Robinhood Founder & CEO, Vlad Tenev: Robinhood’s $85BN Resurgence & Tokenizing SpaceX & OpenAI

Vlad Tenev 0:00 Everyone likes tokenization in principle, but it's not really as attractive when it's being done to you. I think it's important for the tokenization mechanism to work without the opt-in of the companies that are being tokenized. I do think it's a big problem that a retail investor can't get access to Stripe shares. I've shared this viewpoint with, uh, Patrick and John, and they give me some variant of, "Oh, well, we're just a, a small Irish family company. Please don't tokenize my shares."

Harry Stebbings 0:28 Ready to go? Vlad, dude, it is so lovely to have you back

Harry Stebbings 0:43 in the studio. Do you know what was funny, is when you were last in that chair, you had a market cap of 35 billion, and today, I think the market cap is about $85 billion. And so it's been a pretty good eight months. Like-

Vlad Tenev 0:56 That was, uh, was that eight months ago? Really?

Harry Stebbings 0:58 Yeah.

Vlad Tenev 0:58 Yeah. That's amazing. And I felt pretty good back then. You know, it's, uh, it's always nice when the market cap goes up. Things get easier, you walk a little bit straighter, people listen to what you have to say. So, uh, we don't, we don't look at it, of course. That's what they tell you. You can't pay attention to it. But-

Harry Stebbings 1:14 Is that the biggest load of BS in the company? Like, you know, I'm friends with Daniel at Spotify, and it's 148 billion now, and I think he feels a lot better now it's 148.

Vlad Tenev 1:22 Yes. He does, yeah. It's, uh, I think it's very difficult. I don't know if it's easier, uh, with other companies, but my product pushes stock prices into your brain. By using it, it's just hard to ignore.

Harry Stebbings 1:37 (laughs)

Vlad Tenev 1:37 So I think it's especially difficult for a business like ours.

Harry Stebbings 1:41 It's the most meta thing, isn't it? If you (laughs) do like, you guys looking at stock prices on Robinhood.

Vlad Tenev 1:46 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:46 It's like talking to a podcast about podcasting. Um, I did just wanna start on that 'cause it has been insane. I, I tweeted last night that it's kind of the story of Wall Street, bluntly, which is just this insane rise of, of Robinhood in the last year. If you were to put it down to one or two things, what do you think the Street has appreciated that they did not before?

Vlad Tenev 2:03 I think that, uh, we've been saying the same things and articulating a strategy pretty clearly, uh, over the past two years really. And I think it just takes time to understand that it's working. And we, we've gotten fortunate in a sense that many things have worked very, very well.

Harry Stebbings 2:22 When you look at cost stabilization slash reduction, to what extent is that efficient management and just becoming leaner versus AI introduction and AI being the driver of that?

Vlad Tenev 2:33 AI is a big part of it, and I think we have been pretty mum on how much we've been using it internally. I think we've been talking about it in very general terms, and we've started to roll out AI products. Actually, Robinhood Cortex, our, uh, AI system, rolled out to customers today, just, uh, just a little bit earlier. But the impact that it's had on internal teams, ranging from software engineering to customer support, like, the really big internal teams,

Vlad Tenev 3:05 has been huge.

Harry Stebbings 3:05 In terms of software engineering, you know, Benioff said it was 50% of Salesforce new code today. What would you say yours is?

Vlad Tenev 3:12 I think that, that, uh, that sounds right. I mean, it's, it's difficult to say with these agentic systems, right? We've moved from, you know, GitHub Copilot, which is an autocomplete system, to Cursor, and now things like Windsurf, where, I mean, nearly all of the code is, is written by AI, and the adoption rate within engineering for, for us is, you know, close to 100%. It's close to 100%. So it's, it's hard to even determine what the human-generated code is. If I had to guess, it's the minority.

Harry Stebbings 3:51 Totally get that. Customer support-wise, you said that is the other big pillar.

Vlad Tenev 3:54 I think we're best in class there, actually. Even, even stronger than the, like, dedicated customer support AI companies, in terms of what, what we've done there.

Harry Stebbings 4:03 And so you've built your own, or you use off-the-shelf?

Vlad Tenev 4:06 We've built our own.

Harry Stebbings 4:07 Wow. Why did you decide that versus use off-the-shelf?

Vlad Tenev 4:10 Um, well, first of all, when we started, the off-the-shelf companies, like Sierra, for instance, they were just getting off the ground. The big companies that we were using, we're a big Salesforce customer, were, uh, not as developed yet. And, and so we, we built a lot of things. And then, uh, for, for a company like Robinhood, a lot of the complex work is in system integration. So it's getting all of the data to answer customers' queries and also, uh, we're, we're starting to do actions. Like, based on your query, we need to do some kind of action, and that requires a deep level of integration with our backend systems that I think most vendors haven't really figured out how to do yet.

Harry Stebbings 5:00 Why have you been quiet around it when the Street clearly appreciates AI efficiency stories within public companies?

Vlad Tenev 5:08 Yeah, I mean, I, I think we've been thinking about how to tell the story, uh, better. And one of the things we, we've been thinking about is should we just have an event, like a product event like we just had in the South of France? But, uh, sort of like-

Harry Stebbings 5:22 Oh, that sucks for a location, dude. Ugh, where are we gonna choose it? Oh, let's do the South of France.

Vlad Tenev 5:27 Yeah. Well, it's probably not gonna be in the South of France again, 'cause we just did that. But, um, there's lots of great places to have events. Yeah, no, I, I think there's now enough meat and enough things that we can talk about that it would actually be a really cool event, so-

Harry Stebbings 5:41 Would you ever make your customer support tool a SaaS product that you would open source to everyone? I mean, Revolut has now done this with their HR tool.

Vlad Tenev 5:47 Yeah. Uh, we've had discussions about that internally. I think that the challenge is, the, the value is in the deep integration with our proprietary data, and I don't know if we wanna get in the business of, like, going into companies and doing deep integrations with their proprietary data. But generally, I ask the question for everything, can we, if we build a great tool internally-... can we actually make it available as a service to others? Because that's the way to ensure that it stays great. It's like, there's external pressure from customers, not just internal teams. So I'm, I'm a huge fan of that type of platformization.

Harry Stebbings 6:26 Where do you think AI is not where you would most like it to be?

Vlad Tenev 6:30 I mean, I think that there's still a problem with hallucinations, and there's a lot of work that needs to be done to kind of, like, scaffold against that. And that's actually one of the things that was the origin for the company that I'm, I'm chairman of, Harmonic. Uh, it's, can we design a system that prevents hallucinations by, by design and ensures that every step of the reasoning is logical and follows from, from the previous one? So, I, I think that that entails a different approach to, uh, generating AI output, one where every piece of output is checked before it comes out, and there's a very clear measure of correctness. So I think that's gonna be a- an interesting system that will change

Vlad Tenev 7:24 everything.

Harry Stebbings 7:24 We're gonna get to Harmonic 'cause it's super exciting, and congrats on the series B. Uh, super exciting there.

Vlad Tenev 7:29 Thank you.

Harry Stebbings 7:30 The product expansion's been insane. You know, I spoke to Neil Mehta specifically before. He said about the speed of, uh, product build. When we look at it, though, you started with, like, young, first-time traders, added options and crypto, attracted maybe higher risk profiles, then speculative traders, high volume spec traders. Robinhood Gold and Cash Management led to more. I guess my question is, how do you think about the different customer profile types you serve today, and how has that changed over time in your thinking, given the massive product expansion recently?

Vlad Tenev 8:03 I think that, uh, there's been one big change, which is recently, we started thinking about not just the millennial and Gen Z customer, but also the active trader.

Harry Stebbings 8:13 Yeah.

Vlad Tenev 8:13 Like, the digitally native active trader, and that, that's a very different type of profile. I mean, these are folks that, you, you can almost think of them, they, they have some similarity with gamers. They've got, like, the screens, the headphones, the fancy keyboards, and they're just locked in. They're locked into their, to their system, and they have very specific needs. They are like, they need to be at the frontier of technology and innovation. They, they care about speed. They care about latency. And we really had to get into that customer's head to design products like our Futures Ladder, like Robinhood Legend.

Harry Stebbings 8:50 Why did you decide that was a market that you wanted to go after?

Vlad Tenev 8:53 We were kind of aware of this being a market that was important to us back in even 2019, but we weren't really doing much about it. So we had our, we had our strategy that was, we're gonna make an extremely simple-to-use mobile app with zero commissions, and we were targeting first-timers, 'cause the thesis was, well, first-timers would benefit from this. They like ease of use, and commissions are really a big barrier if you're starting with $100.

Harry Stebbings 9:24 Yeah.

Vlad Tenev 9:25 Like, that would- wouldn't have been possible before. And what happened was, when we went, we, when we went live, we started getting active traders that were high volume incidentally, without actually, like, going after that customer base, and that was because the value prop of zero commissions was so strong that if you were someone that was, you know, paying $1,000 a month in commissions, you would do all of the fancy research elsewhere and just do your trading on Robinhood. The value prop were str- was strong even though it wasn't explicitly designed for that. And so we built an active trader business incidentally, without even trying, and we were aware of this. We were like, "Wow, there's a lot of..." (laughs) A lot of our revenue, which was much higher than we anticipated when we modeled this first-time investor business, is driven by, you know, a, a, a, a well-defined kind of circumscribed chunk of our customers, and we ignored that for a while, because what we were doing was working very, very well. But in 2022, it became apparent that we weren't treating this customer base well, and they were even more important, because they, they're actually resilient. Since they're active, they, uh, they have, like, bearish strategies. When the market's moving down, they remain active. When the market's moving sideways, they can do multi-level, multi-leg options. And, uh, a- and from that point on, we realized we weren't serving them well. They were turning to other platforms. They were outgrowing us, and so we put some of our most hardcore people on the task of making Robinhood the best platform for active traders, and not just serving them incidentally. And I think that was actually the number one reason behind our business turnaround. It's realizing that that was actually the core of our business, and if we had to, uh ... And, and we needed to invest in it in order to have resources to do other things well.

Harry Stebbings 11:21 Do you think the memefication of stocks is a good thing or not?

Vlad Tenev 11:27 Uh, what do you mean by the memefication of stocks?

Harry Stebbings 11:29 When you have things that, bluntly, take public attention and really capture the zeitgeist, like a, I think you bluntly put the ............................ in the circles in the match here at this point, but the GameStops of the world, is that a good thing because it actually brings more people into markets, they can learn, they're entering the market for the first time? Or is it fundamentally bad because, bluntly, it's inflated? It's, it's not artificially inflated 'cause it is real, but it's not based on fundamentals.

Vlad Tenev 11:59 I think that people are buying these stocks generally for a very different reason than, you know, um, a meme coin, for example, or, or even GameStop back in 2021. I think they legitimately believe that these are gonna be...... like, gigantic industries. CoreWeave in- for instance, is one of the few opportunities that as a public markets investor, you can actually buy into AI, the growth of the AI industry. I mean, if you think about it, what are your options if you wanna invest in AI as retail? You've got NVIDIA-

Harry Stebbings 12:35 AMD.

Vlad Tenev 12:36 Yeah. I mean, AMD, but really NVIDIA's 4 trillion, right? You've got Tesla where AI is maybe, I don't know, 10, 20% of the story there. So you don't have too many opportunities at sub-trillion valuations. So when CoreWeave comes along, that's like AI exposure at a lower level and, and people are interested in that. And then Circle, you have the stablecoin industry, right? And, and people are betting that that's gonna be a big thing, and that's sort of like clean exposure to, to stablecoins.

Harry Stebbings 13:10 In terms of, like, availability of exposure, you guys did the fascinating, uh, kind of new product, so to speak, in terms of the tokenization of kind of private companies. Talk to me about the decision around that new product. Take me to that room. What was the discussion like and how did you come to the decision that this was a product you wanted to do?

Vlad Tenev 13:30 Yeah, I mean, it was very clear, uh, from the beginning. I actually wrote an article in The Washington Post in January that argued for tokenization, and-

Harry Stebbings 13:41 You said that tokenization will be the biggest innovation in finance in the last decade.

Vlad Tenev 13:46 Yeah. Yeah, I said that yesterday. Uh, yeah, I wasn't quite as clear, I guess, back in January for my Washington Post op-ed.

Harry Stebbings 13:54 (laughs)

Vlad Tenev 13:55 But I think, um, I think there's two benefits of tokenization that are very, very extreme. One is, like stablecoins, it's gonna be the easiest way to get exposure to US assets if you're outside of the US.

Harry Stebbings 14:09 Mm-hmm.

Vlad Tenev 14:10 So stablecoins, very popular outside the US for people that wanna get their hands on dollars. In the same way, I think stock tokens will become the best way to get exposure to US stocks and other assets. So that's like the ex-US use case. The, uh, use case that's gonna be very powerful even within the US where we actually have decent access through Robinhood and, and other things to US stocks is illiquid assets that actually have not been successfully made tradable or accessible to retail, like private companies, but also real estate and, and even things like art. So I think in the US, uh, that, that actually is very, very meaningful, and we wanted to demonstrate that we have the technology built to do this, uh, outside the US. I mean, it, it will work, it works, and, uh, all, all that's left is just details and, in the US, regulatory clarity. So we wanted to start with the two companies that I think are significant, hard to get, uh, challenging, but also in, in demand, and that's SpaceX and OpenAI, which incidentally were the two that I used as ex- examples when I, when I wrote my opinion piece on this.

Harry Stebbings 15:30 I totally... I have more LPs now that call me about access to both of them.

Vlad Tenev 15:34 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 15:34 Uh, so completely agree with you in terms of those being the demand side. The question I have for you is just so I actually understand then, b- if I'm... If it's a token, it's not equity or it, it is, is a reflection of equity? What am I actually buying? Just so I get it.

Vlad Tenev 15:48 Yeah. Um, I'd s- I'd say the analogy is to a stablecoin. Basically, if you think about it, we have some traditional assets in a box. We tokenize that one for one, and the, the tokens actually get put on blockchains where they're tradable. So for stablecoins, Circle, for example, has some US treasury bills and notes in a box that back the tokens that are freely tradable. So in, in this way, we have access to private company shares, uh, or other types of exposure, because OpenAI doesn't have shares. They're a nonprofit, so they have profit participation units and convertible interest securities that give shares upon a successful conversion to a for-profit. So OpenAI is particularly complicated, but you can think of it as exposure in an SPV, like a traditional instrument that then gets held by Robinhood and tokenized and, and given to retail.

Harry Stebbings 16:50 They were a little bit upset by this. (laughs)

Vlad Tenev 16:52 Yes.

Harry Stebbings 16:53 W- were you surprised that they were upset by it?

Vlad Tenev 16:56 Um-

Harry Stebbings 16:56 Uh, do you think that was unfair?

Vlad Tenev 16:58 I thought part of it was unfair. They, they issued a, a statement that said, you know, "Please be careful." Um, which, which I thought was a little bit gratuitous. Uh, but I think, I think it could have been worse. I mean, I understand from OpenAI's perspective that they've got a lot of stuff going on. They're trying to convert to a for-profit. The last thing they want to deal with, um, is, you know, some, some guy tokenizing their stocks. They don't even understand exactly how that works, but it's sort of like a confusing distraction at best. Um, but I, I would say it's in line with their mission. You know, their stated mission is to build artificial general intelligence and make sure the benefit... It, it benefits all of humanity. So one way to make sure it benefits all of humanity and not just, you know, executives and wealthy investors, is to make humanity have ownership of it, which up until now hasn't been possible. You know, o- some of the most important companies of our time have not been accessible to retail, and I think that's a huge problem, so...

Harry Stebbings 18:05 Is there anything that you would've done differently about the launch or the messaging?

Vlad Tenev 18:09 I think that there's always things to, uh, to learn. Uh, for example, I, 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, and reposts, which surprised me. So I, 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. Can it ... 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. Oops. They don't consider retail. Uh, and that leads to this adverse selection problem where basically the only companies tapping retail are the ones that don't have any other options. And that's why all of the initiatives to give access to retail to these opportunities have, have failed thus far. And so I think it's important for the tokenization mechanism to work without the opt-in of the companies that, that are being tokenized. And I think that's actually the innovation that we've been able to drive. Like, we can ... We, we figured out how to make this work without actually having the, the companies opt in.

Harry Stebbings 19:56 Are you fearful that regulation will stop that? 'Cause if it works, this could be the biggest line of revenue in your business, no?

Vlad Tenev 20:03 I think, I think it could be big. I would say that in the EU, it's, uh, it's, it's pretty clear. I mean, EU has clear crypto asset regulation in, in the form of MiCA.

Harry Stebbings 20:15 Yeah.

Vlad Tenev 20:16 Uh, in the US, more work needs to be done, for sure. Like, there's two elements to it. Accredited investor laws, and also, uh, crypto laws. Which, which both need to happen in order to, to truly unlock this. And my belief is par- part of the reason why we're demonstrating this in the EU, aside from just giving our EU customers access to all these amazing products, is that it could show the rest of the world that there's real value here. And you heard the SEC chair, Paul Adkins, say, you know, tokenization is an innovation, and the SEC has to stop putting up roadblocks and start embracing these innovative technologies. So I, I think we've got support from both sides, in effect, to, to, to improve this.

Harry Stebbings 21:05 How do you think about inventory? And what I mean by that is, you mentioned the two then, that are kind of the gold standard. Could you go as low as a Series B? I mean, when you look at Harmonic, and it, I know you announced around, uh, you know, today.

Vlad Tenev 21:18 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 21:19 Um, I- I think I added it, Kleiner Perkins did it, you're the chairman. There's a lot of people who would love to buy into that Harmonic token right now, if you put it on Robinhood.

Vlad Tenev 21:28 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 21:28 Does it go that low? How do you think about where the line ends in terms of accessibility?

Vlad Tenev 21:32 It's a great question. My intent would, would be to go as low as possible.

Harry Stebbings 21:37 Yeah.

Vlad Tenev 21:37 I think that ... And, and it's funny, because we're kind of straddling the, um, crypto and the traditional finance side. And if, if you talk to crypto people, crypto people will tell you, "Well, the future is on-chain issuance. What you're doing right now is, like, not ideal, compared to on-chain issuance, where the equity goes on chain from the very beginning." And what I tell them is, "Nobody gives a shit about on-chain issuance." Like, the only place where people are even thinking about on-chain issuance is, like, in your head.

Harry Stebbings 22:15 (laughs)

Vlad Tenev 22:15 What people want is capital as a service.

Harry Stebbings 22:18 (laughs)

Vlad Tenev 22:18 Like, if you're an entrepreneur, you want capital in your bank account quickly and with as little friction as possible. And, and I think that's where this eventually ends. You, you should be able to go on Robinhood or maybe other services as well, maybe upload some information, and, and actually you'll be competing in a marketplace, so there will be pressure, market pressure, to make information that's clear and as compelling as possible. You push a button, and then money enters your, your bank account, and you can get back to running your business. I think that's where it ... That, that's the logical conclusion. It's capital at all stages, but perhaps the most interesting is the earliest stages. And I think if we succeed in doing this, there will be more startups. Like, it'll become easier to create a startup.

Harry Stebbings 23:06 I, I mean, it's incredible, and it kind of actually kind of pays homage to what crowdfunding always promised to be.

Vlad Tenev 23:11 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 23:11 But never actually was. Um, so I totally get that. What does that look like then, in terms of the roll-out from that six to 12 months of tokenization and what assets you tokenize when, and how you do it?

Vlad Tenev 23:21 Well, what's live right now in Europe, fully live, is public stocks.

Harry Stebbings 23:24 Yeah.

Vlad Tenev 23:25 And we've got about 200 plus of all the, all the big ones, so we're gonna continue to roll that out and, and get to thousands. We will make the private stocks tradable as well. So we'll get those on chain.

Harry Stebbings 23:38 Why does inventory ... Sorry. Just p- pause there. Why does inventory matter in the thousands? When you actually look at, like, trading volumes, and you see the concentration of names the trading volumes go towards, do you need much more than 200?

Vlad Tenev 23:50 I think that you never know what's gonna become popular.

Harry Stebbings 23:53 Mm-hmm.

Vlad Tenev 23:54 There's always a long tail, and, you know, something happens in a, in a random company, right? And, uh, it's, it's interesting. And we don't really wanna be in the business of, like, picking winners and losers and what stocks you wanna buy. We- we'd like to keep it simple and just say, generally speaking, if it's, if it's listed, and it ... I mean, we, we'd like to actually offer it to all listed ones. There have been issues where, unfortunately, you know, sub-dollar stocks are left listed for too long, and some of these have turned into scams, and, and I think that's a problem that we'd like the listing exchanges to deal with. So we, we, we've had to deviate from that to some degree. But ideally, if it's, if it's listed and we just turn it on, and, and we're good to go.

Harry Stebbings 24:42 So we move from 200 to 1,000 there. Great.

Vlad Tenev 24:44 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 24:44 What else?

Vlad Tenev 24:45 Uh, so there's a couple of things. So on the, on the public stock token side, this product will progress in a couple of stages. We're in stage one, where every time we mint or burn a new token, we actually go to the market, to, to the NASDAQ or NYSE, to an actual exchange for every trade. So every time you buy, one new one is minted. And the second phase is we put these tokens on BitStamp, our exchange, and so then you can trade the tokens directly against other cryptos and, and also dollars. And that needs, that needs stage one because we need to have a supply of a significant number of these tokens minted before we can enable the liquidity. So phase two unlocks 24/7 trading. And then phase three, you, you can actually interface with the blockchain directly, and you can self-custody, you can do all of the collateralized lending and borrowing, all the DeFi, the self-custody, and that's when things start to really get interesting. I think the crypto wallet will be a first-class experience for all these tokenized

Vlad Tenev 25:55 assets.

Harry Stebbings 25:55 Is that $100 million revenue line for you? 'Cause you have nine products that are $100 million revenue lines now.

Vlad Tenev 26:01 The crypto wallet, uh, up until recently has not even been monetized. I think we're just starting to, to monetize it.

Harry Stebbings 26:09 When you look at the nine, which do you think is most underappreciated?

Vlad Tenev 26:14 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 i- 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, I think you can slice and dice it by, by, uh, you know, lots of different ways. But if, if they're putting all of their money into Robinhood, I think we're, we're happy.

Harry Stebbings 27:12 In five years' time, which do you think will be the biggest revenue generator?

Vlad Tenev 27:17 I think that crypto is interesting because right now crypto is sort of this, like, separate segment of the business. We, we kind of look at it and the outside world perceives it as a different asset, right? It's like, how big is your crypto business gonna be relative to, say, your options business or equities business? It's very much like this is a separate asset that you're trading. But what we're starting to see already is crypto is gonna be this layer that is behind everything, right? Ev- everything is gonna be powered by crypto to, to some degree. So, uh-

Harry Stebbings 27:58 What do you mean by that? Just so I understand.

Vlad Tenev 28:00 Well, I'll just give you an example. Right now we have, uh, like, uh, Robinhood Gold has a interest piece where you can earn interest on your cash. Well, if we, uh, as we get stablecoin out, crypto will have that as well. You'll be able to earn interest on your stablecoins, and that'll be a, a significant business. And you might consider that part of crypto, but that's, uh, you know, that- that's something that's akin to a savings account. Prediction markets over time, uh, you, you see overseas things like Polymarket. That's a prediction market's business, but it's also powered by crypto.

Harry Stebbings 28:40 Uh, the joys of me is I have no ego, and so I am not afraid to ask very stupid questions. I hang out with-

Vlad Tenev 28:46 Yeah, go ahead.

Harry Stebbings 28:46 ... Jack Zhang from Airwallex, who I don't know if you know, but he's fucking brilliant and one of the most underappreciated founders. He's very negative on the future of stablecoins. Um, how do you see the next three years of stablecoins, and would you share his negativity?

Vlad Tenev 29:01 I don't know if I would go that far. Um, there's definitely use cases. I mean, I'll, I'll just give you an example. Robinhood uses stablecoins, like, for, for our corporate purposes. So we have this use case where we trade a lot of crypto, and that requires settling with counterparties. I mean, if we buy... If our customers buy a bunch of Bitcoin, we have counterparties that we have to send dollars to, and they send us the, the Bitcoin back. And during market hours, Monday through Friday, everything works fine because we can settle intraday. We can wire them dollars. They send us the crypto to our wallets, and, and everything's fine. But what happens on a weekend, right? What happens on a weekend where the banking rails are closed and something's happening in the crypto markets and we've got retail customers that wanna buy billions of dollars of crypto? You have a difficult solu- uh, you have a difficult situation potentially, so... Because we can't move the money. So what happens is either you have to take counterparty risk, meaning you have to trust that, you know, one side will deliver the dollars eventually, when they can, and send them the crypto ahead of time, which is a tough one because counterparty risk multiplies if you have lots of counterparties. Or you have to have lines of credit, right? Lines of credit with your counterparties that are expensive. Or you have to pre-fund in the bank accounts that you have, which can be different. You know, all the counterparties tend to have different bank accounts unless you force them to centralize. And so you have to pre-fund and plan for what could be a... an insane amount of, of volume, and that's very capital inefficient. But stablecoins coming-

Harry Stebbings 30:53 I lit- I literally have goosebumps listening to these different options. That's shit.

Vlad Tenev 30:56 Yeah, it's not good options. And, you know, we had to deal with this in 2021, and, and our solution was to raise lots of capital and pre-fund, um, and hope that it was enough, right? But now with stablecoins, we can just send you the dollars over the weekend, they instantly get to our counterparties, they can send the crypto back, problem solved. So that, that's a real use case, and that's led to us adopting it. So the, the 24/7 movement of dollars in real time is, uh, is a, is a real thing. And I don't think you can argue that outside of the US, particularly in developing countries, stablecoins have become the easiest way to get access to dollars for retail. And, and I think that's a real thing. They basically obsoleted American Express Travelers Checks, which, you know, foreigners in countries with depreciating currencies would like stockpile these things to, to keep their money.

Harry Stebbings 31:52 Are you ready for a really unfair one?

Vlad Tenev 31:53 Let's see it.

Harry Stebbings 31:55 Of the nine products that do 100 million in revenue, if I forced you to shut one down today because of focus, which would you shut down?

Vlad Tenev 32:03 Oh, good question. Um, well, I'll tell you one that I, I wouldn't mind, uh, I, I wouldn't mind if it disappears over time, uh, instant withdrawals revenue. Yeah, so, so we make money from customers, uh, withdrawing money from Robinhood into their bank account instantly. You know, it's, it's a good business for us. And-

Harry Stebbings 32:28 How, how big a business is that?

Vlad Tenev 32:30 Uh, I wanna say this is nine figures. Um, yeah, I mean, we, we can check that-

Harry Stebbings 32:35 Yeah, yeah.

Vlad Tenev 32:35 ... but I think that's one of them. Or e- either by itself or in combination with some, some related thing.

Harry Stebbings 32:41 Close enough.

Vlad Tenev 32:42 But yeah, it's a big business. And, you know, we've got a... Our, our GM there is very proud of this business and he hates when I say this, but I tell him, "Hey, if your business goes to zero, I would not be upset because that would mean nobody's withdrawing money from Robinhood." If, if it's just like everyone just keeps their money in Robinhood all the time, we feel, we feel pretty good. So one of the goals we have is remove all reasons why someone would wanna move their money out to an external bank account.

Harry Stebbings 33:11 Great answer. That's a phenomenal one. It's like being in a job interview and being asked your biggest weakness, and you're like, "I just work too hard." (laughs) Um, okay. Me and you have got a whiteboard, we're planning a new product.

Vlad Tenev 33:24 Chalkboard, please.

Harry Stebbings 33:26 Oh, God, I hate chalkboards. Reminds me of school. Um, what product have you not done that you would most like to do?

Vlad Tenev 33:33 In, uh, financial services? I mean, pri- private markets is one that I've been very excited about. I think we have a plan to, uh, we have a plan to do it. Um, and the time between having an idea and executing on it with, with a new product has decreased quite a bit. I mean, if, if you told me six months ago that I'd be sitting here embroiled in some controversy because I've tokenized private markets and, uh, we- we've been able to deliver that to customers, I would have been surprised, but, like, the team has been executing unbelievably well. Uh, I think what we talked about earlier, um, which is still in the future, of having this, like, capital as a service offering, um, where you just press a button and money is deposited in your account, whether it be a, a business account or a, or a personal account. Uh, I think, I think that would be quite meaningful.

Harry Stebbings 34:34 The one that no one can crack and everyone wants to, people have tried, Nick at Revolut wants it, is the, like, ultra-high-net-worths and the super high-net-worths who are with Goldman or with Pictet or with JP. Do you want that market?

Vlad Tenev 34:49 Yeah. And I think that... Yeah, we- we're interested in that market. I think-

Harry Stebbings 34:55 How do you win it where others haven't?

Vlad Tenev 34:57 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 $100,000 is 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 million, five million?" Ultra-high-net-worth, like if, if you can literally be my family office, um, I th- 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 Robinhood. Um, and I, I don't think we're very far from being able to service my needs, uh, adequately, like maybe a couple

Vlad Tenev 35:42 of years.

Harry Stebbings 35:42 W- w- what do we not have today that we do need to service your needs?

Vlad Tenev 35:46 Yeah, so private banking, which, by the way, we're rolling out. It's happening very, very quickly. And, um, yeah, to, to my knowledge this is the first digital private banking product that's really designed for... I mean, private banking has been a very brick and mortar experience. All of the features require a branch. Nobody has been able to crack how to deliver that service without a branch. And I'll give you an example, cash delivery. I don't know if you heard about this cash delivery innovation, which, which I'm very excited about.

Harry Stebbings 36:16 (laughs) Please tell me.

Vlad Tenev 36:18 Yeah, so one thing that high-net-worth individuals have access to from private banking is, uh, a cash truck. So I was like floored by this when I got to the level where this could happen. But, like, First Republic Bank, which is now sadly defunct, had this service where cash would be delivered to your house-... and, you know, you don't have to go to an ATM. They offered it for larger amounts of cash, and it would come in an armored vehicle.

Harry Stebbings 36:47 I don't know anyone that has ordered a cash (laughs) delivery in the thousands from a cash truck. I'm with Goldman. I don't think they-

Vlad Tenev 36:56 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 36:56 ... fucking do cash trucks. Like, is that actually a thing?

Vlad Tenev 36:59 It was a thing. It was, it was why I loved, uh, why we love First Republic Bank because, you know, going to the bank and going to an ATM is annoying. Much more convenient to have the cash brought to you. And-

Harry Stebbings 37:11 Do you still use cash?

Vlad Tenev 37:13 Uh, yeah, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 37:16 Wow. For what?

Vlad Tenev 37:17 Yeah. Tipping.

Harry Stebbings 37:19 Oh, you Americans.

Vlad Tenev 37:20 You don't tip?

Harry Stebbings 37:21 This i- no, this is an American thing, huh?

Vlad Tenev 37:23 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 37:23 Why do you need like 50 grand in cash?

Vlad Tenev 37:26 You gotta tip, w- I got a lot of people that give me services.

Harry Stebbings 37:29 (laughs)

Vlad Tenev 37:29 You know, you gotta tip them all. Um.

Harry Stebbings 37:32 That is amazing. So, cash. Uh-

Vlad Tenev 37:34 And also, I have people that work for me that use services too, and they have to tip people. So, there's like a-

Harry Stebbings 37:39 So, so-

Vlad Tenev 37:39 ... whole operation.

Harry Stebbings 37:41 So you're gonna do cash trucks?

Vlad Tenev 37:43 So what we've, what we asked ourselves-

Harry Stebbings 37:45 Amazing branding. Can you imagine like Dollarhood cash trucks?

Vlad Tenev 37:48 Well, what we-

Harry Stebbings 37:49 Driving around cities.

Vlad Tenev 37:50 Uh, yeah, I don't think we wanna operate the trucks, but we asked ourselves, "What would this look like if this was a mass market product?" Okay, not everyone needs an armored truck going to their house, and that's quite expensive. But everyone gets a DoorDash or a Deliveroo like you have here, right? So can we solve the needing to go to an ATM problem for you and just get the cash delivered to you? Either if you're at your house or if you're out somewhere and you need cash. And this has happened to me a lot of, a lot of places. You know, my, my wife gets her hair cut, she wants to pay in cash, and then I have to go look for an ATM. It's, it's annoying. So, yeah, we're gonna solve that problem by combining, uh, the logistics of on-demand delivery with all the work that we're doing in finance. And, uh, you'll, you'll get cash delivered to your house. Yeah, and, and actually, first of all, digital banking without a branch, nothing ruins... So, so nobody's been able to figure out how to handle the ATM problem, right? Uh, and if you're... No- nothing ruins the private banking vibe more than having to go to a 7-Eleven or a CVS to have to withdraw cash. Like it's not a, not a premium experience. You also don't want to send customers to some other bank. Like, you know, I'm sure Citi is great, but I don't want my customers going to Citi if they're a private banking customer. So how do you do a branch list? People still have these needs where you have to go to a branch. Well, you should bring the branch to the person. And that's, uh, I- I think that's a thread that we're gonna pull on. And, and that's what high-net-worth individuals have. They have people coming to their houses for all of their needs. If you need a notary, they show up to your house. If you need to buy a watch, they'll show up at your house. So that, that's the goal. I think that's how we have to deliver it to, to our customers.

Harry Stebbings 39:44 The thing I think is so interesting with your business is the different insertion points that different players have taken. And so if you look at yours, when you think about like commission-free trading, um, being your insertion point into the first customer base. When you look at Revolut, it's, you know, FX is the core.

Vlad Tenev 39:58 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 39:58 When you look at Monzo, it was actually just like the current account was a hard one to get first, but the current account was the core.

Vlad Tenev 40:03 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 40:03 And then each expand from there. If I'm totally honest, and I hope I can say this knowing you a little bit over the years now, I thought yours was kind of the lightest in terms of like commission-free trading. It, it feels like looser than-

Vlad Tenev 40:17 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 40:19 But I was clearly wrong, (laughs) when I look at what you've done. Why has actually commission-free trading been the best insertion point? Or was it not, it was just execution alone that was?

Vlad Tenev 40:32 Yeah, I think that's a good question. I think that you could build a, uh, big business with all of these insertion points, right? And, and these guys have. I mean, Monzo and Revolut have done very, very well, big impressive businesses. Um, I do think eventually the end state-

Harry Stebbings 40:49 Do you worry more about Revolut or Chime?

Vlad Tenev 40:51 I think I'm more impressed by Revolut. You know, Revolut's got product velocity, international scale, uh, strong founder, you know, imp- impressive guy. Um, I don't think we like butt into each other very much, but I, I think, I think it's gonna be more. Chime, we don't butt into very much either, because they're targeting sort of paycheck to paycheck customers. Their customers aren't really investing. So, uh, but, but we'd like to get into there too. We'd like to continue to go down market and eventually serve someone that doesn't have money to invest. I do think that the end state of Robinhood involves the current account as well. Like, we, we have to get people's paycheck. It's just easier that way if you can have everything go through Robinhood.

Harry Stebbings 41:37 What is the timeline to that, do you think?

Vlad Tenev 41:39 Well, banking's rolling out very, very soon. I mean, imminently, depending on when this is coming out to the first customers.

Harry Stebbings 41:47 How do you think about the regulatory tactics that have been done by Monzo, Revolut, Starling, where they've really gone for the banking license? When you sit back and analyze that, how do you reflect on, analyze that?

Vlad Tenev 41:59 I think it's different depending on the jurisdiction. In the US, banking license has traditionally been very onerous. I mean, you, you, you have folks in your board meetings, you know, re- approving new products. So that's tough. Um-

Harry Stebbings 42:13 They do in the UK, Monzo.

Vlad Tenev 42:16 Yeah, yeah. And, you know, Revolut, to my knowledge, doesn't have a banking license here, and it's been fine for them.

Harry Stebbings 42:23 Well, it's bluntly been the advantage, which is it's enabled a product velocity that Monzo weren't able to have because they had regulatory bluntly provisions, which meant they couldn't move that fast.

Vlad Tenev 42:32 Yeah. But, you know, bank, the, there's certain advantages in the other direction, which is-

Harry Stebbings 42:36 Totally is.

Vlad Tenev 42:36 ... if you want to be someone's bank, you can, you can say that we're a bank, uh-

Harry Stebbings 42:41 100%.

Vlad Tenev 42:42 And, and some people really care about that.

Harry Stebbings 42:44 Totally get that.

Harry Stebbings 42:45 Um-Behind all of this is actually the machine that makes it. You know, Neil at Maters, uh, I think a very dear friend of yours, and he responded when I asked him, "I LOVE VLAD," all in caps. Uh, and that actually, uh, made me very happy. Uh, he asked very specifically, "How did Vlad go from a culture and company that shipped almost nothing to-"

Vlad Tenev 43:07 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 43:07 ... sorry, it was his words, "to now shipping at the most extraordinary pace? As specific as possible."

Vlad Tenev 43:13 We were kinda gummed up in, uh, 2020 and 2021 just, uh, trying to scale. You know, we, we went from end of 2019 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, the- 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 w- frankly we weren't even doing a, 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 involved some cultural changes to reorient the company post-COVID, bringing people back into the office so we could onboard better. I-

Harry Stebbings 44:37 How important is being in-person? I make sure everyone's in-person for all of our companies.

Vlad Tenev 44:42 I'm a, I'm a big in-person bull in general.

Harry Stebbings 44:46 Mm-hmm.

Vlad Tenev 44:47 Yeah. Um, yeah, I think, I think we've operated much better since we... And it was actually very painful for us because we went remote first, so I had to, like, pull that back entirely which pissed a lot of people off, but, um, we can-

Harry Stebbings 45:00 Is it as bad as you think? A lot of people are like, "Well, I can't pull it back." I think very few doors are actually one way.

Vlad Tenev 45:06 Totally. Yeah, no, there's no one-way doors that I've encountered. It can be done, and, uh, you know, we've, we've done it which, which I think is, is a great example.

Harry Stebbings 45:16 Okay, so we're back in office, we have new personnel.

Vlad Tenev 45:19 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 45:19 Anything that you've done to really fucking supercharge product delivery, iteration shipping?

Vlad Tenev 45:25 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 wanna 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."

Harry Stebbings 46:18 That's why I say it like Steve Jobs, "No, I want it beautiful and today." (laughs)

Vlad Tenev 46:24 And fast. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 46:24 I totally understand that. What's your framework for deciding what new products to do versus not do?

Vlad Tenev 46:29 I think I follow my intuition quite a bit. Yeah. Um, which is funny, I'm-

Harry Stebbings 46:34 Do you agree, do you agree with dictatorial style of leadership?

Vlad Tenev 46:36 The which kind?

Harry Stebbings 46:37 Kind of dictatorial? Top-down?

Vlad Tenev 46:40 Um, I think that certain things have to be top-down, for sure. Whi- which is, uh, the vision has to be top-down because there's just... And, and you know-

Harry Stebbings 46:51 How many direct reports do you have?

Vlad Tenev 46:53 Um, I think it's about 15, 15 to 20. I, I think you know when it's necessary because it's very, very clear when something needs to be top-down because you have people that aren't agreeing with things, they're, like, disagreeing with each other, and I think if that goes on for too long and it's not intentional, that's probably a sign of some form of dysfunction, um, and that's when you need to be top-down. But I don't think you have to be top-down to an extreme degree. I think that... And, and that's, that's the difficult part. What I try to do is be clear about where we're going and what the end state is, and give people who are in the details and can focus on their thing a lot of autonomy to, to how you achieve the, the actual thing, right? And, and then they become owners of it, they become accountable to it. So, I, I wouldn't be top-down and dictate exactly how everything is done. For some things I'll have opinions, like the, the products that I'm very close to, how the events are done, how it's announced, but, um, I, I, I wanna make it clear that, you know, my GMs, the product leaders, the folks that are close to the ground can overrule me, and I, I just encourage them to actually yell at me and tell me I'm being an idiot when, when they think so.

Harry Stebbings 48:16 What element of your leadership do you know is bad but continue to do regardless?

Vlad Tenev 48:23 I, I think I've been, uh, I've been accused of having low emotional intelligence. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 48:30 (laughs) Do you work on that or do you just accept that, "Hey, that's part of me"?

Vlad Tenev 48:34 Um, I try to work on it a little bit. I mean, it's always, I... Maybe, maybe I'm inept, but I don't know, I consider myself, uh, uh, somewhat emotionally intelligent, so.

Harry Stebbings 48:46 Do you tie your happiness to the performance of the company?

Vlad Tenev 48:50 I try not to, but it's, it's sometimes hard to avoid. I mean, just think about it, I- I'm pretty happy now. In 2022-

Harry Stebbings 48:56 Yeah. (laughs)

Vlad Tenev 48:57 ... I was kind of in the dumps and it took a- a- an inordinate amount of effort to, like, uh, climb out of that.

Harry Stebbings 49:02 I can't remember who it was-But someone asked, did you ever feel in the dumps that it actually wouldn't work?

Vlad Tenev 49:08 That it actually wouldn't work, I guess is a relative question. Um, I never really felt like the company was in danger of going bankrupt-

Harry Stebbings 49:19 Yeah.

Vlad Tenev 49:19 ... or anything. I mean, the good thing about 2022 is we'd raised six billion in cash in 2021, uh, which, you know, can be a good thing and a bad thing. But we had-

Harry Stebbings 49:32 This was before you went public?

Vlad Tenev 49:33 This was after we went... 2022 was after we went public. We raised a bunch of cash in the IPO, I think 1.5 to two billion, but also during GameStop we raised like four billion. So we had a lot of cash, um, but it was painful and I did ask myself whether I was, like, the person to, to do this, right? Because I went from, you know, leading a growing startup that went public, and that was a nice capstone. Mo- many people consider going public to be sort of like a end goal-

Harry Stebbings 50:05 End thing, yeah.

Vlad Tenev 50:05 ... in and of itself. And then I was like administering a reduction in force and leading a turnaround.

Harry Stebbings 50:11 Do you like being public? I've never met a public CEO who actually likes it.

Vlad Tenev 50:15 I like being public, actually. Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 50:16 You d- you do?

Vlad Tenev 50:17 I do.

Harry Stebbings 50:18 Why?

Vlad Tenev 50:18 I think it's, I think it's great because I think we've, we flipped, i- in my head at least, from thinking about all the comp- public company stuff, like earnings and, and all of that, from being a nuisance to being just a fun opportunity to connect with our community of shareholders and retail investors. So if you look at our recent, uh, earnings calls, I don't know if you've seen them, we have quite a, quite a lot of fun with, uh... I've got them, um, the vision is it's like a post-game press conference. So I've got the Robinhood logos behind me-

Harry Stebbings 50:53 Oh, I did see this.

Vlad Tenev 50:53 ... with the big mics. Yeah, and it's basically like... Post-game press conferences are a lot of fun. They're fun if the team wins or if the team loses, because, you know, if the team wins, you've got them wearing the nice, like, designer clothes, they're feeling confident, they're talking good. You know, you, you're rooting for the team, you wanna see them win. If they lose, sometimes you get dirt about, like, what player's not pulling their weight or, you know, they come in with, like, the towel over the shoulder, and they're like, you know-

Harry Stebbings 51:24 I'd love to hear that.

Vlad Tenev 51:24 ... getting railed by the press, like, "You played bad. Why did, why did, why did you not get any assists? Why, why did you only score seven points?" So, you know, getting a star player, um, getting railed on by the media after a terrible game's al- always entertaining. So, you know, if that can be a... This is like the business equivalent of that, really.

Harry Stebbings 51:44 Do you think Stripe should go public?

Vlad Tenev 51:46 I think that two things. I think Stripe can do whatever it wants, and obviously they can raise infinite amounts of capital from the private markets to run their business. I do think it's a big problem that a retail investor can't get access to Stripe shares, which has been a category defining company. And I've shared this viewpoint-

Harry Stebbings 52:07 You could tokenize that.

Vlad Tenev 52:07 ... I've, I've shared this viewpoint with, uh, Patrick and John, and, you know, they, they give me some variant of, uh, "Oh, well, we're just, uh, a small Irish family company." Um, yeah, please don't tokenize my shares. Uh, so we'll see.

Harry Stebbings 52:22 (laughs) I absolutely love that. Dude, I'd love to do a quick fire round. I could spend all day talking to you. Um, what have you changed your mind on most in the last 12 months?

Vlad Tenev 52:32 Yeah. In, in the past 12 months, the area that I think has led to a lot of thinking, I, I don't know if we've, we've changed our mind on it too much, we're kind of barreling ahead, is prediction markets. And prediction markets is kind of an interesting category of thing, right? Some people consider it gambling, so you have the whole, like, is it gambling or is it investing controversy that we're continuing to contend with. It's sort of the bane of, of our existence to some degree. I mean, I, I believe it's investing. Many people believe that, that it's gambling. So, so there's that. And it's also like the is it gonna be state regulated? Is it gonna be CFTC federally regulated like a future? So I think we have lots of debates about what that looks like in our product, from separate apps, separate tabs, separate brand, to the other spectrum, just fully integrated, which is basically the, the direction we've gone. So that, that's a heady one. That one's at the frontier. Private markets I'm guessing is gonna be tough to navigate. Like, there's a lot of people that don't like what we're doing there. But I'm quite motivated to actually make that work, so I think I'll... uh, I think we'll ultimately prevail

Vlad Tenev 53:46 there.

Harry Stebbings 53:47 Which competitor do you most respect, and why them?

Vlad Tenev 53:50 I think Revolut's a good one. Revolut, you know, you can tell the culture is, is, is, uh, in a good place. Like, that's the no bullshit company that is... that cares a lot about winning. I think it's pretty clear. So, respect them tremendously. Uh, I respect Coinbase, you know. I think they're a technology company in our space. We come across them quite a bit. We collaborate in some ways, but, uh, you know, no bullshit, founder led. Uh, I, I think they've done very well. And I think there's a lot of, uh, smaller players that also are hungry and, and doing well.

Harry Stebbings 54:30 Any that are non-obvious but super interesting?

Vlad Tenev 54:33 I think, I think Altruist is somewhat interesting as a competitor. Have you heard of Altruist?

Harry Stebbings 54:38 Mm-hmm.

Vlad Tenev 54:39 Yeah, so, uh, it's funny, it's, it's great. We have all these competitors, uh, in all these different fields. Um-

Harry Stebbings 54:45 Well, you do everything, dude. (laughs) There's quite a lot to compete with.

Vlad Tenev 54:48 Yeah, so, so Altruist is kind of our competitor in the RIA custody business. So this is sort of like the products we offer to advisors to, uh, serve their end clients. And, you know, their, their pitch was, "We're Robinhood for advisors." Um, and, you know, they, they do some things very, very well, and, you know-We believe we can be Robinhood for advisors. But yeah, they have, uh, a CEO who's a good-looking guy. He's kind of the, you know, hanging around all these, uh, advisory conferences, and, uh, you know, we entered that space via acquisition a couple of months ago, so that should be interesting.

Harry Stebbings 55:28 (laughs) We put this in yesterday, right? And I stalk the shit out of you. And you'll be impressed, I think, by the level of stalking the shit out of you I did.

Vlad Tenev 55:36 Let's see.

Harry Stebbings 55:36 I hear that you now have a personal trainer, and you didn't for many years. You solo-trained for many years. Uh-

Vlad Tenev 55:43 Well, you didn't see my Men's Health article, did you?

Harry Stebbings 55:46 No.

Vlad Tenev 55:47 So I was in Men's Health about a year and a half ago.

Harry Stebbings 55:49 (gasps) .

Vlad Tenev 55:49 I didn't get the cover, unfortunately.

Harry Stebbings 55:51 Fuckers.

Vlad Tenev 55:52 Which I thought was, uh, very disappointing. I think I deserved the Men's Health cover.

Harry Stebbings 55:56 Why didn't you buy a Men's Health? (laughs)

Vlad Tenev 55:57 (laughs) I didn't have the money back then.

Harry Stebbings 55:59 D- Do you-

Vlad Tenev 55:59 I don't know how much they're worth. Uh-

Harry Stebbings 56:00 I can order you a cash truck if you'd like one. (laughs) .

Vlad Tenev 56:04 (laughs) But anyway, there's a Men's Health, uh, feature on me working out with my trainer and, you know, I, I think for that one I deadlifted close to 400 pounds, but they, they showed the picture of me deadlifting, uh, 135 for some reason that I, I can't fathom.

Harry Stebbings 56:18 We're gonna put this up like here. It's gonna be beautifully visualized for this video. Wow. Well done.

Vlad Tenev 56:25 Thank you. Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 56:25 How... So, so how did like tr- training change?

Vlad Tenev 56:28 Uh, so I started working with a trainer. Uh, I had a bad, uh, back injury. Right around the time I had my first child, I was like lifting incredibly heavy weight and I popped a disc in my, in my back. So I had surgery scheduled because I literally couldn't get up from a seated position without excruciating pain going up my leg. So I had the surgery scheduled. At the last minute, I kind of bailed from it. I'm like, "Ah, it's feeling a little bit better." It took two years to, to become pain-free from, from the time I popped the disc. So, um, then I kind of like rebuilt from first principles. So during COVID, I started working with a trainer, and for the first year, when we were all remote, we were doing body weight and dumbbell stuff only. And then gradually over time, I got into like lifting heavy, doing barbell work again. But it was just going from working out by myself, as you said, to like rebuilding my form and doing like from the ground up, like, uh, like just... It's, it's like a basketball player rebuilding their free throw. I had to just do everything properly, starting with very little weight.

Harry Stebbings 57:41 Did you... I, I, I was sold when I heard that you were in Men's Health. That's the coolest thing that you've said for the last hour. I'm still super impressed. Uh, what purchase under $500 has had the biggest impact on your life?

Vlad Tenev 57:53 Toto Washlet.

Harry Stebbings 57:55 What is that?

Vlad Tenev 57:56 It's a bidet. So if you're taking a poop, you can just push a button and it cleans you without, uh, without needing toilet paper.

Harry Stebbings 58:05 No.

Vlad Tenev 58:05 Very environmentally friendly.

Harry Stebbings 58:07 No.

Vlad Tenev 58:08 You've never, you've never heard of this Japanese toilet?

Harry Stebbings 58:11 No.

Vlad Tenev 58:12 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 58:12 You don't use loo roll?

Vlad Tenev 58:14 Uh, I do, but for drying only.

Harry Stebbings 58:17 Ah.

Vlad Tenev 58:18 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 58:18 This must be so disappointing when you go to a place without it and you're like, "Shit, I've gotta go back to the old way."

Vlad Tenev 58:25 Y- it is disappointing, yeah. And-

Harry Stebbings 58:26 I'm sorry. Le- let me just make sure, next time you're here, we'll get one of these for you (laughs) .

Vlad Tenev 58:30 You should get one. Uh, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 58:32 (laughs)

Vlad Tenev 58:32 I mean, it's, it's fine. I just, uh, try to avoid using the bathroom if, if I-

Harry Stebbings 58:35 Y- y- y- you've opened my world to cash trucks and not... (laughs) That's amazing.

Vlad Tenev 58:40 Japanese toilets.

Harry Stebbings 58:41 Japanese toilets, dude.

Vlad Tenev 58:42 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 58:42 Um-

Vlad Tenev 58:42 They even have a portable actually, if you don't wanna spend the $500 for, you know, 30 bucks, you can get this little thing that's battery operated and you can take with you.

Harry Stebbings 58:52 Uh-

Vlad Tenev 58:52 If you wanna go to 10,000, you get the full toilet.

Harry Stebbings 58:56 Oh, well, I'm sold.

Vlad Tenev 58:57 Yeah, that has some nice features.

Harry Stebbings 58:58 That is... I'll ask for it for Christmas from... (laughs) Uh, what's the biggest advice on marriage?

Vlad Tenev 59:03 Well, uh, I've, I've only done it once, so (laughs) I don't have m- I don't have, uh, voluminous advice.

Harry Stebbings 59:09 You don't, but you've been through a shit ton. I mean, Christ, Vlad.

Vlad Tenev 59:13 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 59:13 And you're still together.

Vlad Tenev 59:15 Um, my wife and I would disagree with, um, with this. I think she's more of like, um... You know the movie Severance?

Harry Stebbings 59:23 Yeah.

Vlad Tenev 59:23 I think she, she would prefer a, a more Severance-like existence, where it's sort of like I come home, I don't really think about work, and, you know, I take off my work clothes, and I'm in like home mode, and there's sort of more strict separation. I prefer closer to like full integration, like my work people coming to my house and hanging out with my kids and me doing a meeting while I'm on vacation and, you know, my kids coming to work. So it can't just be one way. It has to be both ways. So, uh, yeah. I think, uh, I-

Harry Stebbings 1:00:00 (laughs)

Vlad Tenev 1:00:00 I- I think that's one thing we disagree on. But I think there's something also about just like full unconditional commitment where you just know that if you have an issue or a concern, you can, you can work it out.

Harry Stebbings 1:00:11 Penultimate one. Which one was the hardest oh shit that turned into a good thing? So for example, when I was 17, I was kicked out of school for being heavily like very bulimic.

Vlad Tenev 1:00:19 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:00:20 And because of that, I went to this really loose school where they gave you loads of free time and I started a podcast.

Vlad Tenev 1:00:26 Yeah, I mean, I, I wanna say being public through 2022, seeing our stock go from, I don't know what it was in 2021, irrationally high perhaps, but it was still high after we went public, down to being worth below cash, um, was a very-

Harry Stebbings 1:00:47 I mean, that's offensive, isn't it?

Vlad Tenev 1:00:48 It was below cash, so people were betting that we would just like waste our cash and never be profitable. Um, yeah, uh, it was offensive in hindsight. But, you know, uh, it was tough and, and I think that in hindsight led to us making a bunch of decisions and investments and like, um, responding to it in a very positive way that now we're, we're reaping the

Vlad Tenev 1:01:13 benefits of.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:14 Okay, final one for you. Where is Robinhood, and you can choose the timeframe, in five or 10 years time? But where is Robinhood in five or 10 years time?

Vlad Tenev 1:01:24 Well, the vision behind Robinhood is to make it possible for everyone, whether they be an individual or a business, to buy, sell, or hold any financial asset or conduct any financial transaction. So that involves us going from US primary to fully global and from retail only to serving not just retail, but business and institutions.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:51 Dude, I so appreciate you. Uh, I so appreciate all you've done for me. You've always been so good to me. Thank you for joining me and it's been so much fun.

Vlad Tenev 1:02:00 Always a pleasure.

Harry Stebbings 1:02:01 Uh-

Vlad Tenev 1:02:01 Thanks for having me.

Harry Stebbings 1:02:01 I look forward to buying this bidet now (laughs) .

Vlad Tenev 1:02:05 (laughs) .