The Exchanges

Q Is there anything that you would have done differently about the launch or the messaging?

A I think that There's always things to, uh, to learn. Uh, for example, I think this, like, statement that it was somehow unsafe was not very positive for us. I mean, if you look at OpenAI Newsroom Twitter, this was actually the most popular tweet that they tweeted ever. It has, like, the most likes and reposts, which surprised me. So I didn't quite think that it would resonate So much. Um, so I don't know. I don't know. It's so new. I don't know if I would have done much differently. I think the problem is everyone likes tokenization in, in principle, right? But it's not really as attractive when it's being done to you. It's sort of like a digital NIMBYism, right? Everyone's like, oh, great. Tokenization. Kidding. Make it happen over there. And, uh, Yeah, the, the problem that's happened in private markets in general is The best companies have lots of options. They can raise money from anywhere. So they sort of like don't consider retail.

AI assessment note: “I don't know if I would have done much differently.”

Q the team? Last one for the quick five, what did you say to the team? You know, cause obviously when they are, think of your Anyone from a marketer to an engineer, and they're getting a lot of discussion from friends and getting a lot of questions. What did you say to them in terms of keeping their heads down and running their own race and keeping morale high internally?

A So think about the customer. I think the thing is that people at Robinhood didn't have much of an opportunity throughout the past couple of weeks to really engage with the public too much because everyone was just like sprinting to make sure our service was reliable. The people that weren't directly involved in that All helped out and basically did customer support. Customer support is actually another area we've been investing a huge amount of resources to, and it's gotten a lot better. We keep rolling out more and more live phone support use cases. We're seeing more automation. We're seeing upstream issues being resolved in the product much more rapidly. Everyone has an ability to contribute, and it's very clear what we have to do. And certainly, I think my message has been, think of the customer We have a huge responsibility to our customers, and this is our moment. We've always talked about financial services being as culturally relevant as music and the arts, and that idea has been very, very abstract in the past, but it's very clear to people now, like, investing is as culturally relevant as music and the arts and sports, so we've got to seize that moment and just execute so well that people are like, wow, like, this company just Prove that they're the market leader, and they deserve to have our business and remain the market leader.

AI assessment note: “my message has been, think of the customer We have a huge responsibility”

Q own home the minute you can. And actually there's kind of the wealth effect and actually, you know, young people actually have a lot more cash and they spend it on Taylor Swift concert tickets, which for thousands of dollars each and Chanel handbags for thousands of dollars each. Because the house is just so far out. It's too expensive. Is that a good thing in some ways or not?

A I mean, I think it depends on whether you're viewing it as an investment, right? If, if that's sort of like your way of investing, I, I think there's probably more efficient. I mean, if you think about real estate, you're paying a lot of taxes depending on where you live in the US. The taxes on property can be north of one percent, and, and that's big every year. That's kind of layered on. Uh, there's commissions. Every time you buy or sell, it's, it's like five percent. Um, and then you add, you know, maintenance fees and insurance and all those things. And if, if you kind of look at it as an investment, it starts to, uh, it starts to kind of affect the returns. You, you compare that with investing your money in Robinhood. You're not paying any commissions on equities. You can diversify globally. Um, I, I wrote a piece one time about how investing and access to capital markets is like the, should be the real American dream. Everyone should be doing it like they were talking about home ownership decades prior.

AI assessment note: “I think it depends on whether you're viewing it as an investment”

Q But do you need to have anything today saying, oh, we are doing X with AI to make ourselves sexy?

A Well, we, we are, uh, we're looking at several ways in which AI products could help our customers. And I do think that they're gonna, uh, AI is gonna change financial services. And I think the products that work, uh, this might be a little bit of a hot take when a lot of, a lot of people ask like, well, which, which AI products, you probably think of this as an investor. Like, what am I gonna invest in? What's gonna get traction? I think to me, if there is right now an existing market of people paying a human to do a service for them that AI could replicate at much lower cost, I think that's a real business. And you can think of that outside of financial services with like self-driving, right? There, there's Uber, there's Lyft. I pay someone to drive me to somewhere that's a valuable service that you can attribute value to. Uh, if a car can do that without the driver, and I, I would be willing to pay possibly just as much. I mean, it'll cost less over time, but there's a value to that. So I, I think that'll be successful. In financial services, uh, customers pay for financial advice and they pay a lot of money. Very valuable. On the low end, it's sort of like two percent of your assets under management. On the high end, you know, it's like half a percent. And that scales to hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases. So if, if you can replicate the service, and...

AI assessment note: “we're looking at several ways in which AI products could help our customers.”

Q the machine that makes it. You know, Neil at Meters, I think a very dear friend of yours, and he responded when I asked him, I love Vlad, all in caps, naturally made me very happy. He asked very specifically, how did Vlad go from a culture and company that shipped almost nothing, sorry, it was his words, to now shipping at the most extraordinary pace, as specific as possible?

A We were kind of gummed up in, uh, 2020 and 20 21, just, uh, trying to scale. You know, we, we went from end of 20 19, we had 800 employees and we had, uh, maybe 200 or so million in annual revenue. Still a big business, but by the end of 2020, we had, uh, close to a billion in annual revenue. You know, so we, we quadrupled the business roughly. And that was tough because it happened while we were remote. We were dealing with pandemic. We hired all these people. And I think in hindsight, we ingested too many people. It became hard to operate. And, you know, these were new people that didn't know how to work with us. We were all remote. Um, and we had to also scale customer support. This was before AI. So if we quadrupled our customer base, we had to more than quadruple our customer support team because frankly, we weren't even doing a great job with the folks we had back in the day. Um, so it was Making sure we have really, really good talent that involves some cultural changes to reorient the company post COVID, bringing people back into the office so we could onboard better.

AI assessment note: “cultural changes to reorient the company post COVID, bringing people back into the office”

Q What would you have said differently? There was another one of Mickey's, which is like, when you review kind of what you did say, what did you say or not say that you wish you had done the opposite of?

A I think that when I, uh, when I did, uh, I, I did a clubhouse with, uh, Elon Musk on Sunday, it was like, uh, thir, Thursday was when the GameStop trading restrictions, uh, were put, first put into place, and then we were a little bit nervous about sharing all of the details. Part of it, part, part of it was we wanted to make sure we didn't get anything wrong because If we got anything wrong, then we would have to correct it, and that looks bad. That, that, that tends to, uh, I mean, you've got people into all sorts of conspiracy theories, right? And we were, you know, people thought there was this whole collusion narrative with, uh, with Citadel that ended up being disproved, and so we wanted to make sure that we communicated, we communicated everything correctly, and we didn't leave anything out or make any mistakes. That made us communicate a little bit Later than perhaps I would have liked. Um, but it came out in pieces. It was like one detail here, the other details there. And then it was, um, Sunday when I kind of gave the full play by play on a clubhouse, uh, being interviewed by Elon Musk. And of course, uh, in all the lawsuits and litigation that followed all the other details came out over the following several years. But I think in hindsight, maybe like not saying anything until giving the entire story of, of how everything happened, I think would have, would have pr…

AI assessment note: “in hindsight, maybe like not saying anything until giving the entire story”

Q interesting trait. Um, can I ask you, when you think about moving there and America being the land of opportunity that it was, do you think it's still that land of opportunity? I think this with the UK, like, does the best talent want to come to London? And the answer for me is no. Do you think America is the land of opportunity that it was when you went?

A I think so. And for me, uh, entrepreneurship didn't really become a viable option in terms of, I never really considered being an entrepreneur until relatively recently. You know, I, I grew up and, uh, I grew up on the East coast and People weren't really starting technology companies on the East Coast. To me, as, as I've kind of gotten older and, you know, I, I moved to Stanford, California, really because when I was a kid and my family took our first road trip, uh, once we got in a little bit of money and my, my parents felt comfortable taking vacations financially, they took me to California for a road trip. And I remember being in San Francisco one morning, and this was in the summer, so I had to buy a jacket because it was just like too cold to be outside. And then we, we took the 45 minute drive to Stanford, California to check out the campus. And, uh, it was like 85 degrees, perfect. The, the students were like sunbathing in the main quad. Everyone just looked so happy and like they were having a great time. And I wanted to be a lawyer at the time. I had seen A Few Good Men, which was a Tom Cruise movie. And I was like, man, that's cool. Like, I want to be that guy. And I had this video, this photo of me in front of the law school. Um, but

AI assessment note: “I think so. And for me, uh, entrepreneurship didn't really become a viable option”

Q un-British, and maybe ask some of the harder questions. I thought I'd just have to ask the harder questions, so if we start at the crux To the issue. You know, a lot of people have suggested that Robin Hood are maybe the enabler and not the victim of the events of the last few weeks. How would you respond to Robin Hood being the enabler and not the victim?

A Well, it depends how you would define the crisis. I think there's a lot of things going on, and we're getting criticism from almost opposite ends of the spectrum for opposite reasons. There's a people like Charlie Munger who are looking at what's going on, They're basically like individuals shouldn't be investing, or if they are, they should be investing in passively managed index funds in their IRA accounts, and so what Robinhood is doing, facilitating or enabling people to buy these meme stocks is wrong and should be stopped. Then there, there's the people that saw what happened on January, 28th, and they're very frustrated that Robinhood didn't allow people For that one day to buy shares in GameStop and AMC and these other meme stocks that people wanted to buy shares in. There's almost two opposite views of what the crisis is, depending almost on your, your ideology. I would say we're sorry to both of these people, right? I understand how everyone feels. I do think Robinhood is to address, you know, the first point, a source of good for this world. Having more and more people investing is, has been a positive enabler because if you look back at wealth inequality and income inequality, these are big problems that are threatening the fabric of society. We can only connect the dots going backwards, but we can't really quite grasp all of the implications of rising inequality. We…

AI assessment note: “Having more and more people investing is, has been a positive enabler”

Q own home the minute you can. And actually there's kind of the wealth effect and actually, you know, young people actually have a lot more cash and they spend it on Taylor Swift concert tickets, which for thousands of dollars each and Chanel handbags for thousands of dollars each. Because the house is just so far out. It's too expensive. Is that a good thing in some ways or not?

A I mean, I think it depends on whether you're viewing it as an investment, right? If, if that's sort of like your way of investing, I, I think there's probably more efficient. I mean, if you think about real estate, you're paying a lot of taxes depending on where you live in the US. The taxes on property can be north of one percent, and, and that's big every year. That's kind of layered on. Uh, there's commissions. Every time you buy or sell, it's, it's like five percent. Um, and then you add, you know, maintenance fees and insurance and all those things. And if, if you kind of look at it as an investment, it starts to, uh, it starts to kind of affect the returns. You, you compare that with investing your money in Robinhood. You're not paying any commissions on equities. You can diversify globally. Um, I, I wrote a piece one time about how investing and access to capital markets is like the, should be the real American dream. Everyone should be doing it like they were talking about home ownership decades prior.

AI assessment note: “investing and access to capital markets is like the, should be the real American dream.”

Q When you look at the nine, Which do you think is most underappreciated?

A Yeah, I guess I don't really even think about it that way. I mean, we break it down as nine revenue streams, but I, I just think of it as, you know, we get customers, customers become Robinhood Gold subscribers, and once you're a Robinhood Gold subscriber, we, um, we, we get you to use all of our products and increase your average revenue per user on the platform. So, you know, uh, I do, we do break it up into business lines. We consider that and it's, but it's sort of, um, a map of the world, right? And what I really care about is the reality of how many customers do we get? How much money are they putting in the, in the platform? Are we serving all of their financial needs? And I think you can slice and dice it by, by, uh, you know, lots of different ways. But if, if they're putting all their money into Robinhood, I think we're, we're happy.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I guess I don't really even think about it that way.”

Q un-British, and maybe ask some of the harder questions. I thought I'd just have to ask the harder questions, so if we start at the crux To the issue. You know, a lot of people have suggested that Robin Hood are maybe the enabler and not the victim of the events of the last few weeks. How would you respond to Robin Hood being the enabler and not the victim?

A Well, it depends how you would define the crisis. I think there's a lot of things going on, and we're getting criticism from almost opposite ends of the spectrum for opposite reasons. There's a people like Charlie Munger who are looking at what's going on, They're basically like individuals shouldn't be investing, or if they are, they should be investing in passively managed index funds in their IRA accounts, and so what Robinhood is doing, facilitating or enabling people to buy these meme stocks is wrong and should be stopped. Then there, there's the people that saw what happened on January, 28th, and they're very frustrated that Robinhood didn't allow people For that one day to buy shares in GameStop and AMC and these other meme stocks that people wanted to buy shares in. There's almost two opposite views of what the crisis is, depending almost on your, your ideology. I would say we're sorry to both of these people, right? I understand how everyone feels. I do think Robinhood is to address, you know, the first point, a source of good for this world. Having more and more people investing is, has been a positive enabler because if you look back at wealth inequality and income inequality, these are big problems that are threatening the fabric of society. We can only connect the dots going backwards, but we can't really quite grasp all of the implications of rising inequality. We…

AI assessment note: “Having more and more people investing is, has been a positive enabler”

Q interesting trait. Um, can I ask you, when you think about moving there and America being the land of opportunity that it was, do you think it's still that land of opportunity? I think this with the UK, like, does the best talent want to come to London? And the answer for me is no. Do you think America is the land of opportunity that it was when you went?

A I think so. And for me, uh, entrepreneurship didn't really become a viable option in terms of, I never really considered being an entrepreneur until relatively recently. You know, I, I grew up and, uh, I grew up on the East coast and People weren't really starting technology companies on the East Coast. To me, as, as I've kind of gotten older and, you know, I, I moved to Stanford, California, really because when I was a kid and my family took our first road trip, uh, once we got in a little bit of money and my, my parents felt comfortable taking vacations financially, they took me to California for a road trip. And I remember being in San Francisco one morning, and this was in the summer, so I had to buy a jacket because it was just like too cold to be outside. And then we, we took the 45 minute drive to Stanford, California to check out the campus. And, uh, it was like 85 degrees, perfect. The, the students were like sunbathing in the main quad. Everyone just looked so happy and like they were having a great time. And I wanted to be a lawyer at the time. I had seen A Few Good Men, which was a Tom Cruise movie. And I was like, man, that's cool. Like, I want to be that guy. And I had this video, this photo of me in front of the law school. Um, but

AI assessment note: “I think so. And for me, uh, entrepreneurship didn't really become”

Q Okay, so we're back in office, we have new personnel. Anything that you've done to really fucking supercharge product delivery, iteration shipping?

A I think making sure that everyone feels accountable to their business results is, is important. I think there's probably like 12 little things that you just go and do. And if you, if you really want to ship fast and deliver fast, you have to orient your culture towards optimizing for that. And I, I think it's, it's difficult in financial services, especially because You also have to protect people's money and, and be safe. And I think it's an important thing to not treat these two things as things that, uh, sort of counterbalance each other. Oh, well, we can't ship fast because that compromises safety. You have to say, no, I want you to do it at high quality, which means delivering it safely, but, but also once you know what to do, executing relentlessly.

AI assessment note: “there's probably like 12 little things that you just go and do.”

Q Okay, so we're back in office, we have new personnel. Anything that you've done to really fucking supercharge product delivery, iteration shipping?

A I think making sure that everyone feels accountable to their business results is, is important. I think there's probably like 12 little things that you just go and do. And if you, if you really want to ship fast and deliver fast, you have to orient your culture towards optimizing for that. And I, I think it's, it's difficult in financial services, especially because You also have to protect people's money and, and be safe. And I think it's an important thing to not treat these two things as things that, uh, sort of counterbalance each other. Oh, well, we can't ship fast because that compromises safety. You have to say, no, I want you to do it at high quality, which means delivering it safely, but, but also once you know what to do, executing relentlessly.

AI assessment note: “if you really want to ship fast and deliver fast, you have to orient your culture”

Q Is there anything that you would have done differently about the launch or the messaging?

A I think that There's always things to, uh, to learn. Uh, for example, I think this, like, statement that it was somehow unsafe was not very positive for us. I mean, if you look at OpenAI Newsroom Twitter, this was actually the most popular tweet that they tweeted ever. It has, like, the most likes and reposts, which surprised me. So I didn't quite think that it would resonate So much. Um, so I don't know. I don't know. It's so new. I don't know if I would have done much differently. I think the problem is everyone likes tokenization in, in principle, right? But it's not really as attractive when it's being done to you. It's sort of like a digital NIMBYism, right? Everyone's like, oh, great. Tokenization. Kidding. Make it happen over there. And, uh, Yeah, the, the problem that's happened in private markets in general is The best companies have lots of options. They can raise money from anywhere. So they sort of like don't consider retail.

AI assessment note: “I don't know if I would have done much differently.”

Q How do you win it where others haven't?

A Well, um, I don't know if, if, if a lot of people have really tried very hard, to be fair. I mean, I think that, The people making a 100,000 dollars, a very nice market too. And I think it can be very, very tempting to go up and say, okay, why don't we serve the people making a 1,000,005 million ultra high net worth. Like if, if you can literally be My family office. Um, I, I think that is an attractive proposition. And actually that, that's my goal. I'd like to have all of my personal stuff on Robin Hood. Um, and I, I don't think we're very far from being able to service my needs, uh, adequately, like maybe a couple of years.

AI assessment note: “I don't know if, if, if a lot of people have really tried very hard”

Q I completely agree in the UK. We're all back to all in person, but final one for you, you've done many different interviews. People see you on TV a lot. What do you think someone listening doesn't know about you that you kind of just wish they would?

A Well, you know, what's interesting. Um, I think the one lesson, uh, and you, you can, you can call it storytelling or, or what have you, um, I, I think that it's helped me be happier, be like a happier human and probably a better leader to sort of like think less about what other people think about me, because I think it can be pretty distracting. And I think it's natural to be, uh, aware of what others think about you. But, um, if, if you're not kind of Rubbing at least some people the wrong way by your existence, you're probably not doing anything interesting. You're, you're probably not being sufficiently interesting. And I, I don't think the goal is actually to like be interesting to other people too. But, uh, I think it's that to have a point of view and to change things. So I've gotten much happier if, uh, once I've sort of like stopped caring about what others think of me to, to such a degree. Maybe that, uh, didn't exactly answer the question.

AI assessment note: “Maybe that, uh, didn't exactly answer the question.”

Q What have you decided to not do most recently that was a hard decision? It's a constant game of trade-offs.

A You know, we always have, um, there's lots of things that are great ideas in our space that we know will work, but we haven't gotten around to them yet. So for example, earlier this year we launched, uh, Amazing margin rates. We were frankly not very competitive with our margin product in the US up until recently, and then we changed our rates. We were able to do that because we made a lot of investments in risk management. So now we have the best rates. But if you think about the things that we, we offer great margin rates, 24 hour access to the markets, also particularly relevant in the UK, there are things that institutions want too. So if you're a hedge fund, for example, And you also want 24 hour access to equity markets. You want access to crypto. Not a lot of them can get that easily. You want access to low margin rates. Um, and the institutional market's a very big market, you know, and we could take a lot of our infrastructure, adapt it to institutional, and we don't have to rebuild a ton of the technology. Similarly, you look at a company like Fidelity, a big asset manager in the U.S., They have a big, uh, four one K business. So that's also a B to B business. You're helping startups and larger companies manage their employee retirement plans. Um, and that, that's a good, uh, compliment to our retirement offering. So that's something that comes up, uh, servicing regis…

AI assessment note: “we haven't gotten around to them yet”