Studying and Experimenting: the Key in Start-ups

“Start-ups today? They need to learn to take more risks, but above all they need investors. To put it bluntly, they need good ideas – and money.” With a life in start-ups: Uber, Circle, Revolut, and Kuda, Elena Lavezzi has built her career as a tech operator of some of the most important scale-ups of our times that do business in the European market and beyond.

But how do you build an international career in the start-up world? By studying and experimenting. After a degree in Economics from Bocconi and a Master’s in Marketing from ESCP Europe, which she completed in Paris and London, the traditional route for Lavezzi would have been a job in a big multinational. “My mother expected me to follow a traditional path. But I wanted a unique one. I wanted to give myself the chance to take some detours, even to create something of my own, my own company,” she says emphatically.

And then fate stepped in. The story of how Lavezzi ended up at Uber stems from this innovative streak and her search for the road less traveled. She tells us: “I remember finding the website of this small California company and sending them my CV. They replied right away, so I had to choose: chase the dream of my own company or take the plunge in this American adventure. I chose the second option.”

At Uber, she grew as a professional and became head of marketing. “Incredible years, also because I lived through the start-up’s boom: we went from 100 employees to 15,000. It was there that I realized I wanted to work in companies that had an impact on people’s lives,” she adds.

This is how she approached the world of fintech, which was growing at high speed. In 2017, she joined Circle, a leading blockchain company; two years later she was at Revolut, a financial super-app that had become a global industry benchmark. There she was responsible for Southern Europe for three years, focusing on creating and managing local teams and driving growth in the user base in the region. In 2022, she decided to take on a new challenge in an emerging market in Africa, becoming Group Chief Strategy Officer of Kuda, a Nigerian fintech that aims to make the world of financial services more accessible, with the ambition of building the first truly pan-African player and changing the lives of millions of people who would otherwise be cut off from the world of finance. Day-to-day work in a sector that is still male-dominated, for the most part.

“It is certainly true that we women are still few and far between. I’ve been lucky to find both men and women managers who recognized strong professional skills regardless of gender. They supported my career development,” she adds. Lavezzi has a knack for choosing jobs based on merit where she could grow, which has also played a big role. She says: “If I had to give advice to younger women, I would say: work your way up in the right places. It’s important to look for bosses you can learn from, also because you have to realize that you are offering an organization the best years of your life.” And learn to negotiate too. “Never be naive about money; you have to know the value of your profile, and of the market. I often tell my colleagues: negotiate to 
the death.”