When Vision isn’t Enough.
How N26 went from Europe’s fintech darling to a lesson in self-awareness and timing.
Every founder eventually meets a threshold moment. The company you founded and built outgrows the identity you built for yourself. At that point, the choice isn’t simply whether to keep going or step aside. It’s whether you are willing to face the truth of who you are as a leader, or whether you choose to deny it, telling yourself the old version of you will be enough.
The hardest part is self-awareness (and with it, self-acceptance), and the second is timing. Knowing when to evolve into the Operator your company needs, when to admit that being a Visionary alone won’t sustain you, and when to stop pretending that discipline and structure can be delegated away.
N26 is a story of founders that once symbolised the sleek promise of European fintech, but for their founders, that threshold has inevitably arrived. The headlines tell us what happened, but what’s more interesting to me is why, and whether any of it could have been mitigated.
For those not following the news, reports from the Financial Times confirmed that N26’s supervisory board chair, Marcus Mosen, is being lined up to replace co-founder Valentin Stalf as interim CEO, with Maximilian Tayenthal expected to step aside by the end of the year. The move follows years of regulatory fines over anti-money-laundering lapses, capped customer growth, and repeated warnings from BaFin that the bank’s internal controls weren’t keeping up with its scale. What was once Europe’s fastest-growing digital bank is now a case study in how quickly investor confidence can flip when communication is deprioritized, resulting in a business environment where compliance and governance fall out of sync.
As I learned more about what led to this, what I started to understand is that underneath the fines, the restrictions, and now the investor backlash, there’s a familiar leadership story about what it means to be a founder, and what happens when the company you built outgrows the identity you’ve built for yourself.
Signals missed along the way…
I challenged myself to think about what I would have advised them to do differently, and how communications could have taken them somewhere different than where they find themselves today.
Looking at N26’s history and what’s being reported today, it’s clear to me that there are a three big areas where the co-CEOs could likely have done better, both to avoid the current investor revolt and to strengthen the company’s position over the years.
Compliance as communications pillar, not afterthought
In 2021, BaFin fined N26 €4.25 million for delays in suspicious activity reporting. In 2022, another €9.2 million fine. In 2024, regulators flagged further weaknesses despite the company’s claim of €100 million invested in compliance systems. Each time, the fixes came after the headlines. In a huge missed opportunity, compliance was treated as infrastructure, when it could have been a foundational narrative, and the much-needed proof that speed and safety can live side by side. Instead, it was treated like a nuisance, a problem to solve when it arose, something to tick off a checklist and move on. What it should have been, and easily so, is a leading pillar of what the company stands for.
The Founder-to-Operator inflection point
The co-founders excelled at vision. In a familiar story, they were able to scale a product that millions of people loved. But a bank isn’t just an app, and the regulatory environment for banks is held up by more than just vibes. By 2024, the investors and regulators were asking for discipline, which requires a different kind of leader. In this case, Visionaries were required to take on the role of Operator, and without the right approach or awareness of the difference in skillset and strengths, they were unable to step up. This is one of the most common startup dilemmas: either pivot and realign your identity and role to take on leadership in the Operator’s chair, or step back from owning it before you’re pushed out.
The silence between the storms
In my experience, investors rarely act overnight. Their confidence often erodes quietly, through missed signals and unanswered questions. The fines and sanctions weren’t just red flags, they were chances to over-communicate progress, to reframe the story. There was a move that could have helped steer the narrative in the right direction, more than a “mea culpa”, a doubling-down on regulatory topics and a reinforcement of their leadership position in a new but fast-establishing space. However that communication never came through with enough force.
N26 co-founders, Valentin Stalf and Maximilian Tayenthal
Facing the Founder’s (Truth) Dilemma
N26 is not a failure story. It’s an extraordinary company that redefined what a bank could feel like. But it’s also a reminder that leadership isn’t static. The role you play at ten employees isn’t the same one you need at 300, with ten million customers. N26’s founders didn’t lose their vision, or their drive. What they lost was the ability to evolve their signal, to recognize that as the company grew, it needed something different from them.
The story of N26, at its heart, is about what happens when the identity you have built as a leader no longer matches the company you are leading.
The founders built one of Europe’s most recognizable fintech brands on speed: speed to market, speed to scale, speed to millions of users. For years, that speed was the signal. Yet speed has a shadow side. The faster you grow, the harder it becomes to hold on to the infrastructure that carries you through the long game. In banking, that infrastructure is trust, built through the slow and meticulous work of compliance, controls, and governance.
The founders did not make that pivot in time. They remained Visionaries even as the company became something that needed Operators. By then, investors had already lost patience. These decisions are rarely made overnight. They build slowly, through moments when promises fall short, when assurances do not materialize, when warnings are ignored.
What is happening at N26 is a reminder that leadership is never a fixed identity. Your signal must evolve as your company evolves. Sometimes that means stepping into a role you never imagined for yourself. Other times it means recognizing that someone else is better placed to carry the signal forward.
I’ve walked in the trenches with many leaders, and seeing the forest for the trees is often the hardest part. I’ve found that people, more often than not, have good intentions, and want to do well. This is especially true of Visionaries, who are often a little more stubborn and a little less willing to let go of their passionate points of view, even when the world around them (and their company) has evolved and changed. Being open to true (and sometimes painful) self-awareness, accepting of the truth of who you are, and what your company is today, is a difficult exercise and often a moment of transformation for a leader who is willing to facing the truth for the greater good—both theirs and the company’s.
Note: I have no direct connection to N26 and have never spoken to its founders. What I’ve written here is based on public reporting and my own reflections on leadership and communication. For any corrections or concerns, contact me here.
