Interview with Robinhood Founder: The Will of Retail Investors Surpasses All 'Smart Money'

Original Title: The New American Dream: Democratising Investing
Original Source: Master Investor
Original Compilation: Azuma, Odaily Star Daily

Editor’s Note: Recently, Robinhood launched Robinhood Chain, and the new wave of meme frenzy based on this network has reignited the long-dormant cryptocurrency market, even being seen by some enthusiastic investors as the beginning of a new cycle in the industry.

Last week, Vlad Tenev, the founder and CEO of Robinhood, participated in the Master Investor podcast. In the show, Vlad Tenev outlined the development history and success path of Robinhood, discussing everything from meme stocks to meme tokens, while also looking ahead to asset tokenization and the investment value of the private equity market, emphasizing that "retail investors are the real smart money."

Below is the full dialogue from Vlad Tenev's participation in the Master Investor podcast (with some edits for smoother reading):

Opening Remarks

Host: Welcome to the Master Investor podcast, I’m your host Wilfred Frost. In this show, we will engage in conversations with the world’s most successful investors, business leaders, and political figures, sharing their experiences and insights behind their success, hoping to help our listeners gain more investment insights.

Today’s guest is Vlad Tenev, co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Robinhood. Robinhood is a financial trading app that truly propelled the popularity of commission-free trading and brought many innovations to the industry.

Founded in 2013, Robinhood completed its IPO in July 2021, with a market capitalization of about $32 billion at that time. However, less than a year later, in 2022, during a general market pullback, the company's stock price fell by about 80%, reducing its market value to approximately $6 billion. Now, Robinhood has made a comeback, with a market capitalization close to $100 billion, currently slightly above $90 billion, and the platform's assets under custody reaching $380 billion.

They are back, and stronger than ever. I’m very pleased to welcome Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev to the Master Investor.

Vlad Tenev: I really enjoy this trip down memory lane.

Host: Which part do you enjoy the most? Was it during the rise, or...?

Vlad Tenev: It should be now (laughs). Yes, now is the most interesting time.

Historical Review: The 2022 Pullback

Host: Let’s talk about the major pullback from that year. This is not just Robinhood’s history but the history of the entire market.

You have clear insights into the behavior of almost all traders, especially retail traders. So, before that market pullback, and before Robinhood’s own stock price was impacted, did you already see signs of a bubble from your customers' trading behaviors?

Vlad Tenev: Yes, during the pandemic, I personally had some doubts about it, but I wouldn’t directly call it a "bubble."

If you remember, in 2020, the U.S. government began massive money printing, and we directly issued stimulus checks to households. But at the same time, if you look at the indicators predicting inflation levels at that time, no one thought inflation would rise significantly.

For example, the long-term inflation expectations reflected by the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield were still around 2%. I was thinking, how is this possible? The government is printing money, but inflation isn’t rising.

The government didn’t invent a perpetual motion machine; it cannot defy economic laws. So, there’s always some assumption that will eventually be broken. Therefore, from my personal perspective, what happened later was not surprising, although it might have been a surprise for the entire market.

By the end of 2021, inflation began to rise significantly, eventually reaching decades-high levels, surpassing any period in the past 30 years. When you see inflation rise from nearly zero to 9% or 10%, a policy response is inevitable—interest rate hikes and tightening monetary policy.

In my view, this was almost unavoidable and completely foreseeable.

Host: So, can we simply understand that the real cause of the market pullback was the subsequent high inflation and interest rate hikes? Or were there already signs of overvaluation in the market before that?

I’m mainly referring to the meme stock frenzy. In hindsight, shouldn’t we have realized that these companies weren’t profitable, yet their stock prices doubled in a very short time?

Vlad Tenev: I think these things are essentially interconnected.

If we look back at the timeline, the most famous meme stock rally occurred in January 2021, just a few weeks after the U.S. launched a round of massive fiscal stimulus. We can clearly see this from Robinhood’s data.

Whenever the government issued stimulus checks, a large amount of money would flow into the market within just a few days or weeks. Looking back at the huge growth dividends Robinhood gained during the pandemic, there are several important reasons.

First, people had almost nowhere to spend money. All offline activities were almost suspended. Everyone stayed at home, so various digital activities—including investing in the stock market—became one of the few options still available.

Second, people had more time. They could learn about investing, follow YouTube influencers, and various financial content creators.

Additionally, interest rates were lowered to zero. If you remember, in 2019, the Federal Reserve was raising interest rates, and the federal funds rate had risen to over 2%. But by 2020, after the outbreak of COVID-19, the Fed quickly lowered rates back to zero.

On top of the zero interest rates, multiple rounds of fiscal stimulus were added. All these factors were collectively driving the stock market up.

Of course, in March 2020, the U.S. stock market experienced a sharp decline. However, that was just a brief drop, quickly forming a typical V-shaped recovery. If there hadn’t been such rapid large-scale fiscal stimulus and loose monetary policy at that time, the final outcome could have been completely different.

Host: Very interesting. I happened to be working at CNBC at that time, and our ratings also soared during that period. As you said, people had nothing else to do, so their attention naturally turned to the capital markets.

Vlad Tenev: Exactly. Everything was closed, except for the markets.

Retail Investors vs. Smart Money

Host: The reason I chose to start with this topic is that I want to discuss another question later—do you think today’s market has similarities to that time? But before we get into that topic, I want to talk about something else.

I’ve heard that compared to other institutions, your clients—largely retail investors at Robinhood—have actually performed better in the market. In the past few weeks, we’ve interviewed many guests who talked about the so-called "smart money" and "dumb money."

Now, more and more people believe that the real "smart money" is actually retail investors. Whether in October 2022, April 2025, or March 2026, they have successfully bought the dip during market downturns. Does this trend still exist? Do your clients still see the market more clearly than others and are willing to buy when prices are low?

Vlad Tenev: Yes, I’ve always believed that. Many times, so-called "smart money" may actually be a bit too smart, and that’s not necessarily a good thing.

Today’s institutional investing has become increasingly indirect and abstract. Fund managers are more focused on observing the macro environment and constantly adjusting their portfolios based on various macro indicators. Often, when they sell a stock, the reason has nothing to do with the company’s fundamentals.

For example, they might choose to sell simply because of macro factors like tariffs. Tariffs force them to reallocate more funds, leading to a seemingly counterintuitive situation—selling companies like Palantir, even though that company might not be affected by tariffs and could even benefit from them.

Retail investors, on the other hand, have a much simpler mindset. They buy and sell stocks because they believe a specific company will perform well in the future. Therefore, when faced with macro events like tariffs and interest rates, retail investors often show more resilience.

They focus on questions like, "How is this company performing?" "Do I like its products?" "Is revenue growing?" "Are profit margins improving?" "How is the Rule of 40 performing?"...

These are still relatively professional analyses, but they won’t just sell all their stocks because "the Russia-Ukraine conflict has occurred" and switch to fixed-income assets, which is exactly what many institutional investors would do.

Is There a Bubble in Today’s Stock Market Similar to 2022?

Host: Next, I want to talk specifically about Robinhood. As mentioned earlier, you completed your IPO in July 2021, and shortly after, the entire capital market entered a very difficult period.

【Summary (pure text, may be empty)】：

Do you feel like you actually caught the last train? Because in the following years, the capital market has not been friendly to IPOs like Robinhood.

Vlad Tenev: Yes. The IPO market window has been basically closed for several years. Since we later launched the IPO Access product, we have had more firsthand observations of the entire IPO market.

After the IPO window closed, it took a few years before a crack finally appeared. ARM and Instacart's IPOs can be said to be the first two companies to reopen the market. I remember it was in 2023, and to some extent, they can be seen as a precursor to the full recovery of the market.

It wasn't until last year that the IPO market fully reopened.

Host: The reason I went around in circles is actually to ask if you now feel a sense of déjà vu regarding SpaceX's listing? Just like Robinhood back in the day—you managed to go public just before the market closed, and if you had waited a little longer, you might not have had that opportunity, as the market experienced two years of downturn afterward.

Now SpaceX has successfully gone public, and people are watching to see if all these other companies can keep up. OpenAI has now indicated that they may not plan to attempt an IPO for the time being. Does this give you a sense of the past? How do you view the current market dynamics compared to back then?

Vlad Tenev: Right now, everyone is discussing one question: "Are we in an AI bubble?"

I think what complicates this question is that there are a large number of companies investing huge amounts of money in AI, and at the same time, the AI industry has formed relatively clear business models.

These model companies will sell tokens to enterprise clients and individual users, and OpenAI also has a subscription business that has become quite substantial. So, unlike many past bubbles, AI companies today have real business models and continuously growing revenues.

The real question has actually become whether those enterprises that are paying a lot for AI will gradually shift from the current phase of "willing to learn continuously and not too concerned about costs" to a phase that pays more attention to return on investment (ROI). If they start to strictly measure ROI, will the revenue from each client continue to grow in the future, or will it decline?

On the other hand, there is also a very important factor: there are still many enterprises that have not really started using AI, and the same goes for consumers. For example, look at Claude Code; its user base is only in the tens of millions and has not yet reached hundreds of millions or even billions. Therefore, the entire market still has a very long growth runway. Because of this, even though there is real revenue today, I still feel that the entire AI industry is still in a very early stage of development.

So, I think this is different from the logic of judging the timing of IPOs in the past. One more thing I have gradually realized over the years is that no matter what era we are in, we always feel that we are standing at a very important historical juncture, and we feel that everything happening in front of us is unprecedented, as if we are on the brink of some huge transformation.

But looking back, these market cycles are actually becoming shorter and shorter. For example, as we just mentioned, the IPO window closed at the end of 2021, and it began to reopen in 2023. If you look at it over a longer period, you will find that this is actually just a sinusoidal cycle of fluctuations.

No phase is permanent; even if the IPO window temporarily closes, it does not necessarily take ten years to reopen.

Host: From your observations of customer behavior, do you currently see any warning signs similar to the market pullback in 2022?

Of course, SpaceX is clearly not a meme stock. It is a company worth trillions of dollars. But some people will compare it, saying it has also been pushed to a very high valuation by the market despite insufficient profitability, and may fall back again in the future.

I am not equating it with GameStop. What I mean is, have you seen any signs in customer trading behavior that remind you of the indicators before the market adjustments in 2020, 2021, and 2022?

Vlad Tenev: I believe that the vast majority of the companies our customers are investing in today are large enterprises with real profitability and are at the forefront of their respective industries.

You just mentioned SpaceX, and besides that, there are Nvidia, Tesla, and other chip companies. Recently, the entire chip industry has performed quite well, and our customers are very interested in this.

So I think the biggest difference between today and 2020, 2021 is that there was an investment sentiment I call "nostalgia" at that time. Many Robinhood users are millennials, and they were investing in companies that they felt were "unfairly suppressed" by pandemic policies, such as retailers like GameStop, cinema chains, airlines, car rental companies, and so on. Even in the most optimistic scenarios, it is hard to say that these companies are at the forefront of technological innovation. In fact, influenced by market conditions, the pandemic, and trends like online entertainment and streaming, they are somewhat in industries that are being disrupted by the times.

Today is completely different. The companies our customers are investing in are mostly innovative companies that are actively disrupting industries and are at the forefront of their respective industry developments. Of course, there can be debates about price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios and other valuation metrics, but I think one thing is almost undisputed—these companies are indeed changing the world.

The Path to Success Through the Eyes of Founders

Host: Let’s return to Robinhood. Before discussing today’s Robinhood and its future development, I want to reflect on the past.

Looking back, what do you think was the fundamental reason Robinhood was able to quickly open the market and gain user recognition in its early days? I know zero-commission trading must be one reason.

Vlad Tenev: I believe that the widespread resonance of the Robinhood product is the result of three factors working together.

First, as you just mentioned, zero-commission trading. At that time, other brokers charged $7 to $10 per trade, while we were completely free. Therefore, we not only successfully opened up a whole new user base—mainly young people who originally did not have one or two thousand dollars as starting investment capital.

Later, we also attracted a large number of active traders to the platform. For these active traders, if they trade a hundred or even a thousand times a month, then even if our platform has some shortcomings in terms of features or tools compared to other professional brokers, they are still willing to use Robinhood. Because from an economic perspective, the value brought by zero-commission is simply too great. So, at least in terms of business model, we won the competition.

The second point. In addition to being the first to launch zero-commission trading and establishing the business model that is now widely adopted across the industry, we also pioneered mobile trading. Robinhood can be said to be the leader in the brokerage industry’s migration to mobile. Before Robinhood appeared, although some brokers had launched mobile apps, the mobile side was just an auxiliary product, a supplement after the fact.

We bet that mobile internet would definitely become the future, and people would mainly manage their financial lives through their phones. This is not only because phones are more portable but also because the mobile side itself has many practical advantages. Therefore, from the very beginning of product design, we built it around mobile. I believe Robinhood truly created the mobile brokerage industry and pushed it to become the mainstream form in today’s market. And Robinhood has always been the leader in this field.

The third point, which I think is very important, is the values that Robinhood represents. If we go back to the 2008 global financial crisis, many of our users were at important stages in their lives. I graduated from college in 2008 and then entered graduate school. In the first month of my graduate studies, my co-founder Baiju had just started working.

At that time, Lehman Brothers collapsed. The global financial crisis officially broke out. For our generation, our biggest feeling about the financial crisis was that it was a problem created by the financial industry itself, yet the entire society had to bear the cost.

Financial institutions made wrong decisions. The costs of the crisis were, to some extent, borne by society as a whole, but those who should be held accountable were hardly punished. Moreover, the benefits of the economic recovery after the crisis flowed back to the financial industry itself, to those who already had assets, and to a certain extent, to the "insiders," that is, the richest 1%.

Later, this gave rise to the "Occupy Wall Street" movement and shaped a sense of general disillusionment among an entire generation of young people in the early 2010s. Therefore, I believe that people at that time were actually in urgent need of a new solution.

And what Robinhood provided was just such a solution. It told everyone that instead of completely giving up on the whole system, it is better to truly participate in it. Because of this, I believe the concept of Robinhood itself has very powerful strength, as it truly represents ownership. A future that only belongs to a few people will be an extremely fragile future. We hope to enable everyone to own assets. We believe that widespread asset ownership is an indispensable foundation for a free, stable, and prosperous society.

I believe this concept truly resonated with many people. And it was the combination of these three factors that ultimately made Robinhood the fastest-growing brokerage at that time.

Are There New Retail Investors in the Market?

Host: Earlier, you mentioned that you not only captured market share from other brokerages but also attracted users who were originally trading on other platforms. However, I think more importantly, you have actually created a group of new investors who would not have entered the stock market at all.

So, how do you view the current penetration rate of the U.S. market? Not just Robinhood, but the entire retail investment market. Aside from generational changes, are there still many people in the U.S. who will enter the stock market in the future? Or has the development over the past decade essentially exhausted the easiest-to-reach segment of users?

Vlad Tenev: I believe there is still a lot of room for growth. Currently, the participation rate in the U.S. stock market is about 65%, meaning roughly two-thirds of people hold stock assets.

Looking back at history, I remember an episode of the podcast "Acquired" that discussed Vanguard, where they illustrated a development curve of U.S. stock participation rates, highlighting several significant inflection points.

The first inflection point was the large-scale promotion of the 401(k) retirement plan by U.S. companies, which raised stock market participation from about 20% to nearly 50%. Then, after the global financial crisis, this ratio stagnated for a while. On that graph, you will see another important milestone—the birth of Robinhood, which raised stock participation from over 50% to now over 60%, and it continues to rise.

The question now is whether we can raise this number from 60% to 90%? Or even get close to 100%? Of course, achieving a full 100% may be very difficult, as there will always be a portion of people who do not participate in investing. But I believe that reaching over 90% is entirely possible.

To achieve this, the key is that many people do not qualify for the 401(k) plans offered by companies. So, can we enable them to have brokerage accounts? Can we get them to start investing? Even starting from childhood? This is why we are very excited to partner with BNY Mellon to be the sole initial broker and trustee for the U.S. Trump Accounts project.

This project will open a brokerage account for every newborn in the U.S. The funds will be invested in a highly diversified portfolio of publicly traded companies from the moment they are born. I believe this could just be the beginning. In the future, it is expected to truly raise the participation rate in the U.S. stock market to over 90%.

Robinhood has also recently expanded into the UK market. Compared to the U.S., the UK is still somewhat "behind"; currently, only about one-sixth of the UK population holds stock assets, and there is no reason to believe this situation cannot change.

If you look at the entire brokerage industry in the UK, you will find that many large traditional brokerages still do not implement zero-commission trading. Unlike in the U.S., these full-service brokers in the UK have not yet truly adopted this business model, but it is only a matter of time.

In the long run, they will ultimately have to move towards zero commissions. The real industry transformation that belongs to the UK market has not yet occurred.

Robinhood Chain and Asset Tokenization

Host: Next, let’s talk about cryptocurrency. Robinhood has just launched the Robinhood Chain public mainnet. For those who are unfamiliar, what does this actually mean?

Vlad Tenev: Essentially, it is a blockchain, specifically a Layer 2 network built on Ethereum, utilizing Arbitrum technology. Our goal is to make it the best blockchain for Real World Assets (RWA).

For a long time, when people talked about cryptocurrency, they usually thought of assets like Bitcoin and Meme Coins, which do not actually represent anything in the real world.

Over the past year, Robinhood's entire cryptocurrency strategy has revolved around one question: Can we truly leverage blockchain technology to turn it into the infrastructure for real-world assets? This would allow assets that have real value and practical use to operate on the blockchain, making it easier for more people around the world to own these assets.

Therefore, alongside the launch of Robinhood Chain, we have also been advancing our asset tokenization strategy. Last year, we held a launch event in Cannes, France, where we officially announced Robinhood's long-term asset tokenization roadmap.

At that time, we posed the question: What is the true value of asset tokenization? My answer is similar to that of stablecoins.

Stablecoins allow people from hundreds of countries and regions around the world to easily access U.S. dollars. In the past, for many people in various countries, obtaining U.S. dollars was a very difficult task. Stablecoins solved this problem. In the future, asset tokenization will play a similar role, bringing the value of U.S. stocks to the entire world, allowing people in countries and regions where the financial system is far less developed than in the UK or the U.S. to more easily hold U.S. stocks.

Thus, on Robinhood Chain, we will launch Stock Tokens. These stock tokens will be available in over 120 countries and regions, and users can use their non-custodial wallets or Robinhood Wallet—our own wallet product.

We aim to provide an excellent user experience, allowing users to easily trade and exchange stock tokens. Through these tokens, users can gain exposure to the entire U.S. publicly traded stock market. In the first phase, we will support about 2,000 U.S. listed stocks, and these stock tokens will support 24/7 trading.

Additionally, they will have "portability." This means that users will no longer rely entirely on a single brokerage as a counterparty for trading. As long as the blockchain network continues to operate, these tokens can be freely transferred and exchanged.

Host: Are these stock tokens backed by real assets, or are they just synthetic assets? Will you always truly hold the underlying assets? Do you need to obtain permission from the asset issuers?

Vlad Tenev: We will always adhere to a 1:1 real asset backing. Even if Robinhood encounters any issues in the future, the asset exposure they hold remains secure. When we relaunched the stock token product, we further clarified the entire product structure.

Host: What I really want to ask is, since you insist on 1:1 real asset backing, does a company always have the right to prevent its stock from being tokenized? Especially for private companies that are not publicly listed.

For example, suppose Robinhood buys a portion of Stripe shares in the secondary private market. If these shares come from employee stock ownership, can Stripe prohibit the tokenization of these shares in the future through company bylaws? Or as long as you legally acquire the shares, are you willing to push this forward, even if legal disputes may arise in the process?

Vlad Tenev: Yes, we have indeed experienced some such disputes in the past, though not with Stripe, but with other companies.

In fact, we currently have two different models. The first is the stock tokens mentioned earlier. The other model is Robinhood Ventures, which has just launched in the U.S.

Currently, this business is developing quite well. Its core goal is to think about how to use traditional financial tools (TradFi) to allow ordinary investors to gain investment opportunities in these high-quality private companies.

Ultimately, we designed a closed-end fund structure. You can think of it as a publicly traded venture capital firm.

It invests in a basket of private company assets. Currently, the fund has invested in several companies, including Stripe, OpenAI, SpaceX (pre-IPO), and the UK fintech company Revolut, among others.

One of our important principles has always remained unchanged: we will respect the wishes of the issuers. Of course, we always prioritize shareholder interests. We firmly believe that ordinary retail investors should also have the opportunity to invest in these excellent private companies; we also believe that, in the long run, issuers will ultimately accept this as a common phenomenon.

Can AI Change Retail Trading Patterns?

Host: You have mentioned in many podcasts that you are leveraging AI to enhance user experience. You emphasized that you hope to develop core capabilities in-house rather than relying entirely on external sources, as this is the only way to truly form a competitive advantage.

If we say that Robinhood's rise came from zero-commission trading and being the first to embrace mobile platforms, then in the next five years, how much additional market share do you think brokerages that truly excel in AI will gain?

Vlad Tenev: I have always held the view that in the future, humans will always conduct trades in person.

At the beginning of my career, I was involved in high-frequency trading, which can be said to be one of the earliest applications of AI. Of course, back then, we didn't call it AI; we called it machine learning.

At that time, high-frequency trading firms had already started purchasing GPUs. We were even among the first to use NVIDIA CUDA architecture acceleration cards. NVIDIA launched the first generation of Tesla acceleration cards around 2010. I remember that when I was doing high-frequency trading, we were among the first to get these products.

We used GPUs to calculate prices for various securities and develop trading algorithms. Therefore, the financial markets have long been electronic, with quantitative funds continuously developing increasingly complex trading strategies and deploying them in the market.

Before the emergence of Robinhood, many believed that high-frequency trading would ultimately consume the entire market. However, the arrival of Robinhood has led to a significant revival of retail trading.

Retail investors have returned to the market, and individuals have started trading on their own again. Therefore, I believe there will always be a balance between the two.

The truly interesting question is whether we can open up strategies and tools that were previously only available to top hedge funds and high-frequency trading firms to ordinary investors.

These tools are completely different from the trading methods ordinary retail investors use today. But can we enable regular people to easily use these capabilities without needing a degree in computer science? I believe this is what we should truly look forward to.

In my view, this is more about democratizing software engineering capabilities rather than just democratizing stock trading.

Host: So, will this ultimately make the entire market perfectly efficient?

Vlad Tenev: I don’t think so. Of course, there are already many algorithms engaged in automated trading, but the real decision-makers are still humans.

Host: But what if in the future every retail investor has the same AI and just needs to click "start automated trading"?

Vlad Tenev: If all retail investors are using the same AI agent, then the advantages that come from using it will likely gradually diminish. The incremental value it can create will also decrease.

Host: Does that mean human traders will regain opportunities?

Vlad Tenev: Exactly. Financial markets are inherently complex, dynamic, and chaotic systems. Therefore, I believe that humans and AI will ultimately form a balance.

Final Investment Advice

Host: We’re running out of time. As is customary on this show, I’d like to ask you one last question. What is the most important investment advice you have for our listeners?

Vlad Tenev: I have to answer this question cautiously (laughs). The reason I have been so dedicated to promoting the development of the private equity market is that many of the companies we mentioned today (like SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic) are either already at a trillion-dollar valuation stage or are likely to go public at a trillion-dollar valuation in the future.

Thus, we are currently in a very delicate phase. More and more value creation is being shared by an increasingly smaller group of wealthy insiders, who are becoming richer as a result. The era when ordinary investors could buy stocks in Microsoft or Amazon when they were valued at only a few billion dollars and then achieve returns of 1000 times or even 10000 times in the public market is becoming increasingly difficult to replicate.

Therefore, we have always hoped to make it easier for companies to enter the public market. We have also been pushing for related efforts. Of course, there is a possibility that even if our efforts succeed, it may still not change the reality.

Because companies can still easily obtain financing from private markets, and in the future, private financing may even become easier. In that case, they may still wait until they reach a trillion-dollar valuation before going public.

Thus, we must open the doors to the private equity market. This is why I am so passionate about Robinhood Ventures. I believe this is Robinhood’s next truly important crusade.

Our mission is to make private equity markets accessible. We want ordinary investors to participate in the development of these companies as early as possible, provided they have adequate safety guarantees and sound risk control mechanisms.

Because the earlier a company is, the higher the risk, but at the same time, the potential returns are also the greatest.

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