Citing Burnout and a Lack of Job Satisfaction, Monzo’s Founder Steps Down

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken its toll on the mental health of people around the world regardless of wealth or position. The story is no different for Monzo’s Tom Blomfield who was already feeling the strain of leading a financial startup with almost 5 million customers.

Blomfield has announced he will leave the challenger bank he founded in 2015 at the end of January 2021, according to TechCrunch. This marks the end of his direct involvement with the company, as he relinquished his role as CEO to TS Anil in May 2020 to take on a smaller role as President. The new position was created to afford Blomfield the time to focus on his mental health as he contemplated his future with Monzo.

In a conversation with TechCrunch, Blomfield admitted he stopped enjoying his role at Monzo “probably about two years ago… as we grew from a scrappy startup that was iterating and building stuff people really love, into a really important U.K. bank.” He went on to say that he enjoys working with small groups, growing ventures from scratch and building beloved products, rather than achieving profitability and IPOing, stating, “I think those are huge exciting challenges, just honestly not ones that I found that I was interested in or particularly good at.”

Like many others, the stress and isolation caused by the pandemic began to take their toll on Blomfield and amplify his existing pressures. “I don’t think I was any different, so I was really struggling,” he stated in the interview. “I had a really, really supportive exec team around me and a really supportive set of investors on board and I was really grateful that when I put my hand up and said, ‘I need help,’ they were super receptive to that.”

Once January is over and Blomfield will pass his already reduced workload to his carefully selected executive team who he says are better suited than him to continue scaling Monzo. The company closed a £60 million funding round in December 2020, valuing the company at £1.2 billion.

Though he won’t be an employee anymore, Blomfield says he will continue rooting for the scrappy startup he founded six years ago, but for now, he wants to take a vacation and relax. He also has recently gotten back into coding, meaning this isn’t likely the last we’ve heard from him.

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