Vlad Tenev - Navigating Robinhood's Evolution - [Invest Like the Best, EP.384]

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Colossus

Investing, Business, Technology

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 13 August 2024

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

My guest today is Vlad Tenev. Vlad is the CEO and co-founder of Robinhood. It was such a treat to sit down with him and discuss the behind-the-scenes of a revolutionary business we all know well. He details Robinhood’s journey to zero-cost trading and what it means to build a consumer-centric financial product. Vlad believes in finding the harmonies across mathematics and art and applies this lens to everything he builds. We discuss Robinhood’s new credit card and more products on the horizon, the company’s toughest moments, including the Gamestop episode, and the compelling future of AI in financial services. Please enjoy this conversation with Vlad Tenev. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- This episode is brought to you by Ridgeline. Ridgeline has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. I think this platform will become the standard for investment managers, and if you run an investing firm, I highly recommend you find time to speak with them. Head to ridgelineapps.com to learn more about the platform. This episode is brought to you by Tegus, where we're changing the game in investment research. Step away from outdated, inefficient methods and into the future with our platform, proudly hosting over 100,000 transcripts – with over 25,000 transcripts added just this year alone. Our platform grows eight times faster and adds twice as much monthly content as our competitors, putting us at the forefront of the industry. Plus, with 75% of private market transcripts available exclusively on Tegus, we offer insights you simply can't find elsewhere. See the difference a vast, quality-driven transcript library makes. Unlock your free trial at tegus.com/patrick. ----- Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com). Show Notes: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like the Best (00:03:56) The Next Frontier in AI: Reasoning and Logical Deductions (00:06:19) Challenges and Approaches in AI Development (00:09:08) Formal Mathematics and AI Integration (00:11:23) Practical Applications of Mathematical Superintelligence (00:17:30) Robinhood's Journey to Zero-Cost Trading (00:24:38) Building a Consumer-Friendly Trading Platform (00:28:52) Robinhood Gold and the Future of Financial Services (00:35:51) Understanding Robinhood's Business Model (00:42:34) Navigating the GameStop Crisis (00:49:17) Improving Customer Satisfaction (00:52:43) Reputation Repair (00:54:52) The Future of Financial Services (00:59:06) Crypto and AI in Finance (01:08:09) Building a High-Performance Culture (01:11:42) The Kindest Thing Anyone Has Ever Done for Vlad

Transcript

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0:00.0	I first met today's sponsor, Ridgeline in 2019.
0:04.0	They now offer a cutting-edge cloud platform for investment managers,
0:07.5	years in the making, that handles back, middle, and front office
0:10.5	and turns your business from messy and static to integrated in real time.
0:14.4	My experience with them changed the way I think about business and their advice changed the trajectory
0:19.0	of my career.
0:20.2	I thought since this is our kickoff week with Ridgline as a new partner, I'd tell this brief story first and then tell you about what Ridgline does for its customers.
0:28.0	Because it is all of you in this audience who run or help run investment management firms that stand to benefit from their work.
0:35.1	Ridgeline was founded by Dave Duffield, one of the legendary software entrepreneurs, who prior to
0:39.9	Ridgeline started both Peoplesoft and Work Day, which now sports a $60 billion public valuation.
0:45.9	When I met Dave and Ridgeline, I was building canvas, a new investing software platform,
0:50.4	and Dave gave me what was at the time counterintuitive advice.
0:54.0	He said we should pick a very small handful of design partners,
0:57.6	five or so customers who would be our partners in building out the functionality of the software
1:01.8	over a very long period of time, years in fact.
1:04.8	At the same time, my friend Chatham Pudagunta from Benchmark Capital sat me down and gave me similar
1:09.6	valuable advice. My instinct would have been to start selling and scaling as soon as we had
1:13.9	something people liked but Dave knew that in order to build truly valuable
1:17.7	software that served as a total solution for customers and to be a true long-term
1:21.9	partner you had to build with them first for years to make
1:24.9	sure the system was just right.
1:26.9	We did what Dave and Chatham suggested and our team built something so much more special
	...

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