Robinhood CEO: Making Everyone An Owner

Robinhood CEO: Making Everyone An Owner

Vlad Tenev built Robinhood by breaking every rule Wall Street wrote: zero commissions when competitors charged $10, mobile-first when "serious" investors demanded desktop, a brand that made finance feel like rebellion instead of a club you'd never join.

By 2021 they'd forced every major brokerage to slash fees and attracted millions who'd never owned a stock, but then GameStop happened: trading restrictions during the meme stock frenzy triggered congressional hearings, user fury, and a two-year brand crisis that nearly buried them despite the real culprit being antiquated clearing mechanics no one understood.

Now Tenev's pushing an even more radical vision—tokenizing private company shares so retail investors can own stakes in AI giants before IPO, turning prediction markets into "truth machines" that beat polls and pundits, and building what he calls the end of financial nihilism: a platform where your seventy-year-old parents and your Gen Z cousin both manage everything from retirement accounts to election bets in one place.

The question isn't whether traditional finance survives this; it's whether Robinhood can move fast enough to own the entire wealth transfer before someone else does.

Timestamps:

0:00 - Introduction
3:52 - Financial Relationships vs. Pinterest Boards: The Higher Bar
5:27 - Building in a Regulatory Catch-22
7:53 - Three Simultaneous Contrarian Bets
12:15 - From Institutional HFT to Retail Revolution
17:40 - January 28th: The Day Trust Died
27:40 - “Simple Lie More Powerful Than Complicated Truth”
30:02 - Tokenization: The Antidote to T+1 Settlement
32:52 - IPO Access: From Asking For Favors to Everyone Wanting In
39:22 - “Series D Was Called an IPO”
43:06 - WTF Happened in 1971?
47:42 - Going Broad While Going Deep
53:26 - The $120 Trillion Wealth Transfer
58:16 - Debunking “Financial Nihilism”
58:40 - “Speculation Is Critical For Functioning Markets”

Resources:

Follow Vlad Tenev on X: https://x.com/vladtenev

Follow Alex Rampell on X: https://x.com/arampell

Follow Erik Torenberg on X: https://x.com/eriktorenberg

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Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see [a16z.com/disclosures](http://a16z.com/disclosures).

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Episoder(973)

Keith Rabois: Israel, OpenAI, Opendoor, and DOGE

Keith Rabois: Israel, OpenAI, Opendoor, and DOGE

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16 Okt 49min

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15 Okt 1h 4min

Is AI Slowing Down? Nathan Labenz Says We're Asking the Wrong Question

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14 Okt 1h 31min

Columbia CS Professor: Why LLMs Can’t Discover New Science

Columbia CS Professor: Why LLMs Can’t Discover New Science

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13 Okt 50min

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12 Okt 52min

Sam Altman on Sora, Energy, and Building an AI Empire

Sam Altman on Sora, Energy, and Building an AI Empire

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8 Okt 48min

How to Build a Real Estate Marketplace - Kaz Nejatian, Opendoor CEO

How to Build a Real Estate Marketplace - Kaz Nejatian, Opendoor CEO

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7 Okt 55min

Can the US Beat China’s Engineering State?

Can the US Beat China’s Engineering State?

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6 Okt 1h 3min

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