Revolut's most aggressive 28-year-old millionaire is doing it again

If you're one of the Revolut shareholders who made millions in the recent share sale, that valued the British bank at $75bn, you will probably be familiar with the name Alan Chang. However, you may not want to work for him.

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Chang joined Revolut when he was 21 after graduating in Physics from Imperial College London. He was Revolut's 5th employee and became its head of operations aged 22, and its chief revenue officer aged 27. When he left, aged 28, he almost certainly had enough money never to work again.

However, this is not the sort of person Chang is.

Together with Charles Orr, a UCL graduate who led special projects at Revolut, Chang went on to found Fuse Energy, a UK-based energy supplier which is building its own renewable energy stack. Last week, the Financial Times reported that Fuse is in "advanced talks" to raise new funding at a valuation of £5bn. This is five times more than its valuation at the last round of funding, only four months ago.

We'd already noticed Fuse hiring quants from banks and electronic trading firms and Chang informs us that this is by no means over. "We want to hire as many top engineers we can get our hands on," he tells us. "If we can 10X the engineering team tomorrow, we would." 

When it comes to software engineers, Fuse likes to hire from high frequency trading firms and top technology companies, confirms Chang. When it comes to project managers, Chang says his preferred hires are found at "physical engineering companies", like Tesla and SpaceX.

There are good reasons to work for Chang. He is aggressively ambitious. He is the physical embodiment of Revolut's "get shit done" ethos, and appears to be applying this at Fuse. The FT says Fuse already claims to be generating $300m in revenues and that its investors are particularly partial to the high speed at which it rolls out new products. More pertinently, Chang is offering his new hires stock in Fuse. Could this be a chance to earn Revolut-style upside? "Yes," he says.  

However, Chang is not everyone's cup of tea. Responding to one of Chang's recent posts on LinkedIn, a former Revolut colleague commented, "Brutal as always." Glassdoor reviews from people working for him at Fuse suggest the culture there can be as challenging as Revolut ever was. "You're expected to work 14-hour days, including weekends and days off," writes one operations intern (who also complains that hardly anyone gets equity). Another employee complains of a "toxic grind" and "sink or swim mentality."

Just as Revolut isn't for everyone, though, Fuse is only for a particular type of person. Chang himself is the blueprint. Three years ago, he told us he was working 70-80 hour weeks. Now he says he's working 80-90. "Fuse is not for everyone, we are building the number 1 energy company in the world, it takes a lot of hard work," he reflects today.

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