Dmitry Zlokazov

Invest in scalable platforms early to enable small teams to launch complex products across multiple jurisdictions rapidly.

"Another thing here is what I mentioned previously is us investing heavily into platform so that every solution is scalable from the get go so that we don't have any custom solutions. For example, take..."

Internal transfers from operations or engineering often become the most successful product owners due to existing domain knowledge and culture fit.

"It's a quite substantial part of product owners who eventually become very successful by the way. So it's like a positive self-select, so it means that someone already succeeded in another role. So it..."

Product owners must act as 'steamrollers' to drive consensus and unblock their teams when dealing with complex stakeholder environments.

"It also requires a product owner to be able to get things done, just getting people down to consensus and understanding how your stakeholders, how to get them to the necessary decision and then blocki..."

Maintain a high quality bar by having founders or senior leaders review every single user-facing screen before shipping.

"Essentially founders of the company, they still review a hundred percent of screens that are being shipped and everything that you will see in the app pass this review. And there are a lot of eyeballs..."

Prioritize raw cognitive ability and a drive to build over years of industry experience.

"Everyone is striving for talented, skillful, smart people. Revolut values way more raw intellect and this unquenched hunger to build things rather than experience."

Experienced professionals from large companies may lack the 'hunger' required for high-growth environments; former founders often make the best PMs.

"Unfortunately, professionals with a lot of years of experience from established companies, they don't have this strong urge to change status quo, which by the way will require toil, tears, and sweat...."

Source candidates by identifying high-quality products you admire and finding the people who built them.

"One of the great sources is actually looking into products and apps that we love ourselves. So if someone built a great product, then it's likely a high performer. So usually we provide some great pro..."

Empower product managers as 'local CEOs' with end-to-end responsibility for both strategy and execution.

"Product owners are central to the company and its growth. They are end-to-end responsible for the product, for this part of the business, and for their customers to be happy. And for that, they do rea..."

Structure teams so the product owner acts as the line manager for all cross-functional members to ensure alignment on 'what' to build.

"The way we operate, we have these fully cross-functional teams, meaning they're staffed with all necessary functions, engineers data, analysts, designers, operational managers and so on. And we also o..."

Autonomy is earned through the ability to demonstrate rigorous logic and clear decision-making frameworks.

"The ideal position for any product owner is to be fully autonomous. And again, it doesn't mean that you will never be challenged, but if when you're challenged, you can show all the logic behind decis..."

Product owners should conduct their own research to avoid losing critical nuances that occur when feedback is filtered through intermediaries.

"When you delegate such an important thing as customer research and collecting their feedback to someone, you will get a refined filtered version. You won't get these nuances of how people describe thi..."

A product is effectively useless until it is fully finished and launched; 99% completion provides zero customer value.

"They understand that there needs to be relentless focus on execution, and if something is 99% done, it's closer to 0% rather than 100%."