N26 has more than 7 million customers in 25 markets. The company employs more than 1,500 employees across 8 office locations in Berlin, Barcelona, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Vienna, New York, and São Paulo. The company has identified the US as a key growth market and announced plans to expand its American team by 75% in 2021. The latest news from the company shows it’s taking steps to deliver on this pledge.
On March 23rd, neobank N26 announced that it had hired Gilles BianRosa as Chief Product Officer. BianRosa, who will assume the role in the near future, will be the latest addition to N26’s executive leadership team. He joins an executive team that includes US CEO Nicolas Kopp, a former Morgan Stanley investment Banker, co-Founder and CFO Maximilian Tayenthal, and co-Founder and CEO Valentin Stalf. Other recent additions include Chief People Officer Diana Styles who joined from Adidas, Chief Operating Officer Adrienne Gormley, a former executive and board member of Dropbox.
In his new role, BianRosa will lead all product teams based across the company’s main offices and technology hubs in Berlin, Barcelona, Vienna, and New York. He will be responsible for defining, steering, and implementing N26’s global product strategy, with ambitious plans to scale the team and N26’s product innovation capabilities in 2021 and beyond.
BianRosa brings with him decades of experience working with the world’s top technology companies as a product leader. Most recently, he served as Chief Product Officer at SoundCloud. Before that, he was Chief Product Officer at Samsung Electronics, where he oversaw content and services for Samsung Smart TVs globally.
“Gilles has a track record of delivering consumer-facing innovation that truly engages, excites, and entertains customers,” says Valentin Stalf N26, co-founder and CEO. “Today, N26 has revolutionised how people relate to their banking experience on an everyday basis. With Gilles on board, we will expand our experience further to being banking that easily connects an account with one’s lifestyle in an even more tangible way.”
In recent months, N26 has made several enhancements to its offering. The company recently expanded its Perks program, which includes discounts on brands such as HelloFresh, Dropbox, Adidas, Yoox, Booking.com, Postmates, language learning platform Busuu, and several others, when it announced a partnership with Dosh to offer cashback for everyday purchases at thousands of merchants. The company also provided rapid access to Covid-19 stimulus checks.
“The goal of our Perks program has always been to help customers save when spending with their debit card on brands they love,” says Alexander Weber, Chief Growth Officer at N26. “This is now more important than ever with the impact of the recent pandemic putting financial strain on millions of Americans. With this expansion, customers will earn cashback directly in their accounts when spending on more everyday essential items like gas and groceries.”
N26 has raised close to $950million from the world’s most established investors, including Insight Venture Partners, GIC, Tencent, Allianz X, Valar Ventures, Horizons Ventures, Earlybird Venture Capital, Greyhound Capital, Battery Ventures, and Redalpine Ventures. The company currently operates in: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the US.
An entrepreneur at heart, Gilles was also the co-founder and CEO of two successful venture-backed companies in Silicon Valley – FanTV, the multi-service discovery app for video streaming that connected consumers with a million movies and TV shows they love, and Vuze, the largest open-source BitTorrent application to spearhead entertainment distribution over peer-2-peer networks.
“After almost two decades in Silicon Valley, I’m very pleased to be joining one of the most dynamic product teams in fintech globally,” says BianRosa “I look forward to applying my experience from the world of online consumer services to help N26 continue to connect authentically with its customers. Having already begun to redefine banking for customers, I believe that N26 has a unique opportunity to touch more aspects of daily life with their simple, trusted, and delightful experience.”
BianRosa’s start date has yet to be announced. According to N26, he is set to begin his new role in the coming months and work out of N26’s headquarters in Berlin.
