TS Anil, CEO @Monzo: From Layoffs, Downrounds and Low Employee NPS, To $1BN in Revenue | E1254

Harry Stebbings 0:00 What does that look like in terms of how Monzo fundamentally makes money?

TS Anil 0:03 A third is transaction-based revenues, interchange FX and so on. A third is on-balance-sheet lending, when customers take out an unsecured borrowing product from us, a loan or an overdraft, or Monzo Flex. And then the last one-third is what I describe as good fees. And I say good fees because this is not stuff we make money when customers make mistakes. It's not gotcha fees. These are fees like subscriptions, when someone takes out a subscription product from us, or on the marketplace if they original mortgage in the future. It includes the interest margin that we make on the savings product.

Harry Stebbings 0:31 Ready to go? TS, I'm so excited for this. Listen, I've spoken to most of your cap table in preparation for the show, so thank you so much for joining me.

TS Anil 0:49 Just waiting to be asked.

Harry Stebbings 0:50 Ah.

TS Anil 0:50 Excited to

TS Anil 0:51 be here, Harry.

Harry Stebbings 0:51 Listen, we've had it in the calendar for a while. Now, I wanna start with, when you took over, it was, it was a tough time. There was a 40% down round, there was little runway, there was high engineering attrition, there was low employee NPS. It was tough. And also, you're in the US. Why did you decide to take on the challenge?

TS Anil 1:10 You know, to answer that, we're gonna have to back up a little bit, um, Harry, back up because, as you know, I've spent many years in different sorts of financial services companies and banks around the world. And through it all, I had this big unscratched itch of really thinking that someone needed to reinvent the sector, someone needed to reinvent how customers and money worked with each other. And in the bigger places I had worked, I'd tried to do it, right? But it was clear that the legacy players were never gonna fix it, right? For the, with the best of intent and the best of, of, uh, wanting to do it, it was never gonna get fixed by incumbents, right? And the, the history of incumbents transforming their industries is anyways very, very sketchy. And for all of the obvious reasons of legacy tech and legacy mindset and business models to protect, and this and that and the other. So it had been a thing for me for the longest time, so it wasn't an accident that I ended up in the conversation with Monzo in the first place, because I'd been seeking to do that thing, be a part of a team that was gonna change the sector for- uh, forever and ever. So that commitment and belief in the mission was very real for me. So encountering what Monzo was, um, when I started, of course, you've talked about all of the s- you know, all of the things, um, that were, were wrong or broken or difficult, but if I looked at the hand I had to play, there were some good cards in that hand. We had found a magical product market fit with our initial current account product. We'd found a brand and a tone of voice that had really resonated across the country. So in addition to that, all of those problems you talked about were real, right? We were running out of capital and there was, um, COVID on, our revenues had, had fallen off of a cliff, monetization was lagging the user growth. So every version of problem that you can think of, we certainly had that as well. But if I looked at the full hand, this was one I wanted to play. And I guess at a, at a deeper level, I've never been shy to run towards the fire. Never been one to sort of balk because it feels difficult. If anything, it feels more like, "Yeah, I'm gonna give this a swing," right? "And, uh, I'm gonna give everyth- give it everything I've got. And it won't fail because of something I did not do." That's it, there's a deep sense of like, "I'm gonna try and make this work."

Harry Stebbings 3:18 What was the single hardest thing that you had to embrace in terms of those challenges?

TS Anil 3:22 There's some situations where you have to sharpen focus and just do the one thing. Um, this was not one of them. Right? I wish it was, like this was the one thing we did that sort of unlocked everything else. And sadly, it was not. Because it was a set of interlocking problems, right? We needed to raise capital because we had limited runway and we had, wanted to fund the ambition. But to raise capital, investors needed to have conviction. To give investors conviction, we needed to ship product and drive some momentum. To drive pr- uh, momentum and ship products, I needed the regulators to trust us. And to drive that trust, we needed to fix a set of controls to keep them commensurate with the size of company we'd already become, the size of bank we'd already become. And then to do all of those things, you need the right people, right? So every one of these things was like an interlocking problem, right, in a way that it wasn't about doing the one thing. So now you look at this whole landscape of things that needed, uh, to dig in and like, you know, get right, it, you know... A lot of people and teams freeze in the space of that kind of overwhelm. We chose not to freeze, right? We said, "We're gonna dig in. We're gonna look at, look at everything that needs to happen, build a plan." We started with like a 100-day plan. And just go after each one of those things, like chip away at each of those things. And there isn't an answer other than to say we'd dug in, owned the whole damn thing, right? We said, "We're gonna put our arms around this whole thing, dig and grind away at each of these problems." And then you start to unlock things. So in being interlocking, the good news is that if you get a couple of things right, you start to create positive and virtuous cycles

TS Anil 5:07 as well.

Harry Stebbings 5:07 On the like product momentum element, uh, Revolut have an insane product velocity, and I always attributed that to their not having a banking license, and so not needing to be quite so constrained. And you obviously have that. Is it the banking license that pre- prevents the speed? Is it management? Is it team?

TS Anil 5:25 In the arc of time, you have to get all of these things right. Right? So sequencing it, right, uh, you know, should we have gotten a license later in the life cycle versus earlier? Here's the thing. When you're in the early days of a company, when you're building the foundations of the company, you build a great tech stack, you figure out the product market fit and the brand and how you wanna go to market and all of those things. But in a regulated business, you also put in place the muscles to operate this at scale in a regulated context. And getting that right early on has meant a few things. It's meant that we've earned real trust from our customers. It's meant that we know how to do that and continue to scale. We know that...... getting it right actually creates a moat around our business in a very, very important way. So, yeah, I mean, you know, this h- hindsight is a, is a lovely thing and we could debate, you know, what sequencing is better or worse, but here we are, like the largest UK digital bank, um, and, you know, so much more.

Harry Stebbings 6:22 It's interesting to your point on like the timing. Uh, Nick said he regrets doing it so late. He wishes he had done it earlier like you had done.

TS Anil 6:28 Well, there you go.

Harry Stebbings 6:29 Which I thought was interesting. I did not expect that. Mission is so core to Monzo in many ways. Did that ever prevent product build out? I got, I got suggestions before the show and people said that actually there were products that would have been profitable for the business that we deliberately chose not to do because they were against our mission.

TS Anil 6:46 Sure. Let's talk about cryptocurrency trading.

Harry Stebbings 6:48 Okay.

TS Anil 6:48 Right? That's a good one where we chose to not do it, right? Because letting, um, the average customer buy a hundred cryptocurrencies because we could make a buck off of it just felt not on mission at all. It was clear to us that if we wanted, if we wanted customers to trust us and do what's right for them and their long-term, um, you know, uh, the long-term financial interests, we were gonna have to take them on a journey. So, uh, the goal was, and of course, we, we will offer all sorts of asset classes in time, but really build it around he- helping customers understand what they're doing. And so we chose to walk away from that.

Harry Stebbings 7:27 I'm just playing devil's advocate.

TS Anil 7:28 Sure.

Harry Stebbings 7:29 Is that not assuming that consumers don't understand crypto well enough to trade it? Which-

TS Anil 7:34 I mean, you tell me, Harry, of, of the millions of customers investing in cryptocurrency rank number 75 because they saw a tweet, does that sound to you (laughs) like a customer that understands that currency and the reasons why that, that particular currency has got tailwind of growth?

Harry Stebbings 7:50 No, but I'm as far right free market as you can come. And so I think that you can't be the arbiter of consumer knowledge in saying, "You are smart enough," versus, "You're not smart enough." And so I'm not going to provide those-

TS Anil 8:00 I don't disagree for a minute, right? Because this is not about us being paternalistic, right? This is about us presenting to the customer the information to help them make a good decision, right? So if I, if, if I want to have them invest, I think we should give them the tools to make good investing decisions.

Harry Stebbings 8:19 Do you think it was the right decision on crypto?

TS Anil 8:21 I mean, if it r- if it wasn't, if we'd re- if we'd relitigated that, we would have launched it in the time since, right? So it wasn't a one-off decision. It wasn't a point-in-time decision. We've chosen not to do it yet.

Harry Stebbings 8:29 How do you think about stocks with that in mind?

TS Anil 8:31 Sure. As I said, ultimately in my mind, we want to give customers a full range of asset classes to invest in. I think it's just about sequencing it. I'd rather have... Uh, as part of a broader investment proposition, I think we should make all of the choices available to the customer.

Harry Stebbings 8:45 How do you think about that sequencing? I'm so sorry for this. (laughs)

TS Anil 8:48 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 8:48 I'm pretty unscheduled, or maybe not so brilliant scheduled, given that I'm just so interested by this.

TS Anil 8:52 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 8:52 But how do you think about the right sequencing then, given the many options you have in front of you?

TS Anil 8:56 Sure. So with investing, right? And l- we, like we've done with every other product that we've built, we built it with really going deep in understanding what our customers wanted. What we learned from customers was that the two reasons that most British customers, most customers in the UK stay out of investing and keep their money in cash, by the way, it's one of the largest savings versus investments markets in the world, right? Is because of two things. They, one, they think it's only for rich people, and two, they don't understand it. Now, if you take those two insights, what we did with the product and the reason we're on the journey is we said, "Okay, let's start it at... Le- let's solve those two problems. Let, let's make education available to customers in the app." So we de- demystify it, and it's not terms and conditions or disclosures. It's like, "Let me tell you what you need to do to make a good decision here." And we say they can start investing with as little as one pound, right? The idea was to solve for getting this vast majority of people, we have, we have north of 10 million customers now, Harry, right? To, to get started on the idea of making long-term decisions with their money. So we started, we've started with mutual funds and in time we will do ETFs and all sorts of other g- asset classes. And so to your point about sequencing, along that journey, the other asset classes will come and there'll be a right time to do it. In the meantime, um, we're not chasing just a fast

TS Anil 10:13 buck.

Harry Stebbings 10:13 How do you think about that trade-off? Because everything's a game of trade-offs, which is what's so hard in kind of managing businesses and product strategy. But that trade-off between new product innovation, like, um, uh, investing in, you know, different stocks and then crypto versus mortgages, student loans. How do you think about that trade-off?

TS Anil 10:30 Sure. Um, yeah, so I mean, th- the quick backdrop though of this is that we intend to meet all of these needs of a customer, right? Budget, borrow, spend, save, insure, invest, all of that in a single place, right? That's what we're building. Um, the sequencing is driven by many things, right? It's driven by when we feel ready in terms of, uh, you know, everything we need to do to launch that product. Where does it fit into our journey of sort of building out the economics of the business? What are customers saying they want right this second? So a bunch of different things end up informing that particular sequencing. Um, mortgages, as an example, I don't think we will ever do it on our own balance sheet, but we already are making mortgages visible to our customers e- even if they've n- not... If, so it's not a mog- a Monzo mortgage, they've taken it from somewhere else, in the app, leveraging our technology, a customer can actually track their mortgage.

Harry Stebbings 11:19 Are mortgages good business?

TS Anil 11:21 Um, let me reframe that question. What part of mortgages is great business? The problem to be solved is at the front end of the customer journey and we will solve that problem and we will originate for other balance sheets. And there's enough, enough, you know, large balance sheets in the country with lots of lazy capital and, and, uh, liquidity that will happily distribute mortgages through us to our customers. So I wanna play in the front end portion of that because it's... I think it's a g- You know, I would rather not deploy our capital and our balance sheet to funding the mortgage asset itself.

Harry Stebbings 11:51 Well, mortga- mortgage origination for you will be like a 90% margin, 100% margin business versus the balance sheet-

TS Anil 11:56 That's the good sheet.

Harry Stebbings 11:56 ... which is blah.

TS Anil 11:58 And that's... And it's, it's the front end where we can differentiate, where the customer sees pain, let's solve that problem, make the capital-free high margin fees off of that and give the asset to someone else.

Harry Stebbings 12:09 Is there a loss leader product in this product suite? One which you need to have, but it's not a great business, but it's important for the rest?

TS Anil 12:15 The challenge is gonna be defining what's a product versus what's a feature and stuff like that. But we don't seek to monetize every product and feature. Right? So as an example, the gambling block-... right? I don't know if you know about this feature that we built. Right? So a few years ago, three, four years ago, coming out of a, a customer feedback about someone who had spent too much money online gambling the night before because they kept topping up their account, a customer service agent that was w- talking to them had this idea that maybe we should just give them the ability to block those transactions, so customers can set up a gambling block on their account, which says that, "Don't let me top it up, and if I choose to unblock it, I have a 24-hour cooling-off period." Right? The staggering numbers here, more than 600,000 customers have turned that on, right? And it's not something we seek to monetize. In fact, we actually went and lobbied with the government, saying every bank should make it available. So that's an example of a product feature that, you know, we're not doing for the sake of monetizing, but it's, it's good for the customer, and, and we will do it. A whole bunch of budgeting tools are free. We don't price that. And the thing all we're here to get, right, which is k- the heart of... I can see that skeptic look on your face. We sh- we have to dig into this one. At the heart of this is that, is rejecting this false binary that is, you're mission-oriented or you're a great commercial business. Right? I think of that as a false binary, because I think done right, both of these things, they reinforce each other. In saying, talking to you about our mission and what, what Monzo really is good at, what we stand for, and what we invest in every day, what we have built on the back of that is a business where, of course, as I said, the s- the largest UK digital bank, but not just in terms of numbers of customers or revenues, but in the quality of those customers. The engagement that we get from those customers, tracked in weekly active users or daily active users, is off the charts and leagues ahead of our competitors. The commerciality of it is, as an example, so we had over 200,000 new users a month. The vast majority of those are word of mouth, in an industry where people spend 100 quid to acquire a- an account or more. The engagement levels that I said mean that the propensity to buy every new product from Monzo is off the charts.

Harry Stebbings 14:23 Do you care about it being the primary account?

TS Anil 14:25 Of course, we do. Right? Not for its own s-

Harry Stebbings 14:27 Well, it's interesting. I had, um, Antoine Lanel, who's the head of growth at Revolut, on on a 20 growth show, and he was like, "No, we're like a snackables. You know, t- try it, try it, and then over time... But we don't care necessarily at first bite."

TS Anil 14:38 Different question, and do I care at first bite? No. I'd like to get that at first bite. I'd like people to come and bring their whole relationship to Monzo f- i- in the first instance, and many... and, like, large segments of customers do. Right? People that are new to banking, coming of age, new to the country. I don't have another bank account in this country, by the way. Right? B- bring their entire relationship to us, and that's amazing. But I'm also fine if someone wants to try us out and use us for more and more, because the unit economics of that make, make commercial sense, and it's a great way to make sure more people touch and feel Monzo. So the reason main bank matters is not just because of the fact that you get more d- a share of wallet and, and, and higher ARPUs, because you can get that same ARPU even if someone's not using you as the main bank, but takes out another bigger product from you, you can get similar ARPUs. But because w- when more of the relationship comes into Monzo, the ability for that customer to actually manage their money better, for us to add value by actually connecting the dots for them inside of this, inside of the product, is massive. And most customers' anxiety is also driven by the fact that their fricking wallet is fragmented, that, "I borrow here, I, I save there, I invest here, I insure there." That is high anxiety for most people, and it doesn't let them optimize and make good decisions. But when you sort of consolidate that, when you bring it into a single context, there's so much you do on the back of that.

Harry Stebbings 15:56 Can I ask, what's the ARPU today?

TS Anil 15:57 It's about 145 pounds.

Harry Stebbings 15:59 145 pounds.

TS Anil 16:00 On the retail side.

Harry Stebbings 16:01 On the retail side, great.

TS Anil 16:02 And 500, 550 on the small business side.

Harry Stebbings 16:05 Fuck. Okay. All right. Um, on the retail-

TS Anil 16:08 Now, now, now s- I want, I want you to pause there for a second, because those numbers are part of the proof point about this idea of mission, and mission and business.

Harry Stebbings 16:17 Can I just... Oh, sorry. How does that compare to a traditional High Street bank?

TS Anil 16:21 A High Street bank, which has disproportionate revenue contribution from mortgages, would probably be 3, 400.

Harry Stebbings 16:28 On the retail side?

TS Anil 16:29 On the retail side.

Harry Stebbings 16:30 Wow. Okay.

TS Anil 16:30 But that's mortgages. If you capital adjust, if you risk adjust, if you expense adjust, it obviously

TS Anil 16:35 thins out very quickly.

Harry Stebbings 16:35 So when we break down your 145 on the retail side, what does that look like in terms of how Monzo fundamentally makes money?

TS Anil 16:42 Two answers for that, maybe. The first is just what that revenue mix looks like, right? So it's, we're targeting and very close to, um, these numbers, where about a third, a third, a third, a third is transaction-based revenues, interchange, FX, and so on, a third is on-balance-sheet lending, when customers take out an unsecured, um, borrowing product from us, a loan or an overdraft or Monzo Flex, and then the last one-third is what I describe as good fees. And I say good fees because this is not stuff where we make a, we make money when customers make mistakes. It's not gotcha fees. Right? These are fees like subscriptions, when someone takes out a subscription product from us, or on the, on the marketplace if they originate a mortgage in the future. Right? Uh, it includes interest, uh, the interest margin that we make on the savings product, right? So that's the last

TS Anil 17:29 one-third.

Harry Stebbings 17:29 I- I'm always interested in, like, things that you've learned from things maybe that didn't go right. Y- we've mentioned some of the amazing products you've built. What did you build that you maybe reflect on and think, "We shouldn't have built that"?

TS Anil 17:38 So one of the products that we were really interested in building out was energy switching.

Harry Stebbings 17:43 Hmm.

TS Anil 17:44 And we shut that down, I want to say a year or two years ago now almost, um, because a few things happened, right? We thought it was a logical extension of the financial control center, helping people sort of get good choices and make good decisions.

Harry Stebbings 17:57 Also amazing business on the origination side-

TS Anil 17:59 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 17:59 ... if you can be that switching provider.

TS Anil 18:00 But s- so the market turned, right? When caps on energy costs and so on came in, right, that market changed, and we just prioritized it lower. So we may get back to it if, you know, becomes a thing again. But, um, so yeah, that never, that never quite worked out.

Harry Stebbings 18:11 What do you learn from that? How do you reflect on that?

TS Anil 18:13 I mean, the big learning is to make sure that you s- stay close to customers always and are solving problems that they're seeing versus something that you think is intuitively right.

Harry Stebbings 18:22 Yeah.

TS Anil 18:23 Right? So constantly learning. Iterate fast, and I guess lastly, just-... you know, the recognition that, you know, we're operating in a very dynamic market, so you've got- you have to roll with

TS Anil 18:32 it.

Harry Stebbings 18:32 You said about iterate fast. You spoke earlier about product velocity. I spoke to Anu before the show, and she said that one of the many achievements you've had is, like, the unbelievable acceleration in product velocity that you've been at the center of. How do you accelerate product velocity as you do, as specifically as possible?

TS Anil 18:48 I mean, we can take this back to 2020-

Harry Stebbings 18:50 Yeah.

TS Anil 18:50 ... right? The early weeks after I had started. It was important to do two or three things. The first was, have high conviction in the two or three things that we were going to do, so focus, and then make sure you got those across the finish line, number one. Number two, I think it was this thing about playing across different horizons. So the first horizon being stuff that you can ship in the next six to eight weeks, and then stuff that you knew had longer lead times, right, but you needed to get started now if you wanted to meet that thing that you wanted to launch in three quarters from now. Right? So building a clear view of, how do you play across these horizons and get going? Right? So, so the subscriptions product that we launched in, uh, I want to say early July of 2020, um, we'd taken many runs at that product internally, right, and it was still spinning, but we hadn't brought it across the finish line. So that was one where we said, "Okay, digging in, we're going to ship this in four weeks. Let's, let's figure out everything that we've learned, make the right decisions, and just crack on." And, and we did. So that one was a, this is a four-week horizon thing, we're going to get it done. The longer horizon, uh, y- an example of, uh, of one, our borrowing business, that we'd already launched loans and overdrafts, um, but it was clear as, as COVID kicked in that we needed to hit the pause button and really build that for scale, which means invest in the, in, like, world-class underwriting tools, in understanding how the life... the, the customer journey would work much better, and all of the controls associated with building a, a borrowing business at scale. So that one, we said, "Okay, get started at, like, crazy intense pace," knowing that it was nine months away even to, before we could ship it. Right? But you need to invest in those longer lead time things as well if you're going to get it done, because if you just prioritize the what can we get done quickly, right, you'll forever be in a tactical mode without actually building s-... building out the business that you're setting out to build strategically. So we did that. They were, from a shipping perspective, those, that year was also about stuff that was not visible to customers. Right? I, you know, product debt and tech debt is well understood in the industry, but we defined this idea of controls debt, right? So when a company is scaling as fast as we were, you need to make sure that it, a- again, back to the point about a regulated industry, that the r-... that the controls scale alongside as well. And you don't want to pick up debt on the controls side.

Harry Stebbings 21:14 Tom said on the controls side. Um, you know, I've known Tom for years, and he always said, "I hated it at the end being CEO, I just spent all of my time with regulators." Is that the life of a CEO of a bank?

TS Anil 21:24 Well, it's one part of the life of a CEO of a bank. Here's the way I think about it though, right? Which is that, and I say this inside the company a lot, if we were running an e-commerce business that we wanted to run at scale, we wanted to build Amazon, if we sat around whinging and wringing our hands and complaining about warehouse logistics and, "Oh my God, the supply chain is a bitch to handle," I mean, you don't have a business then.

Harry Stebbings 21:52 (laughs)

TS Anil 21:52 You want to do, you want-

Harry Stebbings 21:53 "I can't believe returns." Oh my God. (laughs)

TS Anil 21:56 You... ex- exactly that, right?

Harry Stebbings 21:57 (laughs)

TS Anil 21:57 I mean, if, if it's the business you're in, like, own the whole damn value chain and get great at it.

Harry Stebbings 22:04 I just did a show with Jason Citron from Discord, and he said that empowerment and alignment are two of the biggest BS words of management. Do you agree?

TS Anil 22:12 No. Um, I don't agree at all. Uh, they may be the hardest, they may be the c-... the most annoying and painful things, but sadly, they're not. Right? I mean, how do you, how do you run a business and build it to scale if your team is not aligned with what you're trying to do? Right? How do you run a business where, where people that are closest to the decision, closest to the customer are not freaking empowered to do the right thing? Like, how do you build that? So I get it, they're big words and they're annoying words and they're bandied around all the time in ways that... like strategy and synergy

TS Anil 22:45 and-

Harry Stebbings 22:45 Where was the team most misaligned in terms of product decisions, strategic decisions?

TS Anil 22:51 I'd say there was two things that we needed to build real alignment on early. At the more senior levels, there was this false binary of, are we a tech company or are we a bank? And I say that's a false binary in the same way that I wouldn't expect a g-... uh, the world's best e-commerce companies to say, "Are we a retailer or are we a tech company?" Right? You're, you're both. You're straddled, straddled it all. You're... So you don't frame a false binary that results in saying, "I like this, I don't like that." Right? So that's one f-... so at the senior levels, there was that misalignment. I think at more junior levels, there was a misalignment about this idea of a mission and a business plan. And I would say a mission without a business plan is a bumper sticker. Anybody can write a strapline, right? And s-... our mission is going to be powerful, because it's backed with a business plan.

Harry Stebbings 23:44 What's your mission?

TS Anil 23:44 Making money work for everyone. It's simple and it's ambitious, but that standing alone without a business plan to make it happen, right, is a strapline. You and I could write, like, five more in the next, uh, in the next two minutes. But that, with a business plan that reinforces it, makes it incredibly powerful. Right? So, I mean, we would have this debate, I remember, we were, there, we were, you know, in the way, way back, we were launching, um, a new fee that we were going to charge customers for something, and we were, of course, doing it the Monzo way, which was, like, wickedly transparent to the customers that they knew exactly how and when we were going to charge this thing. Um, but I remember some, um, you know, someone asking me in one of the meetings when we were discussing it, that, "TS, doesn't this seem like it's off-mission? Like we shouldn't be charging for this. We, uh, and you know, charging a fee feels like it's not our mission." And I remember saying then-... that if we choose to not charge for things where we s- transparently and, uh, with the customer, and where we believe we're adding value to the customer, if we choose to not charge it, and we see that as somehow being a mission thing to do, it's effectively saying I'm doing charity at the cost of the VC. Right? I shouldn't take any credit for it. I'm taking the (laughs) VC's money and build- and scaling an unprofitable business to be even more unprofitable. That's there- there's- there's no good that comes

TS Anil 24:58 outta that.

Harry Stebbings 24:58 What do you not monetize today that will be the biggest monetization lever in the future?

TS Anil 25:03 I still think transaction-based fees will be the biggest thing we do, but it's- but it's already there, so it's not as though it's a new thing we're building out. I still think it's gonna be a big thing as we expand the ways in which people pay and get paid. Um, it'll- it- that's probably gon- still gonna be the biggest thing we do. But I think the- the, um, the s- subtext in the question that you're asking me, right, which is, like, is there the one thing? And here's the deal. When we are building a product that is about meeting all the needs that your wallet has, it's by definition gonna be a diversified revenues, which by the way is a high quality business model because not h- it isn't hostage to, you know, economic cycles and- and, um, you know, credit cycles or interest rate cycles or any of that. You build a, like a quality business.

Harry Stebbings 25:43 You mentioned the fees and the transparency around them. Do you think Revolut are transparent with their fees?

TS Anil 25:47 I, I'm not a customer.

Harry Stebbings 25:50 (laughs)

TS Anil 25:50 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 25:52 Can't blame you for trying. (laughs)

TS Anil 25:53 You- I can't blame you for trying.

Harry Stebbings 25:55 10 million customers in the UK.

TS Anil 25:57 And a half a million small

TS Anil 25:58 businesses, so...

Harry Stebbings 25:58 And half a smal- yeah, very important addition. So how big can Monzo get in the UK? And when does one think about, hey, we really have to internationalize now? That was the biggest question segment that everyone had.

TS Anil 26:09 Sure.

Harry Stebbings 26:09 When do we go international?

TS Anil 26:11 I think that when do we go international is now. We're public about the fact that we're investing in building out a strategy for Europe, we're public about the fact that we have a small team in the US building product for the US cust- for the American customer.

Harry Stebbings 26:21 We've had that for a while, no?

TS Anil 26:22 Not really. We did the f- the first- in the first iteration of the US, what we spent our time on was applying for the banking license, and we pulled out of that process when it felt like the- the, you know, regulation there was unlikely to grant any FinTech players licenses, so we pulled outta that process. That was the- that was the sort of first version.

Harry Stebbings 26:38 Was it the right decision to pull out?

TS Anil 26:39 Oh, totally.

Harry Stebbings 26:40 Yeah.

TS Anil 26:40 Because, I mean, nothing has moved, you know, on the regulatory front on that, you know, in- in the couple of years or three years even since we pulled out, so yeah, that was ab- absolutely the right decision.

Harry Stebbings 26:46 So why would going in now be different?

TS Anil 26:48 Because we are not looking to go in with a banking license. The US FinTech industry has this well-established model of a partner bank, a sponsor bank, and most of the US FinTech industry operates with that model. So we- that's what- that's what we're doing, so working w- working with a partner bank and building out product for the customer and focused on- focused on the things that we do really well, which is work close to the customer and nail what will help them make better decisions.

Harry Stebbings 27:11 Why has no one won the US yet?

TS Anil 27:13 It's interesting, um, Harry, so I've spent a lot of time, you know, l- looking at, talking to different US FinTech companies. There's lots of hypotheses. I have a couple. One is, too much cheap capital chasing US FinTech, because what that I think ended up doing was create a context where most FinTech entrepreneurs felt like they were being incented to grow users, right? And the number of businesses that we look at in the market, which is a mediocre product sort of fueled by CAC marketing dollars, but the actual business, the actual product doesn't resonate, the actual product is not doing what they want it to do, and the monetization is coming from, you know, uh, Early Wage Access or some- like one piece of it as opposed to all of the other sort of talk about the business is staggering. So I feel like money ch- you know, money chased the wrong things and people sort of built businesses that were sort of CAC-fueled businesses in- in effect. But there's another reason, right, which is US FinTech has been a developed industry for a while, and in- in being a developed indus- industry for the last couple of decades, what you have is really great FinTech companies that have solved thin slivers of needs, right? So for P2P, there's a Venmo, right, or there's a Cash App. For, you know, point-of-sale lending, there's someone else. For something else, there's someone else. So it's a very fragmented FinTech industry, but which is where we see the opportunity. The idea of bringing it together in a single place for the American customer seems very attractive.

Harry Stebbings 28:40 How do you think about the importance of the right anchor product or entry point? You know, I- I know Vlad at Robinhood very well. You know, he came in here and, and... friend of mine for a long time. I don't really get stock trade. I know he's gonna kill me for this. He's such a bad friend, a Shit Friend award. But like, uh, stock trading as the entry point for product expansion seems difficult to get my head around. How do you think about the right entry point, and...

TS Anil 29:03 Yeah, so we- we... the honest answer, we're still in a bit of discovery mode on that why will they come question, because look, ultimately, whether it is, but-

Harry Stebbings 29:10 Is it not the same as the UK? Is it not current account?

TS Anil 29:12 No, I don't think so. Um, it's a very credit-hungry market, and it's- it's a market where m- where uh, a lot of people have been trained to apply for credit, and that's- that's the hook product. I mean, ultimately, we think about it across, you know, why will they come, why will they stay, and then how do we make money? And we're still early days in sort of pounding the table and saying, "This is a high conviction answer to that question."

Harry Stebbings 29:34 Let's dig into that, like why they come in the US. You said it's kind of still in the ideation phase or kind of we- we're figuring it out. Where do you think it is, and what is it?

TS Anil 29:42 I mean, credit is the obvious hypothesis, as I said, right? Because if you look across the FinTech industry, both in terms of how people are monetizing it and what's driving user growth, right, credit and its adjacent products like Early Wage Access and so on seem to be a big part of the industry. So that's- that's what we're sort of, uh, working on and getting our heads around, like what that real thing there is, and what's the best product for the customer in that context.

Harry Stebbings 30:04 Size of market, odds of winning, where is the first one and two that we go to with Monzo in Europe?

TS Anil 30:10 Too early to answer that question, Harry. But I'll- but let me also... we're public about the fact that we're choosing Ireland as our beachhead into Europe, right? That's the regulatory regime we wanna work with, and that's- that's the- that's where we want to domicile out of.

Harry Stebbings 30:21 But when you look at like size of market and RP potential, I- I wouldn't have put Ireland in the top five.

TS Anil 30:26 Yeah, so when you- I was answering those- those two criteria, I was answering in the context of where do we want to enter and when, um, where do we want to domicile out of, and Ireland is- isn't an attractive market. It's not the biggest market, and so of course we wanna do more than that. We'll start there.

Harry Stebbings 30:41 Okay. What will be the biggest challenge in expanding across Europe?

TS Anil 30:44 Exactly what I said, that it's- it's different countries with different makeups of what attracts customers, what is the real pain point they feel, what segment is- is more attractive or more underserved? So getting those new answers right is not trivial. So I mean, here's the thing, if we were play- playing... here's an alternate product strategy. If we were playing to have a thin layer product, right? That was thin ARPU, scaled to lots of- lo- you know, lots of customers, but fundamentally met a very narrow need, right? You can do that a lot more easily. But what we're looking to build is this idea of a business with high engagement with customers, extraordinary economics up and down the P&L, and in sync with the mission that we have. You end up at a different place in terms of how you think about the strategy, right? You don't think about planting vanity flags, but you think about it in terms of like, "How do I build businesses of scale

TS Anil 31:39 everywhere?"

Harry Stebbings 31:39 Why is engagement a core metric for you? If you think about like your relationship with your money, sometimes people would say, "The less you think about it, the more frictionless it is, the less you engage would be more success."

TS Anil 31:50 Sure.

Harry Stebbings 31:50 What- why, how do you think about engagement as a metric of success?

TS Anil 31:53 So engage... so two things, right? One is the way we define engagement is usage, right? I'm not defining engagement as how much time do you spend thinking about your money, right? (laughs) I'm defining it as-

Harry Stebbings 32:03 How much time on app looking at balance?

TS Anil 32:05 Right, right. So that's- so that's not the thing. Engagement is, how much do you use Monzo, right? We don't look at it... so we look at it in terms of, uh, weekly transacting usage, not just revenue active. You could have a lazy balance with us and make- be making money from Monzo. I don't think of you as an active customer. Are you using the product, right? So that's engagement. Why is that important? Well, because it's correlated with the high ARPUs that you see. Those are our average ARPUs. You can imagine like what the highly engaged customers, even within- within the base, when you disaggregate that, what those ARPUs look like. So engagement drives greater economics for the product itself, but also the ability to buy more product from Monzo, right? I mean, here's... I mean, an example, we talked about investments a lot today, but when we launched our investments product, I literally did one press interview, and by that evening we had 150,000 customers add themselves to the waiting list for the Monzo investments product.

Harry Stebbings 32:56 Distribution.

TS Anil 32:56 Right?

Harry Stebbings 32:57 Distribution is everything.

TS Anil 32:58 But, you know, distribution is the outcome of something. And this... and I'm saying that it's the outcome of engagement and trust with us, right? It's not that I... that if I could have sent-

Harry Stebbings 33:06 This is why I love it though when people say, "Oh, it doesn't get easier with time." It's like, it freaking does. It is so hard to get 100 people to give a shit about you in the early days. You get 150,000 when you have an incredible customer base like you do.

TS Anil 33:17 Yeah, yeah. But- but that incredible customer base is not an accident, right? And that's the point. It's- it's come about because we have built that love and trust, right? It's because warm fuzzy words like mission are not warm fuzzy words for us. It's about saying like, how does it actually connect with the customer? What's the real problem we're trying to solve? And how do we be- stay maniacally obsessed with that? Because it drives all those second order effects. But to- to... back- back to your question about engagement and why is it important. So that's one, right? That en-... greater engagement is greater, um, economics, ARPU, et cetera. There's a second piece of this, because what we're effectively building out, Harry, is a consumer platform where engagement is measured in the trust that customers place with Monzo, the love that they have for Monzo. By the way, here's a trivia question. Do you know how many times more likely it is that a customer uses the word love when they're writing a review about Monzo? Seven times more likely than anybody else, right? This is the c-

Harry Stebbings 34:15 More than any other review?

TS Anil 34:16 Yeah. And this is- and this is in the context of an industry where love and banking, love and financial services just don't go in the same zip code, right? So what we're building this consumer platform where that engagement is measured in trust and love and- and doing more with Monzo. And on the back of that, we earn the right to do so much else for customers.

Harry Stebbings 34:38 There's some tropes in startups which are commonly said, I'm just intrigued how you feel about them. You said there about the, you know, 150,000 people when I said about stock trading, "Build it and they will come." Agree or disagree?

TS Anil 34:49 No, disagree, right? I mean, this is... it's- it's a difficult industry. If it was... if the only thing that mattered was the product, um, how do you reach customers, right? So you have to create the virtuous cycle. In our case, that virtuous cycle is the virality of it, is the tools that- that make people want to talk about us, right? So you have to build a great product so that you create the love, but then you need things to happen around that. So it's not just about- about a great product.

Harry Stebbings 35:18 Being first is everything.

TS Anil 35:20 It depends on the industry. Sure, there's some sectors where that's probably true.

Harry Stebbings 35:23 Do you think it's important that you're first to market in the markets you're in?

TS Anil 35:26 We're 500 years late to banking. There's nothing first about that. And yet here we are.

Harry Stebbings 35:31 (laughs) What do you think are other BS tropes of leadership that you often hear, but now in the seat, like, "That's just crap"?

TS Anil 35:41 Ask away. Let me... well, let me think if I can think of a fav- favorite one. But I mean, this has been

TS Anil 35:45 about...

Harry Stebbings 35:45 Uh, d- listen, totally. There- there are many areas I could go down. Another one that was so important for everyone was- was bluntly IPOs. Um, how do you think about when you'd like to go public?

TS Anil 35:57 We have the luxury of time, right? We have the gift of time because we have plenty of capital to build out our ambition. And not only that, we have extraordinarily supportive investors, patient, but also supportive as in like would give us more capital if we needed it. So, um, it's not a thing for its own sake. We know we'd make a great public company one day and we'll get there when we get there.

Harry Stebbings 36:18 Why would you go public soon? And what I mean by that is just like you have very supportive, very deep-pocketed investors. That's an awful lot of scrutiny that you're bringing to your company when you don't need to.

TS Anil 36:30 So two things. One is, you know, we already know how to operate in a highly regulated context. So the gap between a tech company like us versus another tech company that just do-... doesn't have to deal with scrutiny i-... um, is pretty wide. So we're- the gap for us f- from here to becoming a public company is not insane, right?

Harry Stebbings 36:50 Mm-hmm.

TS Anil 36:50 So let's, let's start there. But why become a public company at all? I mean, there's, you know, you and I could come up... we'd take some time to come up with five names of great brands, great companies that we respect that are not public.

Harry Stebbings 37:01 Mm-hmm.

TS Anil 37:02 Right? So we feel like at some point it's good for the business, it's good for investors, it's good for the brand to eventually become public anyway. So that's what-

Harry Stebbings 37:10 I just think there's always, like, a why now? Now, is this extended window of privatization with larger and larger funds-

TS Anil 37:15 Sure.

Harry Stebbings 37:15 ... moving earlier and earlier, meaning that you can be private for-

TS Anil 37:18 Sure.

Harry Stebbings 37:18 ... in perpetuity.

TS Anil 37:19 Sure. Yeah, um, so I guess it's the, it's just like why ever-

Harry Stebbings 37:21 Mm-hmm.

TS Anil 37:22 ... not why now. Right? So yeah, why ever, I think it's a good question-

Harry Stebbings 37:25 (laughs)

TS Anil 37:25 ... and well, to the extent that that's not what we're obsessing right this second-

Harry Stebbings 37:28 (laughs)

TS Anil 37:28 ... there is a why ever thing that we should answer as well, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 37:30 Would you go public in London?

TS Anil 37:32 I knew you'd ask that. Of course, it's, it's, it's the question you need to take a swing at. But you know exactly what I'm gonna say.

Harry Stebbings 37:37 Well, listen, the London St- London Stock Exchange asked me to come-

TS Anil 37:39 But-

Harry Stebbings 37:39 ... and do a show with them.

TS Anil 37:41 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 37:41 Because, uh, my question is who, who would go public in London? You can't go public in London.

TS Anil 37:44 But, but-

Harry Stebbings 37:44 ... yes.

TS Anil 37:45 ... it's too early for us to call it, Harry. I mean, that's the honest answer. I mean, I could, I could say it lots of different ways, but that's the honest answer.

Harry Stebbings 37:49 Could you paint a picture for me as to why you would go public in London?

TS Anil 37:53 I mean, this is our home market. We're a huge brand in the UK. And, uh, so there's lots of reasons to be, to think about the UK.

Harry Stebbings 38:00 But there's no in-... there's, like, no institutional support at scale that would provide the liquidity needed.

TS Anil 38:04 And so I know that, I mean, both the last government and this government are doing a bunch of things to improve, to improve that. There's been, uh, no dearth of policy changes that have come about and so on. And we have the gift of... I said that we have the gift of time, we have the gift of choice as well, and w- we'll wait and watch. There will be a time when we need to make that decision. It's not now.

Harry Stebbings 38:25 (laughs)

TS Anil 38:25 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 38:25 Uh, you can't-

TS Anil 38:25 You asked me about tropes, by the way.

Harry Stebbings 38:27 Yeah.

TS Anil 38:27 Um, so we could go back, go back to-

Harry Stebbings 38:28 (laughs) That was a better one. Get back, get back, get back.

TS Anil 38:30 No, this one, you know, I- I, I genuinely don't think-

Harry Stebbings 38:32 You, you genuinely-

TS Anil 38:32 ... I have a better, a better answer than to say, you know, we don't have to make a decision today, and we'll make it when we need to make it. That's the honest answer. You know, I could, um, say it in longer ways, but that's the, that's the heart of that one. But, you know, to the tropes was this, um... you know, you asked me this thing, um, earlier as well about, uh-

Harry Stebbings 38:48 Common misconceptions, tropes.

TS Anil 38:49 ... founder mode.

Harry Stebbings 38:50 Yeah.

TS Anil 38:50 How about that?

Harry Stebbings 38:51 Oh, go on, hit me.

TS Anil 38:53 Um, so, I mean, it's, it's all the rage, that debate, about, you know, founder mode and so on, and, uh, you know, the survivor bias in the analysis and, uh, how people talk about it and so on. But here's how I think about it. Um, I think to build a great company at scale for the long term, a leader has to be good at a few different things. Really good at setting the ambition for the company and the product vision to go there, be able to operate really close to the product and the user experience and the way value is created, and then three, be able to scale execution, which means build the right leadership and the team and the culture that allows you to continue to scale at, at bigger and bigger numbers. So you have to be good at all three. And some of these qualities get dubbed as one thing or the other, but I f- I think a debate about it's, this is the only thing feels to me like a trope, right? It's, I think of it like a triathlete, right? You have to swim, bike, and run if you want to win this at scale. So any discussion that feels like, "Oh, all you need to do is be great at swimming," feels like kind of totally missing

TS Anil 39:57 the point.

Harry Stebbings 39:57 Is it difficult coming in as a CEO when there is such idolization of founders today?

TS Anil 40:03 I'm sure it was difficult in some ways early on, r- but it was difficult only in that I was an anomaly in the context, right? So as I was building relationships with the, with the Monzo team, the investors, right? Uh, I mean, it's, there won't be stretching it to say that pe- you know, most people, investors included, were used to seeing a 20, 30-year-old sort of person in a founder pitch mode. So in that sense hard because there was an expectation of what they expected to see, and then I rock up and it's different, right? So, uh, earning credibility and trust takes a different path. It was easy to see me as someone with lots of experience in big companies and a safe pair of hands, but would I 10X the company, right? And the team needs to believe that, investors need to believe that. Um, so hard in that sense, sure. But, y- you know, what's life without, you know, taking challenges like that on?

Harry Stebbings 40:58 How many rounds have you raised now as CEO?

TS Anil 41:01 Um, three rounds.

Harry Stebbings 41:02 Three rounds. And the last one was at 5.9.

TS Anil 41:05 Correct.

Harry Stebbings 41:05 Which was the hardest round and which was the easiest?

TS Anil 41:08 The first was easily the hardest.

Harry Stebbings 41:10 Really? Why?

TS Anil 41:11 The first was the hardest because, you know, when you open this-

Harry Stebbings 41:14 How much did we raise there?

TS Anil 41:15 We raised 250 million pounds.

Harry Stebbings 41:16 250?

TS Anil 41:17 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 41:17 And that was pretty quick after coming in.

TS Anil 41:19 I mean, we did the down round within minutes after I started, like three weeks after I started, and then we topped up that down round over the next six months.

Harry Stebbings 41:26 Is employee morale down when you have a down round? Everyone you look, like, really proclaims the damages of down rounds. Is that wrong?

TS Anil 41:34 It's not wrong. I mean, you know, in an industry where everybody likes to talk up the valuations, the interim valuations, right? Um, of course there's a thing, and you need to manage that. You need to explain to people why. But importantly, as the leader, you have to see through the storm to the business you're building on the other side of it, right? And this was a storm, and we needed to know that we will, you know, we will right the ship. But really, this is not about safe, safe pairs of hands righting the ship, but it's about building that business that you're gonna build on the other side of it. And so of course it's hard, right? And to pretend otherwise would be silly. But the point is you have to play the long game, and you have to have that conviction as the leader that you're gonna get it done because everybody's picking up on your energy, everybody's picking up on the cues of your conviction about it.

Harry Stebbings 42:23 Okay, what was the easiest round?

TS Anil 42:25 This last one we did.

Harry Stebbings 42:26 And how much was that?

TS Anil 42:27 We, uh, $650 million.

Harry Stebbings 42:29 650. Why, why do you think that was easier?

TS Anil 42:31 Because anybody looking at our story by then could see the fact that we would have been on a doubling CAGR revenue trajectory for a while. Anybody looking at the business could see that everything that we talked about in terms of customer engagement and love-... wasn't warm, fuzzy, fluffy, but meant that our arpu was significantly higher than any competitor. Right? Uh, the stickiness of, of revenues is higher than anybody else. And I could see the, the dynamic of that business, could see that, you know, we're, we're growing users as aggressively as we are, but it's not because I'm burning cash. It's because people are recommending us. So the dynamics of the business were clear. Things that we've been saying for three or four years, right? We're not just narrative, but we're visible in every, uh, in every way you go out and look at the business. And so our focus was really on getting quality investors. Right? It wasn't just about the color of money. It was about, you know, who do we want on the journey with us?

Harry Stebbings 43:25 Which investor do you not have that you'd most like to have?

TS Anil 43:28 So we're at this, at the cusp of, you know, in the next round, whenever we do it, we'll get the big institutional investors. So right now, we have a few. We have GIC and others who are, you know, institutional investors. Um, but I think our journey looking ahead is not V.C. names-

Harry Stebbings 43:42 This is like Ontario Teachers' Fund, CPPIB.

TS Anil 43:45 ... but inst- all of them.

Harry Stebbings 43:45 Yeah,

Harry Stebbings 43:46 yeah, yeah, yeah.

TS Anil 43:46 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 43:46 So we have a very fun round, which is, what? (laughs) That was, your face is like, "Oh, fuck." What's up? (laughs)

TS Anil 43:54 Be- because you ha- you, you, you have this, let me rub my hands in glee and, and let, let's go, let's get in-

Harry Stebbings 43:59 Uh, i- i-

TS Anil 43:59 Let's get into it.

Harry Stebbings 44:00 And so this is roun- this is not from me. This is purely from your friends. Okay?

TS Anil 44:04 Fire away.

Harry Stebbings 44:05 Okay. So we're gonna do this new round. So I don't know the questions here, but I get given them in these cards. Okay? You ready for this? Oh, look at that. (laughs)

TS Anil 44:14 Red lights and everything.

Harry Stebbings 44:15 Light change. Which current product would you close down if you could and why?

TS Anil 44:21 We didn't, energy switching's probably the best example of it that we already closed down. Um, nothing else today.

Harry Stebbings 44:33 Who is your least favorite investor on the cap table? (laughs)

TS Anil 44:38 (laughs) You really wanna kill, me to kill myself, right? Um-

Harry Stebbings 44:42 These are your friends. This isn't me. Like, this is genuine, this is your existing cap table who suggested these.

TS Anil 44:47 Well, let's have some fun at Anu's expense.

Harry Stebbings 44:49 Oh. (laughs) Okay.

TS Anil 44:53 She knows it's never gonna be true. She's a, she's an old favorite. She's the reason I'm here at Monzo, actually.

Harry Stebbings 44:58 Really?

TS Anil 44:58 Yeah. She was the one who actually first connected me with Tom and Jonas.

Harry Stebbings 45:01 Wow. I, I am gonna do a quick fire though, which is less interrogative than that. What do you believe that most around you disbelieve?

TS Anil 45:07 So, you know, when you're building a business with as much ambition as we are, there's always naysayers. Right? So the journey of people disbelieving in the early days of Monzo was, "Oh, this company's never gonna make it." Right? "We just have look, look for an easy way to sell the company and get out." Then there would be things like, "Oh, it's gonna be a great and cool app, but like really, you'll be like, you know, like a few, few million customers, and that's it." Then it was, "Oh, you'll have customers, but you'll never make money." Or, "You'll have revenues but you'll never make profits," and so on and so on and so forth. And it's been fun proving each of those naysayers wrong. So even now, right? When I say to you that we're... when I look ahead, I think globally, there will be a handful of companies only in the next decade that will truly be doing this business at scale and managing people's money, transforming that relationship that customers and money have with each other, and on the back of that, build businesses with extraordinary economics and growth, and we are playing to be one of them. Saying that out to you, um, there's gonna be people that will nay say about, you know, lots of bits of that. It's gonna be fun to prove that set of them wrong as well.

Harry Stebbings 46:07 No, I agree with you, and I think the composition of, like, global banking changes entirely from, like, the regional players doing it to five global.

TS Anil 46:14 Yes.

Harry Stebbings 46:15 Uh, okay. What's the hardest element of being CEO of Monzo? And you can't say time.

TS Anil 46:20 No, I, I could, but, um, the, I think the, that trope about being a lonely job is real. I'm surrounded by the best people, right? I have an amazing village, and yet, I think any CEO role, um, has an element of loneliness in it.

Harry Stebbings 46:34 What would you do if you knew you could not fail TS?

TS Anil 46:37 I'd aim to build a global fintech company that would be extraordinarily mission oriented and a generational company that is not just amazing for customers, amazing for the economics of it, but also amazing for its employees. Uh, but wait a minute. That is what we're doing. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 46:57 (laughs) What's the heaviest... uh, I actually heard this quote the other day, and I thought it was amazing. It was, "The heaviest things in life are not iron or gold, but unmade decisions." Uh, an unmade decision for me is should I have moved to San Francisco when I was 18? Be a very different life, very different career.

TS Anil 47:12 Sounds like that decision was made.

Harry Stebbings 47:14 Oh, it was made, but it's an unmade decision of, like, I wi- I think about that. What one would be yours?

TS Anil 47:21 So this is not one that weighs on me or anything, but it's obviously one that I think about and I'm learning about more and more, um, is this IPO decision. Right? It's an unmade decision, timing, location, all of it. And so we know we have to make it at some point. It's not one that weighs on me, but it, it does require that we think diligently about it in the coming, uh, months and years.

Harry Stebbings 47:40 What's your favorite consumer brand and why?

TS Anil 47:43 Well, the honest answer to that is Monzo because-

Harry Stebbings 47:45 It can't be Monzo.

TS Anil 47:46 Yeah. But let's move past that one. Cliched but real, Apple, because its magical design meets magical functionality, meets, like, extraordinary business at scale, the most valuable company in the world. Right? And still a brand that inspires intimacy and trust with everyone. You know, you asked me about my Apple Watch c- coming in. I'm in that ecosystem, right? And I love being in that ecosystem. It connects, connects across my life and, you know, to the whole point about an operating system, it's, it's, it does in the background so much for me in terms of protecting my data and buil- making me feel like I can trust them. Yeah. So all of that comes together there.

Harry Stebbings 48:23 What concerns you most in the world today?

TS Anil 48:25 Judgment without kindness, opinions without curiosity.

Harry Stebbings 48:29 Do you think we are too opinionated without curiosity?

TS Anil 48:31 As a world, I think we are. It's become easier to shout out an opinion and harder to say, "Tell me more, learn more."

Harry Stebbings 48:39 What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you joined Monzo?

TS Anil 48:42 (laughs) That it would take us two years to get a really good coffee machine in the office.

Harry Stebbings 48:48 (laughs)

TS Anil 48:48 (laughs) I should have just brought, brought my own early on.

Harry Stebbings 48:51 ... what would it actually be?

TS Anil 48:52 There's not much in that bucket, um, Harry, but it's been a heck of a journey, um, thus far.

Harry Stebbings 48:57 Also, like you were in SF, you have a family, no?

TS Anil 49:00 I do.

Harry Stebbings 49:01 Yeah. You were in SF with a family, it's COVID when you take this job.

TS Anil 49:06 And-

Harry Stebbings 49:06 I mean, it's a-

TS Anil 49:07 ... and I'm working with a set of entities -

Harry Stebbings 49:08 D- what did your wife say, respectfully? (laughs)

TS Anil 49:11 (laughs) She thought I was crazy.

Harry Stebbings 49:13 Yeah.

TS Anil 49:14 And, you know, she wasn't sure which is the bigger question to ask me, why I was doing it or how I was doing it. Because I would start my day at 2:00 or 3:00 every morning, which is already 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning here in London, and-

Harry Stebbings 49:25 Did it feel nuts?

TS Anil 49:27 Totally felt nuts. Right? I mean, and-

Harry Stebbings 49:28 And you kind of loved it at the same time?

TS Anil 49:31 You know, I had this thing that I would joke, um, with the team and with everybody at the time, this idea of, you know, what type one fun and type two fun are?

Harry Stebbings 49:38 No.

TS Anil 49:39 So type one fun is when you're having fun in the moment, right? Great concert, great party, great whatever. Type two fun is like that camping trip gone bad, which you know is gonna be an amazing story later, and you know it's gonna be fun when you look back at it and recount it to yourself and you remember that you lived through it and all of, all of the crazy that happened. Um, so yeah, every day was some combination of type one fun and type two fun. Every single day, I'd keep score of, "How many face punches did we get today? How many body blows did we get today?"

Harry Stebbings 50:07 (laughs)

TS Anil 50:07 Because when you're in an existential time for a company, there's all of that happening all the time.

Harry Stebbings 50:12 How do you deal with the body blows or the face blows? But like just the... (exhales)

TS Anil 50:16 Quite literally the way I said, like this idea of type one fun, type two fun for me would be, I'd joke about it and say, "Oh, that's definitely going in the book," right?

Harry Stebbings 50:24 (laughs)

TS Anil 50:24 "That's gonna make a great story." Right?

Harry Stebbings 50:26 (laughs)

TS Anil 50:26 It feels like shit right now, but you know, you abstract yourself out of that moment and actually look, look at it with a hindsight.

Harry Stebbings 50:32 What's the best story of type two fun for you?

TS Anil 50:35 Oh, dear God, there's so many. You know, an investor that I would have spent months working on in 2020, and they're that close, and I know that it's gonna be pivotal for us and it changes our story, because on the back of that, I will be able to raise more capital, and they don't pull the trigger. And I would be just like, "Ugh." And it's al- it, and it always feels personal. It is personal. So yeah, uh, no, no dearth of those, uh, in any f- in any capital raise, especially if it's-

Harry Stebbings 51:03 But that's not type two fun. I mean that in a nice way. There's no fun about that. I've, I've been rejected many times too for fun, d- and it's like-

TS Anil 51:10 Mm-hmm. But the, but if I, but yeah, um, uh, the, not for-

Harry Stebbings 51:13 (laughs) It's no fun.

TS Anil 51:13 ... not for public rec- well, not for public record, but many of those are great stories we actually recount and tell ourselves, "Remember that?" And then my team will s- will say to me like, "You should never have gotten out of bed for that call," right? "You should never have gotten out of bed for that size of check." And I'd be like, "Dude, the question would be, what would I get into bed for, not what would I get out of bed for even," right? Because you just had to do what it, what you had to, what you had to do. So no event in isolation may feel like that, but that phase feels like type two fun. If that phase of, you know, the whole world's sort of crashing around you, there's not many believers, and yet you have this conviction that you're gonna build this thing out with this amazing team with you. And that, you know, you, as I was saying earlier, you sort of see through the storm is extraordinary. It's an extraordinary privilege to have an experience like that.

Harry Stebbings 51:59 Monzo was always kind of characterized as a, a, a nice culture, like a w- but like a work-life balance culture. Do you buy that? And is that something you-

TS Anil 52:08 Of course I do.

Harry Stebbings 52:08 ... you do?

TS Anil 52:09 So I mean, here's the thing, that there's a, there's a false binary in what you're saying, right? Because there's this belief that a values-oriented culture can't also be a high ambition, high growth culture. And I actually don't, I reject that b- that binary, right? Because I think if you-

Harry Stebbings 52:24 Well, no, I think it's a specific value that rejects that, which is that a work-life value rejects that.

TS Anil 52:30 It's a, but work life is a part of the, that, an overall value system, right? Because ultimately at the... I believe that if you hire amazing people, right? Put them into a culture which really values them and is an inclusive culture, people work incredibly hard against that mission.

Harry Stebbings 52:48 Mm-hmm.

TS Anil 52:48 And it's a lot of things which add up to this culture where you c- care about customers, not because they're a number, not because they're an ARPU, not because they're sort of a stepping stone or a vanity metric, but because you say, "Okay, let's build it right." And I think if you, if you get that magic right as a company, of, and as a team, the outcomes of that are the quality of the business that we're building. I mean, the proof points are here, right? If I was saying this to you four years ago, right? You'd have been right to be even more skeptical and say like, "What the hell, they're never gonna happen." Right? But look at where we are now.

Harry Stebbings 53:22 40 to a billion in profit.

TS Anil 53:23 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 53:24 Are you proud of yourself?

TS Anil 53:25 I'm proud of the team, um, Harry, inherited some amazing people that I got to partner with. You know, Jonas, the co-founder who stayed on as CTO, um, Sujatha, the COO, who joined us, um, uh, right after I'd started, and all of the amazing people that we've hired since then and the amazing original Monzonauts that are still here building out the dream. Uh, yeah, I'm, I'm insanely proud of all of us.

Harry Stebbings 53:49 Mm-hmm.

TS Anil 53:49 Right? I mean, the o- the odds were, the odds were decked against us. The naysayers were having a field day. And it's amazing-

Harry Stebbings 53:56 How-

TS Anil 53:56 ... to actually build out what we've built.

Harry Stebbings 53:58 How has the way that you lead changed in four years?

TS Anil 54:01 Gosh, you'll have to ask the people around me, right? To tell you what's changed. Um, yeah, a lot feel like, feels to me like it has not changed, right? In that the size of my ambition for what we think Monzo will be has not changed. If anything, it's only been amplified, right? Uh, at each point of inflection in the business, what we have done as a team is bent the curve upwards. Like this was built-

Harry Stebbings 54:28 This is why I hate visions though, because if you stick to a vision, you kind of put this artificial glass ceiling on yourself, and you kind of downward flecked the curve of what it could be. And actually when you turn the next page, you're like, "Whoa, stocks is that? I wouldn't have guessed that."

TS Anil 54:42 Yeah. So, and that's the state, you have to have a really clear sense of scale of ambition, you have to have a really clear sense of the product vision that you want to build out-... but on the journey to getting there, right, you hope like hell that you only inflect to raising the ambition. It's like rock climbing, right? You're always focused on the next ledge. Right? You know that you wanna get to that summit, but you... the f- your focus is on the next thing and the next thing, and that's exhilarating, right? It's, it's fun to take stock for a minute and see how far you've come, but really what you're thinking about is the next thing.

Harry Stebbings 55:14 Yeah. Uh, final one for you. What question have I not asked, or are you never asked that... (laughs) I feel really guilty for this show, dude. I'm so sorry. (laughs) Um-

TS Anil 55:27 TS, tell me a, a song or a track you'd recommend I listen to now. I wish people asked me that more, more often.

Harry Stebbings 55:33 (laughs)

TS Anil 55:34 I always have music playing, I always have music playing in my head, so there's always a track there, but you're sort of lurking.

Harry Stebbings 55:39 Well, what, what, what's your favorite track? If I put on a track that is the one track that's gonna get you dancing, what track is it?

TS Anil 55:47 There's a-

Harry Stebbings 55:48 I've never asked that question in any 20s (laughs) interview before.

TS Anil 55:53 So I'm a cheap date with dancing. There's like... you could play like 500 different tracks and it... you, you wouldn't have to convince me to get on a... (laughs) on a, on the floor. Um, and talent is not correlated with desire-

Harry Stebbings 56:03 (laughs)

TS Anil 56:03 ... to be on the floor-

Harry Stebbings 56:04 Enthusiasm.

TS Anil 56:05 ... with enthusiasm. Um, so that's a low bar. I don't think there's a one track, uh, you could play, I mean, you have 500 tracks, that would do it for me. There's... but different question is, what... you know, so if there's a tr- a, the track that sort of touches my soul, that's a different, different question.

Harry Stebbings 56:17 What would it be?

TS Anil 56:20 There's a few, but I guess the one I'm gonna go with is, um, you know Eddie Vedder-

Harry Stebbings 56:24 Yeah.

TS Anil 56:24 ... with Pearl Jam? So he did this insane collaboration in the '90s with, uh, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. You know who Nusrat is? Nusrat is a Pakistani Sufi music singer, right? Probably the... one of the best musicians of the 20th century, right? And, and I don't say that lightly. So Pearl Jam, so Eddie Vedder, grunge rocker from Seattle, and Sufi Qawwali singer, Nusrat, collaborated on this album, which was the soundtrack of the movie Dead Man Walking.

Harry Stebbings 56:52 Mm-hmm.

TS Anil 56:53 And there's a bunch of tracks in that which are amazing. The Face of Love, The Long Road are both insanely beautiful tracks that never fail to uplift me.

Harry Stebbings 57:03 TS, uh, I'm really sorry. (laughs)

TS Anil 57:07 I'm gonna make you listen to this after this tour.

Harry Stebbings 57:08 No, no, you can't... you can, and I'll- I'll listen after, after this. (laughs) You've been amazingly patient and kind. Thank you for putting up with my pressing questions, and I really appreciate it.

TS Anil 57:18 Thank you very much for having me here, Harry. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 57:21 (laughs)