I’m a physicist turned fintech leader. I spent years studying how systems work — first in a lab building atomic clocks, then at McKinsey advising Europe’s largest banks, and now at Pleo, where I’ve spent the last five years building and scaling the payments platform from a scrappy startup function to an organization of 100+ professionals processing transactions across 18+ European markets.

The work I’m most proud of isn’t a system though — it’s the people. I’ve coached multiple individual contributors into director-level leaders. Watching someone step into a leadership role they didn’t think they were ready for is the best feeling in this job. I set a high bar, but I’m there every step of the way.

My physics background never really left. I still think in hypotheses and experiments — form a theory, test it, learn, adjust. It makes me analytical and technical, but fatherhood made me something else: a more human leader. Becoming a dad taught me to prioritize, to see people for who they actually are, and to bring my whole self to work. I went from a logical executor to an emotionally balanced leader who gets shit done.

At Pleo, I’ve focused on building platforms and organizations that scale — designing modular systems and team structures that abstract away complexity so people can ship fast and make good decisions without bottlenecks. That’s the kind of problem I love: making hard things invisible so others can move at speed.

What I believe

A few things I’ve learned the hard way and now hold as strong convictions:

  • Platform teams should be product teams. If your platform org measures success by “enabling others,” you’ve already lost. Platform teams need their own users, their own metrics, and their own product roadmaps. I’ve written about what this looks like in practice.

  • European payment fragmentation is a competitive advantage — for those who understand it. Everyone complains about the complexity. The companies that win are the ones that build for it instead of around it. I cover this in why “do you support Faster Payments?” is the wrong question.

  • The best organizational structures are the ones that make good decisions happen without you in the room. If your team needs you for every call, you haven’t built an organization — you’ve built a dependency.

  • Goal-setting frameworks matter far less than follow-through discipline. I’ve seen teams with perfect OKRs deliver nothing and teams with a shared doc and weekly check-ins change the business. More on that here.

What I’m thinking about

I’m drawn to the intersection of a few shifts happening at the same time: how AI changes the infrastructure layer of fintech, how European payment rails are converging after decades of fragmentation, and how the next generation of technical leaders gets built. These are the problems I want to keep working on — whether at Pleo or wherever the most interesting version of this work is happening.

Outside of work, I’m usually at a show, listening to music, or just being a dad. Those things keep me grounded.

If you’re building in payments, scaling a platform org, or thinking about leadership at growth-stage — I’m always up for a conversation.

Connect on LinkedIn · Email me · See what I’m working on now