Revolut Series E

SoftBank and Tiger Global threw $800M at Revolut in July 2021 like drunk venture capitalists at last call, valuing the fintech bro-app at $33 billion—approximately the GDP of Iceland for a company that's basically Venmo's aggressive European cousin with a trading feature and anger management issues. The valuation represented a 6x jump from their previous round eighteen months earlier, pricing them at roughly 50x revenue multiples during a period when VCs were snorting hopium cut with ZIRP. For context, this put Revolut's valuation above established financial institutions that actually, you know, make consistent money. The feminist in me notes they raised this obscene amount while systematically burning through employees and maintaining a toxic workplace culture that would make a 1990s trading floor blush. The timing reeks of peak-bubble desperation, right before Powell's rate hikes would deflate these valuations like sad birthday balloons at a child's party nobody attended.

Let's talk about what $800M bought these investors: a company hemorrhaging talent faster than it could hire Eastern European engineers, facing regulatory scrutiny in multiple jurisdictions, and running a growth-at-all-costs playbook that even Elizabeth Holmes might call "a bit much." Revolut's fundamentals in mid-2021 showed explosive user growth—sure, I'll give them that—but profitability remained as elusive as a punk band that doesn't eventually sell out. Their path to actual sustainable revenue involved pivoting users toward crypto trading and sketchy financial products with all the subtlety of a pickup artist at a feminist bookstore. The company culture reports were genuinely horrifying: mental health crises, surveillance software tracking employee activity, leadership that treated humans like disposable growth metrics. SoftBank and Tiger didn't seem remotely concerned about any of this, which tracks perfectly for funds more interested in portfolio valuations than whether their portfolio companies are actively destroying lives.

The investor quality here signals everything wrong with 2021's late-stage venture landscape. SoftBank—fresh off their WeWork faceplant—apparently learned nothing and continued writing billion-dollar checks like a gambling addict who thinks the next hand will win it all back. Tiger Global was in their spray-and-pray era, deploying capital with the diligence of someone swiping right on every Tinder profile at 2am. These aren't the careful, thesis-driven investors you want leading your round; they're the momentum chasers who make deals frothy and founders delusional. The downstream signaling was clear: if you could show exponential user growth and had a charismatic sociopath founder willing to promise the moon, you could name your valuation. Revolut's CEO Nikolay Storonsky became the poster child for founder hubris, and these investors handed him $33B worth of validation for building a company culture that would make Amazon warehouse managers say "damn, that's harsh."

The exit math on this deal makes my punk rock heart hurt because it's so transparently fucked. For SoftBank and Tiger to make meaningful returns, Revolut needs to IPO north of $50-60B or get acquired at an absurd premium that no rational acquirer would pay. Fast forward to 2024, and Revolut's recent valuations have cratered to the low-twenties—billions of paper losses for these late-stage tourists. The competitive dynamics have only intensified with Nubank, Chime, and traditional banks finally building decent apps that don't require selling your soul. The fintech sector's fundamentals shifted dramatically when interest rates remembered they could be positive numbers, exposing how many of these companies were just subsidy-dependent customer acquisition engines wearing a bank costume for Halloween. Red flags? Where do I even start: regulatory problems in the UK, Lithuanian banking license drama, leadership turnover that suggests people keep discovering what working there actually entails and promptly fleeing. This deal deserved a reality check it never received.