Who you are defines how you build.

This is the entrepreneurial thought leader series.

Brought to you by Stanford E. Corner.

Today we are very excited to welcome Vlad Tenev to ETL.

Vlad is the son of two parents who both worked at the World Bank,

and then Vlad went to Stanford for his undergraduate studies where he fell in love with math.

He was a bachelor's degree in math for all you math majors out there, and he also met his future

serial co-founder, Baizu Bhat.

But before he jumped into startup land, he flirted with academia.

He was going to get a PhD in math at UCLA.

And he was thinking about becoming a professor of math.

But he took the red pill.

He dropped out and he joined Baidu down the entrepreneurial path.

But Vlad and Baizu went on to start two trading companies before they started

Robin Hood in 2013. Robin Hood's mission is to democratize investing for all. They are one of the

fastest growing brokerage platforms, one of the top apps on the Apple store. They have just done a huge

raise, which we'll talk about as well. And

Vlad is on a litany of lists. He's on the Forbes 30 under 30. Now that he's a bit older,

he's now on the Fortune 40 under 40. And so we are thrilled to have Vlad here at ETL.

A few things before we begin, I first just want to note that Vlad agreed to do

ETL before the intensity of all the recent events broke out. And he also agreed to honor his

commitment, despite what I'm sure is not the most spacious calendar in the world. And so I just

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