Revolut's ex-COO had "the weirdest job ever" on an H1B visa
Working at Revolut is a common feature among fintech startup founders. Working on wastewater treatment products is not. Crypto firm Deblock's founder, Adriana Restrepo, spoke on the 40-Minute Mentor podcast today about what it's like to do both.
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Restrepo spent three years at Revolut and was COO at Revolut between February 2021 and September 2022, but she was born and raised in Venezuela. She said she wanted to leave because of "a lot of political unrest" and economic issues in the nation. She wanted to find whatever job would provide her with a H1B visa to the US and ended up settling on "the weirdest job ever" at manufacturing firm Atlas Copco.
She described her role as selling "pressure compressors" called blowers that would be used in wastewater treatment plants. She would assist the engineering team in designing the products while negotiating prices with clients. She was initially based in Houston, Texas, before moving to the firm's London office after learning that the UK's visa process had the "quickest path to citizenship" of the two nations.
Restrepo worked at a few other companies before joining Revolut, including Barclays, Vodafone and BT, the latter of the three she called "the most British company [she's] ever worked at..." sorry Barclays.
Restrepo also gave insights into what it was like to work for Revolut. She said that the people at the company has a "directness" that "a lot of people struggle with." The tone is so ubiquitous with Revolut employees that Restrepo said it becomes something of a "shared language" both in and outside the firm. She said that she has met multiple other founders who have spun off from Revolut, and was able to identify them through this language.
We reported on Restrepo leaving back in 2023 to found Deblock, which provides a crypto wallet product. The firm raised £13.3m ($18m) earlier this year in seed funding, and received a MiCA (markets in crypto-assets) license from the French government last month. Perhaps Deblock's success is down to the Revolut impact? Perhaps the wastewater treatment industry has a better pipeline?
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