but says he never believed crypto would become everyday money, unless inflation became severe.
He was never convinced by the metaverse, which he saw as a toy because people live in the physical world. AI, he argues, is a bigger shift, a revolution squared. He notes that his own business is built around people's strengths and weaknesses, and AI is forcing him to rethink those systems. He admits he has not yet solved how to build new systems around AI rather than around people.
The AI Assistant and an Open Ecosystem
Revolut already runs an AI assistant. Storonsky describes plans to add shopping, so a customer can say what to buy and the assistant will browse stores and purchase using secured card details. It will also offer analysis and financial advice, such as which stocks or funds to buy or avoid. In effect, he describes a personal financial assistant that buys, invests and advises.
On how AI agents will work together, he plans to open the company's own protocols (MCP) and agents, so that its agents can talk to each other and third-party agents can share information with Revolut's infrastructure, always with the customer's authentication. He argues against a closed ecosystem, because blocking agents could mean missing features that emerge later.
Building From Europe for the US Market
Storonsky says the American market has been Revolut's largest, with around 100,000 people working with the company in the US and North America. He argues that building in Europe for global markets, and especially for the US, is essential. He calls the US the essence of capitalism and says winning there is the goal for any founder.
His 2034 ambition is to build a global European tech company comparable to Meta, Google, Anthropic or OpenAI, extending beyond banking into technology services and products linked to financial life. He describes proprietary foundational models trained on transaction data, with tens of millions of transactions a day, and in-house data centres. These are company claims, and the talk does not verify them.
Leadership as an Orchestra, Not a Hierarchy
Storonsky uses sports as an analogy for leadership. A company is a group of people working toward one goal, which becomes a kind of organism with its own parts. The founder's job is to build and keep that organism working well. He also uses the image of a conductor, who watches every instrument and makes sure the players stay in sync.
His structural conclusion is to reduce intermediate layers. Having many direct reports, he says, lets him run a large orchestra without intermediaries and change things quickly. He sometimes works directly with developers and designers rather than going through managers.
He adds that a good conductor should understand every instrument, at least well enough to hear when one is wrong. Playing each instrument, even imperfectly, trains the ear to judge quality.
Revolut's Five Culture Principles and Keeping Teams Small
Revolut's culture rests on five principles. Never settle means staying ambitious and hungry for high goals. Think deeper means understanding how things really work before implementing solutions. Dream team means small teams of brilliant people rather than large teams of average ones, which he thinks is underrated. Deliver wow means aiming for near-perfect, elegant, friction-free work. Get things done means owning work end to end, because a brilliant plan with no finished result counts for nothing. He sums it up: half done is zero unless it is fully done.
On scale, he argues that mistakes cost far more in a large organisation, which pushes firms toward more approval stages and bureaucracy. His answer is to keep smart people working in an almost process-free environment, with a few controls to keep things safe. He also runs very small teams, up to about ten people, that operate independently on the same shared platform and tools.
Hiring for Desire and Raw Intelligence Before Skills
Revolut looks for three things, in order of weight: desire to achieve, raw intelligence, and then skills such as design, development or product work. If he could pick only two, he would choose raw brain power and desire over skills, because skills can be learned. He says that over twelve years he has seen young, hungry, smart people disrupt industries by reasoning from first principles and building solutions that outperform existing ones. Experience matters in many cases, but he believes raw intelligence and determination outperform experience in most industries.
He also points to the risk of very strong individuals who do not work well together. Success depends on players who can play together as well as on individual talent.
Quantum Light: Investing on Data and Helping Founders Operate
After many difficult rounds of fundraising for Revolut, Storonsky founded Quantum Light, a venture fund that invests based on data science models rather than human judgment. He describes investor behaviour he found frustrating: a term sheet agreed, then a market drop and investors trying to renegotiate, which he sees as crowd thinking. He also found that investors promised help but usually came from finance rather than operating backgrounds.
Quantum Light's offer has two parts: investment decisions driven by models, and operational playbooks covering hiring, performance management, product expansion and sales. He adds that Revolut as a large corporate client can help portfolio companies sell to other enterprises, since it applies high quality standards and works with thousands of vendors.
He says Ilia, now CEO of Quantum Light, first met him around 2007 or 2018 (the transcript gives both), when Storonsky tried to hire him as head of credit. Ilia declined, disappeared for five years, and then accepted the CEO role in 2023.
What Data Says About the Right Age for Founders and Executives
Storonsky says Quantum Light's data shows that 30 to 35 is the sweetest age for a Series B entrepreneur, with a higher probability of failure both younger and older. He sees a similar prime age for executives, comparable to sport, where people peak with experience and still hunger for results. He notes that data can be back-tested, but the transcript does not describe the sample or method, so treat the finding as provisional.
He also argues that talent shows up quickly regardless of age. When young people produce strong results and solve problems well, he puts them in charge and keeps increasing responsibility until something breaks. He says this accelerates development more than a protected environment does.
Delegating Responsibility and Spotting Weak Managers
Storonsky admits he has 50 direct reports, so he can see everyone. When something is not working as expected at the next level of management, he goes deep and speaks directly with the direct reports to judge how capable they are. He has seen smart, ambitious, determined people who are very poor managers, often because they cannot spot talent or spot it too late. He treats that as a problem to fix, and his method is to evaluate people directly when results diverge.
John Elkann noted that many Italians have done well at Revolut. Storonsky said he had never heard a no when people were promoted, and that giving talented people more responsibility is how they grow.
Advice From an Investor Who Stays Out of Operations
Asked what advice he would give founders and investors to avoid bad experiences, Storonsky says he is very founder-focused. In his view, investors should not interfere with a company at all: they provide capital and leave the team alone. If the team is good, it will solve almost any problem itself. Investors should help only when asked. He compares unprofessional investors who try to direct operations to having non-players tell a football team what to do. Not every opinion is valuable, so it is better to avoid many of them.
He reduces the matter to one point: founders need a way to avoid listening to cheerleaders. The implied skill on both sides is choosing the right counterpart: founders choose investors, and investors choose founders.
Balancing a Demanding Career With Family Life
Elkann closed by noting that Storonsky is also a family man with four children and a fifth expected. Storonsky's answer is direct: it is not impossible, but it is very difficult. He compares it to running two businesses at once. The point he emphasises is that it can be done, which matters to founders who want both a company and a family.
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