What Revolut staff did next: We introduced the fintech alumni-come founders and leaders
It’s been seven years since Revolut burst onto the scene promising to shake up the UK retail industry – and started the path to becoming one of Europe’s biggest startups.
Today, with a price tag of $33 billion, Revolut is Europe’s second most valuable startup after Checkout.com. Employees say that even just two years at startup can feel like a decade. Things move fast and you work very hard.
This intense environment has created something of a founder factory. An impressive number of alumni have started their own businesses across Europe, or taken leadership roles at hot startups.
Gerald Parloiu, partner at Global Founders Capital, which has supported credit access startups Pilarsays he sees a few things in common for startups founded by former Revolut employees.
“The founders tend to have a very good understanding and ability of the product given the emphasis Revolut places on the product itself; they understand internationalization and have a global mindset from day one; and they know how to scale quickly.”
And although IPO chat is not the topic du jour Just now that the economy is taking a turn for the worse, it is worth noting that Revolut also has a number of paper millionaires among its shareholding employees. Some of these are likely to reinvest their new riches in their own companies when CEO Nik Storonsky decides the time is right for an exit.
Meet the Revoluters turned founders and leaders you need to know below.
Ayelen Denovitzer & Shailendra Sason – Solvo
Role in Revolut? Denovitzer joined Revolut in 2020 and spent two years in operations – first as CEO of the fintech’s banking office and then as COO of the shiny new crypto offering. Before this, she was a consultant at Bain.
Sason, meanwhile, joined Revolut in 2019 to work on its crypto offering right away, leaving in August 2021. Before joining the neobank, he worked at UK incumbent bank TSB on its commercial banking offering.
New adventure: Denovitzer and Sason founded Solvo, a pre-launch crypto app, in January of this year. Judging by the range of products listed on Solvo’s website, it would be fair to call Solvo a crypto-neobank: it offers investments, savings, crypto buying and selling, and a card for payments. Also — female CEO in fintech alert (!) — Denovitzer is CEO.
Fernando Terres, Álvaro Correa Gallardo & Zach Garman — DolarApp
Role in Revolut? Terrés, Correa Gallardo and Garman all worked at Revolut between 2019 and 2021 in London, where they held senior roles across the product and special projects teams.
New adventure: The trio co-founded DolarApp, a fintech for the LatAm population (starting with Mexico) that provides a money transfer from pesos to stablecoins pegged to the US dollar, bypassing the usual transfer fees associated with fiat transfers. Terrés tells Sifted that DolarApp allows users to send and receive payments in the US “without the usual hassle and pay with an international Mastercard at the best rates with up to 4% cashback”.
Ashutosh Bhatt – Pillar
Role in Revolut? After a number of roles in credit risk, Bhatt joined Revolut in 2019 as head of UK and US lending, a role he left in July 2021.
New adventure: Three months later, Bhatt founded Pillar, a fintech aims at open cross-border access to credit data for immigrants. The idea is that a Pillar customer moving to the US from the UK will immediately be able to get a Pillar credit card in their new home. Pillar raised a pre-seed round of $16.9 million in April, led by Global Founders Capital and Backed VC.
Lasse Kalkar & Anita Koimur — LiveFlow
Role in Revolut? Koimur joined Revolut in 2019 as the company’s global business development manager, where she executed fintech’s partnerships with brands such as Uber Eats and Amazon. Kalkar joined Revolut to oversee growth in the Nordics.
New adventure: The pair founded LiveFlow, a software API for CFOs to better manage and automate their finances, in January 2021. In December 2021, LiveFlow raised a $3.5 million seed round led by Moonfire Ventures, with support from Y Combinator, Seedcamp and WndrCo – and angels including Klarna founder Victor Jacobsson and former Google CEO Bradley Horowitz.
Ralf Schudt – Carda station
Role in Revolut? Schudt joined Revolut in 2019 and first worked in the executive search team, before transitioning to lead strategy and operations for the company’s crypto offering.
New adventure: After leaving Revolut in 2021 for an eight-month job at crypto firm Kraken Digital Asset Exchange, he founded Carda Station – which describes itself as a “metaverse on the moon” based on the Cardano blockchain.
Benjamin Thacker – Qrowdsy
Role in Revolut? Thacker joined Revolut in 2019 to work on the fintech’s anti-money laundering and fraud products as it entered new markets.
New adventure: After a two-year stint at Revolut, Thacker founded Qrowsdy, a technology-enabled research company, in July 2021.
David de Picciotto, Andre Mohamed and Thomas Lucas — Mortgage
Role in Revolut? Picciotto joined Revolut in 2017 where he led international expansion for three years during a significant growth period for fintech. Mohamed joined in 2018 and oversaw the company’s wealth and trading activities, and Lucas served as senior data scientist at Revolut from 2017 to 2021.
New adventure: In June 2021, the trio founded Pledge – a climate technology that builds carbon measurement and removal software for carbon offsets, targeting gas-guzzling industries such as freight forwarding, transport, travel and last mile.
Neil Shah – Tilt
Role in Revolut? Shah was a true OG revolutionary. He joined the company in July 2015 as one of the first five employees, working his way up through the ranks of the product team to lead global expansion. He left in November 2020 and spent some time as an angel investor and startup mentor for the likes of Seedcamp.
New adventure: In July 2021, Shah founded Tilt – a one-stop shopping app that is currently hidden. It’s a very Gen Z concept – think social sharing and live streaming videos of trying on garments. Shah tells Sifted that Tilt is designed to be “an immersive social shopping app where you can discover new brands and shop through videos and live streams”.
Rishi Stocker — TrueCircle
Role in Revolut? Stocker spent four years at Revolut from 2016 to 2020 as head of partnerships, where he launched new product lines such as the neobank insurance and rewards offering, and worked on the launch in Japan.
New adventure: After a short but apparently productive stay as a angel investor, Stocker founded TrueCircle in August 2021. TrueCircle uses computer vision and data-driven AI to improve recycling efficiency at waste sorting facilities. It picked up $5.5 million in pre-seed funding in March, led by the Lowercarbon Capital fund, with support from Passion Capital, Giant Ventures, firstminute Capital, as well as a list of founding angels including those from Revolut.
Harjas Singh — Shares
Role in Revolut? Singh joined Revolut in 2019 to lead the analytics and core teams for its global wealth and trading product – including equities, crypto and commodities.
New adventure: Singh left Revolut in late 2021 to co-found Shares, a “social investment” app that enables users to buy and sell shares, but with a social twist – they can chat with other users about those investments in the app. The stock has grown at breakneck speed: it raised $40 million in Series A funding in March in a round led by Peter Thiel’s Valar Venture, meaning it has raised $50 million in just nine months.
Exec Teams
As well as founding their own companies, there is a growing group of ex-revolutionaries who have landed top roles at some of Europe’s hottest fintechs.
Just like investors, CEOs see the Revolut name on a CV as a sign of competence. Income-based financing startup Uncapped has even gone so far as to hire 50% of its management team from Revolut. Why?
“Because they’re smart, driven and hardworking with a ‘get shit done’ attitude,” says Piotr Pisarz, founder and CEO of Uncapped.
“At the same time, we are very careful not to clone Revolut’s culture, and focus much more on people.”
Here are some of the recent Revoluters who have become leaders across Europe’s startup world:
Stijn Pieper — Product Manager at Uncapped
Rob Jones – Operations Manager at Uncapped
Nishil Parekh – Product Manager at Lightyear
Sarveen Chester — Head of expansion and authorizations in Shares
Matthew Acheson – Director of operations in equities
Andreas Kapsos — Director of Brand Marketing at Baanx
Jai Kapoor — CFO at Wayve
And finally, a Revoluter turned VC that we couldn’t help but notice:
Don Hoang — Revolut’s former VP for global business, as Atomico employee as a partner earlier this year.
Did we miss someone from the list? If so, we’d love to hear! Email [email protected]
Amy O’Brien is Sifted’s fintech reporter. She tweets from @Amy_EOBrien and writes our fintech newsletter — You can register here.
