We launched in 17 European countries simultaneously. Not one at a time. Seventeen at once. People said it was reckless. Europe's single banking passport said it was legal. We used the regulation as a growth hack.
I'm Austrian. Max is Austrian. We built N26 in Berlin. An Austrian neobank, headquartered in Germany, with a European banking license. Europe is one market if you build it that way.
We pulled out of the US and UK markets. Everyone called it a failure. I call it focus. You can't fight Chime and Monzo on their home turf while also trying to win Europe. So we chose Europe.
Opening a bank account takes 8 minutes on N26. Eight minutes. At Deutsche Bank it takes two weeks and a physical branch visit. That's not competition. That's two different centuries.
We hit 8 million customers. Then BaFin — the German regulator — imposed growth limits on us. They said we were growing too fast for our compliance infrastructure. Growing too fast. As a punishment.
Peter Thiel invested early. Tencent came later. A $9 billion valuation for a European neobank with no branches. The thesis is simple: banks are software now. The buildings are optional.