Nik Storonsky refused to fire his best guy: Fuse's Alan Chang

What happened Revolut co-founder and CEO Nik StoronskyDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → told podcaster David Senra, in an episode released on 25 October 2026, that one of his investors once tried to force him to fire his best person "because he was too hardcore". "Of course I didn't fire him. I said no," Storonsky said. That person was Alan ChangDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → — now co-founder and CEO of Fuse Energy, who joined Revolut as an early employee in 2015 and later became its chief revenue officer.

The Fuse twist The clip prompted Chang to share his own story. "At the Revolut Series D closing dinner I sat next to the investor who tried to get me fired," he wrote on X. "I only found out because he got drunk and told me himself, unprompted." The investor apologised, Chang said, once he saw what Chang could do, "but by then Revolut was already a breakout company." Revolut's Series D was a $500M round led by TCV in February 2020. Chang did not name the investor.

Chang backed Storonsky's broader view: "Most investors can't be trusted with any power over the company. They should cheer from the sidelines and count their returns." He said that at Fuse, "I've put it in the constitutional docs: VCs can't fire me. No matter what." Storonsky, for his part, said "quite a few VCs, they are not very operational, and they can be actually dangerous for the company if they have enough power. So every single investment round, we just remove VCs." Revolut now has no VCs on its board: "You always need to have operators rather than VCs on the board, people who actually build business and who know how to do things."

Context In the same conversation Storonsky said a fight with a big-name investor, which had invested at Revolut's $33 billion valuation and had rights over changes to the shareholder agreement, led him to start his own venture fund, QuantumLightDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, which picks Series B and C startups using machine-learning models. He said its first fund is fully invested and has produced a 56% IRR, and that a second, $500M fund is now investing. These figures are Storonsky's own and have not been independently verified.

Sources David Senra podcast (YouTube) · David Senra on X · Alan Chang on X · Business Insider