How Monzo Hit 10M Users & Just Eat Sold for $8B - Inside the Mind of CPO Fernando Fanton

Fernando Fanton scaled Monzo to 10M users, helped Just Eat hit an $8B exit, grew Mendeley’s user base 4x, and is now shaping the future of Property Finder with AI-powered home search across the MENA region.

Hear how he breaks barriers in product, scales teams fast, and shares bold predictions for AI and MENA’s tech future.

Is trust more powerful than speed in a product? Can AI replace designers and PMs? Fernando Fanton answers these and more, sharing lessons from Monzo, Just Eat, and Property Finder to help you break barriers in product leadership.

Breaking Down Barriers - Hosted by Ricci Putnam, Chief Growth Officer ‪@saltdigital‬

We cover:
– How Monzo scaled to 10M users
– Why Just Eat won (and why it wasn’t luck)
– The truth about product culture, discovery & delivery
– The biggest mistakes founders make hiring CPOs
– AI’s future impact on product teams
– Why most products fail and how to fix it
– His bold predictions for MENA tech over the next 5 years

Timestamps:

00:00 — Trailer
00:18 — Who is Fernando Fanton?
02:41 — The biggest barrier he broke early in his career
06:10 — Scaling Mendeley 4x and early ML lessons
11:48 — Inside Just Eat’s $8B acquisition
17:30 — 1M orders vs 1M customers — which is harder?
21:55 — Building Monzo’s product engine to 10M users
28:44 — Why most product teams lose focus
33:12 — Discovery, experimentation & iteration: the Monzo way
39:20 — The one mistake founders make hiring product leaders
43:55 — AI’s real impact on product teams (not hype)
51:30 — How to scale product orgs without breaking culture
57:10 — The hardest decision he’s made as a leader
1:02:22 — MENA tech predictions for the next 5 years
1:07:40 — When should a founder hire their first CPO?
1:12:00 — The un-Googleable moment in Fernando’s career
1:16:02 — The next barrier Fernando wants to break
1:18:55 — Quickfire: Speed or trust? AI prototype or customer?
1:21:00 — Final message for the audience

In this episode of Breaking Down Barriers, Fernando reveals the real playbook behind hyper-growth products - the decisions, culture, philosophy, and hard barriers that most teams never talk about publicly.

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