Irina Scarlat, Global Head of Growth Revolut: „My Revolut journey is coming to its end. The advice to never give up is really bad advice.”

Irina Scarlat has announced her decision in a blog post.

„I’ve been silent for a while now. That’s because the past month has been a whirlwind, a rollercoaster of work & emotions. My Revolut journey is coming to its end after 3 intense years. Yes, yes, you’ve read that sentence right. While this might come as a surprise for some of you, I am confident this is the best way forward. While it’s been a hard decision to take, it’s not one that I’ve taken lightly. But let’s start with the beginning.„

Revolut: 3 years in a Nutshell

„I joined Revolut in early 2018 as Country Manager for Romania. Revolut was the size of a small village back then – a promising startup with a couple of hundred employees and 20.000 local users. I was the first hire on the ground, working to achieve our goal to hit 100.000 users by the end of the year. We wrapped up 2018 with 150.000 Romanians using Revolut.

It soon became clear that there’s only so much growth we can deliver without a dedicated team and proper resources. Said and done, we started brainstorming on structures that would allow us to reach our true growth potential. This is how I ended up leading what we called our Growth Machine, a fancy name for our efforts to build a world-class growth department and hire growth teams in our priority markets worldwide.

I was later promoted to lead our growth marketing efforts across Central & Eastern Europe, Revolut’s second biggest region after UKI. Together with my team, we grew to more than 3.5M users. A year into the role, I was promoted again, this time to Global Head of Growth. As owner of the growth department, I was leading 15 teams across Europe, the US and APAC, setting up processes, solving problems and removing any bottlenecks in the way of our ambitious objectives.

Saying that my Revolut experience has been rewarding would be an understatement. I feel incredibly lucky to have been part of Revolut’s growth journey. I am grateful to have had the chance to work with so many talented & driven Revoluters all around the world. They’re always going to be a source of inspiration for me, with their passion, drive & relentlessness.„

Why leave now?

You might be wondering at this point how come I’ve decided to leave and why now. Truth be told, things have changed. A lot. I’ve joined a fairly small company with hundreds of employees & 1M users globally. I’m leaving a rocketship with more than 2k employees & 15M global users (of which close to 1.5M are Romanians). I’m confident that there’s still huge untapped potential and plenty of growth opportunities ahead. However, I feel that my learning curve has plateaued and there aren’t as many things to build here as they used to be. And I have to admit I am tired.

3 years on the rocketship feel like dog years in normal time. This is the true reason why the median tenure in a tech startup is 2 years. I feel like I’ve run a marathon with the speed of a sprint. I know way too well what this means and I’ve learnt to listen to the signals that I receive from my body & mind. 

It wasn’t easy for me to come to terms with this decision. Part of me is sad and I know for sure that I’m going to dearly miss Revolut and my team. One thing that I learnt though (but internalised much harder) was that the advice to never give up is really bad advice. There’s a very fine line between being relentless & driven versus inflexible & stubborn. Never giving up is the latter. Giving up doesn’t mean you failed. It just means you’ve found a better way and you can now stop banging your head in the wall, because you’ve found the door. At this point in my life, taking a sabbatical is my door. So I’m giving up to a world of opportunities to open another, take a break and embrace new beginnings, whatever they might bring.

Read the full blog post to find out what’s next for Irina.