1
00:00:00,120 --> 00:00:03,240
Speaker 1: Robin was a very controversial name, and I think that's

2
00:00:03,240 --> 00:00:06,400
Speaker 1: what made it powerful, because you either love it or

3
00:00:06,440 --> 00:00:09,240
Speaker 1: you're kind of like repulsed by it to some degree.

4
00:00:09,360 --> 00:00:12,160
Speaker 1: But it doesn't sound like a finance company. The name

5
00:00:12,240 --> 00:00:15,040
Speaker 1: itself tells you a lot about what the company stands

6
00:00:15,040 --> 00:00:18,600
Speaker 1: for and what the products help you achieve. The number

7
00:00:18,640 --> 00:00:19,520
Speaker 1: one health and Well.

8
00:00:19,520 --> 00:00:27,040
Speaker 2: In the podcast, Jay Sendi, Jay Shendy, Jez Only, j Sheet, Hey, everyone,

9
00:00:27,160 --> 00:00:30,200
Speaker 2: welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to listen,

10
00:00:30,440 --> 00:00:33,919
Speaker 2: learn and grow about how you can become happier, healthier,

11
00:00:34,240 --> 00:00:37,640
Speaker 2: and more healed. We talk about everything from personal growth

12
00:00:37,640 --> 00:00:42,080
Speaker 2: to finance, relationships to business and today's guest is someone

13
00:00:42,080 --> 00:00:46,080
Speaker 2: who's built something truly culturally phenomenon. And I think a

14
00:00:46,120 --> 00:00:48,120
Speaker 2: lot of you may be using the product already, a

15
00:00:48,120 --> 00:00:50,519
Speaker 2: lot of you definitely have heard about it, and a

16
00:00:50,520 --> 00:00:52,080
Speaker 2: lot of you may have a lot of questions like

17
00:00:52,159 --> 00:00:54,360
Speaker 2: I do, and so I'm so excited to have on

18
00:00:54,360 --> 00:00:58,880
Speaker 2: on Purpose. Vlad Tenev the CEO and co founder of Robinhood.

19
00:00:59,240 --> 00:01:03,480
Speaker 2: Vlad is a FIR generation immigrant from Bulgaria. In twenty thirteen,

20
00:01:03,640 --> 00:01:07,720
Speaker 2: Vlad co founded Robinhood and pioneered commission free investing with

21
00:01:07,840 --> 00:01:11,800
Speaker 2: an intuitive mobile first interface, and today Robinhood has more

22
00:01:11,800 --> 00:01:16,039
Speaker 2: than twenty three million funded customers and over one hundred

23
00:01:16,040 --> 00:01:20,200
Speaker 2: and nineteen billion assets under custody. Please welcome to on

24
00:01:20,280 --> 00:01:22,880
Speaker 2: Purpose Flood kind of Flood. It's great to have you here.

25
00:01:23,080 --> 00:01:24,200
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me Jay.

26
00:01:24,319 --> 00:01:28,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, really really fascinating journey you've been on personal and professional,

27
00:01:29,040 --> 00:01:31,800
Speaker 2: and I think our audience and community are going to

28
00:01:31,800 --> 00:01:34,160
Speaker 2: get a lot of value to understand more about the

29
00:01:34,160 --> 00:01:36,640
Speaker 2: investing world from you. But I wanted to start off

30
00:01:36,640 --> 00:01:41,280
Speaker 2: with a question because your pre founder life is actually

31
00:01:41,480 --> 00:01:44,080
Speaker 2: fascinating in terms of how you even got involved, and

32
00:01:44,120 --> 00:01:47,200
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you, what's a childhood memory that

33
00:01:47,280 --> 00:01:50,680
Speaker 2: you have that you feel has impacted the work you

34
00:01:50,760 --> 00:01:51,280
Speaker 2: do today.

35
00:01:51,440 --> 00:01:56,280
Speaker 1: If I think about the childhood memories that I have

36
00:01:56,400 --> 00:01:59,880
Speaker 1: that stick out, they're all kind of like somewhat from

37
00:02:00,520 --> 00:02:02,520
Speaker 1: I would say, but I think I had a very

38
00:02:02,560 --> 00:02:06,120
Speaker 1: happy childhood by and large, like I wouldn't trade anything,

39
00:02:06,200 --> 00:02:12,800
Speaker 1: but my childhood was full of significant change. So a

40
00:02:12,800 --> 00:02:15,680
Speaker 1: couple of the memories that stick out was going to

41
00:02:15,720 --> 00:02:18,119
Speaker 1: the airport for the first time. You know, I grew

42
00:02:18,200 --> 00:02:21,640
Speaker 1: up in Bulgaria, very small country in eastern Europe. I

43
00:02:21,720 --> 00:02:25,680
Speaker 1: was born in the eighties, which was a time of communism,

44
00:02:25,760 --> 00:02:29,240
Speaker 1: so it was sort of like there was the West

45
00:02:29,560 --> 00:02:32,960
Speaker 1: and then the Iron Curtain and not a lot of

46
00:02:33,400 --> 00:02:36,760
Speaker 1: back and forth travel. My first time to the airport

47
00:02:36,960 --> 00:02:41,720
Speaker 1: was actually after the Berlin Wall fell. Communism in Bulgaria

48
00:02:41,840 --> 00:02:45,760
Speaker 1: had kind of collapsed, or was on the verge of collapsing.

49
00:02:46,760 --> 00:02:51,320
Speaker 1: My father was given an opportunity to go to the

50
00:02:51,440 --> 00:02:55,320
Speaker 1: US to study, which was you know, the events that

51
00:02:55,400 --> 00:02:58,040
Speaker 1: kind of conspired to allow that to happen could not

52
00:02:58,120 --> 00:03:03,000
Speaker 1: have conspired an earlier time, right, But you know, he

53
00:03:03,080 --> 00:03:06,760
Speaker 1: had to go by himself because we just didn't have

54
00:03:06,800 --> 00:03:09,600
Speaker 1: the money to like send even my mom with him,

55
00:03:09,680 --> 00:03:12,640
Speaker 1: much less my mom and me, So he kind of

56
00:03:13,800 --> 00:03:18,839
Speaker 1: went off by himself to see if he could make

57
00:03:18,880 --> 00:03:21,760
Speaker 1: it and make a new life for us and kind

58
00:03:21,760 --> 00:03:25,160
Speaker 1: of this new land. And I think I they were

59
00:03:25,160 --> 00:03:27,400
Speaker 1: trying to prepare me for this because I was an

60
00:03:27,400 --> 00:03:32,680
Speaker 1: only child, and you know, the weeks leading up to it,

61
00:03:33,200 --> 00:03:35,120
Speaker 1: and my parents were like, you know, your dad's going

62
00:03:35,200 --> 00:03:39,000
Speaker 1: to America. You're not going to see him for a

63
00:03:39,040 --> 00:03:42,680
Speaker 1: long time, you know, And it ended up being I

64
00:03:42,680 --> 00:03:45,720
Speaker 1: think about two years before before I saw him again.

65
00:03:45,880 --> 00:03:48,480
Speaker 1: I'm not a very emotional person. I've kind of been

66
00:03:48,520 --> 00:03:52,080
Speaker 1: described as stoic. I wasn't a very emotional child, and

67
00:03:52,160 --> 00:03:55,280
Speaker 1: I just remember like when we got to the gate

68
00:03:55,880 --> 00:03:59,320
Speaker 1: and I and my dad kind of like went to

69
00:03:59,360 --> 00:04:03,120
Speaker 1: the other side. I didn't I wasn't like allowed to

70
00:04:04,040 --> 00:04:06,520
Speaker 1: cross because of course I didn't have a ticket. I

71
00:04:06,680 --> 00:04:10,240
Speaker 1: just like cried and baled my guts out because it

72
00:04:10,320 --> 00:04:12,160
Speaker 1: kind of sank in that I wasn't going to see

73
00:04:12,240 --> 00:04:15,440
Speaker 1: him for a very long time. That's probably one of

74
00:04:15,480 --> 00:04:18,960
Speaker 1: the one of the biggest memories. Another memory, you know,

75
00:04:19,240 --> 00:04:25,200
Speaker 1: perhaps a little bit more relevant to robinhood, was after

76
00:04:25,240 --> 00:04:29,400
Speaker 1: I had moved from Bulgaria to the US and we

77
00:04:29,440 --> 00:04:31,880
Speaker 1: had gotten enough money to have a vacation, and of

78
00:04:31,920 --> 00:04:35,360
Speaker 1: course the only place to go back on vacation was

79
00:04:35,400 --> 00:04:38,200
Speaker 1: to see my grandparents back in the home country. So

80
00:04:38,480 --> 00:04:42,200
Speaker 1: we'd gone back, and I remember the exchange rate of

81
00:04:42,240 --> 00:04:44,440
Speaker 1: the currency, right, It used to be sort of like

82
00:04:45,120 --> 00:04:48,520
Speaker 1: two Bulgarian leva for one dollar. But I came back

83
00:04:48,560 --> 00:04:52,000
Speaker 1: and it was two thousand. So Bulgaria had gone through

84
00:04:52,040 --> 00:04:56,159
Speaker 1: this incredible period of hyperinflation where the inflation of the

85
00:04:56,200 --> 00:04:59,760
Speaker 1: Bulgarian lev was the highest in the world. This was

86
00:05:00,040 --> 00:05:03,080
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, and I think nineteen ninety seven as well.

87
00:05:03,160 --> 00:05:05,680
Speaker 1: I think there were two years and so, you know,

88
00:05:05,880 --> 00:05:10,520
Speaker 1: my grandparents' pensions were just worthless. Everyone in the country

89
00:05:10,600 --> 00:05:16,920
Speaker 1: was struggling, and I think those early moments were when

90
00:05:16,960 --> 00:05:21,640
Speaker 1: I developed this like visceral understanding of how important money was,

91
00:05:21,800 --> 00:05:25,960
Speaker 1: because I think to a kid, money's maybe not so important,

92
00:05:26,080 --> 00:05:28,120
Speaker 1: but to me, you know, my parents were new in

93
00:05:28,160 --> 00:05:31,400
Speaker 1: the country. They were just like getting started from scratch,

94
00:05:31,520 --> 00:05:37,280
Speaker 1: basically starting from zero, and I always felt like every decision,

95
00:05:37,760 --> 00:05:41,920
Speaker 1: every family decision, had this like layer of like how

96
00:05:42,000 --> 00:05:44,960
Speaker 1: much money is going to be spent on this, how

97
00:05:45,000 --> 00:05:49,360
Speaker 1: important is it we have to like choose like the

98
00:05:49,360 --> 00:05:53,160
Speaker 1: the budget potato chips, or shop at Shopper's food warehouse

99
00:05:53,279 --> 00:05:55,719
Speaker 1: rather than Safe Way because they have like the dented

100
00:05:55,800 --> 00:05:58,640
Speaker 1: cans and stuff like that. So I think from very

101
00:05:58,680 --> 00:06:03,120
Speaker 1: early on, I got this understanding of like the importance

102
00:06:03,120 --> 00:06:07,640
Speaker 1: of money and saving it and protecting it, and that

103
00:06:07,200 --> 00:06:10,000
Speaker 1: that was just like driving so many of the decisions

104
00:06:10,040 --> 00:06:12,159
Speaker 1: that my parents were making on a daily basis.

105
00:06:12,360 --> 00:06:15,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for sharing both of those, Actually, they're such

106
00:06:15,600 --> 00:06:17,919
Speaker 2: unique perspectives. With the first one, what was it like

107
00:06:17,960 --> 00:06:21,520
Speaker 2: when you reunited with your dad after two years and

108
00:06:21,520 --> 00:06:23,080
Speaker 2: you saw him, you're absolutely in tears.

109
00:06:23,240 --> 00:06:28,479
Speaker 1: I remember that very vividly too. Actually, yeah, because I

110
00:06:28,560 --> 00:06:32,200
Speaker 1: landed in JFK Airport. I was five years old and

111
00:06:33,600 --> 00:06:37,400
Speaker 1: it was my first airplane flight, and I remember I

112
00:06:37,520 --> 00:06:40,039
Speaker 1: was just like puking my guts out that entire flight

113
00:06:40,240 --> 00:06:44,159
Speaker 1: because you know, they had some they were serving some

114
00:06:44,200 --> 00:06:47,599
Speaker 1: food on the plane, and I was traveling with my aunt,

115
00:06:47,640 --> 00:06:51,240
Speaker 1: who was like fifteen years old at the time, and

116
00:06:51,320 --> 00:06:54,560
Speaker 1: she was like a punk rock teenager, like she loved

117
00:06:54,600 --> 00:06:57,920
Speaker 1: American music. She had her Walkman on. She liked you know,

118
00:06:58,120 --> 00:07:03,320
Speaker 1: Nirvana and grunge. She later settled in Seattle, which which

119
00:07:03,320 --> 00:07:05,440
Speaker 1: I think made a lot of sense. But anyway, they

120
00:07:05,760 --> 00:07:08,719
Speaker 1: brought us the food in the plane, and you know,

121
00:07:08,760 --> 00:07:11,400
Speaker 1: it's funny. You think plain food was like just this

122
00:07:11,680 --> 00:07:14,360
Speaker 1: trash you don't want to eat it, but I thought

123
00:07:14,360 --> 00:07:16,840
Speaker 1: it was It looked amazing, So I just kind of

124
00:07:16,880 --> 00:07:20,520
Speaker 1: like engulfed all of it, and then of course that

125
00:07:20,640 --> 00:07:24,080
Speaker 1: led to uh me puking my guts out, and so

126
00:07:24,160 --> 00:07:27,440
Speaker 1: I didn't have a very fun plane ride. So I

127
00:07:27,480 --> 00:07:30,840
Speaker 1: felt a little off coming coming out on JFK, and

128
00:07:31,480 --> 00:07:34,240
Speaker 1: I hadn't seen my parents in a long time. It

129
00:07:34,360 --> 00:07:37,760
Speaker 1: was like I spent the majority of the past year

130
00:07:37,800 --> 00:07:41,000
Speaker 1: living with my grandparents. My dad first went and my

131
00:07:41,080 --> 00:07:44,640
Speaker 1: mom joined him later, and then I joined with my aunt,

132
00:07:44,880 --> 00:07:47,280
Speaker 1: and so I was very shy. It was it was

133
00:07:47,320 --> 00:07:51,560
Speaker 1: almost like meeting strangers, you know. Of course I knew

134
00:07:51,560 --> 00:07:54,160
Speaker 1: they were my parents, but after not having seen them

135
00:07:54,160 --> 00:07:57,040
Speaker 1: for a while, I was like kind of hiding behind

136
00:07:57,080 --> 00:07:59,880
Speaker 1: my aunt's leg and it would stick one eye out

137
00:08:00,800 --> 00:08:02,960
Speaker 1: get a look at them. And there's this picture of

138
00:08:03,000 --> 00:08:07,680
Speaker 1: me in the parking lot of JFK Airport when they

139
00:08:07,760 --> 00:08:09,880
Speaker 1: kind of like showed me the family car for the

140
00:08:09,920 --> 00:08:15,440
Speaker 1: first time, and it was this like Plymouth Duster from

141
00:08:15,520 --> 00:08:17,280
Speaker 1: the eighties. I don't know if you know the car,

142
00:08:17,320 --> 00:08:20,080
Speaker 1: but it had a mask. So back in the eighties

143
00:08:20,120 --> 00:08:22,640
Speaker 1: cars would have masks out front, and that was kind

144
00:08:22,640 --> 00:08:28,600
Speaker 1: of the style. And I could tell you could tell

145
00:08:28,640 --> 00:08:31,280
Speaker 1: by looking at me that I was like this shy kid,

146
00:08:31,400 --> 00:08:34,520
Speaker 1: very very nervous, didn't really know what was going on,

147
00:08:35,240 --> 00:08:39,920
Speaker 1: you know, landed in a new place, skyscrapers everywhere, you know,

148
00:08:39,960 --> 00:08:43,040
Speaker 1: there was just I remember the skyscrapers, you know, just

149
00:08:43,080 --> 00:08:46,800
Speaker 1: nothing prepares you for that when you're coming from a

150
00:08:46,920 --> 00:08:49,360
Speaker 1: very very small country it took me a little bit

151
00:08:49,360 --> 00:08:51,920
Speaker 1: of time to like get reacquainted with my parents. You

152
00:08:51,920 --> 00:08:54,840
Speaker 1: would think I would just like jump into their arms

153
00:08:54,880 --> 00:08:57,280
Speaker 1: and it would be like we we didn't miss a moment,

154
00:08:57,360 --> 00:08:59,720
Speaker 1: But there there was definitely a little bit of hesitancy

155
00:08:59,800 --> 00:09:03,640
Speaker 1: and shyness before I kind of warmed up and realized

156
00:09:03,679 --> 00:09:04,240
Speaker 1: who they were.

157
00:09:04,400 --> 00:09:08,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it makes sense because you had separate

158
00:09:08,440 --> 00:09:11,480
Speaker 2: so young that it's almost like you maybe haven't even

159
00:09:11,520 --> 00:09:15,600
Speaker 2: had an opportunity to even build a relationship at that age. Yeah.

160
00:09:15,640 --> 00:09:17,959
Speaker 1: I mean when my dad left, I must have been three.

161
00:09:17,800 --> 00:09:19,839
Speaker 2: Years, That's what I mean. It's yeah, I can't even

162
00:09:19,880 --> 00:09:20,760
Speaker 2: remember being three.

163
00:09:20,960 --> 00:09:24,199
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I have very few memories from before then.

164
00:09:24,280 --> 00:09:28,400
Speaker 1: Who was basically saying bye to my dad at the airport.

165
00:09:28,640 --> 00:09:32,720
Speaker 1: Maybe my third birthday party. I vaguely remember through pictures.

166
00:09:32,720 --> 00:09:36,520
Speaker 1: Maybe yeah, the first snowfall. But yeah, it's like three

167
00:09:36,600 --> 00:09:38,560
Speaker 1: or four memories and that's basically it.

168
00:09:38,840 --> 00:09:41,400
Speaker 2: Yeah. And with the second short story you shared about

169
00:09:41,400 --> 00:09:45,880
Speaker 2: the financial situation and seeing the inflation in Bulgaria and

170
00:09:46,120 --> 00:09:48,720
Speaker 2: coming back to that world you when you went back,

171
00:09:48,880 --> 00:09:50,840
Speaker 2: how did someone like that, how did a kid like

172
00:09:50,920 --> 00:09:55,120
Speaker 2: you shy separate from parents seeing that in Bulgaria get

173
00:09:55,160 --> 00:09:57,800
Speaker 2: to Stanford, Like, what does that journey look like? Because

174
00:09:57,920 --> 00:10:00,680
Speaker 2: I can imagine that that was an a simple or

175
00:10:00,679 --> 00:10:04,839
Speaker 2: easy journey. That doesn't seem like a natural, natural progression.

176
00:10:05,160 --> 00:10:07,360
Speaker 1: So when I got to the US, I didn't know

177
00:10:07,360 --> 00:10:08,360
Speaker 1: how to speak English.

178
00:10:08,520 --> 00:10:09,760
Speaker 2: That's what I was going to ask. That was it

179
00:10:09,880 --> 00:10:11,000
Speaker 2: your first language? Right?

180
00:10:11,200 --> 00:10:16,040
Speaker 1: Yeah? And Bulgarian was my first language. I think it

181
00:10:16,160 --> 00:10:19,520
Speaker 1: kind of became clear, you know, once my dad went

182
00:10:19,559 --> 00:10:24,000
Speaker 1: to the US. Then my mom tried to teach me English.

183
00:10:24,040 --> 00:10:27,240
Speaker 1: But you know, it doesn't really work unless you're kind

184
00:10:27,240 --> 00:10:30,440
Speaker 1: of talking to kids and doing it on a daily basis.

185
00:10:30,480 --> 00:10:34,040
Speaker 1: And I was three anyway, so it would have been

186
00:10:34,080 --> 00:10:37,160
Speaker 1: tough going. So when I first got to the US,

187
00:10:37,600 --> 00:10:42,640
Speaker 1: and I went to school in Bulgaria, and I never

188
00:10:42,679 --> 00:10:47,960
Speaker 1: really like found a good group of friends in school either.

189
00:10:48,040 --> 00:10:50,760
Speaker 1: I was kind of a lonely kid. I mean it

190
00:10:50,840 --> 00:10:55,400
Speaker 1: was preschool in kindergarten, so I don't have too many

191
00:10:55,440 --> 00:10:58,800
Speaker 1: memories of it. But I would always switch schools too.

192
00:10:59,280 --> 00:11:03,000
Speaker 1: Like I moved in with my grandparents, they obviously lived

193
00:11:03,000 --> 00:11:04,520
Speaker 1: in a different part of town, so I would go

194
00:11:04,559 --> 00:11:06,719
Speaker 1: in a different school. So I never really liked I

195
00:11:06,760 --> 00:11:09,880
Speaker 1: didn't like the idea of school, and I remember kind

196
00:11:09,880 --> 00:11:13,200
Speaker 1: of dreading having to go in this new country, and

197
00:11:13,440 --> 00:11:16,280
Speaker 1: even more so I didn't speak the language. I remember

198
00:11:16,400 --> 00:11:19,560
Speaker 1: just like kindergarten was was really hard. They were all

199
00:11:19,640 --> 00:11:24,440
Speaker 1: all kinds of different types of kids. I couldn't really

200
00:11:24,480 --> 00:11:28,360
Speaker 1: like navigate my way around. I didn't know who was who.

201
00:11:28,840 --> 00:11:31,520
Speaker 1: I couldn't even tell the teacher that I needed to

202
00:11:31,559 --> 00:11:33,400
Speaker 1: go to the bathroom. So it kind of hold it

203
00:11:33,440 --> 00:11:37,560
Speaker 1: in all day. And then I remember first grade. I

204
00:11:37,600 --> 00:11:40,800
Speaker 1: have this like one memory from first grade, which was

205
00:11:41,000 --> 00:11:44,640
Speaker 1: I was in a little reading circle and you know,

206
00:11:45,840 --> 00:11:48,200
Speaker 1: you know, like the kids do these reading circles and

207
00:11:48,400 --> 00:11:52,680
Speaker 1: you're reading like these basic books. And I still remember

208
00:11:52,720 --> 00:11:56,240
Speaker 1: this first grade reading circle and I was like, man,

209
00:11:57,080 --> 00:12:00,079
Speaker 1: I can read, And not only can I read, but

210
00:12:00,160 --> 00:12:03,600
Speaker 1: I'm reading better than all these American kids. So I

211
00:12:03,600 --> 00:12:06,440
Speaker 1: think that's when I kind of had the realization that

212
00:12:07,320 --> 00:12:11,679
Speaker 1: maybe I was like intelligent or I identified as a

213
00:12:11,960 --> 00:12:15,320
Speaker 1: smart person. And I think my parents did this like

214
00:12:15,800 --> 00:12:19,440
Speaker 1: really valuable thing in hindsight, which was they kind of

215
00:12:19,480 --> 00:12:22,200
Speaker 1: like advocated for me. So they never got into like

216
00:12:22,480 --> 00:12:26,400
Speaker 1: the PTA or school activities or volunteering. They just didn't

217
00:12:26,440 --> 00:12:30,240
Speaker 1: have time because my dad was in grad school and working.

218
00:12:30,559 --> 00:12:33,880
Speaker 1: My mom was working as well, just to try to supplement,

219
00:12:34,720 --> 00:12:40,320
Speaker 1: and they're like, you know, our kid is smart. He

220
00:12:40,360 --> 00:12:44,320
Speaker 1: should be in the accelerated like math. Can he skip grades?

221
00:12:44,360 --> 00:12:46,360
Speaker 1: They were always trying to like push the teachers to

222
00:12:46,400 --> 00:12:50,280
Speaker 1: put me in another grade, and the teachers were like, well, well,

223
00:12:50,320 --> 00:12:52,640
Speaker 1: he's small and he doesn't really have that many friends.

224
00:12:53,120 --> 00:12:55,720
Speaker 1: We don't really think it's a great idea for to

225
00:12:55,760 --> 00:12:58,720
Speaker 1: have him skip a whole bunch of grades. But you know,

226
00:12:58,720 --> 00:13:03,720
Speaker 1: they kept pushing, and eventually, you know, I was given

227
00:13:03,760 --> 00:13:07,120
Speaker 1: an opportunity to skip a grade. And I did like

228
00:13:07,320 --> 00:13:09,840
Speaker 1: very very well at school. But I kind of had

229
00:13:09,880 --> 00:13:14,480
Speaker 1: this fairly early realization that I was smart and kind

230
00:13:14,520 --> 00:13:19,240
Speaker 1: of good at math and sciences. And then my parents

231
00:13:19,320 --> 00:13:24,240
Speaker 1: also had this way of like applying pressure, which I

232
00:13:24,280 --> 00:13:27,880
Speaker 1: think was like kind of honest from their perspective, but

233
00:13:27,960 --> 00:13:30,880
Speaker 1: also might have been a little bit strategic, which was

234
00:13:31,760 --> 00:13:36,080
Speaker 1: we're new to this country. We're immigrants, like we're not citizens.

235
00:13:37,080 --> 00:13:39,440
Speaker 1: We could sort of like get kicked out at any time.

236
00:13:39,559 --> 00:13:44,000
Speaker 1: There was this like fear of deportation always, and so

237
00:13:44,080 --> 00:13:45,439
Speaker 1: it was kind of like you got to do well

238
00:13:45,480 --> 00:13:51,240
Speaker 1: in school because otherwise we might get deported, and for

239
00:13:51,320 --> 00:13:54,080
Speaker 1: sure you're gonna have to get a scholarship because we're

240
00:13:54,080 --> 00:13:56,800
Speaker 1: not making any money in this family, so you're gonna

241
00:13:56,840 --> 00:13:58,480
Speaker 1: have to, like if you want to go to college

242
00:13:58,520 --> 00:14:01,319
Speaker 1: and make it in this country and get education, it's

243
00:14:01,440 --> 00:14:03,920
Speaker 1: kind of on you. I would kind of hear this

244
00:14:04,040 --> 00:14:07,360
Speaker 1: and really internalize it at an early age, but it

245
00:14:07,400 --> 00:14:10,080
Speaker 1: was quite intense. I was like, all right, well, I

246
00:14:10,160 --> 00:14:14,400
Speaker 1: better just like always a saw my exams and do

247
00:14:14,559 --> 00:14:16,800
Speaker 1: well because there was like all this pressure of the

248
00:14:17,440 --> 00:14:20,120
Speaker 1: family making it in this country that I felt a

249
00:14:20,160 --> 00:14:23,320
Speaker 1: big part. Yeah, that I felt a big part of.

250
00:14:23,960 --> 00:14:25,880
Speaker 2: Did it ever feel like too much or it felt

251
00:14:25,880 --> 00:14:27,720
Speaker 2: like it just got you to perform and you locked in,

252
00:14:27,840 --> 00:14:30,360
Speaker 2: Like did you find pressure to be your friend or

253
00:14:30,800 --> 00:14:33,440
Speaker 2: did you find pressure overwhelming? Yeah?

254
00:14:33,840 --> 00:14:36,840
Speaker 1: I don't think that it ever felt like too much.

255
00:14:37,600 --> 00:14:42,800
Speaker 1: I think school felt School, at least kind of in

256
00:14:42,880 --> 00:14:48,800
Speaker 1: the early days, was relatively easy for me. Yeah, I

257
00:14:48,840 --> 00:14:53,880
Speaker 1: mean I kind of like sailed through elementary school. By

258
00:14:53,920 --> 00:14:56,480
Speaker 1: the time I got to middle school, I was probably

259
00:14:56,600 --> 00:15:03,280
Speaker 1: like four years ahead of my classmates, three or four

260
00:15:03,360 --> 00:15:09,400
Speaker 1: years ahead in mathematics, for example. My dad always emphasized

261
00:15:09,480 --> 00:15:12,160
Speaker 1: mathematics too, you know, he was he was an economist

262
00:15:12,280 --> 00:15:15,280
Speaker 1: in Bulgaria, and he was always like, well, you know,

263
00:15:15,480 --> 00:15:18,280
Speaker 1: if you're good at math, you can kind of do anything.

264
00:15:18,560 --> 00:15:22,080
Speaker 1: So all this other stuff, like you know, language, arts,

265
00:15:22,120 --> 00:15:24,280
Speaker 1: you know, you'll you'll figure that out. Math is like

266
00:15:24,400 --> 00:15:26,560
Speaker 1: the thing. And there was also a little bit of

267
00:15:26,600 --> 00:15:29,920
Speaker 1: a competitive element because I would be like, oh, Dad,

268
00:15:30,040 --> 00:15:32,800
Speaker 1: you know, how old were you when you figured out

269
00:15:32,840 --> 00:15:36,240
Speaker 1: like this type of math, Like when did you learn calculus?

270
00:15:36,560 --> 00:15:39,480
Speaker 1: And he was like, oh, I learned calculus when I

271
00:15:39,600 --> 00:15:42,160
Speaker 1: was in graduate school. I was like, all right, I'm

272
00:15:42,160 --> 00:15:47,160
Speaker 1: gonna do it in seventh grade. No, maybe it was

273
00:15:47,240 --> 00:15:51,160
Speaker 1: like eleventh grade or something pre calculus maybe. Then I

274
00:15:51,240 --> 00:15:53,760
Speaker 1: you know, started doing it outside of school. I started

275
00:15:53,800 --> 00:15:58,480
Speaker 1: doing all of these camps, like there was this one.

276
00:15:58,560 --> 00:16:01,440
Speaker 1: There was this one camp called CTY. I don't know

277
00:16:01,440 --> 00:16:04,680
Speaker 1: if you've heard of it. I did that in middle school.

278
00:16:05,160 --> 00:16:08,840
Speaker 1: And basically the way it worked was you take the SAT.

279
00:16:09,600 --> 00:16:13,480
Speaker 1: So the SAT is the for any listener who was

280
00:16:13,560 --> 00:16:17,040
Speaker 1: not an American college entrance exam here. I think it's

281
00:16:17,080 --> 00:16:19,640
Speaker 1: required again now for a while it wasn't required, but

282
00:16:20,160 --> 00:16:22,240
Speaker 1: basically you have to take it to get into a

283
00:16:22,280 --> 00:16:28,280
Speaker 1: good college. And for this camp ct Y, you basically

284
00:16:28,280 --> 00:16:31,080
Speaker 1: took it as a middle schooler, and then you know,

285
00:16:31,280 --> 00:16:33,480
Speaker 1: depending on how well you did on this test, you

286
00:16:33,520 --> 00:16:38,640
Speaker 1: could like qualify for certain classes. In eighth grade, I

287
00:16:38,720 --> 00:16:41,280
Speaker 1: got a pretty good score. I think I got a

288
00:16:41,400 --> 00:16:44,000
Speaker 1: thirteen seventy and I'd skipped a grade, so I was

289
00:16:44,040 --> 00:16:47,520
Speaker 1: like a younger eighth grade or two. And at that point,

290
00:16:47,640 --> 00:16:49,800
Speaker 1: you know, I had this math teacher in my middle

291
00:16:49,800 --> 00:16:52,600
Speaker 1: school and he had to like sign some stuff to

292
00:16:52,880 --> 00:16:55,120
Speaker 1: have me go to this camp. He's like seven seventy

293
00:16:55,200 --> 00:16:58,920
Speaker 1: on the on the math and the SAT like that's

294
00:16:59,000 --> 00:17:00,760
Speaker 1: higher than I ever got, you know, when I was

295
00:17:00,800 --> 00:17:04,239
Speaker 1: in college. So I think at that point, I just

296
00:17:04,359 --> 00:17:08,520
Speaker 1: I kept getting this reinforcement that you know, I was

297
00:17:08,560 --> 00:17:11,320
Speaker 1: really great at math. I should I should keep doing it.

298
00:17:11,960 --> 00:17:15,720
Speaker 1: And I guess Stanford. How I came to Stanford was

299
00:17:15,760 --> 00:17:19,400
Speaker 1: an interesting story. The second vacation that my family took

300
00:17:19,520 --> 00:17:22,960
Speaker 1: after we moved to America, they took me to California

301
00:17:23,240 --> 00:17:26,479
Speaker 1: and my dad was like reading all these travel books

302
00:17:26,520 --> 00:17:28,840
Speaker 1: and he had this book like the thousand and one

303
00:17:28,880 --> 00:17:31,560
Speaker 1: Places to See Before you Die, and a lot of

304
00:17:31,600 --> 00:17:33,760
Speaker 1: them were on the West Coast, so like the Grand

305
00:17:33,800 --> 00:17:38,440
Speaker 1: Canyon and Sequoia National Park, where you could drive your

306
00:17:38,480 --> 00:17:41,119
Speaker 1: car through this like big tree. I don't know if

307
00:17:41,160 --> 00:17:44,120
Speaker 1: you've seen pictures of that. We drove through the tree,

308
00:17:44,240 --> 00:17:48,479
Speaker 1: and we kind of did this road trip through California,

309
00:17:48,960 --> 00:17:52,119
Speaker 1: and there was this one day where we drove through

310
00:17:52,200 --> 00:17:54,800
Speaker 1: San Francisco and we spent the night there and it

311
00:17:54,880 --> 00:17:57,280
Speaker 1: was the middle of summer and it was raining. It

312
00:17:57,400 --> 00:18:02,239
Speaker 1: was like close to zero degree celsius. So I had

313
00:18:02,280 --> 00:18:05,240
Speaker 1: to actually buy a jacket because I was just unprepared

314
00:18:05,280 --> 00:18:08,840
Speaker 1: for this. So kind of kind of this miserable day,

315
00:18:09,240 --> 00:18:13,000
Speaker 1: and then we drove down. We drove down to Stanford,

316
00:18:13,040 --> 00:18:15,440
Speaker 1: which was in Palo Alto, about forty five minutes south

317
00:18:15,480 --> 00:18:20,040
Speaker 1: of the city, and everything cleared up. The sky was blue,

318
00:18:20,160 --> 00:18:24,040
Speaker 1: not a single cloud in the sky. It was sunny.

319
00:18:24,280 --> 00:18:27,000
Speaker 1: They were like I think summer school was in session,

320
00:18:27,240 --> 00:18:30,639
Speaker 1: so kids were like throwing frisbee at the oval and

321
00:18:30,680 --> 00:18:34,000
Speaker 1: they were like kids picnicking in the main quad, and

322
00:18:34,600 --> 00:18:40,399
Speaker 1: I just remember it felt so idyllic, particularly juxtaposed against

323
00:18:40,400 --> 00:18:44,719
Speaker 1: how horrible San Francisco was that day that I was like,

324
00:18:45,520 --> 00:18:47,639
Speaker 1: this is where I want to go, Like my parents

325
00:18:47,640 --> 00:18:50,520
Speaker 1: have been spending all this time talking about college. This

326
00:18:50,800 --> 00:18:53,879
Speaker 1: seems like a fantastic college. So back then I wanted

327
00:18:53,880 --> 00:18:55,760
Speaker 1: to be a lawyer. So there's this photo of me

328
00:18:55,880 --> 00:18:57,600
Speaker 1: on that road trip in front of the law school

329
00:18:57,640 --> 00:18:59,760
Speaker 1: at Stanford, and I'm like, yeah, this is where I'm

330
00:18:59,760 --> 00:19:02,000
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna go and be a lawyer. I had

331
00:19:02,000 --> 00:19:05,240
Speaker 1: seen a few good men, you know, the Tom Cruise movie.

332
00:19:05,520 --> 00:19:07,679
Speaker 1: I thought being a lawyer was so cool because you

333
00:19:07,760 --> 00:19:12,600
Speaker 1: get to like really get the people, like these intense arguments.

334
00:19:12,680 --> 00:19:15,560
Speaker 1: I think I always remembered that even when I applied

335
00:19:15,600 --> 00:19:19,200
Speaker 1: for college. I applied early to Stanford as a result,

336
00:19:19,960 --> 00:19:22,919
Speaker 1: but the lawyer thing I kind of grew out of.

337
00:19:23,640 --> 00:19:27,080
Speaker 2: Let's take a short break to hear from our sponsors.

338
00:19:27,840 --> 00:19:30,680
Speaker 2: All right, thank you to our sponsors. Now let's dive

339
00:19:30,720 --> 00:19:34,120
Speaker 2: back in. Was robin Hood the story ever a part

340
00:19:34,119 --> 00:19:36,800
Speaker 2: of your early life or was that just a name

341
00:19:36,840 --> 00:19:40,400
Speaker 2: that stuck out as a name in and of itself? Yeah?

342
00:19:40,520 --> 00:19:42,119
Speaker 2: Did you ask the cartoon when you grew up? Or

343
00:19:42,119 --> 00:19:43,440
Speaker 2: did you read the book? I did?

344
00:19:43,560 --> 00:19:46,359
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I watched the cartoon. I was a big

345
00:19:46,359 --> 00:19:49,280
Speaker 1: fan of that. And of course Men in Tights was

346
00:19:49,680 --> 00:19:54,000
Speaker 1: another great one. The origin of Robinhood the name was

347
00:19:54,440 --> 00:19:58,119
Speaker 1: you know, the finance industry had a bad rap in

348
00:19:58,800 --> 00:20:02,480
Speaker 1: the early part of the last decade. Still does, really

349
00:20:02,640 --> 00:20:10,560
Speaker 1: still does. So you know, my girlfriend Selena my wife now,

350
00:20:10,600 --> 00:20:13,280
Speaker 1: but my girlfriend at the time, she was kind of

351
00:20:13,320 --> 00:20:16,720
Speaker 1: like she started dating me. I was this entrepreneur, I

352
00:20:16,760 --> 00:20:20,920
Speaker 1: had this idea, and she had to kind of explain

353
00:20:21,080 --> 00:20:23,879
Speaker 1: to her friends what I was doing. And she was

354
00:20:23,920 --> 00:20:26,280
Speaker 1: like a doctor and medical researcher at the time, so

355
00:20:26,359 --> 00:20:30,440
Speaker 1: that's a very concrete thing. You know, her friends were

356
00:20:30,440 --> 00:20:35,640
Speaker 1: mostly researchers and doctors. So she was like, well, Vlad,

357
00:20:35,760 --> 00:20:38,679
Speaker 1: you know, he's in finance. But then there'd be like

358
00:20:38,720 --> 00:20:40,720
Speaker 1: this groan, like, oh, you know, they thought I was

359
00:20:40,760 --> 00:20:43,560
Speaker 1: some kind of investment banker or something. She's like, no, no, no,

360
00:20:43,600 --> 00:20:46,080
Speaker 1: but not that kind of finance. They're like the Robinhood

361
00:20:46,080 --> 00:20:48,440
Speaker 1: of finance. They're trying to help the little guy, giving

362
00:20:48,440 --> 00:20:52,080
Speaker 1: them tools to invest and manage their money. And so

363
00:20:52,160 --> 00:20:54,000
Speaker 1: when we were kind of coming up with the name,

364
00:20:54,359 --> 00:20:56,760
Speaker 1: that was a name that that we got excited by.

365
00:20:57,040 --> 00:20:59,080
Speaker 1: And there were a couple of other names too, Like

366
00:20:59,800 --> 00:21:04,840
Speaker 1: we thought about naming the company Omaha actually, and we

367
00:21:04,920 --> 00:21:07,679
Speaker 1: got pretty close to that one. And in hindsight, you know,

368
00:21:07,760 --> 00:21:12,119
Speaker 1: Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger were never big fans of Robinhood.

369
00:21:12,160 --> 00:21:15,120
Speaker 1: They were kind of like crapping on us from time

370
00:21:15,160 --> 00:21:17,840
Speaker 1: to time publicly. So sometimes I think if we had

371
00:21:17,920 --> 00:21:21,040
Speaker 1: named the company Omaha, maybe we wouldn't have had that element.

372
00:21:21,600 --> 00:21:24,479
Speaker 1: I'd also never been to Omaha, so that kind of

373
00:21:24,520 --> 00:21:27,879
Speaker 1: like that sealed it for me. So Robin was a

374
00:21:28,000 --> 00:21:31,560
Speaker 1: very controversial name, and I think that's what made it powerful,

375
00:21:31,600 --> 00:21:34,360
Speaker 1: because you either love it or you're kind of like

376
00:21:34,800 --> 00:21:38,160
Speaker 1: repulsed by it to some degree. But it's not boring.

377
00:21:38,480 --> 00:21:40,359
Speaker 2: It doesn't sound like a normal finance company.

378
00:21:40,359 --> 00:21:43,560
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like a finance company. And I think

379
00:21:43,560 --> 00:21:46,920
Speaker 1: in hindsight that was a really good thing because it's

380
00:21:47,000 --> 00:21:51,480
Speaker 1: just memorable and it's like emotionally gripping, and the name

381
00:21:51,520 --> 00:21:53,639
Speaker 1: itself kind of tells you a lot about what the

382
00:21:53,680 --> 00:21:57,320
Speaker 1: company stands for and what the products should like help

383
00:21:57,359 --> 00:21:57,880
Speaker 1: you achieve.

384
00:21:58,200 --> 00:21:59,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, how old were you when you first died in that?

385
00:22:00,640 --> 00:22:03,919
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it ties into what we were talking

386
00:22:03,920 --> 00:22:06,600
Speaker 1: about earlier. I was at home during the summer because

387
00:22:06,640 --> 00:22:08,440
Speaker 1: you know, my parents were working, and I spent a

388
00:22:08,480 --> 00:22:12,840
Speaker 1: lot of time with computers, and one of the early

389
00:22:12,920 --> 00:22:18,040
Speaker 1: things I discovered was like building a portfolio on Yahoo

390
00:22:18,119 --> 00:22:24,280
Speaker 1: Finance actually, and this was nineteen ninety seven, late nineties. Wow,

391
00:22:25,320 --> 00:22:29,920
Speaker 1: So during the dot com boom, when somehow, I don't

392
00:22:29,920 --> 00:22:32,560
Speaker 1: even know how I came across this, but I was

393
00:22:32,600 --> 00:22:37,960
Speaker 1: building a portfolio of companies that I recognized, like Yahoo

394
00:22:39,000 --> 00:22:41,159
Speaker 1: three Com, which made the Palm Pilot one of the

395
00:22:41,200 --> 00:22:46,000
Speaker 1: first consumer PDAs at the time PDAs. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah,

396
00:22:46,200 --> 00:22:50,359
Speaker 1: I remember, well ahead of their time, right, yeah, very

397
00:22:50,560 --> 00:22:54,480
Speaker 1: I did decently well. In hindsight, everyone was doing well

398
00:22:54,520 --> 00:22:57,160
Speaker 1: on all those stocks for quite a long time because

399
00:22:57,160 --> 00:23:02,000
Speaker 1: it was the dot com bubble. But my parents basically

400
00:23:02,040 --> 00:23:05,000
Speaker 1: saw an opportunity to motivate me to do well on

401
00:23:05,040 --> 00:23:08,360
Speaker 1: the SAT to qualify for this camp that we were

402
00:23:08,359 --> 00:23:12,040
Speaker 1: talking about earlier. So basically they were like, if you

403
00:23:12,320 --> 00:23:17,800
Speaker 1: get above I think it was like thirteen hundred on

404
00:23:17,840 --> 00:23:21,000
Speaker 1: the SAT, we will let you invest with like the

405
00:23:21,119 --> 00:23:23,720
Speaker 1: dollar amount of your score. It was something like that.

406
00:23:24,240 --> 00:23:27,680
Speaker 1: And so you know, I was like very motivated by this.

407
00:23:28,800 --> 00:23:32,240
Speaker 1: And so when I got my thirteen seventy and my

408
00:23:32,359 --> 00:23:34,840
Speaker 1: dad and I kind of he funded an e trade

409
00:23:34,840 --> 00:23:37,600
Speaker 1: account for me and I started investing.

410
00:23:38,000 --> 00:23:40,240
Speaker 2: No way, do you remember your vest investment? Yep?

411
00:23:40,480 --> 00:23:44,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, I bought three Com, the company that made the

412
00:23:44,800 --> 00:23:50,040
Speaker 1: palm Pilot. My feeling was that this device was so interesting,

413
00:23:50,400 --> 00:23:53,560
Speaker 1: and they had started giving them out to my parents,

414
00:23:53,760 --> 00:23:56,399
Speaker 1: who by that point were working at the World Bank,

415
00:23:57,080 --> 00:24:01,160
Speaker 1: and I was like, all right, well, if the World

416
00:24:01,160 --> 00:24:03,480
Speaker 1: Bank is using them, this must be a company that

417
00:24:03,720 --> 00:24:06,399
Speaker 1: you know, is growing and they'll probably be around for

418
00:24:06,840 --> 00:24:09,520
Speaker 1: a while. And plus the device was just super cool.

419
00:24:10,160 --> 00:24:12,520
Speaker 1: You know. Pretty soon after my dad brought it home,

420
00:24:12,560 --> 00:24:13,960
Speaker 1: he didn't know how to use it, so I just

421
00:24:14,000 --> 00:24:17,600
Speaker 1: took it and started playing with it. So and actually

422
00:24:17,640 --> 00:24:20,399
Speaker 1: through that I learned a lot about investing, because what

423
00:24:20,520 --> 00:24:24,119
Speaker 1: happened was there was a spinoff. So first that started

424
00:24:24,160 --> 00:24:27,480
Speaker 1: at as three Com, but then this palm Pilot business

425
00:24:27,600 --> 00:24:31,119
Speaker 1: was growing and they spun it off, so then I

426
00:24:31,200 --> 00:24:34,520
Speaker 1: had two stocks. And then I started getting the prospectuses

427
00:24:34,560 --> 00:24:37,800
Speaker 1: in the mail and voting documents, and I learned all

428
00:24:37,840 --> 00:24:42,360
Speaker 1: about like shareholder proxy voting and all the stuff that

429
00:24:42,560 --> 00:24:47,040
Speaker 1: a normal twelve year old probably wouldn't wouldn't have occasion

430
00:24:47,080 --> 00:24:50,000
Speaker 1: to learn about. But because I was invested, I actually

431
00:24:50,080 --> 00:24:54,400
Speaker 1: like felt compelled to learn more. So yeah, I think

432
00:24:54,480 --> 00:24:58,520
Speaker 1: that really set me off on a lifetime of learning

433
00:24:58,560 --> 00:24:59,920
Speaker 1: about investing in finance.

434
00:25:00,160 --> 00:25:02,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, how much How did did you make or lose?

435
00:25:02,160 --> 00:25:04,120
Speaker 1: At first? I was I was up quite a bit.

436
00:25:04,640 --> 00:25:08,240
Speaker 1: Then in two thousand, I think my portfolio dropped to

437
00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:13,280
Speaker 1: maybe like twenty thirty percent of what I started with,

438
00:25:13,840 --> 00:25:16,880
Speaker 1: and then I think it probably took another ten years

439
00:25:17,320 --> 00:25:20,720
Speaker 1: beyond that for that portfolio to be in the green again.

440
00:25:20,920 --> 00:25:21,320
Speaker 2: Oh wow.

441
00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:23,239
Speaker 1: But I mean, I would say it's the great thing

442
00:25:23,240 --> 00:25:26,439
Speaker 1: about getting started young in general, not just for me.

443
00:25:26,920 --> 00:25:30,520
Speaker 1: You have plenty of time to actually like make up

444
00:25:30,520 --> 00:25:34,560
Speaker 1: for the mistakes, and you know, compounding over a long

445
00:25:34,600 --> 00:25:38,440
Speaker 1: period of time corrects a lot of mistakes. So I think,

446
00:25:38,560 --> 00:25:41,920
Speaker 1: generally speaking, the earlier you can get started the investing,

447
00:25:41,960 --> 00:25:42,399
Speaker 1: the better.

448
00:25:42,840 --> 00:25:45,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fascinating hearing about your own investing journey and

449
00:25:46,160 --> 00:25:49,200
Speaker 2: starting at twelve is is pretty young. I mean, that's

450
00:25:50,000 --> 00:25:54,600
Speaker 2: pretty impressive that you were able to compute and factor

451
00:25:54,600 --> 00:25:56,320
Speaker 2: that in. Have you ever taken an IQ test? Like,

452
00:25:56,400 --> 00:25:58,800
Speaker 2: do you know your argue? I have not. Yeah. Yeah,

453
00:25:58,800 --> 00:26:00,960
Speaker 2: I'm just say I was intrigued. Yeah, it just based

454
00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:03,840
Speaker 2: on everything you've been saying. I'm just like, it's rare

455
00:26:03,880 --> 00:26:08,080
Speaker 2: that I've met someone who's felt that they've always excelled

456
00:26:08,119 --> 00:26:10,440
Speaker 2: since an early age, like that's not as common an

457
00:26:10,440 --> 00:26:13,359
Speaker 2: experience anymore. Yeah, I don't know if you meet people

458
00:26:13,440 --> 00:26:13,800
Speaker 2: like that.

459
00:26:14,160 --> 00:26:18,879
Speaker 1: I mean, I do think that Stanford in particular is

460
00:26:19,320 --> 00:26:24,400
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting amalgamation of people. So you have

461
00:26:25,640 --> 00:26:32,440
Speaker 1: a lot of people from like diverse, modest backgrounds that

462
00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:37,240
Speaker 1: come to Stanford, and usually those people have like excelled academically,

463
00:26:37,560 --> 00:26:41,119
Speaker 1: which is pretty amazing. And then you also have people

464
00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:47,080
Speaker 1: that come from like wealthy families from all over the world.

465
00:26:47,600 --> 00:26:47,800
Speaker 2: Yeah.

466
00:26:47,920 --> 00:26:50,960
Speaker 1: I think some people consider that to be not ideal,

467
00:26:51,119 --> 00:26:55,000
Speaker 1: like maybe it should all be merit based and everything,

468
00:26:55,440 --> 00:26:58,959
Speaker 1: but I think it actually has worked fairly well because

469
00:26:58,960 --> 00:27:04,640
Speaker 1: what happens is the folks from modest means that have

470
00:27:04,760 --> 00:27:07,720
Speaker 1: like really high horsepower get to make connections, and you

471
00:27:07,760 --> 00:27:10,360
Speaker 1: make connections with all of these people and it kind

472
00:27:10,400 --> 00:27:14,040
Speaker 1: of unlocks business opportunities for you. So, you know, a

473
00:27:14,040 --> 00:27:17,080
Speaker 1: lot of the folks that I met in my undergrad

474
00:27:17,200 --> 00:27:20,280
Speaker 1: and the different types of people, I think at the

475
00:27:20,359 --> 00:27:24,480
Speaker 1: time I kind of didn't recognize this, but they ended

476
00:27:24,560 --> 00:27:29,160
Speaker 1: up helping me in my business career, either because they

477
00:27:29,160 --> 00:27:33,600
Speaker 1: became journalists that like helped tell the story of Robinhood,

478
00:27:33,720 --> 00:27:38,320
Speaker 1: or they joined venture capital firms and they became indirectly

479
00:27:38,440 --> 00:27:41,639
Speaker 1: or directly investors in Robinhood, or they advised us with

480
00:27:41,720 --> 00:27:45,440
Speaker 1: certain things. I think everyone is so diffuse in general

481
00:27:45,600 --> 00:27:48,960
Speaker 1: because people grow up in different places. But like, college

482
00:27:49,000 --> 00:27:52,520
Speaker 1: is one of those moments that people get brought together,

483
00:27:52,840 --> 00:27:56,760
Speaker 1: and you do in a place like Stanford in particular,

484
00:27:57,240 --> 00:28:00,480
Speaker 1: get to encounter a lot of a lot of really

485
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:03,359
Speaker 1: special people. And you know, when I came to Stanford,

486
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:07,879
Speaker 1: I actually had no conception of going into business, you

487
00:28:07,920 --> 00:28:10,520
Speaker 1: know that I kind of stumbled into that later. By

488
00:28:10,560 --> 00:28:13,199
Speaker 1: the time I got to college, I was interested in

489
00:28:13,240 --> 00:28:16,800
Speaker 1: theoretical physics. That was like my passion because I was

490
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:21,000
Speaker 1: consumed by this question of, like why are the laws

491
00:28:21,040 --> 00:28:24,640
Speaker 1: of the universe the way they are? I had read

492
00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:28,320
Speaker 1: about relativity when I was in high school, and I

493
00:28:28,400 --> 00:28:31,760
Speaker 1: was just like the first time I read like the

494
00:28:32,359 --> 00:28:36,000
Speaker 1: you know, Einstein's Book of Special Relativity, it just blew

495
00:28:36,040 --> 00:28:38,120
Speaker 1: my mind. And I had to read it like six

496
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:41,400
Speaker 1: or seven times to figure out what was going on,

497
00:28:41,960 --> 00:28:44,840
Speaker 1: you know, and then I you know, you try to

498
00:28:45,120 --> 00:28:50,520
Speaker 1: understand more and deeper. And the question that really motivated

499
00:28:50,560 --> 00:28:55,080
Speaker 1: me was like why do the laws of gravity look

500
00:28:55,200 --> 00:28:58,560
Speaker 1: like this, but like all the sub atomic particles like

501
00:28:58,960 --> 00:29:02,240
Speaker 1: all the laws around article physics look different, and is

502
00:29:02,280 --> 00:29:06,479
Speaker 1: there one theory that is basic that unifies both of them.

503
00:29:06,800 --> 00:29:10,959
Speaker 1: This sort of like unification of quantum gravity was this

504
00:29:11,080 --> 00:29:14,080
Speaker 1: topic that really interested me. So I came to Stanford

505
00:29:14,080 --> 00:29:16,959
Speaker 1: to study that, and that's kind of what what pushed

506
00:29:16,960 --> 00:29:21,280
Speaker 1: me into into eventually doing math and going to UCLA

507
00:29:21,400 --> 00:29:25,560
Speaker 1: to study math with a professor named Terry Tao. But like,

508
00:29:25,720 --> 00:29:28,160
Speaker 1: if you think about that group of people, the folks

509
00:29:28,160 --> 00:29:33,880
Speaker 1: at Stanford who come to study theoretical physics, and you

510
00:29:33,880 --> 00:29:36,239
Speaker 1: don't do that because there's very little money in it,

511
00:29:36,640 --> 00:29:40,160
Speaker 1: particularly back then, right, this was like pre data science

512
00:29:40,240 --> 00:29:45,440
Speaker 1: and applied machine learning. So yeah, Actually, by by the

513
00:29:45,480 --> 00:29:48,480
Speaker 1: time I got to that point, I was looking around

514
00:29:48,480 --> 00:29:51,680
Speaker 1: and I'm like, wow, I'm the dumbest person here. These

515
00:29:51,680 --> 00:29:54,440
Speaker 1: are just I'm surrounded by like some of the smartest

516
00:29:54,440 --> 00:29:55,440
Speaker 1: people I've ever met.

517
00:29:55,680 --> 00:29:57,920
Speaker 2: Well, and how did you get distracted from that?

518
00:29:59,640 --> 00:30:05,400
Speaker 1: I was here at UCLA studying math, and two things happened.

519
00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:09,880
Speaker 1: The number one thing was when I decided to go

520
00:30:09,880 --> 00:30:15,720
Speaker 1: to graduate school and kind I think my bubble of

521
00:30:16,040 --> 00:30:19,400
Speaker 1: the academic world kind of burst a little bit because

522
00:30:19,400 --> 00:30:24,960
Speaker 1: I had this romantic notion that you would kind of

523
00:30:24,960 --> 00:30:29,520
Speaker 1: spend all of your time thinking about difficult problems and

524
00:30:29,760 --> 00:30:33,200
Speaker 1: just like being creative. It's almost like being an artist,

525
00:30:33,520 --> 00:30:35,640
Speaker 1: like maybe there's not much money in it, but you

526
00:30:35,680 --> 00:30:39,880
Speaker 1: spend a lot of your time just like practicing your craft. Right.

527
00:30:40,040 --> 00:30:42,040
Speaker 1: But then I was given this book. It was called

528
00:30:42,040 --> 00:30:46,080
Speaker 1: like the Mathematicians Survival Guide, and it was like chapters

529
00:30:46,160 --> 00:30:49,680
Speaker 1: about how to deal with the administration and the bureaucracy

530
00:30:49,720 --> 00:30:53,920
Speaker 1: of the graduate department, how to advocate yourself for yourself

531
00:30:53,960 --> 00:30:56,680
Speaker 1: with the department chair, how to make sure that you

532
00:30:56,760 --> 00:30:59,800
Speaker 1: get like a good research fellowship so you don't have

533
00:30:59,840 --> 00:31:03,600
Speaker 1: to spend all of your time teaching undergraduate classes. And

534
00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:06,880
Speaker 1: I think at that point I was like, oh, man,

535
00:31:07,240 --> 00:31:12,240
Speaker 1: like this is a career and it's not like the

536
00:31:12,320 --> 00:31:16,160
Speaker 1: career that I wanted. Another thing happened at the same time.

537
00:31:16,240 --> 00:31:19,560
Speaker 1: So my first month in grad school was September of

538
00:31:19,600 --> 00:31:24,280
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, and Lehman Brothers went under that month.

539
00:31:24,880 --> 00:31:27,600
Speaker 1: It was it was the start of the global financial crisis.

540
00:31:27,880 --> 00:31:30,320
Speaker 1: You and I are basically at the same age, I think,

541
00:31:30,480 --> 00:31:36,960
Speaker 1: born in eighty seven. This was kind of like maybe

542
00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:42,320
Speaker 1: for you, for me certainly, like the folks that graduated

543
00:31:42,400 --> 00:31:45,040
Speaker 1: my year of college, some of them went to finance

544
00:31:45,080 --> 00:31:49,080
Speaker 1: and some of them even went to work at Lehman Brothers.

545
00:31:49,120 --> 00:31:53,480
Speaker 1: And it was sort of like one month after they joined,

546
00:31:54,120 --> 00:31:57,680
Speaker 1: you know, there was like photographs of them carrying their

547
00:31:57,720 --> 00:32:01,000
Speaker 1: stuff out of the offices and boxes. Right, So, yeah,

548
00:32:01,040 --> 00:32:03,920
Speaker 1: that was a tough time for a lot of people.

549
00:32:04,240 --> 00:32:07,440
Speaker 1: A lot of my friend's parents lost their jobs that year,

550
00:32:08,000 --> 00:32:15,040
Speaker 1: so it was the global financial crisis. And yes, somewhat oddly,

551
00:32:15,520 --> 00:32:19,120
Speaker 1: my good friend from college, whose name was Beiju Bod

552
00:32:19,240 --> 00:32:21,600
Speaker 1: who I ended up starting Robinwood with, he had gotten

553
00:32:21,640 --> 00:32:24,000
Speaker 1: a job in finance kind of on a whim, and

554
00:32:24,600 --> 00:32:27,320
Speaker 1: he managed to convince me that this time was the

555
00:32:27,320 --> 00:32:30,440
Speaker 1: best time to start a finance company. And of course

556
00:32:30,480 --> 00:32:34,280
Speaker 1: I wasn't like super committed to my PhD path because

557
00:32:34,560 --> 00:32:38,120
Speaker 1: of all the other stuff I mentioned. So I was like,

558
00:32:38,360 --> 00:32:41,880
Speaker 1: you know what, this sounds like an interesting problem. Let's

559
00:32:41,880 --> 00:32:44,320
Speaker 1: see if we can do something here. So we rented

560
00:32:44,320 --> 00:32:47,720
Speaker 1: a little house in South San Francisco in the South

561
00:32:47,800 --> 00:32:52,520
Speaker 1: Mission where we were paying like three hundred dollars a

562
00:32:52,520 --> 00:32:56,800
Speaker 1: month in rent. We're all living together. I had to

563
00:32:56,840 --> 00:32:59,480
Speaker 1: take care of this lady's cats, which was why the

564
00:32:59,480 --> 00:33:02,040
Speaker 1: rent was so cheap. That was kind of my first

565
00:33:02,080 --> 00:33:05,920
Speaker 1: experience with entrepreneurship. What attracted me to it was kind

566
00:33:05,960 --> 00:33:11,080
Speaker 1: of the same thing that attracted me about math and physics.

567
00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:16,160
Speaker 1: It was the act of creating something with you didn't

568
00:33:16,200 --> 00:33:20,680
Speaker 1: really have to listen to anyone telling you what to do.

569
00:33:21,800 --> 00:33:26,959
Speaker 1: You could use your entire mental faculties and your creativity

570
00:33:27,120 --> 00:33:30,560
Speaker 1: to like determine your own success and your outcomes. You know,

571
00:33:30,800 --> 00:33:33,320
Speaker 1: just like a couple of people who were really passionate

572
00:33:33,360 --> 00:33:38,120
Speaker 1: and committed could build something and you know, actually use

573
00:33:38,160 --> 00:33:43,240
Speaker 1: it as a vehicle to sustain themselves economically. So that

574
00:33:43,400 --> 00:33:46,280
Speaker 1: idea when I kind of discovered it, and I never

575
00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:49,680
Speaker 1: really like thought of myself as an entrepreneur before. I mean,

576
00:33:49,720 --> 00:33:52,719
Speaker 1: it wasn't really something that was common in the East Coast,

577
00:33:53,000 --> 00:33:55,680
Speaker 1: to be honest, or in Bulgaria. I mean you had

578
00:33:55,720 --> 00:34:00,080
Speaker 1: some but not technology entrepreneurship really. And then when and

579
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:02,640
Speaker 1: I kind of started doing it and I started like

580
00:34:02,760 --> 00:34:06,400
Speaker 1: programming and writing code, then I just like found the

581
00:34:06,440 --> 00:34:11,600
Speaker 1: whole thing really intoxicating. So even though we didn't have

582
00:34:11,680 --> 00:34:15,959
Speaker 1: success it basically our first idea failed within a year,

583
00:34:17,160 --> 00:34:19,640
Speaker 1: I just kind of knew that that I wanted to

584
00:34:19,680 --> 00:34:21,880
Speaker 1: do it. So that that gave me the confidence to

585
00:34:22,920 --> 00:34:26,480
Speaker 1: drop out of UCLA start something a little bit different,

586
00:34:26,600 --> 00:34:31,080
Speaker 1: and it was it was the third idea that we

587
00:34:31,239 --> 00:34:33,680
Speaker 1: had that led to Robinhood, and that was kind of

588
00:34:33,680 --> 00:34:36,160
Speaker 1: the one that really worked. I think that the actual

589
00:34:36,200 --> 00:34:41,000
Speaker 1: experience and the mindset of an entrepreneur just like resonated

590
00:34:41,040 --> 00:34:43,480
Speaker 1: with me very very deeply, and I was having so

591
00:34:43,600 --> 00:34:46,799
Speaker 1: much fun, like unlike anything else that I had done,

592
00:34:47,719 --> 00:34:49,799
Speaker 1: that I just knew I had to keep doing it.

593
00:34:50,120 --> 00:34:54,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, democratizing investing is such a at least

594
00:34:54,160 --> 00:34:56,160
Speaker 2: at the time as well, with such an ambitious goal

595
00:34:56,840 --> 00:35:01,000
Speaker 2: to think about trying to get the average person to

596
00:35:01,040 --> 00:35:03,560
Speaker 2: be able to have access to something that wasn't accessible

597
00:35:03,600 --> 00:35:06,160
Speaker 2: to them just a few years before, especially in a

598
00:35:06,200 --> 00:35:09,200
Speaker 2: place that seemed volatile, you needed a lot of capital

599
00:35:09,200 --> 00:35:11,560
Speaker 2: to get started. I want to do a bit of

600
00:35:11,719 --> 00:35:15,160
Speaker 2: investing basics for people who are listening, who may or

601
00:35:15,200 --> 00:35:17,719
Speaker 2: may not be using your platform already and want to

602
00:35:17,800 --> 00:35:21,120
Speaker 2: understand a bit more about it. If someone's sitting there,

603
00:35:21,160 --> 00:35:23,400
Speaker 2: going and I remember being this person, So I remember

604
00:35:23,920 --> 00:35:26,279
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen, I just left the monastery that I lived

605
00:35:26,280 --> 00:35:28,560
Speaker 2: in for three years, and I'd gone back into the

606
00:35:28,560 --> 00:35:30,839
Speaker 2: world of work, and I had a mentor who told

607
00:35:30,920 --> 00:35:35,760
Speaker 2: me exactly which crypto to invest in in twenty thirteen.

608
00:35:36,200 --> 00:35:38,279
Speaker 1: Which one did he say? Well, at the time he

609
00:35:38,400 --> 00:35:39,560
Speaker 1: was like dogecoin.

610
00:35:39,800 --> 00:35:42,920
Speaker 2: No, no, definitely wasn't. At the time it was like

611
00:35:43,520 --> 00:35:47,840
Speaker 2: ethereum lithium, like oh yeah, like coin yeah yeah. And

612
00:35:47,880 --> 00:35:50,720
Speaker 2: so he was mentioning all these places. And I remember

613
00:35:50,760 --> 00:35:55,800
Speaker 2: in twenty thirteen, with very little capital, very little investment knowledge.

614
00:35:56,360 --> 00:36:02,719
Speaker 1: See now, if someone said my mentor and what did

615
00:36:02,719 --> 00:36:03,120
Speaker 1: you call him?

616
00:36:03,120 --> 00:36:04,960
Speaker 2: Your yeah, mentor yeah, yeah, mentor. Yeah.

617
00:36:05,200 --> 00:36:07,880
Speaker 1: If now someone's like, oh, my guru told me the

618
00:36:07,920 --> 00:36:12,799
Speaker 1: which cryptocurrency to invest in, I would be like, hey,

619
00:36:12,840 --> 00:36:15,239
Speaker 1: you should be a little skeptical of this mentor. But

620
00:36:15,280 --> 00:36:17,439
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen that was actually like.

621
00:36:17,680 --> 00:36:18,439
Speaker 2: I should have listened.

622
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:22,440
Speaker 1: That was before the space got a little a little corrupted,

623
00:36:22,520 --> 00:36:24,600
Speaker 1: before the pretenders came in.

624
00:36:24,719 --> 00:36:27,319
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, he'd been successful in tech, investing in things

625
00:36:27,320 --> 00:36:30,080
Speaker 2: for years. And yeah, i'd met him. He was I

626
00:36:30,200 --> 00:36:32,600
Speaker 2: was what twenty six at the time, he was fifty five.

627
00:36:32,880 --> 00:36:35,040
Speaker 2: Oh wow, and so he you know, he'd been around.

628
00:36:35,120 --> 00:36:39,000
Speaker 2: He was a very smart, thoughtful, thoughtful person. I didn't

629
00:36:39,160 --> 00:36:41,560
Speaker 2: really understand anything of my investing and I grew up

630
00:36:41,560 --> 00:36:43,960
Speaker 2: in a family where we didn't have a lot. Growing up,

631
00:36:44,080 --> 00:36:47,359
Speaker 2: there wasn't I didn't see my parents invest. I didn't

632
00:36:47,360 --> 00:36:49,600
Speaker 2: see them have that, And so I remember being like,

633
00:36:50,320 --> 00:36:51,920
Speaker 2: he was just like, just put one thousand dollars, put

634
00:36:51,960 --> 00:36:54,000
Speaker 2: one hundred dollars into each of one hundred pounds. I

635
00:36:54,080 --> 00:36:55,840
Speaker 2: was in London, So he goes, just put one thousand

636
00:36:55,840 --> 00:36:57,960
Speaker 2: pounds into one hundred pounds into each and just see

637
00:36:58,000 --> 00:37:00,720
Speaker 2: how it goes. And I remember being so risk averse

638
00:37:00,800 --> 00:37:03,280
Speaker 2: that I didn't even want to put one thousand pounds

639
00:37:03,320 --> 00:37:05,480
Speaker 2: into it. And that's probably all I had at that time.

640
00:37:05,480 --> 00:37:07,600
Speaker 2: I was working a job where I made thirty one

641
00:37:07,920 --> 00:37:10,960
Speaker 2: five hundred pounds a year at Eccentria, and.

642
00:37:11,440 --> 00:37:12,480
Speaker 1: I we're in the UK.

643
00:37:12,640 --> 00:37:14,200
Speaker 2: As in the UK, Yeah, I could have put one

644
00:37:14,200 --> 00:37:16,560
Speaker 2: thousand pounds in and I didn't. If I did, it

645
00:37:16,560 --> 00:37:20,600
Speaker 2: would have been a great investment. But the question I'm

646
00:37:20,640 --> 00:37:23,880
Speaker 2: asking is a lot of people don't invest because they

647
00:37:23,880 --> 00:37:25,600
Speaker 2: don't have enough knowledge, but they also feel they don't

648
00:37:25,640 --> 00:37:28,600
Speaker 2: have enough money. At what point should you feel confident

649
00:37:28,680 --> 00:37:33,000
Speaker 2: and comfortable to start investing what amount? And yeah, let's

650
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:33,320
Speaker 2: start that.

651
00:37:33,840 --> 00:37:36,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean a lot of Robinhood customers start with

652
00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:40,080
Speaker 1: as little as ten dollars, and I think that was

653
00:37:40,120 --> 00:37:43,960
Speaker 1: actually the innovation that Robinhood unlocked. So before we came

654
00:37:44,640 --> 00:37:48,040
Speaker 1: into the mix, you used to have to pay a

655
00:37:48,080 --> 00:37:50,680
Speaker 1: trading fee, and if you started in the UK, you

656
00:37:50,719 --> 00:37:54,080
Speaker 1: probably paid a trading fee at twenty thirteen as well.

657
00:37:54,520 --> 00:37:58,279
Speaker 1: I mean still do that market hasn't gone zero commission yet.

658
00:37:58,400 --> 00:38:02,319
Speaker 1: Let's say you have to pay ten dollars per trade, Well,

659
00:38:02,320 --> 00:38:05,920
Speaker 1: that's you know, if you make one hundred dollars investment,

660
00:38:06,000 --> 00:38:09,120
Speaker 1: that's ten percent of the of the actual value in

661
00:38:09,160 --> 00:38:11,440
Speaker 1: the investment, and if you want to sell it, you know,

662
00:38:11,480 --> 00:38:14,680
Speaker 1: then that gets to twenty percent for the round trip.

663
00:38:15,239 --> 00:38:18,279
Speaker 1: And so it doesn't really make sense to start with

664
00:38:18,560 --> 00:38:22,000
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars in that sense because you have to

665
00:38:22,239 --> 00:38:25,040
Speaker 1: count on many years of appreciation to just pay for

666
00:38:25,120 --> 00:38:28,320
Speaker 1: your transaction fee. But if you lower the fees to zero,

667
00:38:28,920 --> 00:38:31,040
Speaker 1: you could start with any amount, which is what you

668
00:38:31,080 --> 00:38:35,440
Speaker 1: did exactly, And that was kind of our big that

669
00:38:35,600 --> 00:38:37,359
Speaker 1: was that was sort of one of the three big

670
00:38:37,360 --> 00:38:40,160
Speaker 1: innovations that I think made Robinhood possible and really made

671
00:38:40,160 --> 00:38:43,799
Speaker 1: it take off. It's eliminating the commissions and lowering the

672
00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:47,239
Speaker 1: account minimums to zero because a lot of brokers also

673
00:38:47,280 --> 00:38:49,880
Speaker 1: had account minimums. You couldn't even open account unless you

674
00:38:49,880 --> 00:38:53,040
Speaker 1: had two thousand dollars or sometimes more in there. And

675
00:38:53,040 --> 00:38:56,360
Speaker 1: we said, you know what we really wanted. And the reason,

676
00:38:56,640 --> 00:39:01,279
Speaker 1: by the way that they had these accounts minimums was

677
00:39:01,920 --> 00:39:06,759
Speaker 1: these companies were not automated enough to service small accounts.

678
00:39:06,840 --> 00:39:09,879
Speaker 1: They just lose money on them. And so we said

679
00:39:09,920 --> 00:39:16,359
Speaker 1: to ourselves, well, it would be it would not really

680
00:39:16,520 --> 00:39:19,160
Speaker 1: uphold the mission of a company named Robinhood to have

681
00:39:19,560 --> 00:39:22,480
Speaker 1: an arbitrary account minimum. We should make it zero. We

682
00:39:22,520 --> 00:39:26,000
Speaker 1: should hold ourselves to that standard, and we just should

683
00:39:26,080 --> 00:39:30,720
Speaker 1: like incent ourselves to make the business as efficient as possible,

684
00:39:30,760 --> 00:39:32,920
Speaker 1: because I think that would be the long term correct

685
00:39:32,920 --> 00:39:36,000
Speaker 1: way to build the business. Like, let's point everything towards

686
00:39:37,000 --> 00:39:40,200
Speaker 1: creating a forcing function for us to be more efficient

687
00:39:40,239 --> 00:39:45,160
Speaker 1: and more automated and adopt technology more aggressively and be

688
00:39:45,239 --> 00:39:48,440
Speaker 1: the first to do it relative to the market. And

689
00:39:49,400 --> 00:39:53,440
Speaker 1: a company where everything is pointed towards using technology to

690
00:39:53,560 --> 00:39:58,240
Speaker 1: lower the cost of things, make things as usable as possible,

691
00:39:58,239 --> 00:40:01,319
Speaker 1: and as automated as possible, that seems like a long

692
00:40:01,400 --> 00:40:04,600
Speaker 1: term robust structure for a company. So we kind of

693
00:40:04,680 --> 00:40:07,279
Speaker 1: like that, But yeah, a lot of customers start with

694
00:40:07,400 --> 00:40:09,160
Speaker 1: just ten dollars or even less.

695
00:40:09,400 --> 00:40:12,839
Speaker 2: And what would you say the three biggest mistakes new

696
00:40:13,000 --> 00:40:15,720
Speaker 2: investors make when they don't know what they're doing.

697
00:40:15,880 --> 00:40:18,880
Speaker 1: I think this is a little bit strange, given like

698
00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:22,680
Speaker 1: so much of Robinhood, at least in the public realm

699
00:40:22,800 --> 00:40:27,200
Speaker 1: is you know, meme stocks and meme trading. But I

700
00:40:27,280 --> 00:40:31,320
Speaker 1: think probably the biggest mistake one can make is buying

701
00:40:31,360 --> 00:40:35,319
Speaker 1: something just because someone on the internet like thinks that

702
00:40:35,520 --> 00:40:39,440
Speaker 1: you should buy it and is posting it. I'm personally

703
00:40:39,480 --> 00:40:44,120
Speaker 1: a big believer in thinking for yourself, and like buying

704
00:40:44,120 --> 00:40:46,880
Speaker 1: something because people on social media are saying it's a

705
00:40:46,880 --> 00:40:51,479
Speaker 1: good idea, It's just like kind of anathema to me, Like, sure,

706
00:40:51,560 --> 00:40:54,239
Speaker 1: use it as a signal, but like make your own

707
00:40:54,320 --> 00:40:59,960
Speaker 1: decision and kind of think through it yourself and don't

708
00:41:00,200 --> 00:41:05,960
Speaker 1: just rely on the opinions and commentary of others any others.

709
00:41:06,360 --> 00:41:07,680
Speaker 2: Big mistakes that people may.

710
00:41:07,760 --> 00:41:12,760
Speaker 1: I think just like waiting to get started, you know, now,

711
00:41:12,840 --> 00:41:19,279
Speaker 1: particularly with the tools there's you know, with Robinhood kind

712
00:41:19,320 --> 00:41:22,680
Speaker 1: of entering the market, not just Robinhood, but most of

713
00:41:22,719 --> 00:41:25,759
Speaker 1: the competitors that at least survive in the space. There's

714
00:41:25,760 --> 00:41:31,279
Speaker 1: no maintenance fees, no kind of onboarding fees, keeping money

715
00:41:31,320 --> 00:41:35,000
Speaker 1: in the savings account where in particular now with high rates,

716
00:41:35,200 --> 00:41:37,000
Speaker 1: you know a lot of the banks are offering you

717
00:41:37,120 --> 00:41:40,799
Speaker 1: zero percent, so your money is just losing money sitting

718
00:41:40,880 --> 00:41:46,239
Speaker 1: in savings, not doing the simple things to optimize I

719
00:41:46,239 --> 00:41:50,240
Speaker 1: think our mistakes. And there is so much free content

720
00:41:50,280 --> 00:41:55,160
Speaker 1: out there on the internet, on YouTube, and you know

721
00:41:55,200 --> 00:42:01,000
Speaker 1: that just spending even thirty minutes to get educated and

722
00:42:01,280 --> 00:42:04,760
Speaker 1: actually just like getting started and opening an account and

723
00:42:04,800 --> 00:42:08,040
Speaker 1: creating the habit of investing even if you don't think

724
00:42:08,080 --> 00:42:11,160
Speaker 1: you have much money. The technology is there so that

725
00:42:11,239 --> 00:42:15,439
Speaker 1: you could actually do the exact same things with one

726
00:42:15,560 --> 00:42:19,200
Speaker 1: dollar as you can with thousands of dollars. And you know,

727
00:42:19,239 --> 00:42:24,120
Speaker 1: through another thing, Robinhood pioneered fractional shares. You can invest

728
00:42:24,200 --> 00:42:26,799
Speaker 1: any dollar amount in pretty much any stock. You don't

729
00:42:26,800 --> 00:42:29,520
Speaker 1: need a whole share. So one of the first things

730
00:42:29,520 --> 00:42:31,680
Speaker 1: that we did, which we thought was very cool, was

731
00:42:33,280 --> 00:42:38,680
Speaker 1: you have, for example, companies whose share prices are hundreds

732
00:42:38,680 --> 00:42:41,239
Speaker 1: of thousands of dollars per share, like Berkshire hathaway A

733
00:42:41,400 --> 00:42:45,520
Speaker 1: Shares for example, and you know they would almost pride

734
00:42:45,560 --> 00:42:49,840
Speaker 1: themselves on having this share price that's inaccessible to normal people,

735
00:42:49,960 --> 00:42:53,880
Speaker 1: and not everyone could be invited to this club of

736
00:42:54,000 --> 00:42:57,920
Speaker 1: like shareholders and they have the annual shareholder meeting. But

737
00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:00,200
Speaker 1: you know, Robinhood figured out how to break up these

738
00:43:00,200 --> 00:43:02,680
Speaker 1: stocks into pieces and you can buy a dollar of it,

739
00:43:02,760 --> 00:43:05,640
Speaker 1: and you know, then you had all these retail investors

740
00:43:05,640 --> 00:43:08,920
Speaker 1: showing up at the shareholder meetings, and I think that

741
00:43:08,960 --> 00:43:12,680
Speaker 1: made those guys very angry actually in hindsight. But how

742
00:43:12,680 --> 00:43:13,319
Speaker 1: did you vary?

743
00:43:13,520 --> 00:43:16,240
Speaker 2: How did you even pull that off? How's that even possible?

744
00:43:16,440 --> 00:43:21,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a big technical challenge, Yeah, big technical challenge. Basically,

745
00:43:21,719 --> 00:43:25,520
Speaker 1: what happens is the company has to keep inventory in

746
00:43:25,719 --> 00:43:31,160
Speaker 1: all of these names, and you imagine, like let's say,

747
00:43:31,239 --> 00:43:33,640
Speaker 1: I mean the way that this works is probably a

748
00:43:33,680 --> 00:43:36,760
Speaker 1: little bit more complicated, but to simplify it, let's say

749
00:43:36,880 --> 00:43:41,239
Speaker 1: you want to buy a dollar of Berkshire Hathaway. Well,

750
00:43:41,320 --> 00:43:44,680
Speaker 1: then we would essentially have to keep inventory of a

751
00:43:44,719 --> 00:43:48,480
Speaker 1: whole share and then allocate internally different pieces of it,

752
00:43:48,920 --> 00:43:53,720
Speaker 1: and then you know, when the total sum exceeds one share,

753
00:43:53,880 --> 00:43:55,759
Speaker 1: then we go out and buy another one. So we're

754
00:43:55,840 --> 00:44:00,279
Speaker 1: kind of like managing this portfolio of you know, right

755
00:44:00,320 --> 00:44:03,600
Speaker 1: around one share in every instrument.

756
00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:04,239
Speaker 2: Yeah.

757
00:44:04,480 --> 00:44:06,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then we can just do that through technology.

758
00:44:06,719 --> 00:44:09,399
Speaker 1: I mean, we have great engineers and data scientists and

759
00:44:09,960 --> 00:44:14,120
Speaker 1: brokerage experts that can manage the system.

760
00:44:14,400 --> 00:44:16,480
Speaker 2: If you had to say that for a new investor,

761
00:44:16,520 --> 00:44:21,640
Speaker 2: there's certain factors they should understand about a stock before investing.

762
00:44:21,680 --> 00:44:23,440
Speaker 2: What would you say the three key things that they

763
00:44:23,480 --> 00:44:27,080
Speaker 2: should know? An amount of information they should have before

764
00:44:27,120 --> 00:44:29,120
Speaker 2: they go in and put any amount in.

765
00:44:29,560 --> 00:44:34,920
Speaker 1: I guess without giving people two specific investment advice because yeah,

766
00:44:34,960 --> 00:44:39,120
Speaker 1: I'm kind of not really allowed to do that. I'm

767
00:44:39,120 --> 00:44:44,480
Speaker 1: a big proponent in investing in companies that create products

768
00:44:44,640 --> 00:44:48,799
Speaker 1: that you like and use. You know, if you use

769
00:44:48,840 --> 00:44:53,000
Speaker 1: the product, if you think that the company that's making

770
00:44:53,000 --> 00:44:56,840
Speaker 1: those products is improving the products, and if you're bullish

771
00:44:56,920 --> 00:45:00,520
Speaker 1: on continuing to be useful and you think it's trending

772
00:45:00,520 --> 00:45:05,000
Speaker 1: in the right direction. That's been sort of my philosophy.

773
00:45:05,040 --> 00:45:08,600
Speaker 1: It's how I got started to and I think that's

774
00:45:08,600 --> 00:45:11,120
Speaker 1: why if you look at the Robinhood customer base and

775
00:45:11,160 --> 00:45:16,279
Speaker 1: we're now publishing the stocks that our customers are investing in.

776
00:45:16,400 --> 00:45:21,000
Speaker 1: Most we call it the Robinhood Investors Index, it tends

777
00:45:21,040 --> 00:45:26,160
Speaker 1: to be consumer companies that make products. They're sort of

778
00:45:26,239 --> 00:45:31,760
Speaker 1: like heavy in innovation, So for example, in Nvidia, Tesla, Apple,

779
00:45:31,920 --> 00:45:36,600
Speaker 1: these are some of the most commonly invested stocks, and

780
00:45:36,800 --> 00:45:40,800
Speaker 1: it's because our customers are younger, they believe in the future.

781
00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:44,040
Speaker 1: They tend to be early adopters of technology and innovation.

782
00:45:44,600 --> 00:45:50,439
Speaker 1: They believe in artificial intelligence, clean energy, electric vehicles. So yeah,

783
00:45:50,760 --> 00:45:55,000
Speaker 1: those tend to be like both sort of like some

784
00:45:55,040 --> 00:45:58,720
Speaker 1: of the most held instruments and some of the first

785
00:45:59,120 --> 00:46:04,400
Speaker 1: instruments that people kind of buy into. We also have

786
00:46:04,480 --> 00:46:08,600
Speaker 1: a product first trade recommendations, and it's difficult for the

787
00:46:08,680 --> 00:46:13,360
Speaker 1: service to recommend individual stocks, but for someone that actually

788
00:46:13,400 --> 00:46:15,120
Speaker 1: comes in and they say, you know, I just want

789
00:46:15,120 --> 00:46:17,719
Speaker 1: to invest, I don't really know, I don't want to

790
00:46:17,719 --> 00:46:22,799
Speaker 1: pick my own stocks. Over time, we're increasingly getting better

791
00:46:22,800 --> 00:46:25,920
Speaker 1: and better equipped to serve that customer. So now you know,

792
00:46:25,960 --> 00:46:28,200
Speaker 1: you can just answer a couple of questions and we'll

793
00:46:28,880 --> 00:46:32,840
Speaker 1: recommend a diversified portfolio of ETFs, explain to you what

794
00:46:32,920 --> 00:46:36,360
Speaker 1: all the pieces are, and then you'll kind of see

795
00:46:36,360 --> 00:46:40,600
Speaker 1: how it all works mechanically. And I think sometimes just

796
00:46:40,719 --> 00:46:44,000
Speaker 1: like going through the process of making a trade, it's

797
00:46:44,080 --> 00:46:46,680
Speaker 1: much simpler than like reading a book on it I

798
00:46:46,760 --> 00:46:49,000
Speaker 1: like to say that it's like playing a violin. You're

799
00:46:49,000 --> 00:46:51,040
Speaker 1: not going to learn to play a violin really well

800
00:46:51,080 --> 00:46:53,840
Speaker 1: by like reading a book on how to play the violin.

801
00:46:54,080 --> 00:46:57,479
Speaker 1: Maybe if you're already really really good and you're trying

802
00:46:57,560 --> 00:47:01,240
Speaker 1: to get a little bit better understanding the behind, it

803
00:47:01,000 --> 00:47:03,840
Speaker 1: is going to help. But otherwise it's just sort of

804
00:47:03,920 --> 00:47:06,680
Speaker 1: like pick up the thing and start practicing, and you'll

805
00:47:06,680 --> 00:47:09,960
Speaker 1: get better the more you do it. One of the

806
00:47:09,960 --> 00:47:12,200
Speaker 1: things I became interested in when I was an undergrad

807
00:47:12,280 --> 00:47:15,160
Speaker 1: is options trading. A lot of my students my year

808
00:47:15,560 --> 00:47:18,600
Speaker 1: were applying to be options traders. That was like a

809
00:47:18,680 --> 00:47:21,960
Speaker 1: before went fully electronic. That was a job that people had,

810
00:47:22,040 --> 00:47:28,680
Speaker 1: right And there was this book like Options, Futures and Derivatives.

811
00:47:29,360 --> 00:47:31,400
Speaker 1: It was called something like that by Hull, and it

812
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:34,720
Speaker 1: was like this thick dictionary explaining how all these option

813
00:47:34,880 --> 00:47:38,640
Speaker 1: strategies work. And I just kind of imagine, you know,

814
00:47:39,280 --> 00:47:43,480
Speaker 1: if someone had to understand that book before kind of

815
00:47:43,520 --> 00:47:48,440
Speaker 1: like going into options trading or discovering it for the

816
00:47:48,520 --> 00:47:51,960
Speaker 1: first time, I think that would be just like an

817
00:47:51,960 --> 00:47:55,960
Speaker 1: incomprehensible barrier. But like, you build up some intuition for

818
00:47:56,040 --> 00:47:58,520
Speaker 1: these things by doing it, and it sort of like

819
00:47:58,840 --> 00:48:01,960
Speaker 1: makes you more motivated to read the literature, and it

820
00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:07,200
Speaker 1: also sort of like gives you more real world knowledge

821
00:48:06,920 --> 00:48:09,440
Speaker 1: than you could ever get from just reading. So I

822
00:48:09,440 --> 00:48:12,080
Speaker 1: think just like getting started and doing it is the

823
00:48:12,080 --> 00:48:15,800
Speaker 1: most important things. It's a skill like playing a sport

824
00:48:16,080 --> 00:48:19,399
Speaker 1: or playing a music instrument, more than just like an

825
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:20,520
Speaker 1: academic pursuit.

826
00:48:20,800 --> 00:48:23,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, how many of you uses do you find going

827
00:48:23,440 --> 00:48:26,200
Speaker 2: beyond just that first trade? Do you have a percentage

828
00:48:26,200 --> 00:48:29,600
Speaker 2: of users that you know, go beyond their first or

829
00:48:29,640 --> 00:48:31,879
Speaker 2: second trade and kind of continue on and build and

830
00:48:31,920 --> 00:48:34,600
Speaker 2: grow versus like they tried something out and kind of

831
00:48:34,680 --> 00:48:36,719
Speaker 2: just said, oh, it's not for me. I don't know

832
00:48:36,719 --> 00:48:37,239
Speaker 2: what I'm doing.

833
00:48:37,360 --> 00:48:40,880
Speaker 1: With consumer technology, there's sort of a funnel for everything.

834
00:48:41,000 --> 00:48:43,759
Speaker 1: You know, there's people downloading the app, not everyone who

835
00:48:43,800 --> 00:48:47,160
Speaker 1: downloads the app actually ends up creating an account. Not

836
00:48:47,239 --> 00:48:51,120
Speaker 1: everyone that creates an account funds it. And you know,

837
00:48:51,440 --> 00:48:56,000
Speaker 1: we're definitely focused on making sure that we have a

838
00:48:56,040 --> 00:49:01,440
Speaker 1: really good funnel, that it's clean, that people who you know,

839
00:49:01,880 --> 00:49:05,080
Speaker 1: enter are getting exactly what they want. I adventure to

840
00:49:05,160 --> 00:49:08,960
Speaker 1: say that our funnel is probably much more efficient than

841
00:49:09,040 --> 00:49:13,520
Speaker 1: those of our competitors. That said, there are things that

842
00:49:13,719 --> 00:49:18,680
Speaker 1: certain customers want that. We're not like ideal at offering now.

843
00:49:18,880 --> 00:49:22,040
Speaker 1: So for example, if you want an advisor. A lot

844
00:49:22,080 --> 00:49:25,080
Speaker 1: of people want a financial advisor. They want someone to

845
00:49:25,160 --> 00:49:28,239
Speaker 1: manage their money for them, tell them exactly what to do.

846
00:49:29,680 --> 00:49:32,720
Speaker 1: We don't have a great comprehensive solution for that yet,

847
00:49:32,960 --> 00:49:35,120
Speaker 1: although we're working on it. I think we will get

848
00:49:35,120 --> 00:49:39,080
Speaker 1: there eventually one of the advisors, I think AI certainly

849
00:49:39,160 --> 00:49:45,160
Speaker 1: will be involved, if not you know, replacing the advisors,

850
00:49:45,200 --> 00:49:49,800
Speaker 1: certainly augmenting and giving them kind of superhuman capabilities and

851
00:49:49,840 --> 00:49:54,120
Speaker 1: the ability to service more customers. But yeah, I think

852
00:49:54,160 --> 00:49:57,360
Speaker 1: that's certainly one of the most interesting applications of AI

853
00:49:57,680 --> 00:50:01,840
Speaker 1: and financial services. But yeah, right now, the platform is

854
00:50:01,880 --> 00:50:05,680
Speaker 1: like very self directed. It's for folks that want to

855
00:50:05,719 --> 00:50:08,640
Speaker 1: be in control of their money, and like, you know,

856
00:50:08,719 --> 00:50:12,200
Speaker 1: like the the most hardcore Robinhood users are the ones

857
00:50:12,320 --> 00:50:17,359
Speaker 1: that really are just kind of like optimizing everything, you know,

858
00:50:17,440 --> 00:50:21,440
Speaker 1: they're optimizing their taxes, they're optimizing all of their fees

859
00:50:21,480 --> 00:50:25,040
Speaker 1: and commissions. And we do attract some of those people

860
00:50:25,120 --> 00:50:27,760
Speaker 1: that really want to be hands on with everything because

861
00:50:28,160 --> 00:50:30,440
Speaker 1: it's a very easy to use tool we have. We

862
00:50:30,520 --> 00:50:34,600
Speaker 1: tend to have the lowest pricing across all services that

863
00:50:34,640 --> 00:50:37,320
Speaker 1: we offer. We sort of like from the very beginning,

864
00:50:37,640 --> 00:50:44,520
Speaker 1: have built with like the self directed retail customer in mind.

865
00:50:45,000 --> 00:50:48,200
Speaker 1: So I think for that customer, there's probably no better fit.

866
00:50:48,320 --> 00:50:52,440
Speaker 1: If you want to be in control over every aspect

867
00:50:52,640 --> 00:50:56,480
Speaker 1: of your finances and you actually in some cases are

868
00:50:56,520 --> 00:50:59,520
Speaker 1: openly distrustful of other people telling you what to do,

869
00:50:59,600 --> 00:51:01,560
Speaker 1: and they're there's a lot of people like that. They're like,

870
00:51:02,040 --> 00:51:04,440
Speaker 1: I don't even want to listen to a financial advisor

871
00:51:04,480 --> 00:51:07,680
Speaker 1: because I feel like they're just gonna talk down on

872
00:51:07,800 --> 00:51:10,960
Speaker 1: me in a good scenario or rip me off in

873
00:51:11,040 --> 00:51:15,279
Speaker 1: like a bad scenario. And those people are like, yeah,

874
00:51:15,400 --> 00:51:18,439
Speaker 1: like they tend to gravitate toward robin Hood.

875
00:51:19,040 --> 00:51:21,960
Speaker 2: Before we dive into the next moment, let's hear from

876
00:51:21,960 --> 00:51:25,680
Speaker 2: our sponsors, and now let's get back to the episode.

877
00:51:26,239 --> 00:51:29,720
Speaker 2: At a time when investing is becoming more talked about,

878
00:51:29,920 --> 00:51:33,400
Speaker 2: more diverse, there's more options. I want to get your

879
00:51:33,440 --> 00:51:36,279
Speaker 2: personal opinion on people think about stocks versus people think

880
00:51:36,280 --> 00:51:39,799
Speaker 2: about property, for example, which of course is far more expensive.

881
00:51:39,840 --> 00:51:42,880
Speaker 2: But I feel like we've seen a generational shift from

882
00:51:43,080 --> 00:51:46,080
Speaker 2: people wanting to own their homes, purchase their homes, get

883
00:51:46,080 --> 00:51:50,200
Speaker 2: a mortgage versus now people moving towards renting more. Are

884
00:51:50,239 --> 00:51:52,359
Speaker 2: you seeing that trend? And are you seeing people move

885
00:51:52,400 --> 00:51:55,960
Speaker 2: towards stocks? So you still what's your personal take on

886
00:51:55,960 --> 00:51:59,880
Speaker 2: people choosing between buying and renting versus using that capital elsewhere.

887
00:52:00,400 --> 00:52:05,239
Speaker 1: For a while, the American dream involved home ownership, yes, right,

888
00:52:06,880 --> 00:52:09,360
Speaker 1: and I have mixed feelings about it, to be honest,

889
00:52:09,440 --> 00:52:13,600
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of like corporate interests that are

890
00:52:13,640 --> 00:52:16,600
Speaker 1: pushing for more homeownership. I mean, if you're a bank

891
00:52:16,760 --> 00:52:19,560
Speaker 1: and you're giving people mortgages. You know a lot of

892
00:52:19,600 --> 00:52:25,400
Speaker 1: people criticize leverage in the stock market, but if you

893
00:52:25,400 --> 00:52:29,160
Speaker 1: think about the amount of leverage in a thirty year

894
00:52:29,200 --> 00:52:35,239
Speaker 1: fixed mortgage, right, it's like ungodly right, you end up

895
00:52:35,280 --> 00:52:39,279
Speaker 1: paying much more in interest than you know, even the

896
00:52:39,640 --> 00:52:46,160
Speaker 1: principle sometimes yeah, I mean again, without getting into investing advice,

897
00:52:47,280 --> 00:52:50,440
Speaker 1: real estate I think has been tempting for people because like,

898
00:52:50,480 --> 00:52:53,680
Speaker 1: you can see it, you can touch it. It's sort

899
00:52:53,719 --> 00:52:57,160
Speaker 1: of like this thing that you can use and it

900
00:52:57,200 --> 00:53:02,000
Speaker 1: feels like an investment, even though it really isn't, especially

901
00:53:02,040 --> 00:53:04,680
Speaker 1: when you give when you take into account all the fees,

902
00:53:04,760 --> 00:53:10,680
Speaker 1: like the brokering fees on either side of the transaction, property, taxes, maintenance. Meanwhile,

903
00:53:10,880 --> 00:53:13,080
Speaker 1: you know in the stock market, you have it on

904
00:53:13,120 --> 00:53:16,360
Speaker 1: your phone now, commission free, some of the lowest fees,

905
00:53:16,520 --> 00:53:20,200
Speaker 1: access to like the widest variety of companies that are

906
00:53:20,200 --> 00:53:23,000
Speaker 1: really even though it's the US market, by and large,

907
00:53:23,040 --> 00:53:28,040
Speaker 1: the US markets increasingly global. I think, and I wrote

908
00:53:28,080 --> 00:53:32,040
Speaker 1: this article back in twenty twenty one, investing in the

909
00:53:32,040 --> 00:53:36,360
Speaker 1: global markets is really the new American dream. And actually,

910
00:53:36,800 --> 00:53:42,320
Speaker 1: during the hyperinflation episode in Bulgarian the nineties, my grandparents

911
00:53:43,280 --> 00:53:45,600
Speaker 1: didn't have access to any tools that allowed them to

912
00:53:45,640 --> 00:53:52,200
Speaker 1: invest in equities. So my grandfather, who was a medical

913
00:53:52,239 --> 00:53:56,840
Speaker 1: doctor on navy vessels in Bulgaria, he had like a

914
00:53:56,920 --> 00:54:00,640
Speaker 1: contact on the port side who would basic give them

915
00:54:00,920 --> 00:54:04,440
Speaker 1: access to copper cookware. So he would take his Bulgarian

916
00:54:04,520 --> 00:54:07,680
Speaker 1: leves from his pension and get copper cookware. We had

917
00:54:07,680 --> 00:54:10,840
Speaker 1: this closet. They had this closet in their apartment that

918
00:54:10,960 --> 00:54:14,160
Speaker 1: was just full of copper cookware, and that was like

919
00:54:14,560 --> 00:54:16,719
Speaker 1: that was their robinhood app like that's where they would

920
00:54:17,120 --> 00:54:19,839
Speaker 1: self custody their wealth. I mean, right now you can

921
00:54:19,880 --> 00:54:24,520
Speaker 1: buy any stock, you can buy crypto. We started offering

922
00:54:24,560 --> 00:54:29,480
Speaker 1: crypto in twenty eighteen for the lowest fees in the industry,

923
00:54:30,080 --> 00:54:34,520
Speaker 1: and you can get you know, you can get access

924
00:54:34,560 --> 00:54:39,000
Speaker 1: to ETFs, you can have gold ETFs, so really in

925
00:54:39,040 --> 00:54:43,319
Speaker 1: your pocket you can diversify and hold pretty much any

926
00:54:43,360 --> 00:54:45,600
Speaker 1: asset and you can even do real estate through the

927
00:54:45,640 --> 00:54:49,520
Speaker 1: form of reats and other publicly traded ETFs. Yeah, you

928
00:54:49,560 --> 00:54:52,680
Speaker 1: can get exposure to that asset class. But like real

929
00:54:52,800 --> 00:54:56,799
Speaker 1: estate investing in terms of buying a primary home yet,

930
00:54:57,120 --> 00:55:01,560
Speaker 1: it's I think the story behind that is is difficult.

931
00:55:01,800 --> 00:55:05,799
Speaker 1: It's like very liquid, high transaction fees. You're kind of

932
00:55:05,840 --> 00:55:10,800
Speaker 1: like picking a particular neighborhood. So even if the global

933
00:55:10,800 --> 00:55:14,600
Speaker 1: real estate market does well, something could happen to that neighborhood.

934
00:55:14,680 --> 00:55:17,359
Speaker 1: You know, you build a power plant next door, and

935
00:55:18,160 --> 00:55:22,000
Speaker 1: you're kind of in big trouble. So even though I'm

936
00:55:22,000 --> 00:55:27,840
Speaker 1: not making any investment recommendations, I think it's yeah, it's

937
00:55:28,160 --> 00:55:30,600
Speaker 1: hard to kind of like equate those two. I think

938
00:55:30,640 --> 00:55:33,680
Speaker 1: really the future is going much more toward investing in

939
00:55:34,200 --> 00:55:37,680
Speaker 1: publicly traded stocks and cryptocurrencies.

940
00:55:38,000 --> 00:55:40,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's what I want to ask your opinion,

941
00:55:40,280 --> 00:55:43,520
Speaker 2: So yeah, definitely not official advice. I've read an amazing

942
00:55:43,560 --> 00:55:46,640
Speaker 2: stat that said the next generation is set to inherit

943
00:55:46,680 --> 00:55:50,600
Speaker 2: an estimated seventy two trillion dollars over the next twenty years,

944
00:55:51,239 --> 00:55:55,200
Speaker 2: with twenty seven trillion going to millennials alone. Yes, and

945
00:55:56,080 --> 00:55:58,440
Speaker 2: that blows my mind because first of all, I'm like,

946
00:55:58,440 --> 00:56:00,680
Speaker 2: who are those millennials'.

947
00:56:00,080 --> 00:56:02,320
Speaker 1: Big wealth transfer, big wealth trends?

948
00:56:02,600 --> 00:56:04,600
Speaker 2: When someone like you hear is that, what goes through

949
00:56:04,640 --> 00:56:05,040
Speaker 2: your mind.

950
00:56:05,280 --> 00:56:08,640
Speaker 1: What goes through my mind is there's a big opportunity

951
00:56:08,680 --> 00:56:11,520
Speaker 1: for Robinhood. There's a big opportunity for us because we've

952
00:56:11,520 --> 00:56:15,280
Speaker 1: got more millennial app users than basically all the incumbent

953
00:56:15,320 --> 00:56:19,520
Speaker 1: brokerage competitors put together, even more so gen Z. I

954
00:56:19,520 --> 00:56:21,840
Speaker 1: think if you look at gen Z, over sixty percent

955
00:56:22,080 --> 00:56:27,799
Speaker 1: of our competitive set just uses Robinhood. And so we

956
00:56:27,840 --> 00:56:32,320
Speaker 1: already have relationships with these folks and we're offering more,

957
00:56:32,560 --> 00:56:35,960
Speaker 1: Like we don't just offer stocks. We have an awesome

958
00:56:36,000 --> 00:56:39,120
Speaker 1: credit card, we have among the best retirement products, an

959
00:56:39,160 --> 00:56:42,840
Speaker 1: amazing retirement product with a first built in match in

960
00:56:42,920 --> 00:56:47,319
Speaker 1: an IRA. We have a high yield product, and we're

961
00:56:47,360 --> 00:56:50,640
Speaker 1: adding just more and more over time, and we're making

962
00:56:50,719 --> 00:56:55,000
Speaker 1: it really easy to transfer your account. If you're you know,

963
00:56:55,640 --> 00:56:58,279
Speaker 1: a customer of a legacy brokerage to Robinhood so you

964
00:56:58,320 --> 00:57:01,839
Speaker 1: can take advantage of all these amazing and rates and

965
00:57:01,880 --> 00:57:07,880
Speaker 1: the user experience. So yeah, I think that we'd like

966
00:57:07,920 --> 00:57:11,160
Speaker 1: to put ourselves in the position where Robinhood is like

967
00:57:11,520 --> 00:57:15,320
Speaker 1: the home for all of these assets, and I think

968
00:57:15,760 --> 00:57:17,280
Speaker 1: I think we're rapidly getting there.

969
00:57:17,400 --> 00:57:20,800
Speaker 2: What do you think you've done differently to attract those

970
00:57:20,880 --> 00:57:24,120
Speaker 2: groups and those communities into your space, Like, what what's

971
00:57:24,200 --> 00:57:25,080
Speaker 2: been the big difference.

972
00:57:25,280 --> 00:57:28,720
Speaker 1: I'd like to say that the way we communicate and

973
00:57:28,800 --> 00:57:30,960
Speaker 1: the marketing is a big part of it, But I

974
00:57:30,960 --> 00:57:36,360
Speaker 1: think the biggest thing is like the the economics, getting

975
00:57:36,520 --> 00:57:41,160
Speaker 1: rid of account minimums and trading commissions, removing the friction.

976
00:57:41,800 --> 00:57:47,480
Speaker 1: These are all barriers that prevented people. Yeah, I think

977
00:57:47,520 --> 00:57:50,760
Speaker 1: I mentioned to you earlier that you know, before Robinhood,

978
00:57:50,800 --> 00:57:53,640
Speaker 1: if you had one hundred dollars, it would have just

979
00:57:53,680 --> 00:57:57,760
Speaker 1: been nonsensical to invest. The fees would have just ripped

980
00:57:57,760 --> 00:58:00,320
Speaker 1: the part of your portfolio. And you know a lot

981
00:58:00,320 --> 00:58:03,000
Speaker 1: of times there were barriers that prevented you from getting

982
00:58:03,000 --> 00:58:07,440
Speaker 1: started in the form of minimum account balance requirements as well.

983
00:58:07,760 --> 00:58:10,440
Speaker 1: So we got rid of all of those and basically

984
00:58:10,520 --> 00:58:13,320
Speaker 1: that allowed a whole bunch of customers that were previously

985
00:58:13,440 --> 00:58:18,160
Speaker 1: under served to be able to open accounts, and you know,

986
00:58:18,280 --> 00:58:25,080
Speaker 1: unfortunately a lot of those customers were from disadvantage historical demographics.

987
00:58:25,120 --> 00:58:27,400
Speaker 1: And you know, I think it's a great thing that

988
00:58:28,000 --> 00:58:30,800
Speaker 1: we've now kind of opened the doors to basically everyone

989
00:58:30,880 --> 00:58:33,200
Speaker 1: to open up an account and become an investor.

990
00:58:33,640 --> 00:58:36,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, similar to the to the property question, I wanted

991
00:58:36,040 --> 00:58:38,880
Speaker 2: to know your take on traditional retirement accounts like the

992
00:58:38,880 --> 00:58:43,400
Speaker 2: four oh one K, like in comparison to the more

993
00:58:43,480 --> 00:58:47,800
Speaker 2: aggress aggressive growth strategies in stocks, like what's your what's

994
00:58:47,800 --> 00:58:50,040
Speaker 2: your take there? Again from an opinion base.

995
00:58:50,000 --> 00:58:54,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, so four one k's are fantastic, Uh, for those

996
00:58:54,680 --> 00:58:57,560
Speaker 1: that you know are privileged to have an employer that

997
00:58:57,760 --> 00:59:03,960
Speaker 1: offers one. In particular, if an employer offers a four

998
00:59:03,960 --> 00:59:06,840
Speaker 1: oh one K with a built in match and they're

999
00:59:06,880 --> 00:59:10,520
Speaker 1: matching your contributions, you know, that's free money. So that

1000
00:59:11,000 --> 00:59:14,040
Speaker 1: value prop is very very strong. But you know, not

1001
00:59:14,160 --> 00:59:18,160
Speaker 1: everyone has access to that, And so what we've done

1002
00:59:18,480 --> 00:59:25,680
Speaker 1: is and actually I think over time, users and kind

1003
00:59:25,680 --> 00:59:30,160
Speaker 1: of end consumers can be less reliant on individual employers.

1004
00:59:30,280 --> 00:59:32,440
Speaker 1: I mean, it used to be that you would have

1005
00:59:32,480 --> 00:59:35,960
Speaker 1: a job and you could like count on that employer's

1006
00:59:36,040 --> 00:59:39,439
Speaker 1: pension to take care of you. You know, maybe you'd

1007
00:59:39,480 --> 00:59:41,800
Speaker 1: work at the same employer for twenty thirty years, then

1008
00:59:41,840 --> 00:59:44,680
Speaker 1: you'd retire and you would kind of subsist on the

1009
00:59:44,720 --> 00:59:48,880
Speaker 1: pension plan, and then of course social Security kind of

1010
00:59:49,160 --> 00:59:51,720
Speaker 1: filled in some of the gaps. But I'd say the

1011
00:59:51,760 --> 00:59:57,040
Speaker 1: future of Social Security is very much shrouded and a

1012
00:59:57,080 --> 01:00:01,840
Speaker 1: cloud of uncertainty, right, So I think the upshot is

1013
01:00:01,880 --> 01:00:05,520
Speaker 1: people have to take it upon themselves to be responsible

1014
01:00:05,680 --> 01:00:09,959
Speaker 1: for their own finances and their own retirement. I don't

1015
01:00:10,000 --> 01:00:13,200
Speaker 1: think that you can rely on the government. I don't

1016
01:00:13,200 --> 01:00:17,040
Speaker 1: think you can rely on any one employer. Many people

1017
01:00:17,120 --> 01:00:21,479
Speaker 1: aren't sticking around at a single employer for very long now,

1018
01:00:22,240 --> 01:00:26,640
Speaker 1: And so what's important is having these investment accounts not

1019
01:00:26,800 --> 01:00:30,440
Speaker 1: tied to the employer and actually tied to the user.

1020
01:00:30,640 --> 01:00:34,280
Speaker 1: You're kind of carrying around your retirement with you. And

1021
01:00:34,320 --> 01:00:38,680
Speaker 1: that's why we launched our IRA products, your individual retirement accounts.

1022
01:00:38,920 --> 01:00:42,360
Speaker 1: So we offer roths and individual retirement accounts. If you're

1023
01:00:42,360 --> 01:00:45,480
Speaker 1: a Robinhood Gold subscriber, you get a three percent match

1024
01:00:45,600 --> 01:00:49,960
Speaker 1: on contributions. So basically you might not have an employer

1025
01:00:50,080 --> 01:00:52,640
Speaker 1: matching you, but Robinhood will match out of our own

1026
01:00:52,680 --> 01:00:56,040
Speaker 1: economics in a world where you can't rely on a

1027
01:00:56,080 --> 01:00:59,960
Speaker 1: single employer and you have these accounts that should travel

1028
01:01:00,120 --> 01:01:03,520
Speaker 1: with you. I think that it's much more future proof

1029
01:01:03,840 --> 01:01:07,000
Speaker 1: and the product's really been resonating. You know. We had

1030
01:01:07,680 --> 01:01:09,919
Speaker 1: end of twenty twenty three, which was the first year

1031
01:01:09,960 --> 01:01:12,680
Speaker 1: that we launched our retirement products, we had about one

1032
01:01:12,720 --> 01:01:16,280
Speaker 1: point seven billion in assets under custody and that's gone

1033
01:01:16,400 --> 01:01:19,880
Speaker 1: up more than six x since the beginning of the year,

1034
01:01:20,080 --> 01:01:23,200
Speaker 1: so now we have close to ten billion in assets

1035
01:01:23,240 --> 01:01:25,280
Speaker 1: in retirement accounts at Robinhood.

1036
01:01:25,440 --> 01:01:29,640
Speaker 2: Was that more recent development or was that something that

1037
01:01:29,680 --> 01:01:30,640
Speaker 2: was always part of the plan.

1038
01:01:31,120 --> 01:01:36,720
Speaker 1: We had always talked about offering retirement products. There's just

1039
01:01:37,000 --> 01:01:40,000
Speaker 1: I mean, the financial space is so big and there's

1040
01:01:40,000 --> 01:01:45,120
Speaker 1: so much that we want to do that the order

1041
01:01:45,160 --> 01:01:50,240
Speaker 1: of things becomes important and which what's first, And you know,

1042
01:01:50,280 --> 01:01:54,640
Speaker 1: there's sort of like always a balancing act between innovative

1043
01:01:54,680 --> 01:01:57,960
Speaker 1: new features that you don't find anywhere else but Robinhood.

1044
01:01:59,000 --> 01:02:01,600
Speaker 1: And those are things like twenty four hour market offering,

1045
01:02:01,720 --> 01:02:04,400
Speaker 1: which allows you to trade stocks twenty four hours a day,

1046
01:02:04,760 --> 01:02:07,840
Speaker 1: and we're the first to market with that for individual

1047
01:02:07,920 --> 01:02:11,560
Speaker 1: stocks like Tesla and Nvidia and Apple, things like retirement

1048
01:02:11,560 --> 01:02:14,840
Speaker 1: accounts that others offer, but you know, we'd have to

1049
01:02:14,920 --> 01:02:17,200
Speaker 1: kind of like catch up and add them, and of

1050
01:02:17,200 --> 01:02:19,680
Speaker 1: course we try to put our innovative twist, like the

1051
01:02:19,760 --> 01:02:23,960
Speaker 1: matches onto them. And then there's just like scaling the infrastructure,

1052
01:02:24,560 --> 01:02:27,479
Speaker 1: and that includes things like customer support and just making

1053
01:02:27,520 --> 01:02:31,520
Speaker 1: sure that the infrastructure gets more reliable and sophisticated to

1054
01:02:31,560 --> 01:02:36,520
Speaker 1: handle more, which you know, as we're expanding globally and

1055
01:02:36,600 --> 01:02:42,320
Speaker 1: servicing other customers in different countries is also a giant

1056
01:02:42,360 --> 01:02:43,640
Speaker 1: area of investment for us.

1057
01:02:43,720 --> 01:02:46,920
Speaker 2: It's so interesting, isn't it, Because I feel like you're

1058
01:02:46,960 --> 01:02:51,560
Speaker 2: seeing all these new disruptive platforms. Technologies give people so

1059
01:02:51,720 --> 01:02:57,640
Speaker 2: much opportunity that wasn't accessible before, but often they come

1060
01:02:57,760 --> 01:03:04,680
Speaker 2: under even more scrutiny and challenged then banks or anything

1061
01:03:04,680 --> 01:03:06,800
Speaker 2: anything else did in the in previous years. I was

1062
01:03:06,840 --> 01:03:09,080
Speaker 2: wondering what your take on the GameStop movie was. I

1063
01:03:09,120 --> 01:03:09,840
Speaker 2: don't know if you saw it.

1064
01:03:09,840 --> 01:03:11,960
Speaker 1: Did you get to see it or I saw some

1065
01:03:12,040 --> 01:03:12,600
Speaker 1: clips of it?

1066
01:03:12,680 --> 01:03:14,720
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, what was the full thing? No?

1067
01:03:15,000 --> 01:03:16,800
Speaker 1: I mean I saw the clips that I was in.

1068
01:03:16,880 --> 01:03:18,840
Speaker 1: Of course I wanted to I wanted to see how

1069
01:03:18,880 --> 01:03:23,160
Speaker 1: I was portrayed certainly not out of vanity or anything

1070
01:03:23,200 --> 01:03:23,520
Speaker 1: like that.

1071
01:03:23,880 --> 01:03:26,400
Speaker 2: Did they have to ask permission for that? No?

1072
01:03:26,680 --> 01:03:28,960
Speaker 1: It was kind of the weirdest thing. You know, your

1073
01:03:29,640 --> 01:03:33,520
Speaker 1: likeness and name can just be kind of taken and monetized.

1074
01:03:33,640 --> 01:03:36,200
Speaker 1: And I don't think the movie made very much money,

1075
01:03:36,280 --> 01:03:40,400
Speaker 1: But yeah, they certainly didn't ask for permission, right.

1076
01:03:40,440 --> 01:03:41,880
Speaker 2: And then when you saw the clips of you and

1077
01:03:41,960 --> 01:03:43,320
Speaker 2: how did you feel? Like? How did that?

1078
01:03:43,520 --> 01:03:46,880
Speaker 1: I thought they kind of got my mannerisms right. It

1079
01:03:46,960 --> 01:03:49,920
Speaker 1: made sense because I think they probably looked at interviews

1080
01:03:49,960 --> 01:03:52,880
Speaker 1: that I'd done, and you know, they they basically had

1081
01:03:52,920 --> 01:03:56,760
Speaker 1: figured out sort of like my way of speaking. And uh,

1082
01:03:57,520 --> 01:03:59,840
Speaker 1: you know, the actor that played me was very good

1083
01:04:00,000 --> 01:04:03,880
Speaker 1: looking guy, you know, the Winter Soldier. I think they

1084
01:04:03,920 --> 01:04:05,840
Speaker 1: had to kind of make him look a little uglier

1085
01:04:05,880 --> 01:04:09,280
Speaker 1: so he could he could more accurately portray me. But hey,

1086
01:04:09,320 --> 01:04:13,959
Speaker 1: I'm not complaining. The plot was obviously like complete fabrication.

1087
01:04:14,640 --> 01:04:18,880
Speaker 1: I think people really liked this whole conspiracy theory thing,

1088
01:04:18,960 --> 01:04:22,040
Speaker 1: and you know, there was this like conspiracy theory of

1089
01:04:22,160 --> 01:04:27,640
Speaker 1: collusion floating floating around particularly at that time, So I

1090
01:04:27,640 --> 01:04:35,120
Speaker 1: don't think they could actually like explicitly say the conspiracy theory,

1091
01:04:35,120 --> 01:04:37,960
Speaker 1: but they were just evoking it in all sorts of ways,

1092
01:04:38,360 --> 01:04:41,440
Speaker 1: So those parts were fictional, but I think they got

1093
01:04:41,480 --> 01:04:42,480
Speaker 1: my mannerisms right.

1094
01:04:43,480 --> 01:04:45,479
Speaker 2: And then I mean I saw you do at the time.

1095
01:04:45,520 --> 01:04:47,520
Speaker 2: You did tons of interviews. I think you did a

1096
01:04:47,680 --> 01:04:50,520
Speaker 2: clubhouse with Elon and yeah, there are a bunch of

1097
01:04:50,520 --> 01:04:53,320
Speaker 2: different things that I saw that you did at the time.

1098
01:04:53,800 --> 01:04:55,840
Speaker 2: What does it feel now reflecting back on that time,

1099
01:04:55,880 --> 01:04:59,160
Speaker 2: because I imagine that there was so much scrutiny, there

1100
01:04:59,200 --> 01:05:02,720
Speaker 2: was so much conspiracy, there was How have you felt

1101
01:05:02,760 --> 01:05:05,080
Speaker 2: about it since then? Like now you can look backwards

1102
01:05:05,080 --> 01:05:07,040
Speaker 2: eye on it, I guess as supposed to at that time,

1103
01:05:07,080 --> 01:05:10,440
Speaker 2: where you're looking right at it. What's changed over the

1104
01:05:10,520 --> 01:05:11,280
Speaker 2: last three years.

1105
01:05:11,400 --> 01:05:13,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, from time to time I do look

1106
01:05:13,440 --> 01:05:18,120
Speaker 1: at like some old clips of my interviews back then,

1107
01:05:18,240 --> 01:05:21,560
Speaker 1: and you know, I kind of feel bad for myself

1108
01:05:21,640 --> 01:05:24,960
Speaker 1: because I was like a little kid, you know. It

1109
01:05:25,160 --> 01:05:30,680
Speaker 1: just the company was private. I was always particularly at

1110
01:05:30,680 --> 01:05:34,280
Speaker 1: that time, I was just very focused on getting the

1111
01:05:34,320 --> 01:05:37,160
Speaker 1: technology to work, and I didn't really want to be

1112
01:05:37,160 --> 01:05:41,760
Speaker 1: in the public eye. And I certainly didn't see myself

1113
01:05:41,800 --> 01:05:46,720
Speaker 1: as you know, some kind of political figure wrapped up

1114
01:05:46,720 --> 01:05:51,200
Speaker 1: in some kind of political quarrel over investing or regulation.

1115
01:05:51,840 --> 01:05:56,720
Speaker 1: I think what happened was, you know, GameStop for better

1116
01:05:56,800 --> 01:06:00,680
Speaker 1: or worse put robin Hood sort of like firmly into

1117
01:06:00,720 --> 01:06:03,400
Speaker 1: the zeitgeist right before it was a little fringe. I mean,

1118
01:06:03,400 --> 01:06:05,760
Speaker 1: we still had a lot of customers, but we weren't

1119
01:06:06,840 --> 01:06:12,360
Speaker 1: we weren't like a politicized brand. And I think at

1120
01:06:12,400 --> 01:06:16,160
Speaker 1: that point I really had to learn really quickly not

1121
01:06:16,320 --> 01:06:18,960
Speaker 1: just how to like build technology and lead teams to

1122
01:06:19,000 --> 01:06:21,440
Speaker 1: do it, but also how to represent the company. And

1123
01:06:22,520 --> 01:06:25,920
Speaker 1: you know, it's like you can see in those interviews,

1124
01:06:25,960 --> 01:06:29,200
Speaker 1: I'm kind of like reading a script and that was

1125
01:06:29,240 --> 01:06:31,400
Speaker 1: my approach to interviews for a while. It was like

1126
01:06:31,480 --> 01:06:34,480
Speaker 1: reading my points and trying to communicate the facts of

1127
01:06:34,520 --> 01:06:38,600
Speaker 1: the message. But you know now now, I know now

1128
01:06:38,600 --> 01:06:42,280
Speaker 1: that I'm much more wise and mature and still not

1129
01:06:42,960 --> 01:06:47,400
Speaker 1: nearly as as experienced as you. You've probably done thousands

1130
01:06:47,440 --> 01:06:52,560
Speaker 1: of these, right, but it doesn't really resonate with our audience.

1131
01:06:52,600 --> 01:06:55,520
Speaker 1: To just like read the facts, you have to give

1132
01:06:55,560 --> 01:06:58,840
Speaker 1: some emotion and some feeling and have some empathy, and

1133
01:06:59,640 --> 01:07:02,800
Speaker 1: you know, there has to be a little bit more.

1134
01:07:02,880 --> 01:07:05,320
Speaker 1: So I've had to kind of learn all that stuff.

1135
01:07:05,360 --> 01:07:10,400
Speaker 1: And now they just look incredibly inauthentic and robotic. And

1136
01:07:11,520 --> 01:07:14,880
Speaker 1: I think the the more time has passed, the more

1137
01:07:14,920 --> 01:07:18,760
Speaker 1: I'm kind of trying to be as authentic as possible

1138
01:07:18,800 --> 01:07:20,680
Speaker 1: in my appearances. And I think that had to be

1139
01:07:21,600 --> 01:07:26,280
Speaker 1: had to be something that I learned and doing so,

1140
01:07:26,640 --> 01:07:29,880
Speaker 1: especially in that time where the stakes were super high

1141
01:07:29,920 --> 01:07:32,640
Speaker 1: and we were about to go public, and you know,

1142
01:07:32,880 --> 01:07:37,640
Speaker 1: you have like all sorts of advisors and lawyers and

1143
01:07:37,760 --> 01:07:40,720
Speaker 1: you know, professionals that are trying to protect me and

1144
01:07:40,760 --> 01:07:43,240
Speaker 1: the firm, say, don't say this, be careful not to

1145
01:07:43,280 --> 01:07:46,080
Speaker 1: say this. Be careful when you're kind of making this

1146
01:07:46,240 --> 01:07:48,680
Speaker 1: point that you don't make people think that you're actually

1147
01:07:48,760 --> 01:07:52,240
Speaker 1: meaning this. So and if you're kind of running the

1148
01:07:52,320 --> 01:07:55,080
Speaker 1: algorithm through your head of like what you can't say

1149
01:07:55,120 --> 01:07:57,960
Speaker 1: and what you what you should say, and how what

1150
01:07:58,000 --> 01:08:00,360
Speaker 1: you're saying could be kind of like interpret.

1151
01:08:00,120 --> 01:08:02,520
Speaker 2: Did it's exhausting hearing exactly. Yeah.

1152
01:08:02,600 --> 01:08:08,840
Speaker 1: Eventually, to some degree, like you practice enough and it

1153
01:08:08,960 --> 01:08:11,200
Speaker 1: becomes second nature and you can kind of rip up

1154
01:08:11,240 --> 01:08:14,640
Speaker 1: all the guidelines and be pretty confident that you're doing

1155
01:08:14,680 --> 01:08:17,520
Speaker 1: the right thing. But I think it has to be authentic.

1156
01:08:17,640 --> 01:08:21,920
Speaker 1: And back then I was just like very inexperienced at

1157
01:08:21,960 --> 01:08:25,160
Speaker 1: all this stuff. I sort of undervalued it, and I

1158
01:08:25,200 --> 01:08:27,840
Speaker 1: think it took a while for me to get to

1159
01:08:27,880 --> 01:08:29,720
Speaker 1: like a basic level of competency.

1160
01:08:30,120 --> 01:08:31,680
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I mean I think it's fair. I think

1161
01:08:31,680 --> 01:08:34,240
Speaker 2: that every founder goes through that journey of like you've

1162
01:08:34,240 --> 01:08:37,400
Speaker 2: been building something in private in a room or an

1163
01:08:37,400 --> 01:08:39,280
Speaker 2: office for so many years, and all of a sudden

1164
01:08:39,760 --> 01:08:43,920
Speaker 2: your company gets notoriety in mainstream culture, and then all

1165
01:08:43,920 --> 01:08:46,360
Speaker 2: of a sudden you're having to do things that you

1166
01:08:46,360 --> 01:08:48,320
Speaker 2: don't necessarily set out to do as a founder. I

1167
01:08:48,360 --> 01:08:50,760
Speaker 2: feel like even actors go through that way. You're just

1168
01:08:50,800 --> 01:08:53,040
Speaker 2: working on a movie on a set and then you

1169
01:08:53,040 --> 01:08:55,920
Speaker 2: have to go promote the movie, but or you're seen

1170
01:08:55,960 --> 01:08:58,519
Speaker 2: in public and something impacts the movie, and that wasn't

1171
01:08:58,560 --> 01:09:01,759
Speaker 2: necessarily what you signed up for. What were the actual

1172
01:09:01,840 --> 01:09:05,160
Speaker 2: ramifications or consequences of all of that, Like, what actually,

1173
01:09:05,560 --> 01:09:09,640
Speaker 2: how did that actually affect Robinie apart from the cultural propelling.

1174
01:09:09,960 --> 01:09:12,439
Speaker 1: Well, I think a lot of a lot of people

1175
01:09:12,439 --> 01:09:15,040
Speaker 1: who were just like looking at me at the time,

1176
01:09:15,400 --> 01:09:20,280
Speaker 1: and maybe we're not Robinhood users themselves. Maybe some of

1177
01:09:20,280 --> 01:09:22,960
Speaker 1: them were Robinhood users, but others were kind of thinking

1178
01:09:23,000 --> 01:09:25,720
Speaker 1: about it and were aware of it. I think some

1179
01:09:25,760 --> 01:09:29,120
Speaker 1: people got the impression that I just like maybe didn't

1180
01:09:29,160 --> 01:09:32,240
Speaker 1: care about our customers, and I think that was the

1181
01:09:32,280 --> 01:09:36,719
Speaker 1: part that actually like pained me and kind of stayed

1182
01:09:36,760 --> 01:09:39,840
Speaker 1: with me over time. They're like, oh, look at him,

1183
01:09:39,920 --> 01:09:43,040
Speaker 1: he doesn't have any emotions and he's just like talking

1184
01:09:43,040 --> 01:09:48,320
Speaker 1: about these clearing house regulatory requirements, but he doesn't understand

1185
01:09:48,479 --> 01:09:51,360
Speaker 1: the pain that kind of customers went through who wanted

1186
01:09:51,400 --> 01:09:54,479
Speaker 1: to you know, buy game stop or AMC or all

1187
01:09:54,560 --> 01:09:57,600
Speaker 1: these other things. I mean, like, I definitely understood the

1188
01:09:57,640 --> 01:10:00,600
Speaker 1: pain that those were some of the most painful sleepless

1189
01:10:00,720 --> 01:10:06,240
Speaker 1: nights for me going through that whole uh ordeal. But yeah,

1190
01:10:06,280 --> 01:10:10,439
Speaker 1: my approach was always just I'm I don't I don't

1191
01:10:10,439 --> 01:10:12,680
Speaker 1: want to like talk about doing stuff. I like to

1192
01:10:12,720 --> 01:10:17,120
Speaker 1: do stuff, so uh, I'm not gonna like, maybe maybe

1193
01:10:17,120 --> 01:10:20,120
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be like super emotive with my customers,

1194
01:10:20,120 --> 01:10:22,639
Speaker 1: but I'm just gonna build them great products that save

1195
01:10:22,720 --> 01:10:25,880
Speaker 1: them tons of money and give them a great experience

1196
01:10:26,040 --> 01:10:28,479
Speaker 1: so that they could learn to invest and manage their money.

1197
01:10:28,560 --> 01:10:32,280
Speaker 1: I think that was painful. Obviously, the collusion narrative was

1198
01:10:32,400 --> 01:10:33,560
Speaker 1: painful because.

1199
01:10:33,280 --> 01:10:36,439
Speaker 2: It was like proven there's no there's no.

1200
01:10:36,600 --> 01:10:40,519
Speaker 1: It was disproven. I mean, learning how to communicate and

1201
01:10:41,880 --> 01:10:47,920
Speaker 1: actually like to some degree, like going through a crisis

1202
01:10:48,240 --> 01:10:51,880
Speaker 1: and then surviving and then sort of like learning from

1203
01:10:51,880 --> 01:10:57,920
Speaker 1: it and building building back better so that you don't

1204
01:10:58,000 --> 01:11:01,880
Speaker 1: actually repeat the same thing again. I mean, Robin Hood's

1205
01:11:01,920 --> 01:11:04,880
Speaker 1: had our share of issues over the years. Like we

1206
01:11:05,160 --> 01:11:07,880
Speaker 1: definitely haven't been perfect. But I mean one thing I'm

1207
01:11:07,920 --> 01:11:11,040
Speaker 1: proud of is they're all like we've made mistakes, but

1208
01:11:11,080 --> 01:11:14,280
Speaker 1: they're a series of original mistakes, so we tend not

1209
01:11:14,400 --> 01:11:18,000
Speaker 1: to make the you know, same mistake twice, and so

1210
01:11:18,160 --> 01:11:21,559
Speaker 1: like throughout all of these we've just like built up

1211
01:11:21,560 --> 01:11:23,920
Speaker 1: a ton of scar tissue and learnings and have been

1212
01:11:23,920 --> 01:11:26,800
Speaker 1: a much stronger company. And I think all of this,

1213
01:11:27,120 --> 01:11:29,679
Speaker 1: all of the crises, you know, I remember the dates.

1214
01:11:30,080 --> 01:11:33,800
Speaker 1: You know, It's like, you know, it's like January twenty eight,

1215
01:11:33,840 --> 01:11:39,639
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, or December twelfth, twenty eighteen, or March second,

1216
01:11:39,720 --> 01:11:42,040
Speaker 1: twenty twenty right at the beginning of COVID when we

1217
01:11:42,080 --> 01:11:44,840
Speaker 1: had a day long trading outage. So you kind of

1218
01:11:44,880 --> 01:11:48,240
Speaker 1: remember all of these events and kind of take different

1219
01:11:48,240 --> 01:11:52,200
Speaker 1: things away from them. But I mean, at the end

1220
01:11:52,240 --> 01:11:54,839
Speaker 1: of the day, we've been a company for ten years

1221
01:11:55,160 --> 01:11:59,479
Speaker 1: and you're gonna if you're in a disruptive space where

1222
01:12:00,400 --> 01:12:03,920
Speaker 1: you're kind of challenging the status quo and trying to

1223
01:12:04,040 --> 01:12:10,519
Speaker 1: change things, some people are if some people are going

1224
01:12:10,600 --> 01:12:13,760
Speaker 1: to be unhappy, right, and you have to have thick

1225
01:12:13,800 --> 01:12:15,559
Speaker 1: skin to kind of get through that.

1226
01:12:15,920 --> 01:12:19,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an interesting dynamic, isn't it. When when companies

1227
01:12:19,120 --> 01:12:22,080
Speaker 2: are doing something for the first times, it's inevitable that

1228
01:12:22,120 --> 01:12:26,560
Speaker 2: there's going to be mistakes and mismanagement and challenges.

1229
01:12:26,640 --> 01:12:29,040
Speaker 1: And I think and it's almost like, you know, if

1230
01:12:29,080 --> 01:12:32,440
Speaker 1: you're being too careful, if you actually make zero mistakes,

1231
01:12:33,360 --> 01:12:35,760
Speaker 1: you might not be successful. You're probably aren't going to

1232
01:12:35,760 --> 01:12:38,679
Speaker 1: be successful because you're just like not pushing hard enough.

1233
01:12:38,960 --> 01:12:42,960
Speaker 1: Like it's like he at some point, not taking any

1234
01:12:43,040 --> 01:12:45,760
Speaker 1: risk is like the biggest risk of all, particularly in

1235
01:12:45,800 --> 01:12:48,800
Speaker 1: like a hot competitive market. So you just you have

1236
01:12:48,840 --> 01:12:51,240
Speaker 1: to know the right amount. I think it's a it's

1237
01:12:51,280 --> 01:12:55,960
Speaker 1: somewhat of a fine dance, but it's it's certainly not

1238
01:12:56,040 --> 01:13:00,000
Speaker 1: acceptable to like play everything super safe in the world

1239
01:13:00,000 --> 01:13:00,679
Speaker 1: world of business.

1240
01:13:00,760 --> 01:13:02,720
Speaker 2: And I guess the challenge is because it's dealing with

1241
01:13:02,760 --> 01:13:06,480
Speaker 2: people's money, it's even a more heightened.

1242
01:13:06,120 --> 01:13:10,200
Speaker 1: There's a heightened sense of safety. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, and

1243
01:13:10,520 --> 01:13:12,679
Speaker 1: people can be very emotional about their money.

1244
01:13:13,000 --> 01:13:16,120
Speaker 2: But first, here's a quick word from the brands that

1245
01:13:16,160 --> 01:13:19,840
Speaker 2: support the show. All right, thank you to our sponsors.

1246
01:13:20,160 --> 01:13:22,400
Speaker 2: Now let's dive back in. What were some of the

1247
01:13:22,400 --> 01:13:24,559
Speaker 2: biggest mistakes that you felt and the lessons you learned

1248
01:13:24,560 --> 01:13:27,800
Speaker 2: from them that were so pivotal that you think would

1249
01:13:27,800 --> 01:13:31,280
Speaker 2: be useful for other founders, for customers to hear, for

1250
01:13:31,760 --> 01:13:34,120
Speaker 2: other people to just be aware of, Like this is

1251
01:13:34,120 --> 01:13:36,639
Speaker 2: how you now look at it versus at the time

1252
01:13:36,640 --> 01:13:38,960
Speaker 2: when you're like, well, we need to be risk pro

1253
01:13:39,080 --> 01:13:40,640
Speaker 2: risk try things out.

1254
01:13:40,720 --> 01:13:47,320
Speaker 1: Designing our infrastructure with scalability in mind from day one

1255
01:13:47,880 --> 01:13:50,040
Speaker 1: probably would have saved us quite a bit of grief

1256
01:13:50,080 --> 01:13:54,639
Speaker 1: because we've had to like rewrite and like redo multiple times.

1257
01:13:55,680 --> 01:13:59,200
Speaker 1: The conventional wisdom is you don't want to prematurely optimize anything.

1258
01:13:59,280 --> 01:14:02,400
Speaker 1: The Silicon Valley sort of like tombs are littered with

1259
01:14:02,520 --> 01:14:06,040
Speaker 1: corpses of startups that had perfect infrastructure and no users,

1260
01:14:06,439 --> 01:14:08,880
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, yeah, So it's always hard to do

1261
01:14:08,920 --> 01:14:13,400
Speaker 1: the counterfactual on these things, because like you know, if

1262
01:14:13,400 --> 01:14:17,000
Speaker 1: we had if we had overinvested in those things, maybe

1263
01:14:17,000 --> 01:14:20,960
Speaker 1: we like wouldn't have customers and then no problems but

1264
01:14:21,040 --> 01:14:23,439
Speaker 1: no customers, right. I think we can end up being

1265
01:14:23,479 --> 01:14:27,439
Speaker 1: like tormented by our pass too much. So I don't

1266
01:14:27,439 --> 01:14:29,240
Speaker 1: even I don't know how helpful it is.

1267
01:14:29,720 --> 01:14:33,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's an interesting take. I can see why.

1268
01:14:33,240 --> 01:14:35,040
Speaker 2: I can definitely see why. I mean, the only thing

1269
01:14:35,080 --> 01:14:38,439
Speaker 2: that stood out to me was you saying that your

1270
01:14:38,479 --> 01:14:41,439
Speaker 2: most difficult period was in twenty twenty two, when Robin

1271
01:14:41,520 --> 01:14:44,920
Speaker 2: Hude's business took a hit amid the market downturn. Yeah,

1272
01:14:44,960 --> 01:14:49,320
Speaker 2: that's true, and I feel like what was so what

1273
01:14:49,400 --> 01:14:51,120
Speaker 2: was what was so tough for you personally about that?

1274
01:14:51,160 --> 01:14:53,479
Speaker 1: I mean you've Yeah, some people might hear that and

1275
01:14:53,520 --> 01:14:56,760
Speaker 1: be like that's crazy, Like how can that compare to

1276
01:14:56,800 --> 01:14:57,360
Speaker 1: Game Stop?

1277
01:14:57,439 --> 01:14:57,599
Speaker 2: Right?

1278
01:14:58,120 --> 01:15:00,599
Speaker 1: I think the thing about Game Stop was like very

1279
01:15:00,680 --> 01:15:06,439
Speaker 1: acute difficulty, you know, and it was like almost like

1280
01:15:06,439 --> 01:15:09,519
Speaker 1: a roller coaster ride. You know, it's like intense, but

1281
01:15:09,920 --> 01:15:12,360
Speaker 1: it's over in three minutes, and it's kind of clear

1282
01:15:12,439 --> 01:15:14,640
Speaker 1: what you have to do to get out of that

1283
01:15:14,640 --> 01:15:18,879
Speaker 1: difficult situation. You know, we navigated it, we became stronger company.

1284
01:15:21,040 --> 01:15:25,040
Speaker 1: Twenty twenty two was like a slower burn, right, and

1285
01:15:25,840 --> 01:15:28,479
Speaker 1: we had just gone public in middle of twenty twenty

1286
01:15:28,479 --> 01:15:31,160
Speaker 1: one kind of at the end of the window. The

1287
01:15:31,200 --> 01:15:35,120
Speaker 1: window has kind of been basically shut since then for IPOs, right,

1288
01:15:35,439 --> 01:15:38,080
Speaker 1: and we kind of squeezed in right before things got

1289
01:15:38,120 --> 01:15:42,479
Speaker 1: really bad. And so what happened was you had this

1290
01:15:42,520 --> 01:15:47,840
Speaker 1: period where it became clear that inflation was getting completely

1291
01:15:47,880 --> 01:15:51,160
Speaker 1: out of hand, and that freaked everyone out. And then

1292
01:15:51,200 --> 01:15:53,599
Speaker 1: it became clear that the FED was going to hike rates,

1293
01:15:54,280 --> 01:15:58,080
Speaker 1: and we had kind of like everyone was prepared for

1294
01:15:58,120 --> 01:16:03,200
Speaker 1: a multi year period of like zero rates, and you know,

1295
01:16:03,240 --> 01:16:06,720
Speaker 1: to tame inflation, the FED, who hadn't really dealt with

1296
01:16:06,760 --> 01:16:10,439
Speaker 1: inflation for thirty years, had to hike rates up at

1297
01:16:10,479 --> 01:16:14,880
Speaker 1: the fastest pace in the past several decades. And what

1298
01:16:14,960 --> 01:16:21,080
Speaker 1: happens was when rates go up, people typically invest less

1299
01:16:21,320 --> 01:16:24,599
Speaker 1: because you imagine, if you can get five percent on

1300
01:16:24,640 --> 01:16:28,840
Speaker 1: your cash just sitting there and the stock market appreciates,

1301
01:16:29,000 --> 01:16:32,639
Speaker 1: you know, seven to ten percent each year pre tax,

1302
01:16:34,120 --> 01:16:39,040
Speaker 1: and you can get that five percent rate without taking

1303
01:16:39,120 --> 01:16:44,120
Speaker 1: on market risk, that becomes much more much more compelling relatively,

1304
01:16:44,160 --> 01:16:47,120
Speaker 1: so you'll have less investing. And then that's what we saw.

1305
01:16:47,320 --> 01:16:50,400
Speaker 1: Less people were interested in opening up brokerage accounts and

1306
01:16:50,439 --> 01:16:54,200
Speaker 1: investing for the first time, and that was like our

1307
01:16:54,200 --> 01:16:56,920
Speaker 1: whole business. You know, that was the core of our business,

1308
01:16:57,439 --> 01:16:59,599
Speaker 1: and we didn't really have anything for a high rate

1309
01:16:59,720 --> 01:17:03,120
Speaker 1: environ at that time. And you know, there was some

1310
01:17:03,240 --> 01:17:06,200
Speaker 1: criticism of this when we went public and some questions,

1311
01:17:06,680 --> 01:17:10,400
Speaker 1: you know, the analysts and investors would be like, well, Robinhood,

1312
01:17:10,400 --> 01:17:13,640
Speaker 1: you've done really well during COVID and during this extended

1313
01:17:13,720 --> 01:17:17,240
Speaker 1: period of zero rates. The company has gone to twenty

1314
01:17:17,280 --> 01:17:20,000
Speaker 1: million users in that time. But how are you guys

1315
01:17:20,040 --> 01:17:23,760
Speaker 1: going to do in a environment where the interest rates

1316
01:17:23,760 --> 01:17:26,880
Speaker 1: are higher? You know, is this just is Robinhood a

1317
01:17:26,960 --> 01:17:31,240
Speaker 1: zero interest rate phenomenon. Of course, you know we had

1318
01:17:31,320 --> 01:17:36,120
Speaker 1: answers to that, but until you prove that, people don't

1319
01:17:36,160 --> 01:17:39,439
Speaker 1: really believe you. And so we actually had to like

1320
01:17:40,600 --> 01:17:45,960
Speaker 1: go through an incredibly challenging process of like changing the

1321
01:17:45,960 --> 01:17:49,960
Speaker 1: strategy of the company, effectively refounding the company in twenty

1322
01:17:50,000 --> 01:17:56,400
Speaker 1: twenty two, when you know, the entire macro environment shifted,

1323
01:17:56,960 --> 01:17:59,439
Speaker 1: and I think we we did a really good job.

1324
01:17:59,479 --> 01:18:03,439
Speaker 1: I mean, within six months after that we had gone

1325
01:18:03,479 --> 01:18:07,439
Speaker 1: adjusted ebadat positive. In twenty twenty three, we had gap

1326
01:18:07,479 --> 01:18:11,040
Speaker 1: profitability at the first time. We now have eight business

1327
01:18:11,080 --> 01:18:13,559
Speaker 1: lines that are generating one hundred million in revenue or

1328
01:18:13,600 --> 01:18:16,960
Speaker 1: more so, the business is very diversified. More than half

1329
01:18:16,960 --> 01:18:21,000
Speaker 1: of the rent revenue is interest rather than transactions. And

1330
01:18:21,040 --> 01:18:24,880
Speaker 1: now we're starting to get the question, Wow, like Robinwood

1331
01:18:24,920 --> 01:18:27,400
Speaker 1: is doing so well in this high interest rate environment,

1332
01:18:27,479 --> 01:18:29,519
Speaker 1: the Fed's going to cut rates. What are you guys

1333
01:18:29,600 --> 01:18:32,280
Speaker 1: going to do when when the Fed cuts the rates?

1334
01:18:32,320 --> 01:18:35,280
Speaker 1: And like, you can't. You can't have these like high

1335
01:18:35,360 --> 01:18:38,920
Speaker 1: interest rate revenue streams firing on all cylinders now, So

1336
01:18:39,760 --> 01:18:42,200
Speaker 1: now we have to go backwards and and prove that

1337
01:18:42,920 --> 01:18:46,320
Speaker 1: customers still would want to trade options and crypto inequities.

1338
01:18:46,439 --> 01:18:49,400
Speaker 1: So it was I think, n interesting.

1339
01:18:49,640 --> 01:18:53,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny how it just keeps uscillating between cycling.

1340
01:18:53,280 --> 01:18:55,719
Speaker 1: I guess, well, the more times you do that cycle.

1341
01:18:56,040 --> 01:18:58,800
Speaker 1: I always felt like when we were private, every time

1342
01:18:59,280 --> 01:19:01,559
Speaker 1: we raised a new round of funding, we had to

1343
01:19:01,640 --> 01:19:04,840
Speaker 1: kind of like reprove ourselves to these new investors that

1344
01:19:04,960 --> 01:19:09,360
Speaker 1: came in and just didn't understand the company. But then,

1345
01:19:09,439 --> 01:19:12,840
Speaker 1: you know, the longer we lasted, as we got up

1346
01:19:12,880 --> 01:19:17,479
Speaker 1: to like Series H I think in private funding, and

1347
01:19:17,600 --> 01:19:21,479
Speaker 1: you know, by that point, the Series ABC investors had

1348
01:19:21,520 --> 01:19:24,800
Speaker 1: developed such a deep understanding of the company. They had

1349
01:19:24,840 --> 01:19:27,519
Speaker 1: so much trust and I think it's the same with

1350
01:19:27,640 --> 01:19:30,160
Speaker 1: the public company, or at least i'd like to think. So,

1351
01:19:30,680 --> 01:19:33,400
Speaker 1: you know, you pick your investors, your investors pick you,

1352
01:19:33,920 --> 01:19:37,479
Speaker 1: and the more cycles we go through, we are building

1353
01:19:37,560 --> 01:19:41,760
Speaker 1: institutional knowledge as a public company, and I do think that,

1354
01:19:42,800 --> 01:19:46,519
Speaker 1: you know, the market is starting to recognize that, hey,

1355
01:19:46,680 --> 01:19:50,639
Speaker 1: maybe this founding team, the management team of this company

1356
01:19:50,680 --> 01:19:53,120
Speaker 1: knows what they're doing. And the more cycles we go through,

1357
01:19:53,240 --> 01:19:54,800
Speaker 1: I think the more we'll prove that out.

1358
01:19:55,240 --> 01:19:56,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think I've read somewhere where you were

1359
01:19:56,840 --> 01:19:59,720
Speaker 2: saying that that time really changed how you look to

1360
01:19:59,760 --> 01:20:03,479
Speaker 2: being a CEO and a leader and reprioritizing the company.

1361
01:20:03,680 --> 01:20:06,360
Speaker 2: Was what was you You just talked there about almost

1362
01:20:06,400 --> 01:20:11,400
Speaker 2: what you did in terms of building product, diversifying income streams,

1363
01:20:11,520 --> 01:20:13,599
Speaker 2: you know, having all of the portfolio of how people

1364
01:20:13,600 --> 01:20:18,559
Speaker 2: could use Robin hood, But what was that like for

1365
01:20:18,600 --> 01:20:21,960
Speaker 2: you internally from a leadership per cective? What changed as

1366
01:20:22,280 --> 01:20:23,599
Speaker 2: how you about how you led?

1367
01:20:24,000 --> 01:20:28,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there was this exercise that I would go

1368
01:20:28,080 --> 01:20:32,599
Speaker 1: through with with some of my team where I would

1369
01:20:32,600 --> 01:20:38,599
Speaker 1: imagine if a new person came into the roles as CEO.

1370
01:20:39,160 --> 01:20:40,880
Speaker 1: And I've told this story a couple of times, and

1371
01:20:41,040 --> 01:20:45,160
Speaker 1: it's not like I imagine myself being fire. I was

1372
01:20:45,200 --> 01:20:47,320
Speaker 1: worried about that or anything like that, but it was

1373
01:20:47,560 --> 01:20:52,000
Speaker 1: almost like, Okay, this thought exercise of let's say I

1374
01:20:52,040 --> 01:20:54,320
Speaker 1: didn't come with any of the baggage of like having

1375
01:20:54,360 --> 01:20:57,040
Speaker 1: founded the company and made all the decisions to get

1376
01:20:57,120 --> 01:20:59,160
Speaker 1: us to this point. If I could look at it

1377
01:20:59,400 --> 01:21:05,120
Speaker 1: from with a beginner's mind and just say, hey, I'm here,

1378
01:21:05,439 --> 01:21:07,559
Speaker 1: I'm seeing this company, this is kind of the state

1379
01:21:07,600 --> 01:21:11,200
Speaker 1: of affairs. What would I do differently? And you know,

1380
01:21:11,280 --> 01:21:14,800
Speaker 1: I came up with a bunch of things that like

1381
01:21:14,840 --> 01:21:19,200
Speaker 1: a stereotypical like top CEO coming in would do differently.

1382
01:21:19,760 --> 01:21:22,000
Speaker 1: They would pull back on remote first and get people

1383
01:21:22,040 --> 01:21:24,920
Speaker 1: in the office so they could collaborate and work together

1384
01:21:25,280 --> 01:21:28,080
Speaker 1: in person. And even though I had turned Robinhood into

1385
01:21:28,160 --> 01:21:32,800
Speaker 1: a remote first company not too long before, I reversed

1386
01:21:32,840 --> 01:21:35,640
Speaker 1: my own decision there, which was kind of tough from

1387
01:21:35,680 --> 01:21:39,240
Speaker 1: a self consistency standpoint. People have a very hard time

1388
01:21:39,439 --> 01:21:43,400
Speaker 1: being inconsistent with their prior selves. So I think that's

1389
01:21:43,479 --> 01:21:48,920
Speaker 1: like one mental barrier to get past. Another one was

1390
01:21:48,960 --> 01:21:51,400
Speaker 1: I just made this realization that you know, if you

1391
01:21:51,439 --> 01:21:54,880
Speaker 1: look at our business, a lot of our revenue is

1392
01:21:54,920 --> 01:22:01,760
Speaker 1: generated by you know, relatively small component of very active traders,

1393
01:22:02,400 --> 01:22:07,120
Speaker 1: and we actually weren't building products specifically for them. And

1394
01:22:07,160 --> 01:22:09,800
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, we looked at kind of

1395
01:22:09,840 --> 01:22:14,439
Speaker 1: this customer base very deeply in twenty twenty two, and

1396
01:22:14,880 --> 01:22:18,280
Speaker 1: these folks tend to be more sophisticated. So actually, when

1397
01:22:18,720 --> 01:22:23,320
Speaker 1: when the markets are crashing or moving sideways, they tend

1398
01:22:23,400 --> 01:22:27,280
Speaker 1: to actually be more resilient because they can deploy more

1399
01:22:27,320 --> 01:22:30,439
Speaker 1: sophisticated strategies that can take advantage of all sorts of

1400
01:22:30,479 --> 01:22:34,599
Speaker 1: market environments. And we saw what we saw was the

1401
01:22:34,600 --> 01:22:39,400
Speaker 1: more active someone traded Airgo, the more revenue they generated

1402
01:22:39,400 --> 01:22:43,040
Speaker 1: for us, the less happy they were with Robinhood. So

1403
01:22:43,040 --> 01:22:46,000
Speaker 1: so actually our most active customers had like the least

1404
01:22:46,000 --> 01:22:49,280
Speaker 1: customer satisfaction with the platform. So then when we kind

1405
01:22:49,280 --> 01:22:52,200
Speaker 1: of like grock this, we were like, this is a

1406
01:22:52,240 --> 01:22:56,600
Speaker 1: five alarm fire, like any healthy business, Like, you know,

1407
01:22:56,640 --> 01:22:57,160
Speaker 1: you don't.

1408
01:22:57,000 --> 01:22:59,280
Speaker 2: Have to be an MBA.

1409
01:22:59,080 --> 01:23:04,479
Speaker 1: From Wharton to realize that your most valuable customers being

1410
01:23:04,520 --> 01:23:09,120
Speaker 1: like unhappy with you is a big problem. So but

1411
01:23:09,160 --> 01:23:11,559
Speaker 1: what was remarkable was when we kind of like shifted

1412
01:23:11,600 --> 01:23:15,759
Speaker 1: focus towards making these active trader traders really really happy,

1413
01:23:16,280 --> 01:23:20,240
Speaker 1: we fixed it like that like much faster than I

1414
01:23:20,280 --> 01:23:23,400
Speaker 1: thought possible. I think within six months we had basically

1415
01:23:23,439 --> 01:23:27,720
Speaker 1: like solved the problem. Yeah, it's kind of interesting, a

1416
01:23:27,760 --> 01:23:30,160
Speaker 1: lot of introspection to how we ended up sort of

1417
01:23:30,200 --> 01:23:33,479
Speaker 1: like ignoring the active trader audience for for so long.

1418
01:23:33,920 --> 01:23:36,840
Speaker 1: I think once we sort of like refocused on that

1419
01:23:37,080 --> 01:23:41,480
Speaker 1: and and really started treating them like the important constituent

1420
01:23:41,520 --> 01:23:44,160
Speaker 1: part of the user base that they are. Uh, the

1421
01:23:44,240 --> 01:23:48,559
Speaker 1: company just started doing much better. I think by and

1422
01:23:48,640 --> 01:23:52,080
Speaker 1: large that was the biggest part of our of our

1423
01:23:52,120 --> 01:23:54,160
Speaker 1: turnaround as a company since going public.

1424
01:23:55,000 --> 01:23:58,320
Speaker 2: That's that's fascinating. I mean to to discover that your

1425
01:23:58,800 --> 01:24:02,559
Speaker 2: deepest us is on Yeah, it must be like such

1426
01:24:02,600 --> 01:24:03,439
Speaker 2: a yeah.

1427
01:24:03,439 --> 01:24:07,720
Speaker 1: And part of it was like Robinhood was historically very targeted,

1428
01:24:08,000 --> 01:24:10,720
Speaker 1: very focused on the first timers. We want to be

1429
01:24:10,760 --> 01:24:14,040
Speaker 1: someone's first brokerage account. We want to make it easyasy

1430
01:24:14,080 --> 01:24:17,760
Speaker 1: as possible to get started with five dollars, right. But

1431
01:24:18,080 --> 01:24:22,760
Speaker 1: what happened was one a lot of the people that

1432
01:24:22,800 --> 01:24:26,960
Speaker 1: got started with us then became really sophisticated and like

1433
01:24:27,680 --> 01:24:31,680
Speaker 1: wanted more advanced tools and had more specialized needs, but

1434
01:24:31,720 --> 01:24:34,360
Speaker 1: still loved Robinhood and loved the simplicity and the easy

1435
01:24:34,360 --> 01:24:37,720
Speaker 1: abuse of the interface. But the other part was if

1436
01:24:37,760 --> 01:24:41,479
Speaker 1: you think about our options trading platform. For example, we're

1437
01:24:41,520 --> 01:24:46,719
Speaker 1: one of the few, very few that offer options trading

1438
01:24:46,760 --> 01:24:50,280
Speaker 1: for no contract fees. Most of our competitors charged sixty

1439
01:24:50,280 --> 01:24:52,840
Speaker 1: five cents per options contract, So if you trade one

1440
01:24:52,880 --> 01:24:56,720
Speaker 1: hundred contracts, that's sixty five dollars. That's real money. And

1441
01:24:56,760 --> 01:25:01,120
Speaker 1: there's some active traders that you know, spend thousands of

1442
01:25:01,160 --> 01:25:04,799
Speaker 1: dollars a month on other platforms paying these contract fees.

1443
01:25:05,280 --> 01:25:08,680
Speaker 1: So even if like the platforms not really built for you,

1444
01:25:09,840 --> 01:25:12,800
Speaker 1: there's like a really strong economic incentive to use it.

1445
01:25:13,040 --> 01:25:15,120
Speaker 1: So you had a lot of these like super active

1446
01:25:15,200 --> 01:25:18,559
Speaker 1: options traders that were using Schwab or e Trade or others.

1447
01:25:19,120 --> 01:25:21,760
Speaker 1: Maybe they're using their charting from their other platform, but

1448
01:25:21,800 --> 01:25:25,000
Speaker 1: they're putting the trades in via Robinhood and just to

1449
01:25:25,479 --> 01:25:29,960
Speaker 1: save fees. So you know, we grew active traders. We

1450
01:25:30,000 --> 01:25:35,160
Speaker 1: also had some using us because the economics were so good. Yeah,

1451
01:25:35,600 --> 01:25:37,479
Speaker 1: and that way we sort of like built up this

1452
01:25:37,600 --> 01:25:42,960
Speaker 1: large active trader business. Incidentally, while building products for first

1453
01:25:43,000 --> 01:25:44,320
Speaker 1: time novice investors.

1454
01:25:45,280 --> 01:25:49,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's so interesting that since the beginning

1455
01:25:49,520 --> 01:25:52,439
Speaker 2: everything you talked about from the name, there's always been

1456
01:25:52,479 --> 01:25:56,879
Speaker 2: people who've been disgruntled, slightly angry, as you said earlier,

1457
01:25:57,040 --> 01:25:59,960
Speaker 2: like this feeling of like, oh, these guys are doing something,

1458
01:26:00,080 --> 01:26:02,559
Speaker 2: you know, has that kind of like has that kind

1459
01:26:02,560 --> 01:26:04,760
Speaker 2: of changed now as a company matures and like people

1460
01:26:04,800 --> 01:26:08,479
Speaker 2: see you become established and not obviously competitors. But when

1461
01:26:08,479 --> 01:26:11,920
Speaker 2: you look at the people who felt that way initially,

1462
01:26:11,960 --> 01:26:14,880
Speaker 2: do you find that founders are reaching out, you're more

1463
01:26:14,920 --> 01:26:17,960
Speaker 2: connected to people and as you've become more established as well,

1464
01:26:18,040 --> 01:26:20,280
Speaker 2: or does it get lonelier as things go on?

1465
01:26:20,840 --> 01:26:23,719
Speaker 1: Well, I think in different ways it does get lonelier,

1466
01:26:24,360 --> 01:26:28,840
Speaker 1: But I would say in general, I think in the

1467
01:26:28,840 --> 01:26:32,680
Speaker 1: past couple of years especially, we've like fixed more problems

1468
01:26:32,840 --> 01:26:38,240
Speaker 1: than we've created, hopefully, and so our customers generally have

1469
01:26:38,280 --> 01:26:41,719
Speaker 1: been getting happier and happier, not just the active traders,

1470
01:26:41,760 --> 01:26:44,559
Speaker 1: but you know, the great thing when you fix things

1471
01:26:44,560 --> 01:26:47,400
Speaker 1: for active traders, they're like power users of the platform,

1472
01:26:47,479 --> 01:26:51,599
Speaker 1: so the customer experience for a more casual user improves

1473
01:26:51,640 --> 01:26:55,439
Speaker 1: as well. So yeah, fortunately, you know, again knock on wood,

1474
01:26:56,880 --> 01:27:01,880
Speaker 1: we've been like we've been avoiding like major catastrophes in

1475
01:27:01,920 --> 01:27:04,720
Speaker 1: the last few years, which you know, the last few

1476
01:27:04,760 --> 01:27:07,840
Speaker 1: years have been hard, just with standard business challenges to

1477
01:27:08,320 --> 01:27:11,600
Speaker 1: work through. So that's been really nice. I think, like

1478
01:27:12,720 --> 01:27:16,360
Speaker 1: to some degree, I don't expect Robinhood to ever be

1479
01:27:17,200 --> 01:27:21,960
Speaker 1: perfectly understood and non controversial, so it just comes with

1480
01:27:22,080 --> 01:27:23,640
Speaker 1: the comes with the territory.

1481
01:27:23,680 --> 01:27:25,880
Speaker 2: I guess what's made you comfortable with that? I feel

1482
01:27:25,880 --> 01:27:28,880
Speaker 2: like that's obviously always hard. We always want to be liked.

1483
01:27:28,960 --> 01:27:31,839
Speaker 2: We want what we create to be, you know, overall

1484
01:27:31,880 --> 01:27:34,639
Speaker 2: seen in a certain way. What's made you comfortable with that?

1485
01:27:35,120 --> 01:27:37,800
Speaker 1: Well? I think the first time that, for example, I

1486
01:27:38,479 --> 01:27:43,439
Speaker 1: saw a negative press about Robinhood probably was like twenty eighteen,

1487
01:27:43,520 --> 01:27:46,320
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. So for the first four to five years

1488
01:27:46,320 --> 01:27:49,200
Speaker 1: of the company's existence, it felt like everyone was kind

1489
01:27:49,200 --> 01:27:52,400
Speaker 1: of rooting for us, Like the regulators were fans, right,

1490
01:27:52,760 --> 01:27:58,519
Speaker 1: you know. I remember our first FINRA exam. We had,

1491
01:27:58,920 --> 01:28:02,080
Speaker 1: you know, someone kind of looking at what we were doing.

1492
01:28:02,200 --> 01:28:05,840
Speaker 1: Finn was our primary regulator, and you know, this was

1493
01:28:05,880 --> 01:28:09,640
Speaker 1: a young guy. He's like, hey, there's never any like

1494
01:28:09,760 --> 01:28:14,080
Speaker 1: new brokerages filing. This is like super interesting. I wish

1495
01:28:14,160 --> 01:28:17,200
Speaker 1: you guys luck. It gave me this feeling of like wow,

1496
01:28:17,360 --> 01:28:21,160
Speaker 1: I every investor in person I talked to was like

1497
01:28:22,000 --> 01:28:24,599
Speaker 1: run as far away from regulation as possible. You don't

1498
01:28:24,600 --> 01:28:26,680
Speaker 1: want to be a regulated business. It's going to just

1499
01:28:26,760 --> 01:28:30,840
Speaker 1: grind the company to a slow death, so find some

1500
01:28:30,840 --> 01:28:33,479
Speaker 1: way to do it via partnerships or something. When we

1501
01:28:33,479 --> 01:28:38,000
Speaker 1: got started, it was unheard of to like be a

1502
01:28:38,040 --> 01:28:42,280
Speaker 1: financially regulated startup. It was really before the word fintech existed.

1503
01:28:42,439 --> 01:28:45,960
Speaker 1: For example, Robin Wood predated that probably created it to

1504
01:28:46,400 --> 01:28:49,639
Speaker 1: some degree. And then you know, the press was always

1505
01:28:49,640 --> 01:28:52,639
Speaker 1: telling this David and Goliath tale where we were these

1506
01:28:52,680 --> 01:28:57,800
Speaker 1: little guys that were going after the you know, big, established,

1507
01:28:57,880 --> 01:29:02,439
Speaker 1: gigantic competitors, and you know, we had the millennials on

1508
01:29:02,479 --> 01:29:05,880
Speaker 1: our side, and so it was just like very very

1509
01:29:05,920 --> 01:29:10,840
Speaker 1: positive always, and it kind of it was like, I

1510
01:29:10,840 --> 01:29:13,960
Speaker 1: don't really get what all of the fuss is about,

1511
01:29:14,000 --> 01:29:17,200
Speaker 1: Like all of the negative press and all this stuff

1512
01:29:17,200 --> 01:29:20,640
Speaker 1: that people are talking about that's happening to other companies,

1513
01:29:20,720 --> 01:29:23,679
Speaker 1: maybe not us. Eventually I would get like the comms

1514
01:29:23,680 --> 01:29:28,000
Speaker 1: and marketing people that they would come and show me

1515
01:29:28,080 --> 01:29:32,040
Speaker 1: the clock of like company perception. Have you seen this?

1516
01:29:33,000 --> 01:29:37,000
Speaker 1: It's like this clock and like basically, when you're kind

1517
01:29:37,000 --> 01:29:39,760
Speaker 1: of here, everyone loves you, and when you're kind of.

1518
01:29:39,680 --> 01:29:40,800
Speaker 2: Here, everyone hates you.

1519
01:29:41,680 --> 01:29:44,599
Speaker 1: And they're like, so you're here at like four o'clock,

1520
01:29:44,760 --> 01:29:46,800
Speaker 1: but you should get ready. In the next six to

1521
01:29:46,880 --> 01:29:50,479
Speaker 1: twelve months, you'll be here and everyone's gonna hate you

1522
01:29:50,600 --> 01:29:53,200
Speaker 1: and you just haven't seen it. Yeah, and then it

1523
01:29:53,280 --> 01:29:56,200
Speaker 1: keeps going around and they're like, look, Facebook is here.

1524
01:29:56,400 --> 01:29:58,639
Speaker 1: They're like a little ahead of you. Everyone hates them now.

1525
01:29:59,000 --> 01:30:01,760
Speaker 1: They ended up being exact actly right. A six to

1526
01:30:01,800 --> 01:30:04,760
Speaker 1: twelve months later. It was like all negative press. But

1527
01:30:04,840 --> 01:30:07,240
Speaker 1: I guess like the way I got used to it

1528
01:30:07,280 --> 01:30:09,920
Speaker 1: was just going through that. Right. It's like the first

1529
01:30:09,920 --> 01:30:14,160
Speaker 1: time a negative article hits, you're like, holy shit, it's

1530
01:30:14,200 --> 01:30:17,120
Speaker 1: negative press. I've never seen it before. You kind of

1531
01:30:17,160 --> 01:30:20,280
Speaker 1: feel like it's the end of the world. And then

1532
01:30:20,479 --> 01:30:24,080
Speaker 1: you know, after the six hundredth one, you're just kind

1533
01:30:24,080 --> 01:30:27,559
Speaker 1: of like, Okay, it's another one of these things. I'm

1534
01:30:27,600 --> 01:30:31,280
Speaker 1: just gonna move on and run my business. Yeah, and

1535
01:30:31,320 --> 01:30:35,520
Speaker 1: then when the press turns positive, you're like positively surprised

1536
01:30:35,560 --> 01:30:38,519
Speaker 1: and you're not expecting it. So I think that's how

1537
01:30:38,560 --> 01:30:40,800
Speaker 1: I got through it. You just get punched in the

1538
01:30:40,840 --> 01:30:44,160
Speaker 1: face enough and your face contorts to the shape of

1539
01:30:44,200 --> 01:30:44,679
Speaker 1: the fist.

1540
01:30:44,960 --> 01:30:49,760
Speaker 2: Right, What how have you managed your personal life through

1541
01:30:49,800 --> 01:30:51,360
Speaker 2: all this because I feel like, you know, when we

1542
01:30:51,400 --> 01:30:53,920
Speaker 2: started the interview today, you talk so much about your

1543
01:30:53,920 --> 01:30:56,200
Speaker 2: personal life and you know how you came to this

1544
01:30:56,280 --> 01:30:59,200
Speaker 2: country and the build, and I feel like, you know,

1545
01:30:59,240 --> 01:31:01,639
Speaker 2: as you're an entrepren and your professional and personal life

1546
01:31:01,680 --> 01:31:04,320
Speaker 2: almost become one. And you know, when you're building something

1547
01:31:04,520 --> 01:31:07,280
Speaker 2: that's growing as fast as you are, you get absorbed

1548
01:31:07,280 --> 01:31:09,280
Speaker 2: and you have to be like you know, you sleep

1549
01:31:09,320 --> 01:31:12,599
Speaker 2: and dream and eat Robinhood, Like that's how it has

1550
01:31:12,640 --> 01:31:15,479
Speaker 2: to work, That's how it goes. What's been powerful for

1551
01:31:15,520 --> 01:31:18,280
Speaker 2: you in your personal life that you think is allowed

1552
01:31:18,320 --> 01:31:24,519
Speaker 2: you to reinvent, reboot, stay renewed, stay re enthusiastic, Like

1553
01:31:24,560 --> 01:31:27,679
Speaker 2: you seem as excited about robin Hood today as I

1554
01:31:27,680 --> 01:31:29,800
Speaker 2: imagine you would have been in twenty thirteen, if not more.

1555
01:31:30,520 --> 01:31:34,880
Speaker 2: And what's been allowed you to renew your enthusiasm so consistently.

1556
01:31:35,360 --> 01:31:43,080
Speaker 1: My kind of sort of like analogy of so many things.

1557
01:31:43,120 --> 01:31:45,679
Speaker 1: My mental model for so many things that I use

1558
01:31:46,600 --> 01:31:49,599
Speaker 1: in business and in life is kind of the barbell.

1559
01:31:50,080 --> 01:31:52,600
Speaker 1: Like I like to get things on opposite sides of

1560
01:31:52,680 --> 01:31:56,400
Speaker 1: the barbell right, and I tend to ignore the things

1561
01:31:56,400 --> 01:32:00,479
Speaker 1: in the middle right. So basically, for me personally, my

1562
01:32:00,560 --> 01:32:04,080
Speaker 1: work is like highly intellectual, and that's maybe on one extreme,

1563
01:32:05,000 --> 01:32:08,559
Speaker 1: and what's what's the opposite of like intellectual, just sort

1564
01:32:08,560 --> 01:32:12,439
Speaker 1: of like the physical. So I really focus on that,

1565
01:32:12,520 --> 01:32:16,559
Speaker 1: and it's just uh, super basic. And you know, when

1566
01:32:16,600 --> 01:32:20,800
Speaker 1: I started, I would kind of not really spend too

1567
01:32:20,920 --> 01:32:24,519
Speaker 1: much time and effort on my health. But as I've

1568
01:32:24,560 --> 01:32:28,240
Speaker 1: gotten older and the job's gotten more stressful, I notice

1569
01:32:28,280 --> 01:32:32,639
Speaker 1: that like effort I put in here pays off multiples. Right,

1570
01:32:32,720 --> 01:32:36,960
Speaker 1: So now my like wellness routine and my training, I

1571
01:32:37,000 --> 01:32:40,559
Speaker 1: spend more time just dialing it in so making sure

1572
01:32:40,560 --> 01:32:42,559
Speaker 1: I get the right amount of sleep, that I have

1573
01:32:42,680 --> 01:32:45,960
Speaker 1: an awesome mattress that like I keep my bed at

1574
01:32:46,000 --> 01:32:49,280
Speaker 1: the right temperature. I like to journal before bed, and

1575
01:32:49,360 --> 01:32:52,439
Speaker 1: I like to shut off the devices. The devices, by

1576
01:32:52,439 --> 01:32:54,479
Speaker 1: the way, has been the hard part for me. You know,

1577
01:32:54,640 --> 01:32:58,360
Speaker 1: I like try really hard. I have to do unnatural

1578
01:32:58,439 --> 01:33:02,040
Speaker 1: things to like stop from looking on my phone, like

1579
01:33:02,200 --> 01:33:05,080
Speaker 1: my phone's not with me right now, for example, because

1580
01:33:05,760 --> 01:33:09,360
Speaker 1: you know, I would just it's hard to avoid looking

1581
01:33:09,360 --> 01:33:13,000
Speaker 1: at it. And if I know it's in my pocket,

1582
01:33:13,120 --> 01:33:17,840
Speaker 1: you know, then it's almost like too close. So I mean,

1583
01:33:17,880 --> 01:33:21,040
Speaker 1: actually during the whole game stop stuff, it was particularly

1584
01:33:21,080 --> 01:33:23,960
Speaker 1: acute for me because I was at home, so there

1585
01:33:24,040 --> 01:33:29,280
Speaker 1: was no boundary between work and personal and I was

1586
01:33:29,280 --> 01:33:32,320
Speaker 1: going a little bit crazy, and so I had this

1587
01:33:32,360 --> 01:33:34,280
Speaker 1: thing where I would try to sleep with my phone

1588
01:33:34,320 --> 01:33:37,320
Speaker 1: in a different room so I'm not always just tempted

1589
01:33:37,360 --> 01:33:42,200
Speaker 1: to check out what emergency is happening, which ended up

1590
01:33:42,200 --> 01:33:44,799
Speaker 1: being a big problem the morning of game stop because

1591
01:33:45,120 --> 01:33:47,559
Speaker 1: it took forever for my team to like get a

1592
01:33:47,600 --> 01:33:50,719
Speaker 1: hold of me. And then now then for a while

1593
01:33:50,760 --> 01:33:53,040
Speaker 1: I slept with like three phones next to me, which

1594
01:33:53,160 --> 01:33:57,080
Speaker 1: it really backfired. But yeah, my health, I work out

1595
01:33:57,080 --> 01:34:01,639
Speaker 1: a lot. I've gotten into like hot cold therapy. At

1596
01:34:01,640 --> 01:34:04,360
Speaker 1: first I was doing cryo, but then I got like

1597
01:34:04,400 --> 01:34:07,439
Speaker 1: a cold plunge at my house that and and that

1598
01:34:07,560 --> 01:34:10,759
Speaker 1: really helped. And yeah, just like the basics of sleep

1599
01:34:10,800 --> 01:34:13,719
Speaker 1: and diet, I think has made a world of difference,

1600
01:34:14,520 --> 01:34:18,559
Speaker 1: and just trying to like I don't think I've figured

1601
01:34:18,560 --> 01:34:22,280
Speaker 1: out the device thing and sort of like my rhythm

1602
01:34:22,320 --> 01:34:24,840
Speaker 1: of the day perfectly, but that's a that's a work

1603
01:34:24,880 --> 01:34:25,600
Speaker 1: in progress.

1604
01:34:26,520 --> 01:34:29,439
Speaker 2: And you're marriage. You're married too, right, you mentioned, Yeah, Yeah,

1605
01:34:29,479 --> 01:34:32,320
Speaker 2: what's how's how's it been like dealing with all of this?

1606
01:34:32,400 --> 01:34:35,000
Speaker 2: But it sounds like you've been together for quite some time,

1607
01:34:35,200 --> 01:34:35,759
Speaker 2: Like it's.

1608
01:34:35,880 --> 01:34:39,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've been married for almost ten years now. Yeah,

1609
01:34:40,000 --> 01:34:44,040
Speaker 1: got a got a bunch of kids, great kids, and

1610
01:34:45,560 --> 01:34:46,720
Speaker 1: they don't really know what I do.

1611
01:34:48,120 --> 01:34:50,479
Speaker 2: Came back to how your wife to know what you did?

1612
01:34:51,439 --> 01:34:56,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, well she did, but yeah.

1613
01:34:55,479 --> 01:34:57,840
Speaker 2: Showed them at the cartoon and they'll get it.

1614
01:34:57,960 --> 01:35:00,519
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they love that cartoon. I think like the

1615
01:35:01,000 --> 01:35:03,360
Speaker 1: credit card, they kind of get a little bit because

1616
01:35:03,400 --> 01:35:06,080
Speaker 1: they know they can use it to buy toys. Yeah,

1617
01:35:06,120 --> 01:35:11,479
Speaker 1: my wife is a great compliment to me. She's very patient,

1618
01:35:11,760 --> 01:35:15,880
Speaker 1: she's very empathetic all the things that I'm not, and

1619
01:35:15,920 --> 01:35:19,600
Speaker 1: so she's just been an amazing partner through all the crises.

1620
01:35:19,680 --> 01:35:24,000
Speaker 1: And she sort of like knew me before Robin Hood, right,

1621
01:35:24,040 --> 01:35:26,160
Speaker 1: I mean she kind of helped come up with the name.

1622
01:35:26,720 --> 01:35:30,320
Speaker 1: So I think I think she feels like Robinhood's like

1623
01:35:30,360 --> 01:35:32,479
Speaker 1: one of the children, just kind of like I do.

1624
01:35:32,880 --> 01:35:35,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's beautiful, man, I wanted to this. I'll probably

1625
01:35:35,760 --> 01:35:38,519
Speaker 2: cut and put back in. You mentioned the credit card there.

1626
01:35:38,840 --> 01:35:42,960
Speaker 2: I'm intrigued as to product you created because you saw

1627
01:35:43,040 --> 01:35:47,160
Speaker 2: the traditional versions of them being ineffective. So when you

1628
01:35:47,160 --> 01:35:51,639
Speaker 2: go build a credit card, what's wrong with a traditional

1629
01:35:51,880 --> 01:35:53,680
Speaker 2: credit card that you can get from anywhere else, Like

1630
01:35:54,000 --> 01:35:55,280
Speaker 2: what are you doing differently?

1631
01:35:55,560 --> 01:36:00,439
Speaker 1: I think there are a couple of problems with additional

1632
01:36:00,479 --> 01:36:08,840
Speaker 1: credit cards. One is that basically the rewards are kind

1633
01:36:08,840 --> 01:36:15,599
Speaker 1: of incomprehensible. I think that anytime there's like websites devoted

1634
01:36:15,640 --> 01:36:18,559
Speaker 1: to like exactly how you should kind of like work

1635
01:36:18,640 --> 01:36:21,679
Speaker 1: through your points to optimize the value you get from

1636
01:36:21,680 --> 01:36:26,479
Speaker 1: all the points, like media empires like the Points Guy

1637
01:36:26,600 --> 01:36:29,200
Speaker 1: were created on the back of this, right, It's like, yeah,

1638
01:36:29,320 --> 01:36:33,240
Speaker 1: if you want to spend ten hours a week optimizing

1639
01:36:33,280 --> 01:36:38,519
Speaker 1: your points and maximizing the rewards, I think that's pretty good.

1640
01:36:38,760 --> 01:36:41,320
Speaker 1: But we wanted to create something that simplifies all of

1641
01:36:41,360 --> 01:36:44,559
Speaker 1: that and basically just by like using it for the

1642
01:36:44,640 --> 01:36:47,800
Speaker 1: vast majority of people, you know, you get the best rewards.

1643
01:36:48,360 --> 01:36:52,160
Speaker 1: So simple, clear reward structure that you don't have to

1644
01:36:52,280 --> 01:36:56,320
Speaker 1: be like a PhD to decipher people building their credit.

1645
01:36:57,479 --> 01:37:01,840
Speaker 1: If you're a student and you will are you know,

1646
01:37:02,320 --> 01:37:06,000
Speaker 1: you don't have a credit history, typically you have to

1647
01:37:06,040 --> 01:37:09,439
Speaker 1: start out with like a really crappy card. You have

1648
01:37:09,520 --> 01:37:13,360
Speaker 1: to sort of like upgrade your way to a nicer

1649
01:37:13,439 --> 01:37:16,280
Speaker 1: card once you prove that you're worthy and you know

1650
01:37:16,320 --> 01:37:19,880
Speaker 1: there's a crappy starter card for people with no credit history,

1651
01:37:19,920 --> 01:37:24,439
Speaker 1: and like the premium card for folks that have the means.

1652
01:37:24,720 --> 01:37:26,599
Speaker 1: We asked, can we can we fix that? Can we

1653
01:37:26,640 --> 01:37:30,480
Speaker 1: actually have a starter card that has the same economics,

1654
01:37:30,520 --> 01:37:35,200
Speaker 1: the same rewards, the same design, uh for as like

1655
01:37:35,280 --> 01:37:39,360
Speaker 1: a highly premium card. And then the digital experience. You know,

1656
01:37:39,439 --> 01:37:43,559
Speaker 1: most cards don't really think through how to take all

1657
01:37:43,640 --> 01:37:48,000
Speaker 1: of the things that technology and you know, fintech has

1658
01:37:48,040 --> 01:37:51,320
Speaker 1: given us and sort of like give them to you

1659
01:37:51,400 --> 01:37:56,240
Speaker 1: in the same package. And those are things like virtual cards.

1660
01:37:56,320 --> 01:37:58,240
Speaker 1: I don't know, if you've been to a restaurant, you

1661
01:37:58,320 --> 01:38:00,599
Speaker 1: probably you probably go to restaurant. It's where you have

1662
01:38:00,640 --> 01:38:03,880
Speaker 1: to give your credit card to lock down the reservation.

1663
01:38:04,479 --> 01:38:07,559
Speaker 1: Imagine you could create a virtual card so that not

1664
01:38:07,640 --> 01:38:10,439
Speaker 1: every restaurant has your actual card number, and if you

1665
01:38:10,439 --> 01:38:12,559
Speaker 1: want to cancel the reservation, you don't have to call

1666
01:38:12,600 --> 01:38:16,160
Speaker 1: the restaurant. You could just disappear that virtual card, right

1667
01:38:16,640 --> 01:38:19,080
Speaker 1: Or if you want to sign up for a free trial,

1668
01:38:19,120 --> 01:38:21,720
Speaker 1: you can create a virtual card seamlessly and that can

1669
01:38:21,760 --> 01:38:23,680
Speaker 1: be your free trial card, but you don't have to

1670
01:38:23,680 --> 01:38:27,920
Speaker 1: give them your real phone number. Helps maintain people's privacy

1671
01:38:28,280 --> 01:38:31,960
Speaker 1: and in fact, there are great innovative businesses Privacy dot

1672
01:38:32,000 --> 01:38:35,400
Speaker 1: Com created with this notion. We put all three of

1673
01:38:35,439 --> 01:38:39,160
Speaker 1: these things in one package. One card for everyone, the

1674
01:38:39,160 --> 01:38:41,880
Speaker 1: best rewards in the industry, three percent cash back on

1675
01:38:41,920 --> 01:38:47,439
Speaker 1: all categories, a beautiful physical card, including the solid gold

1676
01:38:47,720 --> 01:38:49,880
Speaker 1: variant which I have in my wallet I can show you.

1677
01:38:50,520 --> 01:38:56,439
Speaker 1: And a digital experience that's like world class. And we

1678
01:38:56,520 --> 01:39:02,280
Speaker 1: put all these together and it's definitely the best reviewed,

1679
01:39:02,920 --> 01:39:06,240
Speaker 1: most popular product that we've ever rolled out, even more

1680
01:39:06,280 --> 01:39:09,760
Speaker 1: popular than free trading. So it's it's been quite amazing,

1681
01:39:10,040 --> 01:39:13,880
Speaker 1: and now it's just like like we people want to

1682
01:39:13,960 --> 01:39:18,040
Speaker 1: rolled out faster. That's the one limitation. We had over

1683
01:39:18,080 --> 01:39:20,439
Speaker 1: a million people join the wait list for it within

1684
01:39:20,479 --> 01:39:23,760
Speaker 1: a month of announcement. And the bet was that if

1685
01:39:23,800 --> 01:39:26,360
Speaker 1: we make the rewards and the product so good, we

1686
01:39:26,360 --> 01:39:29,200
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to spend the typical like five hundred dollars

1687
01:39:29,240 --> 01:39:32,559
Speaker 1: to acquire a credit card user that the big bank spend.

1688
01:39:32,680 --> 01:39:35,439
Speaker 1: We could get it just organically, and that seems to

1689
01:39:35,479 --> 01:39:38,599
Speaker 1: have proven out. Now it's just about getting it into

1690
01:39:38,680 --> 01:39:44,000
Speaker 1: everyone's hands while also validating the economics and the underwriting

1691
01:39:44,040 --> 01:39:45,440
Speaker 1: of a new credit model.

1692
01:39:45,560 --> 01:39:48,519
Speaker 2: That it's been fascinating talking to you. Your truly an

1693
01:39:48,880 --> 01:39:52,680
Speaker 2: extremely unique individual. In a positive sense, it's no thank you,

1694
01:39:52,800 --> 01:39:54,040
Speaker 2: it's really brilliant.

1695
01:39:54,280 --> 01:39:56,680
Speaker 1: Maybe some negative too, you know, brilliant.

1696
01:39:56,360 --> 01:39:59,800
Speaker 2: Brilliant to dive into your mind. Honestly, it's it's been

1697
01:39:59,800 --> 01:40:02,120
Speaker 2: really fascinating for me. We end every episode of on

1698
01:40:02,160 --> 01:40:05,080
Speaker 2: Purpose with the final five, so these questions have to

1699
01:40:05,160 --> 01:40:09,120
Speaker 2: be answered in one word to one sentence maximum. So

1700
01:40:09,200 --> 01:40:12,200
Speaker 2: if lad ten of Dizzy your final five. The first

1701
01:40:12,240 --> 01:40:14,639
Speaker 2: question is what is the best advice you've ever heard

1702
01:40:14,720 --> 01:40:15,240
Speaker 2: or received?

1703
01:40:15,520 --> 01:40:19,000
Speaker 1: Be honest, don't lie to others, but most of all,

1704
01:40:19,040 --> 01:40:20,120
Speaker 1: don't lie to yourself.

1705
01:40:20,920 --> 01:40:24,320
Speaker 2: Good advice. Question number two, what is the worst advice

1706
01:40:24,360 --> 01:40:25,479
Speaker 2: you've ever heard or received?

1707
01:40:25,680 --> 01:40:32,240
Speaker 1: I think, in the context of the company, trusting experts

1708
01:40:32,240 --> 01:40:36,719
Speaker 1: who have done it before is bad advice. Generally speaking,

1709
01:40:37,120 --> 01:40:40,200
Speaker 1: I think you have to listen to experts and understand,

1710
01:40:40,479 --> 01:40:44,360
Speaker 1: But like I don't think people should blindly trust anything.

1711
01:40:44,800 --> 01:40:48,120
Speaker 2: Question number three, if we saw one of your evening

1712
01:40:48,200 --> 01:40:50,519
Speaker 2: journal entries, what would we learn about you that we

1713
01:40:50,560 --> 01:40:51,439
Speaker 2: haven't learned today?

1714
01:40:51,720 --> 01:40:56,200
Speaker 1: I still really loved math, and I spend a non

1715
01:40:56,240 --> 01:41:00,000
Speaker 1: trivial amount of times trying to solve basic math problems.

1716
01:41:00,439 --> 01:41:04,200
Speaker 2: Really yeah, Oh wow, that's cool in your journal.

1717
01:41:04,720 --> 01:41:07,760
Speaker 1: In my journal, yeah, you'll see pictures of like triangles

1718
01:41:07,800 --> 01:41:09,719
Speaker 1: and spheres and stuff in there.

1719
01:41:10,120 --> 01:41:14,759
Speaker 2: That's cool. Fourth question, how would you define your current purpose?

1720
01:41:15,040 --> 01:41:19,200
Speaker 1: I think it's it's to seek truth. I think if

1721
01:41:19,200 --> 01:41:22,080
Speaker 1: I had to find like a personal I think a

1722
01:41:22,120 --> 01:41:25,599
Speaker 1: lot about like what are my what are my personal values?

1723
01:41:25,920 --> 01:41:30,360
Speaker 1: What do I care the most about? And I think

1724
01:41:30,439 --> 01:41:36,200
Speaker 1: my top value is is truth? Actually I care about truth?

1725
01:41:36,720 --> 01:41:42,160
Speaker 1: And I mean in terms of purpose, I really want

1726
01:41:42,200 --> 01:41:51,240
Speaker 1: to understand how the universe works mathematically or mathematically physically. Yeah,

1727
01:41:51,360 --> 01:41:53,759
Speaker 1: I mean we can start with that, but of course

1728
01:41:53,800 --> 01:41:55,280
Speaker 1: psychologically is good too.

1729
01:41:55,800 --> 01:41:56,040
Speaker 2: Cool.

1730
01:41:56,160 --> 01:41:59,719
Speaker 1: Financially I think we're closest to that one. Yeah, pretty

1731
01:41:59,720 --> 01:42:01,920
Speaker 1: close to understanding how it works financially.

1732
01:42:02,160 --> 01:42:04,360
Speaker 2: And how do you define truth? That's a sub question

1733
01:42:04,439 --> 01:42:05,240
Speaker 2: to them all the faith.

1734
01:42:05,520 --> 01:42:08,680
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good question. How is truth defined?

1735
01:42:10,720 --> 01:42:17,880
Speaker 1: I think that truth is something that multiple observers will

1736
01:42:17,880 --> 01:42:22,840
Speaker 1: simultaneously agree on. Yeah. So if you had like multiple

1737
01:42:22,920 --> 01:42:28,840
Speaker 1: independent intelligent observers observing an event with like the same information,

1738
01:42:29,400 --> 01:42:32,200
Speaker 1: they should agree on it. And if they agree on it,

1739
01:42:32,320 --> 01:42:38,680
Speaker 1: then you have like high confidence if it's true. Now,

1740
01:42:38,720 --> 01:42:42,439
Speaker 1: of course, if it's something that's like fact based. It's

1741
01:42:42,479 --> 01:42:45,040
Speaker 1: even easier because you can just like prove that it's

1742
01:42:45,080 --> 01:42:48,960
Speaker 1: true if it follows from axioms. But probably the more

1743
01:42:49,000 --> 01:42:51,800
Speaker 1: interesting one is if there's some ambiguity.

1744
01:42:52,200 --> 01:42:53,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, I also find but I.

1745
01:42:53,760 --> 01:42:58,040
Speaker 1: Think you need a notion of verification and also some

1746
01:42:58,200 --> 01:42:59,760
Speaker 1: notion of like independence.

1747
01:43:00,560 --> 01:43:02,960
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of my favorite verifications of truth I feel

1748
01:43:03,000 --> 01:43:07,880
Speaker 2: in my definition is timelessness. That's something being timeless. It

1749
01:43:07,960 --> 01:43:11,240
Speaker 2: was as true a thousand years ago as it is today.

1750
01:43:11,200 --> 01:43:16,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, Lindy effect right, tell me about it. Yeah, basically,

1751
01:43:16,840 --> 01:43:20,639
Speaker 1: like I think it was. I read about it from

1752
01:43:20,760 --> 01:43:27,200
Speaker 1: Nassim Taleb. Yeah, so so basically, like he says, a

1753
01:43:27,240 --> 01:43:31,679
Speaker 1: good approximation for how long something's likely to be relevant

1754
01:43:32,160 --> 01:43:35,160
Speaker 1: is how long it's already been relevant. So I think

1755
01:43:35,200 --> 01:43:38,439
Speaker 1: the way he kind of describes it as the New

1756
01:43:38,479 --> 01:43:42,960
Speaker 1: York Times bestseller list, if a book sort of like

1757
01:43:43,040 --> 01:43:45,120
Speaker 1: hits the best seller list and is a best seller

1758
01:43:45,200 --> 01:43:48,640
Speaker 1: for one week, you can basically assume that it's going

1759
01:43:48,720 --> 01:43:51,600
Speaker 1: to be irrelevant in a couple of weeks. Right, But

1760
01:43:51,720 --> 01:43:54,719
Speaker 1: if you know the Holy Bible people have been reading

1761
01:43:54,720 --> 01:43:58,120
Speaker 1: it for two thousand years, you have pretty high confidence

1762
01:43:58,160 --> 01:44:00,120
Speaker 1: that it might it's it's going to be relevant in

1763
01:44:00,160 --> 01:44:02,280
Speaker 1: two thousand years from now in a way that you

1764
01:44:02,280 --> 01:44:05,080
Speaker 1: wouldn't with what's on the bestseller list now.

1765
01:44:05,280 --> 01:44:05,840
Speaker 2: Absolutely.

1766
01:44:06,160 --> 01:44:06,680
Speaker 1: Absolutely.

1767
01:44:06,800 --> 01:44:08,760
Speaker 2: Fifth and final question, we asked this to every guest

1768
01:44:08,760 --> 01:44:11,040
Speaker 2: who's ever been on the show. If you could create

1769
01:44:11,080 --> 01:44:13,599
Speaker 2: one law that everyone in the world had to follow,

1770
01:44:13,760 --> 01:44:14,439
Speaker 2: what would it be.

1771
01:44:14,520 --> 01:44:17,760
Speaker 1: I think there's too many laws. Yeah, I think deleting

1772
01:44:17,840 --> 01:44:20,840
Speaker 1: laws is the more interesting thing. If there was a

1773
01:44:20,960 --> 01:44:23,400
Speaker 1: law where in order to create a new law, you

1774
01:44:23,479 --> 01:44:27,760
Speaker 1: had to delete at least one existing law, I would

1775
01:44:27,800 --> 01:44:29,040
Speaker 1: feel much better about it.

1776
01:44:29,280 --> 01:44:30,000
Speaker 2: That's a good law.

1777
01:44:30,120 --> 01:44:32,720
Speaker 1: If you think about overregulation, which I think is a

1778
01:44:32,720 --> 01:44:36,519
Speaker 1: big problem, it's really really easy for new laws to

1779
01:44:36,560 --> 01:44:41,639
Speaker 1: be created. It's easy for like organizations and the government

1780
01:44:41,680 --> 01:44:44,720
Speaker 1: to get bigger, and that creates all sorts of problems,

1781
01:44:44,760 --> 01:44:47,479
Speaker 1: Like it's impossible to get you know, high speed rail

1782
01:44:47,560 --> 01:44:50,760
Speaker 1: in California. Right we need a force to counteract that.

1783
01:44:51,000 --> 01:44:53,680
Speaker 1: And right now it's very easy for these things to

1784
01:44:53,720 --> 01:44:58,479
Speaker 1: get bigger and more laws. But like periodically we've got

1785
01:44:58,520 --> 01:45:01,400
Speaker 1: to go in there and slash laws and make things smaller,

1786
01:45:01,600 --> 01:45:05,000
Speaker 1: and there's there's a lot of pressure against this.

1787
01:45:05,320 --> 01:45:10,240
Speaker 2: Well said Vlad. I look forward to many more conversations

1788
01:45:10,240 --> 01:45:14,880
Speaker 2: with the philosophical, seeking of the truth, psychological. Truly, truly

1789
01:45:14,920 --> 01:45:17,200
Speaker 2: wonderful to get to know you today, and thank you

1790
01:45:17,240 --> 01:45:19,439
Speaker 2: for being so honest. Thank you for being so open

1791
01:45:19,439 --> 01:45:22,679
Speaker 2: and vulnerable. And even though you describe yourself as stoic

1792
01:45:22,760 --> 01:45:26,880
Speaker 2: at the start, I definitely feel you shared. You shared

1793
01:45:26,880 --> 01:45:28,920
Speaker 2: a lot of emotion and what you shared, so thank

1794
01:45:28,920 --> 01:45:31,639
Speaker 2: you so much for doing that. I really appreciate it.

1795
01:45:31,720 --> 01:45:33,760
Speaker 1: Thank you for taking the time, you know, it's been

1796
01:45:33,840 --> 01:45:36,160
Speaker 1: It's been a lot of fun. Yeah. I don't usually

1797
01:45:36,200 --> 01:45:39,240
Speaker 1: do uh, I don't do too many podcasts in general,

1798
01:45:39,320 --> 01:45:41,280
Speaker 1: but this was a unique experience.

1799
01:45:41,479 --> 01:45:44,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm very grateful, grateful for your time. Thank you

1800
01:45:44,320 --> 01:45:47,080
Speaker 2: so much. Wise, thank you, thank you so much for

1801
01:45:47,200 --> 01:45:50,800
Speaker 2: listening to this conversation. If you enjoyed it, you'll love

1802
01:45:50,840 --> 01:45:54,680
Speaker 2: my chat with Adam Grant on why discomfort is the

1803
01:45:54,760 --> 01:45:59,120
Speaker 2: key to growth and the strategies for unlocking your hidden potential.

1804
01:45:59,520 --> 01:46:01,200
Speaker 2: If you know, oh you want to be more and

1805
01:46:01,280 --> 01:46:04,400
Speaker 2: achieve more this year, go check it out right now.

1806
01:46:04,600 --> 01:46:07,240
Speaker 1: You set a goal today, you achieve it in six months,

1807
01:46:07,680 --> 01:46:10,479
Speaker 1: and then by the time it happens, it's almost a relief.

1808
01:46:10,720 --> 01:46:12,840
Speaker 1: There's no sense of meaning and purpose. You sort of

1809
01:46:12,880 --> 01:46:14,960
Speaker 1: expected it, and you would have been disappointed if it

1810
01:46:14,960 --> 01:46:15,599
Speaker 1: didn't happen.