20VC: Vlad Tenev on Robinhood’s $85BN Resurgence | Tokenizing SpaceX & OpenAI | Building Nine Revenue Lines Over $100M | Why Crypto Will Be Robinhood's Biggest Revenue Line | Why Stablecoins Will Replace Banking Rails
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 14 July 2025
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Vlad Tenev is the Founder and CEO of Robinhood, the greatest story on Wall St of the last decade. In the previous 18 months, Robinhood has increased its net revenue by 58% to nearly $3B; a $500M loss in 2023 turned into a $1.1B profit in 2024. Robinhood’s stock is up roughly 4x, lifting their market cap to north of $80B. Today, Robinhood has nine lines of business that do over $100M in revenue.
Agenda:
00:00 – “Tokenization Is The Biggest Innovation in Finance”
03:28 – How Robinhood 4x’d Its Market Cap in 8 Months
06:40 – AI Writes 50% of All Net New Code at Robinhood
10:02 – Why Robinhood Built a Secret ChatGPT for Support
12:11 – The One Customer Type That Transformed the Business
15:29 – “CoreWeave Is Retail’s Way Into AI” — The Meme Stock Defense
18:05 – Inside Robinhood’s Tokenized Private Shares Product
21:23 – “Capital as a Service” — Vlad’s Wild Vision for Startup Fundraising
24:10 – The $100M Revenue Line Vlad Wishes He Could Kill
26:45 – Robinhood Is Building... Cash Delivery Trucks?!
29:55 – “We Were Shipping Nothing”: Vlad on the 2020–2022 Culture Crisis
33:20 – What Line of Business Will Be the Biggest For Vlad in 5 Years Time
35:11 – The One Competitor Vlad Actually Respects
36:55 – From Men’s Health to Japanese Toilets: Vlad’s Weirdest Quickfire Yet
38:40 – “I Was in the Dumps”: What 2022 Taught Vlad About Resilience
40:00 – Where Robinhood Is Headed: The Next Decade of Financial Infrastructure
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Everyone likes tokenization in principle, but it's not really as attractive when it's being done to you. |
| 0:07.1 | I think it's important for the tokenization mechanism to work without the opt-in of the companies that are being tokenized. |
| 0:14.4 | I do think it's a big problem that a retail investor can't get access to Stripe shares. |
| 0:18.9 | I've shared this viewpoint with Patrick and John, and |
| 0:21.9 | you know, they give me some variant of, oh, well, we're just a small Irish family company. Please |
| 0:28.2 | don't tokenize my shares. This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and I'm so excited for the show today. |
| 0:33.9 | Robin Hood is one of the most incredible stories of Wall Street in the last 12 months. Check this |
| 0:38.6 | out. They have nine lines of business that do more than a hundred million in revenue. Net revenue is |
| 0:44.9 | up 58% to nearly $3 billion. They had a $500 million loss in 2023. In 2024, it was a $1.1 billion profit. Stocks up roughly forrecks, |
| 0:59.0 | market caps at like $85 billion, 18 months ago it was like $15, $20 billion. It has been the most |
| 1:06.3 | insane turnaround. Vlad is one of the great CEOs of our time, and I'm so thrilled to have him in the |
| 1:12.3 | studio today. But before we dive into the show stay, I love seeing the team come together to make |
| 1:17.4 | this show happen. What I don't love is trying to keep track of all the information, the data and |
| 1:22.0 | the projects that we're working on across dozens of platforms, products and tools. That's why |
| 1:26.8 | we use Coda, the all-in-one |
| 1:28.9 | collaborative workspace that's helped 50,000 teams all over the world get on the same page. |
| 1:34.6 | Offering the flexibility of docs with the structure of spreadsheets, Coda facilitates deeper |
| 1:39.4 | teamwork and quicker creativity. And their turnkey AI solution, the intelligence of Coda brain, is a game |
| 1:45.9 | changer. Powered by Grammally, Coda is entering a new phase of innovation and expansion, |
| 1:50.9 | aiming to redefine productivity for the AI era. Whether you're a startup looking to organize the chaos |
| 1:56.3 | while staying nimble or an enterprise organization looking for better alignment, Coda matches your |
| 2:02.0 | working style. Its seamless workspace connects to hundreds of your favorite tools, including Salesforce, |
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