The growth playbook behind $75B - Antoine Le Nel

In this discussion, Antoan Le Nel, VP of Growth at Revolut and former marketing lead at King, shares the strategies used to scale Candy Crush to hundreds of millions of users and subsequently drive Revolute to a $75 billion valuation. The conversation explores the intersection of gaming psychology, rigorous financial engineering, and the unconventional growth tactics that have allowed Revolute to add one million customers every 17 days while maintaining significant profitability. ### Lessons from the Gaming Industry: The King Era Le Nel’s tenure at King was defined by the challenge of diversifying the company’s portfolio ahead of its IPO. At the time, King was perceived as a "one-hit wonder" reliant almost entirely on Candy Crush. To counter this, Le Nel used Candy Crush as an "anchor" to cross-promote new titles. By leveraging internal tools like push notifications and cross-app prompts, the team launched *Candy Crush Soda Saga* in 150 markets simultaneously, achieving seven million downloads in a single day with zero marketing spend. A pivotal growth hack involved Facebook’s social graph. At its peak, King was messaging 70% of global Facebook users daily, sending two billion "lives" to friends. When Facebook eventually closed this channel due to user annoyance, it inadvertently created a massive barrier to entry for competitors. Candy Crush had already reached critical mass, and new games could no longer use the same viral loop to challenge its dominance. This experience taught Le Nel the power of leveraging free virality to build a legendary brand before the "channel" is burned out. ### Revolute’s Growth Philosophy: Profitability by Design When Le Nel joined Revolute in 2021, many fintechs were collapsing. Revolute’s survival and subsequent growth to 65 million customers were driven by a philosophy borrowed from gaming: prioritizing unit economics over top-line growth. Unlike many Silicon Valley startups that fuel growth with venture capital before proving their business model, Revolute focuses on the profitability of the individual user first. Le Nel asserts that marketing should only be "fueled" once the unit economics are positive. At Revolute, as marketing spend increases, the bottom line grows even faster—a rarity in the tech world. This discipline resulted in over $1 billion in net profit in 2024. By treating each market launch as a new product and strictly monitoring retention and profitability metrics for early cohorts, Revolute ensures that every dollar spent on acquisition generates a predictable return. ### The Exponential Lifetime Value (LTV) Curve One of the most striking differences between gaming and banking is the LTV curve. In gaming, LTV typically plateaus as users churn. In contrast, Revolute’s LTV curve is exponential. Users often join for a single "hook," such as low-fee currency exchange (FX) for travel. Over time, they gradually adopt secondary features like savings, crypto, trading, and insurance. This gradual adoption leads to "negative churn." While there is an initial drop-off of users shortly after sign-up, those who stay become increasingly active. Le Nel notes that if Revolute stopped all new onboarding today, the company would still see an increase in active users because returning customers would outweigh the churn. To drive this stickiness, Revolute identifies early "aha moments," such as the initial deposit amount. Interestingly, Revolute charges for physical card delivery—a deliberate choice to ensure transparency regarding costs and to secure a "commitment" from the user. If a customer pays for a card, they are statistically much more likely to use it. ### Scaling Through Autonomy and the B2B Ecosystem Revolute’s organizational structure is designed to eliminate "middlemen," which Le Nel describes as the "cancer of an organization." The company is divided into small, autonomous units—such as the Crypto, Savings, and Business teams—each responsible for their own tech stack and KPIs. This reduces interdependencies and allows for rapid experimentation. A prime example is the Telco team. Starting with a small group of 10–20 people, they launched travel eSIMs as a proof of concept. Following its success, they expanded into a full mobile operator service. This lean approach allows Revolute to test products like pet insurance or "Buy Now Pay Later" and quickly pivot or pull back if they don't meet expectations. Strategically, Revolute is moving toward a closed-loop ecosystem. Revolute Business now generates $1 billion in annual recurring revenue (ARR), accounting for 20% of the business. By controlling the consumer app, the merchant's payment gateway, and the business account, Revolute can offer instant, safer, and cheaper transactions by cutting out traditional banking intermediaries. ### Global Strategy and the Power of Brand Unlike traditional global banks like HSBC, which often operate with fragmented tech stacks and different apps for different regions, Revolute uses a single global app. Whether a user is in Japan, Brazil, or the UK, they interact with the same core technology. Regional differences are managed through "regulatory coloring"—a layer of country-specific compliance on top of a unified backend. This agility allows Revolute to roll out features like mortgages or RevPoints loyalty programs globally with minimal friction. In his final reflections, Le Nel discusses the shift from purely data-driven marketing to brand building. While most of his budget is tied to strict ROI metrics, he allocates 5–10% to "wow" projects, such as the upcoming 2026 Audi Formula 1 partnership. The goal is to create a "generational sponsorship" that makes the brand legendary. Le Nel’s key takeaway from 15 years in hyper-growth companies is the vital importance of protecting and nurturing the brand. While he started as an engineer focused solely on ROI, he now views brand consistency as the ultimate driver of long-term value. For Revolute, the path forward involves staying private for the foreseeable future, utilizing secondary share sales to provide employee liquidity, and focusing entirely on product excellence rather than the distractions of an IPO.