Fuse CEO Alan Chang: The Revolut Playbook of Speed & Ownership, Why Founders Aren’t Ambitious Enough

1. You cannot have work-life balance

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.

Alan is the co-founder and CEO of Fuse Energy. Like Netflix beat incumbents to own media and Revolut beat incumbents to own banking, Fuse will beat incumbents to own energy.

There's nothing wrong with wanting work-life balance. But I think the only way to build a generational company is a very, very strong work ethic. I just don't see any other way to do it. 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 fail. We increased our revenue 10x every year since inception. The first year was £2 million, the second year was £20 million, and this year we're going to end at over £200 million.

You can't 10x again. Ready to go. Alan, dude, I am so looking forward to this. I have you to thank for hiring my chief of staff, because we were sitting in a cocktail bar in London and you were helping me hire. I was like, “Holy shit, this guy is brilliant, and I need to do a show with him.” That was 3 years ago, so thank you so much for doing this with me.

2. The interview process that led to the $150M pay packet

Yeah, thanks for having me.

3. What I disagreed with Nik on most

Dude, I think a really interesting one to start with is that you're a freaking machine, and I just want to understand. When we look at transformative moments, one of the most transformative early moments for you was getting the job with Nick and Revolut. Can you just take me to that? Sakura 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?

Yeah. At the time, I had just graduated, and I was perusing a Facebook group called London Startups. I saw a job post for Revolut. I was like, “Okay, I have no idea what this company does, but they were looking for fresh guys.” I applied, and Nick replied within 5 minutes. I was like, “Oh, wow, that's very quick.” Then he asked me to come for a face-to-face interview the next day.

I came for an interview, and he asked me a bunch of physics questions. I didn't realize I was applying for a physics job. He offered me a role right after the interview, I said yes, and that was it. It was the fastest interview process I've ever had.

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

At the time, in terms of full-time employees, it was Nick, Vlad, and 2 other full-time engineers, and that was it. We were just hot-desking. The job was called operations analyst, but effectively, the first 3 months were spent doing customer support.

When did you realize that this was going to be a massive, $100 billion company?

At the time, Revolut was in a co-working space called Level 39.

Yeah, I remember this.

Yeah. Level 39, for those who don't know, is basically a giant startup co-working space with maybe over 200 startups. Revolut was the only team that worked past 7:00 p.m. on weekdays. After 7:00 p.m., the whole floor was dead. It was also the only team that worked on weekends.

That was when I realized there was something special. The second moment was when I asked Nick, “What's your ambition? What keeps you motivated?” At the time, he was already worth quite a bit of money, so what drove him? He told me he wanted to be JP Morgan. That was the second moment when I realized this was going to be a massive company.

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

At the time when we got started, there were basically 3 players: Revolut, Monzo, and N26.

Yeah.

For the first 2 years, at least from the outside, it felt neck and neck. It wasn't clear who the winner was, but for me, it was crystal clear. It was crystal clear who was going to win, and the reason why was the team's ambition and execution.

Ultimately, if you asked the same teams at the time about the product roadmap, almost everyone would tell you basically the same thing. There wasn't any differentiation in the product roadmap. What differentiated us from everyone else was ambition and the speed of execution, and that was it.

4. How Revolut drove speed and urgency in their teams

How do you move so fast? What are 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?

5. Is Nik right that Revolut should have got a banking licence earlier?

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

What did you learn from Nick about managing people and people performance?

It's all about results. I think Nick made this analogy before, but there are 3 types of people in the world. There are people who can self-identify the target, shoot, and hit the goal. Then there are people who can't identify the target, but if you point, they shoot and hit the goal. Then there's the third type of people, which is neither.

You want to maximize the first and second groups of people, and ideally, you want the first and second types of people leading teams. Basically, the throughput of your company is the sum of the number of people in the first and second buckets.

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

I'll say the get-it-done culture, really. I think it's the best way to build something great very, very fast, and it's something I took on board. But I even amped it up more.

How do you amp it up more?

I think just putting even more intensity into it, driving a lot of urgency within the company, and always keeping people on their toes.

How do you—I'm sorry, I am asking because I'm trying to learn from you. 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?

In terms of results, or lack thereof. I always emphasize that we're not moving fast enough. We could be doing more, but we're not. For example, I told the team last year that execution was maybe 4 out of 10, and we need to get to 10 out of 10. We're not passing.

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

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

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

I think we were off in execution maybe every year. The mindset should be that number 1 isn't enough. You need to be the best version of yourself. You always need to review: in the past week or the past month, what could I have done better?

I used to ask my team at Revolut a more extreme analogy: if you had 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 will be people who say, “I also have a family. I also have other parts of my life.”

I get this a lot. I'm sure you've probably seen, because you're socially aware, but I've been chastised for 996—

Actually, including by some of your investors at Balderton. Interesting. They would say it's not work-life balance. I could always say yes, I could have done more, but I have other parts of my life. How do you respond to them?

Don't join Fuse. That's okay. I have total respect for people who want a 9-to-5 job. There's nothing wrong with wanting work-life balance. But I think the only way to build a generational company is a very, very strong work ethic. I just don't see any other way to do it.

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

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

How many does it have?

From memory, it's 6.

Okay. How many should you have?

I think 1.

What's your 1 cultural value?

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

Can I ask, do you apply that to all parts of life? What I mean by that is, 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 want to keep this one private because otherwise they'll kill me.

They said, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” If we have mistakes in a memo, that says that we’re not thinking clearly and we’re not putting the work in. 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, because sometimes it’s okay to settle on 80% for a junior account manager or whatever. Do you know what I mean?

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

Can I ask you, when you were building Revolut with Nick and the team, what was your biggest disagreement with Nick, and how did that play out?

I’ll say the overuse of KPIs. Ultimately, there are things you should measure, which tells you the health of that team and how well they’re doing, and you should 100% do that. But then, once you start incentivizing against that, teams find ways to game it.

I think Nick is a super number-driven guy, right? That worked very well in a large part, but I would say not everything should be the KPI.

What shouldn’t be a KPI, and what should, and how do you determine that?

When you start incentivizing a metric, you need to think about what the second-order consequences are. Let’s take a very simple example. Let’s say you give a KPI to a recruiter based on hires per month. What they might start to do, because the bonus depends on it, is try to convince hiring managers to lower the talent bar.

I’ve seen that happen before, but that’s actually not what the company wants, right? What the company wants is to keep the talent bar high. Instead, recruiters who really want to chase their bonuses try to negotiate with hiring managers and convince them, “This is the best you’re going to find. You’re not going to find someone better,” et cetera.

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 that he said about 26 product experiments were being run internally at the same time. That was a really interesting way to approach company-building to me, something that no one had ever talked to me about before. What did you learn from that, and what are your takeaways from seeing that which you’ve applied to Fuse?

Product diversification is so important. Let me give you one example of why that was so important. During the COVID lockdowns, the interchange revenue—from people spending on cards, especially abroad—went basically to near zero. However, there were a lot of stimulus checks from the COVID period, the stock market was booming, and the crypto market was booming. Whilst the interchange revenue went down, the trading revenue went up, so they kind of offset each other.

That was a great example of where diversification actually helped make the company’s revenues much more resilient.

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.

Actually, I think the product diversification could have happened even if Revolut had got the banking license earlier. I think Nick is totally right. The issue is that the bigger you get, I guess the more scared the regulators are of you, because if you succeed, they have no upside. They don’t get a big bonus. But if you fail, they might lose their jobs.

Ultimately, they’re incentivized to be risk-averse as opposed to risk-neutral, whereas what’s best for the economy is actually risk-neutral regulators.

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

I still don’t think they realized. I still don’t think the incumbents have woken up yet.

Oh, dude, they have.

They have.

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

But what have they done about it?

Well, the trouble is they can’t. That’s why you bet long on Revolut. That’s why I would like to—and I am trying to—buy every Revolut share I can at a good price, because honestly, the structures, the comp bands, and the policies that they have mean they can’t do it.

It’s almost like they know the challenge, but they’re unable to fight against it. No one has ownership. It’s a 100-year-old bank. As a hired CEO who’s been paid $5 million a year for 5 years, honestly, if he bounces, he’ll go back to Marbella, to the family home, and it’ll be fine.

Yeah, maybe. I guess talking about it and doing something about it are very different. But yeah, I get your point.

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

I think it’s important to have a common goal. For example, in Fuse, our common goal is “no trade-offs.”

If you think about the last 20 years, there’s been this green movement of basically telling people to use less. You had politicians saying you should drive less to work, you should turn the heating on less often, you should fly less, and you should do less of everything in order to save the environment. Then you had energy prices slowly creeping up over the last 20 years as well.

I think it’s basically trade-offs, and I think that’s totally wrong. It’s actually moving in the complete opposite direction. 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. If you look at the Americans, they use almost 8 times more energy than Europeans. Look at the quality of life.

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

For sure. Think about the average American home. They have a large detached house, a big driveway, several cars, a big backyard, maybe a swimming pool, maybe a sauna, and maybe a jacuzzi. That’s middle class—we’re not talking about ultra-wealthy Americans.

Even if you look at wealthy Brits living in London—

But that’s bluntly built on an infrastructure of credit and borrowing that they’re unable to afford, which you see in the debt and borrowing levels in the US on the consumer side being higher than they’ve ever been. 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.

That’s also true. But if you look at the average cost of an American home, it’s relatively affordable.

So what do we take away from that?

I think the takeaway is that you can have it all three ways. You can have low-cost energy, you can have more energy, and you can have lower-carbon energy at the same time.

6. Energy Crisis

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

I think we’re in an energy crisis already, in the whole developed economy. The UK is in the deepest trouble. If you look at energy consumption per capita over the last 25 years, the UK has dropped 25%. In the US, it’s been flat. In China, over the same period of time, it’s gone up 7 times. Seven times in the same period of time—just think about that.

Energy prices have gone up, and price volatility has gone up, so everything is trending in the wrong direction.

What’s the cause of that? Can you help me answer? I was talking to one of the biggest data infrastructure providers the other day, and they were like, “Listen, the reason we’re not going into the UK is because, as a percentage of revenue, energy is 16% of our revenues in the UK, whereas comparatively elsewhere it’s 3% to 4%.” Why is that? Why are we so bad?

Two reasons. The first reason is overregulation. It’s very hard to build anything in the UK, physical or otherwise.

Let me give you an example. We’re trying to build a power plant in the UK, and one of the things councils have complete discretion over is planning, especially around environmental impact. We had to do wintering bird surveys over several winters. You hire a guy with a clipboard, and he counts the number of birds in the winter. Until that survey is done, you can’t build.

That’s one example of why it’s so hard to build something physical in Britain. Right now, I can tell you, if you speak to any of the infrastructure capital providers, they want to deploy a lot of capital to build infrastructure.

The problem is not capital. The problem is that it’s very, very hard to build. So that’s the first reason.

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

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

Yeah, it’s Ofgem.

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?

Yeah, I think, to be clear, the US also shares a lot of the same problems as the UK.

To a lesser extent.

It also depends on what state you’re talking about. For example, in the state of Texas, where a lot of people say it’s the home of energy, it’s much easier to build compared to the UK.

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

First of all, there’s no such thing as 100% renewable. Just think about it: when the sun is shining, solar is generating, and obviously the sun isn’t shining all the time. For wind, it’s the same: when wind is blowing, you get wind energy—wind power. However, they are extremely correlated with each other. What that means is, even if you overbuild solar and wind, it’s never possible to cover 100% of the time—to be 100% renewable—because they’re highly correlated, right?

In certain hours, you get an abundance of solar and wind energy, but in 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-hour. Batteries are way too expensive for us to use to store days or even weeks without solar or wind energy.

Any energy company that’s claiming they’re 100% renewable is a complete lie. They’re simply buying renewable energy certificates to claim they’re 100% renewable, and it’s completely false. Let me give you a proof point of why this is completely false. When Russia invaded Ukraine, gas prices shot up, but the energy companies offering 100% renewable energy tariffs also went up. How is that possible if it’s 100% renewable?

The second thing most people don’t understand is that power is not fungible across time and space. You have a lot of wind power, for example, in the north of Scotland that’s being told to turn off because the power isn’t getting to where it needs to be. People aren’t using energy when the wind is blowing, and it’s also not getting to where it needs to be, which is the big demand centers like London, because the grid isn’t set up to do that. Those are the 2 biggest misconceptions in energy, I would say.

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

I would deregulate building anything physical. I would make it so easy for anyone to build. Number 2 is, I’d delete all subsidies of any kind.

Why?

Because the goal for energy should be as low a cost as possible. A subsidy basically means it’s not actually profitable to build this project, but because of the subsidy, it’s now profitable. Who takes on the burden of that higher energy cost? It’s ultimately the ratepayers, right? It’s you and me; it’s everyone. So it doesn’t make sense.

7. Why China is the shining light for regulation to follow

I’d 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.

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

China.

Why is that?

Just look at the energy price. If you look at what Brits and Europeans pay in terms of cost per kilowatt-hour, it’s roughly $25 to $30. In the US, it’s $10 to $15. In China, it’s $8.

If you look at energy per capita, the US basically hasn’t grown in the last 25 years; it’s been flat. China has gone up by 7 times. If you look at the build-out in China, they have truly vertically integrated energy companies run by the state, from generation to the grid and distribution.

Whilst people in the West are debating, “Is renewables better? Is oil and gas better?” and it’s becoming a very political thing, in China they built everything. They deploy more solar than all Western economies combined. They’ve deployed more gas, more coal, and more grid. They’ve laid more cables and built more grid than all Western economies combined.

They’re just building everything. They’re thinking, “Okay, we need to keep building.” Clearly, they understand the importance of energy costs, and they’re just building everything. It’s common sense, right? I think that’s an economy we should follow for energy policy.

Do you stand by the belief that we’re all in the same WhatsApp groups and everyone says, “The level of talent coming out of Imperial, Cambridge, and Oxford absolutely means we can parallel the US”? Do you stand by that on talent levels in the UK?

I think talent levels in the UK are good. Ultimately, higher education—I personally received higher education in the UK—and I think it’s pretty good. I think it’s world-class, and ultimately this is the key ingredient to building anything successful.

Although I’m short-term bearish on the UK, long-term I’m bullish.

What makes you bearish right now on the UK?

The current government is heading in the wrong direction.

Why?

As I said, we need deep deregulation so it’s easier to build, and there’s a lot of talk about growth, but it’s just talk and no action.

I respectfully don’t know how you can be bearish in the short term and bullish in the long term. When you look at the kind of cyclical, structural decline that we’re heading into, that is multidecade, actually, and it’s very difficult to reverse out of. With respect, I don’t know how you can be long-term bullish but short-term bearish.

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

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 when you look at the UK populace transparently, it’s not the intellectual Matt Clifford who’s the average person on the street.

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

Do you feel you have a political party home today? I feel kind of politically lost, if I’m honest. I used to be a Conservative, but now I don’t feel any particular allegiance to the Conservatives under Kemi, to be honest. I don’t feel a 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.

For me, I want to make sure there are people who are competent to lead the country. I want to make sure the most competent individuals are leading countries, regardless of party.

Who would you most like to see?

8. Interview Process: Green & Red Flags

Matt Clifford is a pretty good choice. [Laughter] But, yeah, I don’t think there’s—I’m probably in the same camp as you for now.

We were talking 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. What are the big green flags? You helped me again—you hired my chief of staff. 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?

Obviously, beyond the usual skill sets we hire for that role, when I explain to the candidate what we’re trying to build, our huge ambitions, how we want to be the number-one energy company in the world, and the hard work that requires to build it, what I usually see is the body language, as well as the facial expression. Are they leaning in, or are they leaning out? You want to be hiring people who are leaning in.

I don’t like bouncers either. When you look at someone’s CV and it’s like one year, one year, one year, one year—

That’s also not great.

Yeah. Anything else where you’re like, “Not great”?

Fluffy CVs, for me.

Okay, you’re hiring a marketing manager. I want to see, “I increased MQLs by 38%. I did that through these 3 core channels. I learned this about Facebook advertising, but then it saturated when we hit X spend.” I’m looking for very detailed, clear, attribution-led data.

I’ll say very long CVs are bad. It should be like a page. What should it be?

Yeah, I think it should be a maximum of 1 page. If Elon Musk can fit a CV on 1 page, so could you.

It’s got that type of vibe, right? “Professional Tiddlywinks player. Other hobbies: skiing, art.” I fucking hate art. 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?

I think first you define the skill set you need. For example, for a software engineer, it could be coding skills, system design, problem-solving, as well as culture fit. We basically find who is the best coder in the company and who is the best at system design, and then we assign those people to assess those skills individually.

At the end of the process, they get a grade for every single step. If they’re above a certain threshold, then we offer. That’s also how we decide how much we offer. As a company, we don’t actually use compensation bands. We simply look at the grades, and the higher the grade, the higher our bid, because ultimately, we’re buying skills.

Wow, sorry, this is really interesting. You essentially say, “Okay, we’re looking for a software engineer, and we need—I don’t know, you choose your language, whatever we’re going for—we need language,” and then you rank them out of 10 on that one core skill and assign them a salary as a result of that.

Actually, we don’t even look at language. Although our whole back end is in Python, we’ll hire any back-end developer, even if they know nothing about Python. It’s a coding challenge in the language of their choice.

Then there’s system design, which is about how you architect the whole system; problem-solving, which is whether they’ve successfully solved problems in the past, whatever those problems are; as well as culture fit. If they get straight A’s in every single one, we bid a very, very high offer.

I totally get that. If they’re a 7 out of 10, should you just not hire them? Shouldn’t it be all-in: give them top whack or don’t hire them?

Our threshold is that we’ll hire anything above a B. If you get straight B’s, you’ll 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, good luck to you.

Why would you do that? That feels, to me, like a mean deal.

To be clear, a B is still pretty good. An A is exceptional, so a B is where the bar is. You can still be a very solid performer if you’re a B.

For straight B candidates and straight A candidates, the difference is simply compensation. For straight A candidates, we’ve made offers that are much higher than what they make today. Even if we know that, that’s okay, because we want to make sure we’re a no-brainer for you, so you’ll never think about leaving.

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

A month or 2 months.

Do you pull the cord that quickly?

We always give them a verbal warning first.

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

We don’t really have formal PIPs. I don’t believe in PIPs.

Why?

I think it’s a waste of time. Just give them a warning, because most people we hire are already self-aware of where they fall short, even before we give them the verbal warning. They know they’re falling short already.

The formal warning is simply, “Look, you have 1 more chance. If you don’t improve, you’re out.”

When you look back at a mishire, what did you not see that you should have seen?

I used to overvalue IQ and didn’t put enough weight on deeply caring.

Can you explain that?

What you want to do is hire someone who really deeply cares about the company and the mission—someone who would stay up late to fix a bug or stay over the weekend to get a new feature shipped. Even if you hire someone who’s very, very intelligent, if they just don’t care, it’s also not going to work out.

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

I’ll say it’s certainly not a game of luck. There are questions you can ask. I usually pitch them on the company, telling them, “We want to be a number-one energy company in the world,” and then I explain to them, “Look, you have many choices. You’re obviously a very, very talented engineer. You can work at any startup you want or any tech company you want. Are you really sure this is what you want to do?”

It’s going to be very tough. There will be tough times. You have to constantly balance shipping new features, fixing bugs, and improving the scalability of the platform. Why do you want to do this? Why are you sure you want to do this?

If they say, “I’m not sure. It depends on the pay,” that means they’re not up for it. If they lean in and tell you, “I’ve been so bored at my corporate job. This is something I’ve been looking for for a very long time. I’m in,” then you know.

Obviously, they can lie, but from my experience, they don’t.

Any big red flags around people and their title expectations? “I want to come in, but I want to be head of product.” Is that okay, or is it a no-no? Is it, “Come in and earn the right”? Any lessons around titles and how people feel about them?

Have you ever given a head-of position to anyone you’ve hired?

In terms of internal promotion?

Yes. We’ve only given it based on performance.

Got you. What about salary? Is it, “I’m being paid X at my current job, and I need that to make this worth my time”?

9. Lesson from Nik about ownership and excuses

For us, their expectations don’t really matter. It’s about either interview performance or performance in the company. We’ll pay you top of market if you perform very well.

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

I remember, back when I was at Revolut, I was explaining to Nick—I’ve actually forgotten what it was—but I had failed at something and was trying to explain to him why I failed. Then Nick sent me an article explaining the difference between a janitor and a VP.

The story goes that if the janitor fails to collect the trash because the locks in the office were changed, Jobs will say, “Okay, that’s irritating, but that’s acceptable because you’re the janitor.” Somewhere between the janitor and the VP, reasons stop mattering.

Every time one of the leaders at Fuse explains to me why they failed and couldn’t hit a certain goal, I send them this article.

Can you help me understand the takeaway from that? It’s like, “You know what? It doesn’t fucking matter why you failed. The point is, you failed in the expansion.” What do you take from that? Excuses don’t matter.

Excuses don’t matter. If you’re a leader of an area in the company, if you succeed, you get all the praise. If you fail, you get all the blame. It doesn’t matter why you failed.

10. The signs of truly top performing people in a team

Do you worry that you’re ever too harsh on people?

I get told I am, because I would say things like this: “I don’t give a fuck. I don’t care about your excuses.”

I care about outcomes, and people say that I’m too harsh and too direct. Do you worry?

I don’t care what they think.

You don’t worry about them leaving? For my best performers—for Fuse—if Nick at Revolut were saying that to you, he should be terrified that you leave. You’re a core part of that business. I want to protect you and look after you.

When you say, “Dude, there are a lot of reasons why Poland didn’t work in the expansion,” I want to say, “Okay, Alan, you’re my guy. I’m here for you, and thank you for explaining that to me.” I want to protect my best performers.

I would say I don’t think that’s protecting them. That’s just hiding information from your best performers. Ultimately, your best performers are smart and hardworking. They’re not dumb.

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 sending me the article. What I found is that usually top performers internalize negative feedback very well. They take negative feedback too hard, 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.

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

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

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

No, because it's very important that you create a culture of truth-seeking. The truth is very ugly and might hurt someone's feelings, but you should still say it because it'll make that person better.

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

If I realize that a person hasn't improved after I've kept giving them negative feedback, then I just stop bothering. They can leave the company.

Do you think there's a bit of a culture of fear around you? I love Nik, and I think he's a phenomenal leader and one of the greatest founders I've ever interviewed—ever. I've done 1,000 founder interviews, and he's truly the best. Let's not shy away from it, whatever the right term is: people are scared of him. Is it bad to have fear-based leadership?

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

And you do with Nik.

Yes. I tell him if I think it's a bad idea. I tell Nik. He can disagree with me, and sometimes I change his mind; sometimes I don't. But I do tell him the truth.

What specific decision on product or strategy do you think moves the needle most with Revolut? When you think about those decisions, was there one where you thought, “We have to go into crypto, we have to go into stock trading, we have to go into this country, we have to invest in this”?

No, because the answer is we need to do everything. As we built the company, we realized there were so many opportunities, and we just needed to pursue all of them.

That advice is completely counter to what every founder is being told: that you need to focus, create a product for a very specific customer base, deliver an excellent experience, and focus, focus, focus. There are so many shiny objects; you can't pursue them all. That advice is completely counter to that. What would you say to those listening who are now confused?

I actually think there are not enough ambitious founders out there. Ultimately, the throughput of the company—how many parallel workstreams you can take on at a given time—is dictated by the number of great leaders you have in the company.

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, and therefore you're only going to pursue these things. The expansionist mindset would be, “I need to hire more leaders in my company so I can pursue more.” So I'll argue that we're in the business of expanding things. Rather than playing the zero-sum game, you should figure out ways to hire more leaders so you can pursue more.

What does your direct-report structure look like? Jensen has popularized having 50 direct reports and being so involved in the minutiae of a large amount of the business in terms of surface area. To what extent do you agree with that versus delegating to fantastic leadership, like you mentioned there, in terms of increasing surface area?

I think of having many direct reports. I don't know how many. I would probably lean toward what Jensen is doing because ultimately, I don't even think of them as direct reports. I think of them as, going back to the self-guiding-missile analogy, people you don't need to manage.

You discuss and debate the target, but once you both agree on the target, then that's it. You don't really have to manage them. You just monitor them and make sure things are okay, but that's about it.

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

First of all, it's probably the only place in London where you can keep expanding offices. You can keep upgrading the office without incurring a big penalty in a lease. The second reason is that it's far away from the party.

If you work around here, there's this thing going on at this bar, or there's this club. I think there's too much going on in West London—too many distractions—whereas here, it's clear that there's nothing going on. It's just work and nothing else.

Do you not think that—I live here, but I'm disciplined. I don't go to parties, I don't drink, and I do nothing but work and go to the gym—isn't that the secret to being a great entrepreneur? Discipline.

11. You need to work weekends to win

I think so. But I'm talking about other people on the team. Ultimately, you want to avoid temptation. If you see a full bar downstairs, I think you're tempted. You might think, “Oh, I'm going to pop down for a pint.” [laughter]

Do you expect people to work weekends?

Yeah, I'd say, as I said before, this is very hard. This is the only way to do it. We're going against big energy companies with huge balance sheets and billions in revenue. The only way to win with much smaller balance sheets, much less cash, and fewer resources is through work ethic.

Work ethic gets you a long way. In the early days, you built the MVP with just $1 million before any outside funding. Can you talk to me about that and what you advise founders on MVPs and going to V1 with minimal resources, having done that?

At the time, we wanted to build a full-stack energy company, and we had $1 million. What do we need for a full-stack energy company? We need power generation, a license, someone to help us navigate regulation, and a qualified trader. You need to be qualified to trade energy. We also need a qualified electrician.

We found a single wind turbine in the north of Scotland whose seller was willing to sell it for 750K. We found a license for 75K. We convinced the former CEO of Ofgem to become an adviser for equity and no cash, and my co-founder Charles became a qualified trader and electrician. So we acquired all the skills and assets we needed to build an MVP for a full-stack energy company.

My advice is that I don't think you need a lot of capital. You don't need a huge Series C round to get started. You can just—

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

I think if you could, you should.

But you could. Anyone would have written you a check. You could say, “I'm doing a fart app. I'll give you $10 million.” [laughter]

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

Yeah.

We chatted when you were raising your first round. God. Anyway, one of your investors said that I had to ask you—no, it wasn't. It was actually Antoine who said, “Is it true that you turned up to Balderton with your Ferrari parked outside, then strolled in and said, ‘I'm going to raise a $60 million seed round’?” [snorts]

Yeah, there's some truth to that.

How did it go down?

I think it went pretty well.

You raised $78 million in the first round.

Yeah. I think they really liked the concept, and they realized it was a pretty good strategy. I realized, after a lot of the investments, that because they made so much money from the Revolut investments, they just kept investing in ex-Revolut teams.

You raised $78 million at a $140 million, $150 million valuation?

You diluted by like half.

It wasn't just equity. Ah, of course, it was the tokens. Yeah, this is where I hated it. Sorry, dude. For me as a venture investor, it's like, “Hang on a minute. I'm going to give you $20 million, and $10 million is going to tokens and $10 million is going to equity.” Like, come on.

This was when I was starting my career, and I had to be disciplined. You're young, and you think you have to do everything by the book.

Yeah.

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

Yeah, I think we raised at too low a price.

Could you have raised it higher?

Could have.

Why didn't you?

We had a price in mind, and—

What was the price?

It was roughly where we were at, at $145 million. It's about $140 million, actually. We had an oral agreement with Balderton: we'd take the term sheet.

We hadn’t signed the term sheet yet. Later, another investor came and said, “I will offer you a higher term sheet.” We said no because we’d already agreed with Balderton that we’d take the term sheet.

And you regret that?

No. Ultimately, I regret saying yes too early, because we could have raised on better terms.

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

Ultimately, I would say I underestimated the value of the company at the time. I didn’t realize investors would put such a high price on it, so I’d say wait a bit longer. At the time, it was effectively the second term sheet we had.

12. Every single year we 10x revenue - now at ~$400M

But at the same time, I believe if you say you’re going to do something, you should do it. That’s why we took Balderton’s term sheet, even though we could have received a better one.

You raised a recent round—70 at 5 billion.

Yeah.

That’s often what’s referred to as a suicide round, which is a very high price with not actually that much money going into the business. Why is that a good round for the company?

First of all, the company is doing over 400 million in annualized revenue.

400 million.

Yeah. In terms of financial year, we’ve increased our revenue 10x every year since inception. Day 1 was—I’m just trying to get it.

Well, the first year was £2 million.

We just started from £3 million. The second year was £20 million, so roughly £25–26 million, and then this year we’re going to end at over £200 million. So, yeah, roughly £260 million.

You can’t 10x again.

We’ll try.

Where do you think you’ll land if you and I have a bet?

Our business plan is much less than 10x for next year.

Is it 5x?

Something around there. But we’ll still shoot for 10x.

What would be the biggest barrier to you hitting a billion?

There’s one reason.

What is it?

13. Why Eastern European engineers are the best

I think it’s the speed of hiring quality engineers. That’s the biggest barrier. There’s no capital; it’s quality engineering.

Why do you like hiring Eastern European engineers?

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

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

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.

Can I be blunt and ask you what that level is? 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.

I’d say the number is probably 5.

Do you remember when you made your first real money?

I do remember, yeah.

How did it feel?

It felt surreal. My bank—my Revolut account—went from basically no money to 1,000x overnight.

Did you sell much of your Revolut?

No. I only sold what I needed, only for personal consumption. I’m still very bullish on the company.

How big can Revolut be? I often say publicly it’s easily a $250 billion business.

And it’s too small.

Pause. Without the U.S.—with the U.S., it’s a $500 billion business.

I think it’s a $1 trillion company.

Do you think he’ll be able to crack the U.S.?

If someone’s going to do it, it’s Nicolai.

At what price would you start to sell?

A trillion.

14. What People Get Wrong About Having Money

I totally get that. What does no one know about having money that people should know about having money?

It actually buys you quite a bit of time back.

Where do you spend to save time?

Having an assistant helps you save a lot of time, so you don’t have to waste a lot of time doing chores. Travel—flying coach just kills you. I think it just wastes 2 days.

Flying business is worth it because you can work on the plane and not feel terrible the day after. Traveling better, eating better, and not wasting time on things outside the business—you could buy a lot of time back.

Does it change your personal relationships?

Maybe for the better. You stop thinking about price tags, which is good. You just go wherever you want and eat wherever you want. So I think it does help in a positive way.

But you also need to think about who your friends truly are. Have you ever had that question?

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

15. Quick-Fire Round

Dude, I want to ask a quick-fire question. I say a short statement, and you give me your immediate thoughts. What investor do you not have that you would most like to have?

Do you know what’s really hard about what I do? I’m friends with the greatest founders, and in a lot of cases, you’ve invested in Project Europe, and I have the joy of knowing you. It really is a joy, and I’m like, “What the fuck? Why am I not invested in these companies?”

I have this with Mati at ElevenLabs, and I’m just like, “Oh.” It almost happened too early for me. Does that make sense? I became friends with these people and had the chance to invest when I was a kid, and I didn’t know what I was doing.

Yeah.

Had I had that chance now, it would have been very different. But it is life. Rank these in order of importance: luck, talent, and timing.

I think timing, talent, luck.

Why timing first?

I think if you get the timing wrong, even if you’re the best team in the world, you’re not going to 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, because renewable penetration in the grid is so high and the skills you need to manage renewables are so different from how we used to generate and consume power.

If you look at Revolut, I think Revolut is 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 have been possible 10 years before 2014.

So I do think timing matters. The second thing is talent. I think these are 2 prerequisites. If you have good timing and good talent, I think luck will also come.

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

Probably leaving Revolut.

Did you want to stay to IPO?

I do. I do.

Do you remember telling Nick?

I remember.

Can you just tell me that?

It was a very, very hard moment. He asked me, “Are you sure?” 3 times, and I said, “I’m sure,” 3 times.

Where were you? What time of day was it?

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

Wow.

Yeah, it was that room.

What did he say? Because, respectfully, a lot of people have come and gone from Revolut, but you were his guy. Was he visibly shocked?

I don’t know. He has this emotionless reaction. He just asked me, “Are you sure?”

Did he invest in Fuse?

Yes, in the most recent round.

In the most recent round?

Yeah.

Fucking great. Is it still open? I can’t believe I said this to Massie[?] the other day. I said, “I can’t believe we’re still not invested.” I’ll just pay any price. I’m just pissed off. That’s amazing.

You said downstairs that being CEO is not all it’s cracked up to be. Why is it not all it’s cracked up to be being CEO?

I think there are pros and cons. A pro is that, at Revolut, I could basically pick the role I wanted—the problems I wanted to solve. But now I give that opportunity to other leaders within the company. That means, by definition, I don’t get to choose the things I do.

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

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

Gosh, how big is the biggest incumbent in the space?

Our view is, you have the power incumbents, and then you have the big oil majors. If you look at big oil majors like Shell, they make approximately $1 billion in revenue a day.

How big can Fuse be?

I think we could be bigger than Shell.

How much is Shell worth?

I think it’s worth just north of $300 billion. But it lists on the London Stock Exchange, so I think there’s a discount.

They do $1 billion in revenue a day.

Yeah.

And they’re worth less than their annual revenue, then.

Yeah. I think if they list in the US, they’re probably worth more.

Would you list in the US?

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

Would you list?

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 a listed company. The only reason I see listing as a real need is if the liquidity dries up in the private markets.

Do you let team members sell?

Yeah.

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

We do want to create liquidity opportunities for employee stockholders. Sometimes people need to buy a house or a car, and I think some liquidity is helpful.

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

I think what we’d love to build is a world where power is so cheap and abundant that any builder, AI or otherwise, doesn’t even think about power anymore. They can just build more, and the economy starts growing again as a result. That’ll be great.

Alan, I so appreciate you. I think you’re one of the great entrepreneurs in the UK. I’m going to pester you about investing, and I so appreciate our friendship. Thank you so much for doing this with me, dude.

Oh, thanks for having me.