The Near Death Experience of RobinHood | Vlad Tenev, Co-Founder

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/1a9a7caf6411e1d3

I wanna come to GameStop for a moment. You need
Billions and collateral. You make a decision to restrict the trading. How did you make that decision? It was a situation which had no precedent. The narrative that came out was you were in bed with hedge funds. A juicy falsehood is more powerful than a boring truth. What did you think of the movie Dumb Money When You?

I didn't see the entire thing, but I did see the clips that I was in.
Wait, come on, you haven't watched it. I think what most companies suffer from is
I wanna come to GameStop for a moment. So
Take me back.
To the moment your phone rings.
You need
Billions and collateral.
maybe set the scene for us and you make a decision to
Restrict the trading. How did you make that decision? I have very fuzzy recollection of that time.
You know, sometimes you talk to um
Uh.
Trauma victims. Or like uh
I I've heard a lot from people that have many children, uh, including myself. I've more than one. It's like uh
Uh my wife says, you know, it's very
the pregnancy and the childbirth very, very painful, but for some reason I don't remember it.
And then that sort of like uh evolutionarily gives gives you the signal that you should do it again.
Um
I think we're doing uh
Yeah, I think um
I was at this IPO round table at the SEC.
uh about making the IPOs great again. And with ro with Robinhood Ventures where
taking that fun public. So we're doing another IPO and
I joked that um
Yeah, it's kind of like that, the IPO process I remember being painful.
And I didn't like it, but I don't really exactly remember why and now I kind of want to do it again.
Um
But yeah, that's a big aside that has nothing to do with GameStop.
Um other than
Yeah, that that was uh
very challenging time. It was towards the end of
Covid.
And
I felt like everyone was going a little bit crazy. They'd been cooped up at home for about a year without
much human to human interaction. I think from a crisis management standpoint, it was very difficult to deal with because
We're doing these like conference video calls with all these different stakeholders.
The regulators weren't in office.
And so um
Yeah, basically what happened was we got this like
Automated file.
In the middle of the night.
And it had big numbers on it.
Right.
It it had big numbers.
That kept changing.
And
Uh
І вас за ситуат.
And um
You know, we we had to make a tough
Call to
Uh.
put GameStop and a bunch of other companies on position closing only, which basically meant
Uh you couldn't open up new positions, take on more risk.
Uh
For a period of about one day. So
Wasn't even that long.
But
Because there was this narrative.
that had taken over social media, this like viral narrative that
It was the
the retail investors taking down the hedge funds. And we were kind of the tool
Um
People wanted to put it.
It was like a good versus evil thing.
And and I think what was just um
What would have at any other time for any other stock been kind of an innocuous risk management decision to control our internal risk.
turned into Robin Hoods on the side of the hedge funds colluding against the
A retail investor. And I think the fact that the name of the company was Robin Hood made this like a
juicy false narrative to
uh that that continued to go viral. So I remember in the beginning of the in the middle of the night when I woke up
My phone was basically unusable.
Because
It was like those videos you see of what happens if a Kardashian turns off uh Do not disturb on their phone. It just
Is a constant buzzing

Right.
So that was
That was my morning. I was like
The phone is completely unusable. I can't even get on a Zoom call because there's just
random people calling me.
Uh.
Telling me to
to turn it back on, you know?
Uh just to give people context a little bit, um, if they're unfamiliar with the situation.
The narrative that came out was you were in bed with the hedge funds because the hedge funds were trying to close their short positions on a stock that was
Basically going parabolic. Right.
Um
And
It was a huge unprecedented
situation. I've never seen it before anyway. I I can't.
But you also never happened before. One of the interesting details of this story that I don't think many people know is you had given GameStop shared to people.
When they signed up for Robinhood, didn't you? Like that. That's absolutely right. So you can make the argument that we kinda started the whole thing.
you know, e everyone if if you were joining Robin Hood in the year twenty twenty, leading up to the whole GameStop thing.
Uh, which by the way, a lot of people joined Robin Hood that year. GameStop was one of the
Collection of free
Free stocks that was given to customers.
So yeah, a lot of people, you know, just
Came in.
Yeah, got their free game stop share and maybe they weren't
Engage that much.
But then when they saw
GameStop going up.
suddenly those shares were

What's one thing the world still gets wrong about that time?
I mean I think the major thing is just that
Robin Hood.
Colluded with
hedge funds to shut down trading.
There was also another false narrative that I think is funnier. I
Uh but
Yeah.
Sequoia had to refute this.
Someone put on the internet that
Uh the White House.
Actually
called uh Sequoia Capital, one of uh venture capital investors.
And got them to pressure us to shut down GameStop.
So um
Yeah, that that was a particularly funny one. But if you look on Reddit
That had like thousands of
Re posts.
Um
So
Yeah, I think that I mean we don't really have any business with with hedge funds. So the the idea that somehow a hedge fund would
Collude to
Have us.
Shut down.
trading of a of a stock. Um
I mean always seemed silly to me, but I think
What we learned is
A juicy falsehood is more powerful than kind of a a boring truth.
Yeah, and you can't
Fight story with facts. It's like so weird.
Like once a narrative.
gets any traction whatsoever. It doesn't matter how crazy or false it is.
Facts do not tend to refute that. You see this in politics all the time, right? Once somebody tells a story and the mind share goes to that story, no amount of evidence or data
Will ever overturn that story and and they'll believe it for like twenty years.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
Uh, one of the byproducts of that though is you've got to talk.
to Mark Zuckerberg and Daniel Eck. I'm curious about like what you learned during that period of time.
Um
From those two. I think Daniel had talked to you about like going through a PR crisis or
Oh yeah. Um actually I didn't talk to Daniel at that point.
But I did call him when he was
Um
Dealing with his Joe Rogan thing.
I don't know if you remember that. Oh totally.
Yeah, like Joe Rogan was in the process of getting canceled and
Yeah.
I mean Spotify was getting immense pressure from both sides, right? Do they deplatform Joe Rogan or do they
Piss off.
all the people that want the Joe Rogan to be
de platformed.
Um
So that was probably
I mean Daniels
I'm sure dealt with.
His share of
Of uh
crises, but that was probably his game stop moment. So
Yeah, I called him to pay it forward to to offer whatever support uh I could have and and hopefully that was helpful to him. But
He's actually um
Yeah, probably wiser and uh and better than me in these things. So I don't know if he needed it. But yeah, at that time Mark Zuckerberg called me and
Elon Musk called me.
Mark Benioff called me and
a a nice positive
side effect was
These people probably wouldn't have cared about little Robin Hood at at the time and
Suddenly I think uh I got to talk with
These business magnates that have uh have built massive companies and they're giving me their perspective on the whole situation. One of the things that I love that you did during that period of time was you went on a clubhouse with Elon. I don't know if you regret that now.
Um, but I thought that was probably the the best uh media appearance of the week for sure. Not saying much because I I had some bad ones, but
W what did you think of the movie Dumb Money when you watched it?
Yeah.
I didn't see the entire thing, but I did see the clips that I was in.
And uh
Wait, come on, you haven't watched it.
Um
Well, I did see the parts that I was in, which was about six minutes. Um
Uh and some of the rest.
Uh I I actually thought you know, I know it didn't do very well, but uh I found it
More or less entertaining.
My favorite part, which maybe wouldn't uh
wouldn't be other people's favorite part. Or or maybe it would for
for for some ladies there was that my character um was played by
A very good looking actor.
Sebastian Stan.
Which you know, I wasn't displeased about.
Um I would have thought Adam Driver would also be good, but
Um Sebastian Stan maybe a slightly less good actor, but probably
uh easier on the eyes, right?
And
The thing that I enjoyed most is that in
Every single scene he was shirtless.
So it was like
In the kitchen.
Grinding a smoothie.
Talking about, you know, GameStop or
In the bathroom shaving. Just the idea of me.
being shirtless dealing with all these complicated business situations just made me laugh a little bit. You're gonna be the first physics math person on the cover of GQ, I think. I mean I see what they were doing. Uh
I'm I'm flattered.
But yeah, I I was I I wasn't solving all these business problems, uh
You know.
Grinding my smoothie, finishing my workout.

Most people assume that GameStop was the hardest time for you and Robin Hood, but actually twenty twenty two was harder. What happened?
I think twenty twenty two was harder in the sense that it was more sort of like a gradual, slower burn. I mean GameStop was acute.
and very painful and stressful for a short period of time.
But
Once we resolve the situation, unlocked the shares of of GameStop so they could start
being purchased again and
You know, I basically like
Did my congressional hearing and
Uh then my round table of
different podcast appearances, the acute part of it was over. Like the acute part of GameStop was really one day. Yeah. Whereas in 2022,
It was a gradual shift.
of all of like the economic trends
That had been
Tailwinds for the business during Covid.
reversing rapidly into headwinds.
So for example
Um
I mean first the
the uh covet relief
Uh.
Stimulus check stopped.
Mm-hmm. Right.
And then
It became clear.
Inflation.
Was
Picking up.
Mm-hmm. And that was
having a a big impact on people's discretionary
spending and and investing.
And then
layer on to that.
Uh.
The interest rates government went from
a long period of rock bottom interest rates to the highest interest rates in over thirty years. They went to
You know, four or five percent.
And and when that happens actually
Investing becomes less attractive.
Because
You can get your
average seven percent.
Uh.
rate of return from the stock market after inflation.
Um
Or you could get five percent.
Just sitting in cash.
Yeah. So
people naturally reallocate a little bit and start holding more cash and and buying less stocks.
Um
And our business was
first timers getting into the stock market, buying
Buying stocks.
Um
So all of the tailwinds for our business turned into headwinds.
And of course
When that happened, it was obvious to the market as well.
And
Not fair.
To be fair, not just Robin Hood, but
our entire sector got hit hard. We went from IPOing at
about a thirty two billion dollar valuation in twenty twenty twelve.
One.
to
In twenty twenty two, we were
There we were trading at like
Six dollars and change.
Yeah.
Eighty percent plus of

Which you know, a lot of time if people were calling Robin Hood a broken IPO.
Right, and I was getting advice that maybe I should try to figure out how to do a buyout and go private or something.
Um
So
Yeah, all all of these things start coming up that don't actually have much to do with running your business.
And building products.
They become kind of
Distracting.
So
Yeah, that that was very, very tough to navigate and
I think
It took some solace in the fact that it wasn't just a Robin Hood specific issue.
But nonetheless.
I mean uh
We uh as as an entrepreneur.
Uh.
Yeah, it's very very competitive and you really just
uh wanna win. And so I said, you know, I'm not gonna be one of these people that
Either gives up.
'Cause a lot of founders, unfortunately. We lost a lot of great founders in that time where they just left their companies, right?
Uh.
But so I'm not gonna give up.
I'm also not going to batten down the hatches.
And say we're just gonna ride this out and hope for interest rates to go to zero.
uh in the future.
And just like uh not do anything and and turn into an ostrich or a turtle. A lot of businesses were doing that. For example, the mortgage companies.
A lot of the mortgage companies, if you if you listen to their public statements, they were like, Well, the market's gonna improve at some point and people want mortgages again.
We said what can we give to our customers?
That will actually let them thrive.
In this particular market environment where you see high rates and cash is attractive.
And that led to the birth of
Or the I should say the revival of Robin Hood Gold.
Which started with
How do we give customers the absolute highest yield on their uninvested cash so they can put that
onto the platform. We followed that up with Robinhood Retirement, which has w over one and a half million accounts. I think it's the best retirement product on the market by a wide margin.
We give everyone a three percent match.
If you're a gold member for
for making contributions into retirement.
And so we we really started to think about okay.
How can we diversify the business?
Away from trading, but also away from
being sort of like a zero interest
Uh
business that thrives in that environment, but maybe doesn't do as well when
when we're in a high interest rate.
And so we we ended up doing that. We diversified the business tremendously.
And then
Quicker than I imagined.
Um
you know we we become uh
A business that has eleven business lines now.
With uh over a hundred million in annual revenue.
I talked to somebody uh and they characterize this and maybe they're wrong, so correct this as uh
You basically fired the nice version of yourself and be
Turned on like founder mode. I forget their exact words, but
Uh yeah.
Is that true?
I don't know if I would characterize that
Uh
I still think I'm very nice.
Basically what it was was it
We I had to spend a lot of time thinking about how to fix things.
And
Um
I think that's
When we went through covid.
There was a lot of pressure.
Not just from what other companies were doing.
But also just because
We were doing very well during Covid and growing very, very quickly.
Right, we went from I'd say
End of twenty nineteen we had seven hundred people.
And
Something like two hundred
two hundred and change million in annual revenue. Yeah.
to
In the next year.
End of twenty twenty.
We had
Thousands of people.
And
Close to a billion in revenue. Mm-hmm. It's like a three three
Three X plus in growth.
And you look around us.
And
You know.
During covet a lot of our contemporary companies were struggling.
Airbnb. Yeah. Which
We always to some degree like
grew alongside Airbnb, which started at similar times. They were a little bit before
Um
So that
What was swirling in the air was we've got to batten down the hatches covet.
You know, but our business was booming and in fact what we were hearing was
Customer support is getting strained, our engineering systems were strained, we ended up having to hire a bunch of people.
uh during covet just just to keep up.
I think we continued that hiring.
And became a
Big company.
Very quickly.
Things didn't really work very well together.
Um
A lot of the people that joined since we were remote had never met in person.
Uh
And
So it it wasn't just that
We were being nice or we were like coddling employees.
I think that
The
the inputs that led to
that tremendous acceleration in the business and the headcount growth.
Um
were not sustainable inputs like you only have one covet
So when that reversed.
We actually
It gave us an opportunity to
Rethink.
all of the changes that we made to keep up and and reset a little bit, which I think at the time was painful.
But
It led to a much healthier company.
It's like um
It's like uh not to use another weightlifting analogy, but they're so good. Um
If you want to get really, really strong
Um
There's one way.
Where
You just like gradually build up muscle mass and keep your fat
Yeah.
low over
long periods of time.
But what what Robin Hood did was
We bulked up.
Gigantically
And also gained a lot of fat in the process. And then we did like uh a massive leaning out.
Um
I think that works for for a lot of people and you
end up getting to the same place and in in retrospect I'd say
Maybe.
Maybe um
It's too much to say that I would have done it differently. I think we we had to
We had to adapt to
To to what
what our reality was at the time. So I don't know if we had
Yeah. I probably would have
done things differently around the edges with the culture and thought about the values and and really
Um
sort of like enshrine them earlier.
you know, the values I mentioned earlier, high performance, safety always
Um
lean and disciplined, one Robin Hood, but um
In practice.
Fixing things.
Yeah.
Everybody says that, but where it sort of like meets difficulty is
That means undoing something I've already decided. And that means admitting that I was wrong. And so people sort of like tend
In general, not everybody they tend to like slowly sort of like oh I'll undo a little bit of it and then I don't get the any of the results.
Oh yeah.
So I have a good s business suggestion.
Um
Usually things
Uh
Things get easier if you do'em multiple times.
And uh you could practice
doing this once and making a big show of it.
Like actually maybe you take a small thing that you were wrong about that you wanted to undo and just say
I wanna tell you about something that I completely screwed up. It was a wrong decision, and now we're taking it back.
It could be like the snacks in the office or something. Got rid of
Got rid of uh
Uh
Sichuan food uh catering on Wednesdays.
And then
You know?
See how it goes and then you realize, well, maybe it's not so scary that you can do it for
A serious thing. And then maybe eventually you can do it for three or four things.
simultaneously.
Um
I'll give you an example.
During Covid we introduced um
A lot of uh
It it was this thing that
From the beginning, I just like didn't really like the idea of
But
A lot of people felt felt felt very strongly and there was just
too many things happening. But yeah, we were like uh we had these wellness days where entire teams would like take a wellness day after working particularly hard.
And at one point I was just like
Let's kill these wellness days.
And there was just a lot of fear. I mean some people actually legitimately
like the idea of wellness days. I was like, I don't want to be a wellness day company. We have generous PTO, take a PTO, and this whole idea that an entire org or team would take the same day off.
That seems like a problem. What if there's an issue and we need someone, the entire org is taking a day off? Doesn't make any sense.
Um
I think this was like one of those Covid era things that
Some companies probably still have, but um
Yeah, any anyway. Um
And there was fear.
Like we were t we're taking back a perk.
From employees. Yeah. They like their wellness days. They'll complain.
Well, we took off the wellness days. There was complaining for one day and then we never heard about it again.
So I think when once you start doing these things and you realize
our deepest fears about the consequences were were wrong
And uh
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How does Robin Hood operate internally? Like if you were to
distill the operating principles that you use to run the company, what would they be?
Our values are high performance.
So
Uh we
Make it clear.
Two
Not just employees, but anyone applying for
A job that
This isn't meant to be like uh
Cushy chill job. Like this is for people that want to stretch.
And to do in
One year what
maybe another company would expect you to do in ten years.
Um
So we we keep a very, very high performance bar.
And
that filters into how we compensate.
Mm.
We we we reward people disproportionately based on impact, and we try to stay away from rewarding people on conventional things.
Think about a typical company.
People are paid.
generally proportional to the org size that they manage.
And if you think about what that incentivizes, that incentivizes empire building. I want to have a big org with a big team because then
According to traditional HR metrics.
I'm more important. Yeah. Um, but really what we want to incentivize is the opposite. Can you can you have a lot of impact with
The smallest possible team.
So
High performance is one of them.
Safety always. We have a safety always value, which means sure we're we're gonna move fast.
You know, sure we're we're holding ourselves to an absolute
Performance bar.
But you can't
Use that as an excuse to cut corners or compromise on
uh the security of customers and
And their money.
So it's a very important one.
you know, r regulatory compliance is very, very important to our business as a as a trusted financial platform.
So we have that one. Lean and discipline.
Another one.
Always ask how can we do more with less?
We scrutinize every dollar and
Every process as well.
Um
And uh
Yeah, I mean I think that
If if I think about culture.
Uh I w I won't go through every single value, but uh those are the big ones.
If I think about culture, it's it's
A few things.
It's
How we hire.
Um
the talent that we that we bring in.
How we performance manage and and reward people.
Uh and also uh
The working environment.
What's the environment like?
in in the office.
So
Hiring uh it's really top talent. I'd rather have a small team of the best people than a large team of of mediocre people.
And that goes goes along with the high performance.
Uh how we
compensate and performance manage.
We want to make it we want to reward people disproportionately based on impact.
And also if it's not working.
f with someone, we want to make it as easy as possible process wise.
for that person to go somewhere else. Right. We don't we don't wanna we don't spend too much time
How quickly does that happen? Is this like, you know, somebody's there for three weeks and you're like, Oh, this isn't working out, or is it
Do you give it six months, which sounds like an absurdly long period of time, especially given what you're trying to accomplish? We wanna make it I mean, sometimes it's pretty obvious that uh
you know, for for whatever reason.
Um
We made a hiring mistake.
Usually.
that that someone's not a fit and at that point we wanna make it easy as easy as possible. So yeah, if it's three weeks
Doesn't make sense.
For us or for the person to

Um
I think six months
Once you know it's not a fit is way too long. But of course sometimes
We've had people that

And
For whatever reason
they don't hit the ground running right away, but if if we see potential in someone and they're
extraordinarily good at
At a particular thing.
Um
You know, sometimes they they actually
they get there and that could take six months. But yeah, generally speaking, I think what most companies suffer from is
Process getting in the way.
And
Actually making it.
very, very difficult for people to
Uh.
to to get rid of low performers and and I think we try to make that very, very, very easy.
If I was looking from the outside in, is there anything about your hiring process that would stand out as unconventional that works for you?
Well, I I should say I'm not super familiar with
how every company does it.
Right.
I'm sure some companies do
many of these things. But
Um
Yeah, yeah. Perhaps one thing that's unconventional, at least in
financial services is
uh emphasis on
early career.
People.
From the very beginning.
We
put our company next to Stanford University, we would spend a lot of time
Alright.
You know, recruiting
uh interns and and engineers from there.
And that was my alma mater and and Beju my co-founder as well.
So we would spend time actually when we were individually hiring everyone.
going to career fairs at the top
tech universities.
And
You know.
I still spend a lot of time with early career folks and interns.
And I think it's very, very good for the company because
A lot of the companies in our space tend to get older.
as they get further along and the you know, the the folks working there
can be more disconnected from from the young people. And then that puts you
Puts you at risk of becoming a
More of a generational company.
In the sense that
You know, Charles Schwab serves baby boomers very well. You had E Trade coming later that
Was really a Gen X company.
Well
I think
they've struggled a little bit getting the younger generation excited and
I know, you know.
they they try very hard to to get there, but I think the best way to do it is to actually make sure that the company itself
has
the point of view of of young people.
And you're sitting with them, working with them and learning from them at the same time.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sitting right next to them. You know, I I always like to have uh some interns or early career people
working on important things and I like to be around the people that are working on the key priorities as well.
So
Yeah, we we don't just
stick them in the basement and and have them fetch coffee. The big thing is we actually want you to have
to to work on projects that ship to production and and do meaningful work. And what what I like to say is I started off as an intern.
At Robin Hood.
I mean, I didn't have any career experience. I went straight from school into becoming an entrepreneur. And so I kind of have empathy for what it's like and
You know, f if I can succeed and become the CEO of uh of a company from a internship
And uh
then everyone should have the ability to to do that.
How do you run your weekly leadership meeting?
Yeah, so weekly leadership meeting is a big meeting.
Uh there's there's a lot of people involved.
And I like uh having large groups of people involved because then everyone can sort of like hear
What's on
Everyone's mind. I don't like
having a lot of one on ones.
Uh and I some people are
Big one on one fans.
But over time I've
No, my my one on ones are basically on demand when you need
something critical or or some important decision needs to be made.
So the leadership meetings are either
important information that I want to cascade.
Like
They're at the beginning of the week. So a lot of it is, you know, I spent some time thinking over this weekend about this, or we should be moving faster on this.
Or it's uh we we also review goals.
So
I like a very simple
mechanism for
Uh.
Sharing progress on goals. It's either green, yellow, or red.
If it's green.
We don't really have to talk about it.
If it's red, I think it deserves some scrutiny. So
You know, sometimes we go through
The red goals and
See how we can help turn it around as quickly as possible.
And that involves a little bit of ceremony. You know, I have a gavel and I I hit the gavel on the you actually? That's awesome.
Yeah, yeah.
Um
And
Yeah, you know, it's uh
I I think that
Sometimes it's it's really nice to
lighten up some extremely serious things so that
People actually enjoy.
Uh
Talking openly about
you know, goals that things that aren't going well. Because of the the assumption is e everyone in the leadership team is
Uh.
If not exceptionally strong, at least very, very strong. So
Usually if things aren't going well
Um
you know, there there's a good reason. It's usually not for lack of effort. And sometimes having the perspective of multiple people can can really help us quickly
improve things and turn them around.
Are there any other meetings that you have on a weekly basis? Like I I think about
a founder's time being the most valuable and most highly leveraged. Yeah. And then where do you get involved uniquely as a founder to add that leverage to the organization and where do you sort of like it?
Hands off.
Yeah, I mean usually I'm I'm involved in
Uh the most critical
product launches or or projects that are going on at
any given.
And a lot of times
We are so we do a lot of product events.
I think this year we're gonna have five.
of various
sizes and scales, but but usually the product events tend to have themes.
So actually we're doing one in a couple of weeks.
Um
Well, I should probably be more explicit about the date.
We're doing one on December sixteenth of this year, so
uh towards the end of the year. And it's called Yes No. So it's an event on prediction markets and
uh an AI.
And
I s we spend a lot of time just
Making sure the messaging is right, the design of the the event, the look and feel, of course the products that go into it.
Um
So
Yeah, there there's a big component that's just making sure that the next event that we're gonna do is
Are you in the weeds on that?
Uh yeah. So um I
You know.
present at the events and I introduce
The products.
Not not just me, but with with the teams that are that are working on them.
So the the event is like um
Television show.
Yeah.
I'm excited to watch. Wha what factors do you think makes your marketing communication so good? Like your it seems so clear and crisp and like on point. Well, thank you. It wasn't always the case.
Um
I think we have great people that
Think
Uh
Entirely about
the storytelling of of what we're doing.
what the purpose is. I think the events themselves are a good forcing function.
Because if you're communicating
A new product to twenty milyen people.
It really forces you to
distill it into the essence of what twenty million people can understand.
So
Yeah.
I think where where I tend to
uh sometimes
make make mistakes in communication is
I can get too jargony, too in the details. Um
Because I just assume
the average person watching is in the details of the business like I am, which I think is uh
Not a great assumption. So
I think like
really thinking about her from first principles.
If you're
Someone who has never heard of a prediction market.
For example.
How do you explain what a prediction market is and
why why it's innovative, why it's important for society for these things to exist. We we start there.
And then I think
Once you have the foundation.
You tried to
make sure all the products plug into that foundation. You
You you tell a a coherent story.
So I think it's it's really just about storytelling and you have to spend time and have people thinking about it and
You know, if uh
If I
don't think about it, or if the CEO doesn't think about it, then I don't think the story gets told. So as a founder and CEO you have to spend a lot of time personally getting involved in that, I think.
Yeah.
as you were saying that what came to mind is like Steve Jobs and features and benefits. Yeah he he didn't come out and say like
Uh you know
Here's thirty two gigs music capacity. He's like a thousand songs in your pocket. Is that what you mean by that?
Well actually.
Yeah, you know, when we started doing this events, that was a huge inspiration.
You're like, Well, we should just make them exactly like the Apple events because they've perfected it.
But then you know, now now we're on our fifth event this year. We started it last year.
And it's really just
We don't think about the Apple events at all. We
I I think
I think it's almost like um
learning to play a new instrument, right? When you first learn to play an instrument
You know, you just have to practice and do what the other greats have composed in the past.
But then once you get to a certain level
you uh you know enough to to innovate and to like break rules and to change things
Um
So
Yeah, now now we really like try to make it different each time.
Like how how can we from first principles make this event as as good as possible?
And uh we we don't feel like we have to be tethered to the the old Apple model, which some people just replicate.
Um
But to answer your questions.
No, I I think
I don't think that was necessarily a rule that Apple had for the events.
Actually in a lot of their events they get really into the technical details of the computers and they share the megahertz of the processors and the
They they even had bake offs where, you know, they would load a website with a PC and they would load it with a Mac and
Obviously the Mac would load ten times faster and
Everyone will be like, Oh my God.
Yeah.
one second one point five second load time versus seven point nine um
Well, Jobs was I mean, he had this element and you see it throughout history and and showmanship, right? Like there was a absolutely
a story to it. There was a presentation. There was like you were anticipating. You were like you could feel what was going on.
Yeah, and I think
You know, he was basically
Uh an artist.
He's probably the the greatest of all time at at that particular element of it.
How are you guys using AI internally? Like what would surprise me about how you're using it?
Yeah, um
I think we haven't talked
too much publicly about it, but we're doing a AI event.
on December sixteenth, which is our first uh
our first big event focused on AI as well as prediction markets, but AI is gonna be a a big part of it as well.
Um
I think that when when we talk about
Internal operations
What we told
the team from the very beginning is look there's two areas where we want to start with.
And be absolute best in class in our space.
And that's customer service and software engineering.
Because
If you think about what really moves the needle.
Those are
the big teams that have multiplicative impact. Customer service interacts with
you know, all all of our customers that are having issues or need help with the platform and
Traditionally that's been a big cost center for
our peers and competitors because it scales with
Uh.
with number of customers on platform.
Um
And so we've we've done so much innovation there. By and large, if you interact with customer service on Robinhood, you're you're interacting with our AI agents.
Um
And and I think
We are
best in class uh uh on that side.
on the software engineering side.
You can think of it as
Accelerating
product velocity and and development. So
We've seen tremendous increases in product velocity.
uh fr from our engineering teams because
From a very early point, we made it as easy as possible to use every AI tool.
Uh it started with a GitHub Copilot because that was the only game in town. And of course, Cursor and Windsurf.
Until that got acquired.
And then of course uh clawed code has been
Very popular.
Yeah.
command line interface tool.
recently.
And and I think the important thing about AI adoption is
You have to track the right metrics.
and and actually look at them very, very carefully. And I think the the great thing about
Software engineering.
and customer support is the metrics are pretty easy, right?
Mm.
customer support you have to look at AI deflection rate.
How many what percentage of tickets that would otherwise be going to an agent are actually being
fulf served by
By AI.
Uh and you you want to drive that up as high as possible.
And for software engineering you're looking at percentage of code commits.
generated by AI.
But
You also want to check that with
Is the total.
engineering velocity or the or the total
you know, monthly commits per engineer.
continuing to increase.
Because
Um
You wanna make sure that it's not just AI is doing a larger and larger percentage of the software engineering contributions, but that
In aggregate.
You're you're making more contributions and and being more productive.
And so I think we started with those internally.
And now we're
We have it baked into the process where we almost think of it as headcount.
Okay, how much
How much compute.
Do you need next year?
Uh instead of this headcount.
How hard have you tried to like
use AI agents in the workflow for every team.
And and I think the next frontier where we're gonna see really interesting stuff is on creative and marketing.
So you can imagine
To create
really high quality
advertising collateral would have taken
A lot of like
deep work over a long period of time by by great artists, but if you can empower those artists with the best tools.
Eleven Labs mid journey runway.
You know.
the the total amount of creative
can increase by
A hundred or a thousand X.
And you can actually make them much more personalized.
So so I think
That's that's the next frontier that companies aren't really talking about, but I think we'll get to the point where
Next year you'll see you'll see a big step change.
So what does that mean though? Walk me through the second and third order effects of that. Like if you can do that, that means anybody can do that.
And if anybody can do it, well, all of a sudden, like what is the consequence of that? I actually don't think anybody can do that.
Um
I think these are really hard
Problems.

Um
Yeah,'cause it's not just of course, most people don't even have metrics to track this stuff, which is
Uh.
I can give them the metrics, hopefully they're they're useful to to listeners.
But
Thinking about
Леч сей кустомер супо.
For example.
I like to break down customer support, progress, and AI into three
stages.
Uh and and you'll you'll see or
More uh more phases.
Than stages, I should say.
Phase one, phase two, and phase three.
Phase one.
is uh a company
Puts the help center.
Into the AI chatbot.
So the chat bot can answer
Any question from the help center.
Most
Companies doing AI for customer support are in this phase.
Right, where it's just
that's pretty easy to to get going. Most people just almost like a better search function. Yeah. Better well, you know, and it's better than actually having links to the help center that you'd have to navigate.
Which actually
I think probably still most companies aren't using AI for customer support and they're still pushing you towards just navigating a help center.
We were there too.
Probably
five years ago, five to ten.
Phase two is
All right, you're getting a little bit more sophisticated. You're not just taking the data from your help center and feeding it into the AI, but now the AI can actually go into the database.
They can say okay.
I can see Shane's account, he's got, you know.
fifty thousand dollars in there and he just deposited some money yesterday from Chase Bank.
Okay, so you can pull that data and you can use it to
Provide better contextual support.
But it's still read only.
Yeah. Right.
So um
Rough numbers, let's say ninety percent of companies are in phase one.
Ninety percent of the ones that aren't in phase one are probably in phase two.
Then you have phase three.
Which is
Okay.
Now I can actually do
non read only actions. I can change stuff.
Maybe I'll refund you if
you know, you're not happy with your purchase.
You can refund your gold subscription fee.
So that involves
Actually some pretty deep
Mm-hmm. Work.
deep integration into all of like the back end systems.
Uh so you can imagine
The utility
Goes up.
As you get deeper, but the cost also goes up.
Um
And so actually I think very few are in
Phase three.
That's where Robin Hood's in.
Um
And uh
Yeah, it's it's it's actually not easy. And I I think that
Most companies are vendoring this, and this is the thing that vendors are hard at because
you know, vendor's not gonna be able to
Save you much time.
in the actual process of plugging into all your systems. That's gonna be work that your engineers internally are gonna have to do.
But I think what made it easier is
From a pretty early point.
Mm-hmm.
We wanted to make
Our data.
easily queryable internally.
because we wanted to run good analytics to understand what was going on. And so once your data is queryable.
It makes it so that you you generally have good systems hygiene. It's you know, in one place.
Uh.
It's like got clean interfaces. You spend time making sure that it's correct.
Um and and I think the work that we did
not really thinking about AI made it a little bit easier to plu plug in these models and
and actually run inference and
You know, build build agents.
And and that's just the stuff we do internally.
In the product, we have Robin Hood Cortex, which is our AI model.
And
Uh
The most visible
use case of it in Robinhood right now is
Stock and crypto digest.
So if you go to a stock that's moved, it'll give you
uh a real time view of what's actually driving it. I think some of our competitors have done this as well.
Um
But I think one makes our offering especially compelling is it updates
Basically every minute.
Uh it it updates whenever new information comes in.
Whereas, you know.
I think most companies do it once per day and it's just
It's it's basically stale for
Companies in which
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You have an AI company now, too.
Yes, that's right.
Talk to me about the limitations of how we train the models and and what the implications are. I think about this in the sense of
You know, the models are trained on the whole internet.
There's a lot of garbage out there.
Yeah, they're predictive in the sense of they're really
Uh you know.
to the
Walk me through maybe the prediction versus reasoning, pure reasoning from first principles up.
And how you think
uh the current limitations are and where we're going with this and what the alternatives are.
Sure.
Um
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and basically the company that I started a couple of years ago that I'm chairman of
uh is called harmonic and it's building mathematical superintelligence.
Which is AI that can solve
Math problems.
at a level exceeding
uh humans the best human mathematicians
And
Alright.
It's not quite at a level exceeding all of the best human mathematicians, but it certainly exceeded my level, which
I didn't think it would do so.
So quickly.
But yeah, earlier this year it
We actually achieved gold medal performance at the International Mathematical Olympiad, which is the world's most prestigious mathematics competition.
Um
These are like
cracked high schoolers.
Like
f five people got perfect scores in the international mathematical olympiad and
Alright.
Just to contextualize, I say high school, but
I bet you
I would struggle solving a single IMO problem, uh
Yeah, yeah, right now.
So Aristotle, which is our model, solved five out of six.
And um
The bet always was that
This would actually generalize to
So if you're good at math.
As a human I felt this because I was a math major. If you could figure out how to solve a math problem
you could solve pretty much any problem. So that that could generalize to
general problem solving. Like
be better at making business decisions, for instance.
Um
And so we've tested that.
Actually, over the past few weeks
Yeah.
They released a uh product.
For mathematicians and researchers.
And it's been used to solve unsolved math problems.
I saw that.
You saw the the Urdosh problem. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Paul urged. I didn't understand it. I just saw that you solved it.
Yeah. I mean,
Um
Yeah, the problem itself is too complicated for me to understand and solve.
But Paul Erdush was this like um
very prolific mathematician. He would actually travel around the world, stay at people's houses and work with them for a week or two weeks at a time, solving math problems.
And so
There's like a collection of articles and books of
Mm.
problems that Urdush conjectured. They're usually conjectures like
Seems like this thing is true mathematically, but I can't prove it.
And so now there's, you know, websites that collect these things. There's something like eleven hundred
Urdish problems.
Uh about half of them are are open, unsolved.
And um
Yeah, harmonic solved at least one of them. There's always some debate like is it solved somewhere else on the internet and nobody found it?
Um
So
You know, there there's always some controversy around these announcements.
But I mean it's solving an unsolved problem that people care about is a big deal. And you've seen
making the jump from competition math
to solving unsolved Erdish problems in a couple of months.
And the goal is to um
ladder that up to
Unsolve problems that everyone cares about that are of like massive importance.
And actually yesterday they released an update that
uh Aristotle learned to write computer code too.
So on a
So verify software verification benchmark it hurt it hit a new state of the art of
Something around ninety seven percent.
Amazing. What's different about how you're training that versus how somebody like
Enthropic or open AI, like what's different about the model itself?
Yeah, two things.
One is
Um
They tend to train uh
So
I mean they they do a lot of little things to train these models, and I think these models used to be like a monolithic L M. Now they're actually a network of agents, which which Aristotle is. It's it's actually a network of agents that are
Optimized for slightly different things.
Um
Mm.
I guess at the highest level.
Uh the interesting thing about math is
You can pose a math problem.
As
Computer code and if you pos it as computer code.
There's actually a way to machine check the validity of the proof.
Oh yeah. Yeah. So it can be checked automatically.
And what that allows you to do is to create a synthetic data pipeline.
And
So all of the data that
Uh.
The the vast majority of the data that
trains uh Aristotle is actually
data that we generate. It's not, you know, internet data.
And what happens is you ask a a question.
The model reasons about it.
It tries to solve it.
And
on the way to solving it.
It solves
It generates some lemmas and facts that are proved, and because you can machine check them.
You know that they're correct.
And if they're correct, you sort of like put them into the training.
And so as it as it solves problems, it gets smarter and smarter.
And
That's basically the idea. So there's similarities.
Mm-hmm.
It's probably closer to training a model to play chess really, really well.
than it is to
Training just like uh
English language.
L L M.
But I think the the fundamental techniques
tend to overlap. I mean there's a lot of reinforcement learning and post training.
There's pre training as well.
Um

But yeah, the the main difference is this
This ability to
machine check the results, which gives you uh
a good reward signal for your
Reinforcement learning.
What do you think the limitations are on the way that we're sort of like doing the large scale language models now in the sense of
training on huge data sets and and being
more predictive than I would say bottoms up first principles.
If that makes sense.
Yeah, I mean
I think that
We've already shown an ability to create new knowledge.
Um
And I think that's gonna continue. So
You know, right now, let's say
You can easily at low cost produce a proof.
That's
Ten pages long.
And actually we can produce longer ones, but
Just uh as an example, per per unit cost and time, you can produce a ten page proof.
Well in a year it'll get to a hundred pages.
And
three years it'll get to a hundred thousand pages. And then you can say, okay, what type of problem has a hundred thousand
Page proof.
That's probably some of the deepest
problems in in mathematics. And at the same time
That same thing is not just gonna happen in mathematics, but all dependent fields, physics, computer science.
And you know what
Uh.
What's the equivalent of
A a really deep
result in physics. I mean we can we can understand
the fundamentals of
Um
Unification, which has been a big problem for
It's been the problem in in theoretical physics for fifty years. Like
How do you align the theories of
Yeah.
Gravitation.
With the other
with the other forces.
Um
And we we haven't had much progress in that and
probably
A I could help with that. And then if we can figure that out.
the consequences for building new engineering.
Is uh are profound.
Do you think AI is gonna be like one model sort of like takes all or do you think it's going to be
fairly like you're gonna have multiple models that maybe are slightly nuanced, a little bit better at different things. Like how do you see this playing out in the next
in five or ten years.
I think it depends on
Uh I I think there's gonna be multiple models and it's really gonna depend on the data.
That is used to feed them.
So for example, one thing that's great about Aristotle, which is harmonics model, is you've got mathematicians.
That are using it to ask.
Very complex math.
Questions.
I think
If you've got all the mathematicians using the model, then
You basically have an advantage with mathematics data, and I think that's true in other domains.
I think that
Generally people tend to use chat GPT.
As a first crack.
But
It's you know, it's a it's a good general model. It'll probably give you a reasonable answer, but
I don't think they're gonna spend the time.
to go deep.
On
Every single domain.
And I think that's why you're already starting to see a little bit of specialization.
Um
Anthropic has a very good coding model.
And
They've basically done very well in the enterprise for software engineering. They've kind of specialized there.
Um
Google, obviously, very, very strong model in general reasoning. You know, Gemini three came out and
Surprise some people.
Though if you were looking at the Robin Hood prediction market, we had a prediction market
For uh for the majority of the year on what's gonna be the top AI model by the end of the year. I think it became pretty clear mid year that Gemini was gonna take it. Interesting. I mean, they should based on the data access that they have. They have the probably the highest quality data source in the world.
Uh and full access to it with very few restrictions.
And
Uh limitless compute and big printing lots of net income to fund it. Yeah, they've got they've got some advantages for sure. I would say Chad GBT.
Harmonic.
So
They have a similar mathematics model called
um alpha proof.
Oh, interesting. Yeah, which is uh
Again, it
Converts mathematics from English into a programming language.
Uh
You get that reward signal.
Actually
Interestingly enough, alpha proof
was the first AI model to get a silver medal to achieve silver medal performance at the IMO last year. Okay.
But Alpha Proof, uh they did not announce a gold this year.
So
Yeah, we were we were uh
We're the harmonic team was excited about that that you know in in a year we were able to surpass alpha proof capabilities.
I will say Gemini uh has far passed on my usage of
Um just in the last two weeks, like it blows away a chat GPT.
A lot of people have been saying that, yeah. Yeah. And and I I love the race as a consumer. Like it's it's great.
peanut butter.
technology for everybody is sort of and competition is good for everybody. Like it pushes everybody to be better and work harder and
Get ahead.
Absolutely. Yeah, I mean I I heard there was reports of open AI calling a code red
And
It's funny because when Chad GPT came out
Uh.
In twenty twenty two.
Google.
Called uh code red.
Yeah. Right, and they said this is a existential threat to Google search.
And then at that time everyone was counting them out. They're like a big slow company.
How are they ever gonna catch up? They're just getting disrupted. Look at the Google search market share. So it's just amazing how quickly the narrative can shift.
But yeah, I think S Sundar and and Sergey and the team have uh
Have done an amazing job, you know. You gotta tip your hat off to them.
I wanna come back to something you said earlier about
How math helps you make decisions. Uh Robin Hood
Uh and just decisions in general.
Yeah.
What's the connection there?
I think math is a good way to train your brain into uh
doing hard things.
Right, and it's almost like
If you can deadlift
Five hundred pounds.
Then
Picking up your crawling baby.
Uh.
From the floor is very, very easy, right?
So
no m business problem is as complicated as solving a really, really hard math problem. So if if if you if you get used to the pain and the suffering and like the
mental
Stress.
uh of beating your head against the wall for twelve hours on one single math problem.
Which Bader and I did very, very often when we were in college, we'd like pull all nighters working on these problem sets.
Um
They think that's really, really good training. It's like going to the gym for uh
For business problems.
What are you obsessed with lately?
Um
I am obsessed with the business world.
Uh
I
The the thing that I'm most
Focused on right now.
In
sort of my my life as
Robin Hood founder and CEO.
Is
getting more people
into the markets and in particular giving access to private markets.
I think that's
The biggest
inequity in capital markets today. And I think it's it's very important because
You see all these companies
Who are
Building AI models.
We're in the midst of
possibly the greatest technology
Revolution.
not just of our time, but of all time. And there's gonna be disruption. There's gonna be large scale dislocation.
And it's simultaneously the fastest growing
technology and product out there.
But
among the the least popular.
People are worried AI is
possibly gonna take my job.
Do I really like it?
And and of
The majority.
of AI companies out there.
are private companies, even though some of them are in valuations of tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of dollars.
Which means retail investors can't invest in them.
And
juxtapose that with
The fact that
going public as a company keeps getting
More challenging.
There's more process, less companies are doing it.
There's more opportunities for institutional capital to fund.
private companies and and you get an inadvertent situation where
retail investors are shut out of some of the most important companies. And it's not just AI. I think AI is the
Most important.
But there's also space technology.
Right you look at SpaceX.
valuation in the hundreds of billions.
It's basically
the largest and most impactful private space company.
uh retail's been shut out from the from the very beginning there.
And so uh
I'm trying to figure out how to correct that and reverse it.
Give people exposure to these companies.
And make it so that
Everyone's an owner of
Our industry
And and if we make sure everyone
is an owner if you own something you want to protect it and
I think we're more likely to have
А stable and prosperous future.
Well what
I was gonna start with how you operate internally, but let's dive in right here about tokenization and how we sort of allow retail access to private, otherwise private
Investments.
Talk about that. So we we have space, which is arguably one of the most important technologies over the next, you know, we can anticipate over the next fifty years. We have AI probably in the same bucket. And then we have real estate, which is another one that people sort of talk about and tokenizing. Yeah. How do you think about
All three of those different types of assets where I would imagine AI
and sort of space are the same, you're tokenizing a private asset that
Uh you need to own the underlying shares. Yeah.
What about real estate?
I think real estate is uh incredibly meaningful, especially now that
most people are unfortunately at a point where they're
They're having difficulty buying
their first home.
Um
And I think that could be attacked.
from multiple angles. One is by breaking it up into little pieces and making it so that okay
Uh
Maybe I don't want to
take on a mortgage and and
own my own home, but maybe I want to be an investor and be exposed to
Either one or multiple homes in
areas that I think will do well.
So I I think that'll happen.
But my my priority, I think, is late stage privates. We launched this thing in the US called Robin Hood Ventures, which aims to solve this problem.
And we have our first closed end fund, which we filed to go public.
Which is in the quiet period right now, so I can't
Talk in much detail about the mechanics of that.
But
I think
the the biggest opportunity and the biggest problem is in private markets.
And I think
There's also opportunity in early stage.
venture. We we want more people to be exposed to companies at the earliest possible stages, even though the risk is greater.
Because
the opportunity for upside is also greater. So I think there's there's interesting opportunities and products there.
And if we can streamline
uh the capital markets aspect and make it easier for entrepreneurs to raise money.
on the other side, then we could lead to more entrepreneurship and innovation too.
Yeah, and and real estate is interesting to us as well. And
I think the way real estate's been done
Is
Not amazingly inspiring.
I mean it's sort of like
generally low quality
properties in
random parts of the world, commercial properties. So
I think that
I mean.
Real estate is so visual.
uh the the purchasing experience of just going on a Zillow or Trulia and browsing
has gotten really good.
An and I think it's far ahead of
the experience of actually investing in real estate. And I think those
Don't
Exactly overlap. So I do think there's room for a a real estate investing product.
That's
is actually legitimately good and low cost and
And easy to understand.
So how would that work? Would Robin Hood buy the real estate and then
sort of tokenized percentages of it almost like shares? Like what would be the mechanism for that? I think I think tokenization
uh as a underlying technology
Uh.
can be done, but it it's not really permissible in in the US. And and the reason for that is
Um
What what you'd be tokenizing is essentially a a company.
And so when you tokenize a company
It it goes into security regulations.
And security regulations have an established framework that
is not currently compatible with
uh decentralized finance and crypto technology.
So
That that's one of the things that is being worked out.
But there's another mechanism in the US using sort of traditional rails.
Which uh
Which are called forty act fund structures.
And I I think there's been
Oh yeah.
Well there there will be a flurry of innovation in this space.
Partly because the current administration has declared that they're open to using these vehicles to provide access to alternatives and privates.
Um
And
the limitations currently are that
It's hard to take an individual
Asset like a
If it's real estate, an individual property or an individual private company for in the in the in the sense of late stage privates.
Uh and and make that tradable, but you can do a portfolio of things. So at least as a passive investment vehicle, we can give people that type of exposure. So you're buying access to a bunch of late stage maybe there's sector specific like AI or space or
Just broadly speaking. Yeah, and uh tokenization will work outside of the US. So you might have seen a couple of months ago we did a crypto event.
For a crypto business in Europe.
And there we tokenized
uh hundreds of public equities and also did a tokenized giveaway of open AI and and SpaceX, which was very popular.
And uh
And so I think
Similarly to how stablecoin has evolved, tokenization will be the primary vehicle for
Ex U S
Investment.
Uh
Uh until we get regulatory clarity and you'll see
tokenization of of privates seep into the US as well.
Uh and
The US already has robust structures for traditional finance that
Robinhood will work to make more digestible and and accessible to retail investors. So if that's the first step, what do you see as the second, third order, the intended and unintended sort of consequences of that?
I think it depends on the asset class.
So for example for privates
I think the uh
second order consequence is that
for entrepreneurs, the other side of the market.
Uh you'll have an easier time.
Raising capital.
So
Rather than going through this opaque process of
Spending a lot of time meeting investors one on one, pitching in person.
Uh you could imagine
a digital fundraising process where you're plugged into
you know, an electronic market.
And
You can push a button and you you get the capital to to run your business.
I think that'll happen not just for crypties, but for for all types of companies.
Um
Secondary liquidity will be much easier. So if you're a
early employee.
of a company or an executive and you have quite a bit of shares locked up.
you'll be able to sell easily on a transparent market without
The complexity of
Dealing with paperwork.
Um
Yeah, or or waiting until I PO.
So I I think those are the things.
And
I think the third order consequence will be
Uh.
an explosion of entrepreneurial activity.
Like if it's easy to get
If it's easier to get funding.
For an early stage venture, for example.
And you don't have to spend.
Full time.
As
CEO raising capital.
I think there will be you.
Much more
much more capital.
uh for startups and consequently much more startups.
Are there unintended consequences to a company like Stripe where
your uh you know they're
I would say by and large controlling the price. Like it's fairly stable.
Uh, whereas if it goes to retail and it gets marked by the day
that price could change dramatically. And then employees who are getting options, I'm just trying to think through the chain here. If employees are getting options, but those options are highly variable because you, if you're the company, you want to tie the employees tenure to the growth of the business.
And you can kind of distort that, couldn't you, with secondary marks?'Cause they would have to consider those marks when they're valuing
the company internally for options or no? I don't know.
It really depends on
The vehicle.
So for example there's
Tender offer.
vehicles uh in the US that
Allow trading only at
Uh the nav.
the net asset value, which is
Uh.
Sort of like the
The the price that
These assets are priced by
independent valuation bodies.
The problem with that is
If you're a company that hasn't done a round of financing in four to five years.
The nav is
not necessarily reflective of the true cost of the asset.
So there's other vehicles that
Allow for real time pricing.
And I I think that
The platonic ideal is for
the price of the asset to be
Driven by
Yeah.
supply and demand and willing buyers and sellers in a in a transparent market. I think that's where everyone gets
Uh.
The best outcome because
In any other scenario.
Someone
Could be taken advantage of.
Right. Like if if uh
You know, the
one side has more information than the other.
Um
You know, you you you could
You could end up in situations that aren't fair.
So I'm I'm generally a proponent of
price being discovered transparently through two sided markets.
Now again.
That's not necessarily the world we live in today.
With
private assets.
Um
And so there will be a
transition period and
Not not all companies are gonna
Like
the changes, but I I do think it's inevitable to to some degree that this happens because
What'll happen is
There's gonna be
active derivative markets on these private shares.
I mean there you've already seen that already is, yeah. And
The data is getting out.
And
I think that's a hard
genie to put back in the bottle if if the price is out.
And then the company's doing a round of financing anyway. And it's like well
Why why are the derivatives here and you're pricing the round at at this price? Why don't I just
hedge my exposure. Um
So I I think that it's gonna be tough.
increasingly in a global market to
have as much control over over the price as
maybe private companies have historically
Had.
One of the other impacts of that that I can think of off the top of my head is LPs selling their interests.
in a fund or a vehicle that they have
Where that is not a liquid market these days. And if it is, to the extent that it is liquid, there's often huge discounts or haircuts.
Uh on LPs trying to exit early.
Th there's been a lot of activity in the space and and I think it'll continue, particularly for
L P interests in special purpose vehicles that are
highly concentrated in one or two companies.
I think those are
in many ways becoming an alternative to to direct investments in companies.
I think our our preference
And uh h how we approach access to privates is
We we always would prioritize
coming through the front door.
Right, and and making sure that the company wants
exposure to retail.
And
You know, we we want to work with companies who actually see this and
Um
I think in in the case of the
Open AI and SpaceX tokenization.
We were sort of running an experiment and we wanted to be the first
You know, if there was a Guinness book of world records for the first
tokenization of open AI.
And SpaceX. I wanted to claim that.
Um but you know, it was a small giveaway in the grand scheme of things.
I think the scaled solution
Alright.
Is is best when
actually the companies are involved. And what I've seen in the past few months as we've gotten Robinhood Ventures off the ground.
Is that great companies
Duel.
want to be a part of this and do see the value of retail. We've made a a number of investments that have actually been public about
how much they love the model and how uh they think this is the future.
And we saw the the same phenomenon.
for our IPO access offering. So we have a great IPO access offering which is
the number one retail channel for IPO participation.
And we started this in twenty twenty one, around the time that we went public.
We've done.
I think roughly fifty IPOs since the beginning.
And around
The beginning of this program.
Generally we got a skeptical reception from companies.
They didn't understand why they would want to do it.
their bankers would kinda talk them out of it. So we had to ask for favors and we really had to
elbow our way into to getting even small allocations into some of these deals.
And this year
There's a complete
Profound change.
Where the best companies
that are going public or coming to us and asking
for feedback about their retail strategy.
And you see the CEOs going on national television and talking about how
you know, they wanna contribute to the disruption of the traditional IPO model and
giving retail larger and larger alloc as time goes on.
So
People are embracing it and I think the same thing is gonna happen.
For
for private retail access. It's just gonna go earlier stage.
But the benefits are so strong.
that I think that they'll be
It'll be standardized as time goes on.
Uh and I think also we could make it easier for companies to go public.
There was actually a round table that I was part of.
Here in New York, uh two days ago.
It was called
make IPOs great again.
We had the red hats and everything, um at the New York Stock Exchange.
And I think that there's improvements the IPO process has gotten so ossified.
And the branding of it is bad at all stages.
that you can really just like systematically make improvements across the board.
So um
I I think we should do that as well and make it
Uh.
i improve the brand of of being a public company and also make it easier to to get public and at that point
What will really be
Attacking the problem from multiple angles.
How do you think about what to expand in next? Like what goes into that decision? What are the factors, the variables that you're thinking about in your head as you're
looking towards the roadmap the next ten years, there's all these things we could do. How do we allocate
What we are gonna do next.
Yeah. Um I think like our North Star is really just maximizing equity ownership.
Oh.
direct equity ownership from retail.
Across the world.
Right.
And
You know, that that's what we get into
How do we get more people?
Invested in public stocks.
Uh can we start at a younger age?
Can
Uh, which is why we're excited about initiatives like
Invest America with the Trump accounts. Can we get people outside the US plugged in as well and make that as easy as possible?
Uh can we do private markets which are inaccessible to people?
Like I think that
Alright.
If we if we maximize
Equity ownership.
And actually the the percentage
Uh
A bit held directly by retail.
will end up in a more stable and
Prosperous.
society that that's more
Yeah.
And and that's a future that
I feel much more confident in
So
Uh we we kind of think through that and that's why we care so much about
Robin Hood Ventures, the Trump accounts.
Um I've been talking a lot about multi-generational financial services.
How do we make Robin Hood work?
Really well for you.
Uh.
For your whole family.
And
make it work better if your spouse or your parents or your children
Or on Robin Hood.
Um
And I I think that
There's a huge wealth transfer.
Uh coming.
So
over a hundred and twenty trillion are gonna change hands and go from the old generation into the young
And I think that's
a big opportunity to actually accelerate our goals. And and I think if we do that, Robinhood itself as a business
should benefit as uh
As as our customers benefit.
One thing I love and y you might have a unique opinion on this
Given your background, your family's background.
Is
Giving people a stake.
Yeah.
the American economy, the Canadian economy, whatever economy, giving people ownership in that as a means of fending off communism.
You came from a communist country. I mean your father was there and
Walk me through how you think of that and like how important it is to actually sort of fend that off and fight up front.
Against that.
Yeah, I mean
The year
that
My father left.
Uh Bulgaria.
He he
Had an opportunity to study at the University of Delaware. So in Bulgaria, he was a professor of economics in in tourism.
uh in on the Black Sea coast, which is
Um
warm weather summer capital, they call it.
So anyway the the Berlin Wall fell, the iron curtain was lifted.
And suddenly
Folks from Bulgaria could leave, people from the West could come in and and we could leave.
And so my my dad was given an opportunity to go to the university of Delaware to pursue a master's degree.
And the year he left was nineteen ninety one. So
We we couldn't we weren't in a position where my whole family would go.
we we didn't have the resources for that and we also weren't sure at the time whether it was gonna work out.
in in America.
Well, there's a future there.
Uh so my dad went.
in nineteen ninety one.
uh the inflation rate in bulgaria was over a hundred percent
So we talk a lot about, you know, five percent inflation here, but literally it was like
triple digit percentage inflation.
And and I remember my mom
Um
Wood.
look out the window. We lived in an apartment in Varna and I still remember the line for the the grocery store.
Like
You had to actually get there at the right time.
Um
Or or otherwise.
There were no eggs available, no milk available.
You know, and the milk would be in these like big
plastic bags.
So
Um
Yeah, and
There there was also power rationing.
So, you know, when when inflation hits that high, you get all kinds of problems, not just food shortages, but also electricity and power shortages.
And so they would have these rolling blackouts.
So I remember being huddled around the radio and the the radio was like battery powered.
And you know, the power would go out pretty much every night. So we would just be like listening to the radio with with my grandparents.
Um
And then we came to the country.
Uh to the US. My mom came.
uh about a year after my dad
Аким сикманц афер.
And um
I remember I was five years old, so I could still
Alright.
I still remember some things.
Like it w it was very clear, you know, I have memories from childhood in Bulgaria and then when I came to the US
And one thing that shocked me was
that there were bananas in the grocery store. Like you go to the grocery store and you'd see the big thing of bananas and
In Bulgaria, bananas were
Like a crazy
Well, because you had to get them from Cuba. Yeah. Right. That was that was our I think that was the banana trading partner.
So
Like
Bananas or what?
twenty cents. Um
So yeah, that that seemed crazy.
And then I also remember when I was a little bit older, so this was nineteen ninety six, nineteen ninety seven.
Five years after I came.
Bulgaria.
Had the unfortunate distinction.
uh of having the highest inflation rate in the world.
was it eighteen hundred percent in one year.
So you had the currency essentially collapsed and they they kept having to add
zeros to it. It used to be, you know, two Bulgarian leva to one dollar and I think it got to
Two thousand.
Um
So they kept having to like recycle all the bills and add more and more zeros.
And at that point
I was I was actually looking at this earlier. Um
My parents had
Uh the bank statements.
For my
initial savings account. So my grandparents opened up a savings account for me
when I was born.
And you see all their deposits.
And it was like, you know, ten level, twenty level.
Uh it got up to
Two thousand Lebah.
in the mid nineties.
And then the next one it was like basically zero.
Yeah, they they had to do all sorts of crazy things. My my grandfather
would uh invest in copper cookware.
So he had we had this
closet in in his apartment that was just full of
Copper pots and pans.
they would hold value better than the currency.
And
I I think that
If there was an easy way to invest and to protect your wealth.
Um
Would have been much better for the for the country.
Uh at the end of the day because
You know the

The year I was born.
Nineteen nineteen eighty seven.
Maybe
The time around that was
was the heyday of the country, and then for a long time it was just a gradual decline.
And and I think now there's promising signs, but
No, I I think that
Um
s so much of it starts from the will of the people and
and and how optimistic they are about the future, being able to raise children, uh, the economy.
And
Uh
You know, I just just saw the impacts of of having uh
A market system that just
Didn't work.
Um
So
you know, m made me appreciate what we have in this country and
uh wanting to make it more global, export it to to everyone else and and just making it easier for people to
own companies that are producing stuff.
I I love the idea of owning a part of the American dream in that sense. Um
Are
Is there another leading
sort of indicator of that that can change things? Like is it housing affordability? Is it optimism? Like what can be done
in a in a way to sort of give people
A rung on the ladder, if you will, if you want to think about it in that way. So the ladder's not outbreach.
And I think about that in terms of like how do we get more people invested in capitalism.
And one of the ways is
is ownership of assets. Yeah. Uh and tying that I love what
um they're doing with tying that back to education and schools and the portfolios and stuff.
What's the other one? Like what is the next big thing that we could do to sort of like give people a stake in capitalism?
Yeah, I mean we talked about real estate uh
U we've definitely talked about real estate in the past.
Um
And
I wanna
You know, I'm a I'm a I'm a proponent of a diversified portfolio. I I don't want to say one asset is better than another asset.
Um
I think that
If if we make it easier
Two
I I I think the general
approach that we have is
Look at what wealthy folks have access to.
What are the tools they have to protect their wealth and and grow their wealth?
And
You know, they have access to all sorts of things that are not easily accessible.
Um a lot of alternative investments.
Real estate.
Private credit.
Private equity.
Venture capital.
And
If if we're in a world where
It's easy for for the mass market to have access to these.
Then uh
I I think
I think we'll be in good shape.
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How do you think about something like Bitcoin?
Uh
I think bitcoin has been
In in hindsight the
the top performing asset of the past
decade.
Um
And you're starting to see
it becoming more institutionalized.
I mean not not just with the dats, but
companies putting bitcoin on on the balance sheet.
institutions and asset managers embracing it.
I mean for a long time Vanguard
One of the largest acid managers said
We're not gonna
offer Bitcoin.
On our platform.
you know, e even companies like that are changing their tune and and offering it.
And um
Yeah, I I think you should expect that to accelerate. I mean
Bitcoin as the original
Crypto asset.
is always gonna be singular. Nobody else is gonna be the first or or original. And I think that's why so many people
that's why there's such like uh mystique and aura about it, right? Because
Um
Yeah, y you go to these
You go to these bitcoin events.
And
There are
believers and and they'll tell you
It doesn't matter what what's gonna happen. It goes up, I buy more, it goes down, I buy more, I'll tell everyone I know to buy it.
Um
So um
Yeah, at this point I would I would definitely
Not
Uh.
I I w I w I would definitely not be uh a long term Bitcoin bearer.
If
Trading retail assets.
uh and allowing easy access to that. You guys offer no fees on that.
How do you make money on that? You still have people to pay, you got an organization to run. If I can if I can go buy a share of
Tesla or SpaceX or Stripe or whatever through the app.
How do you make money on that?
Well we we do have um
fee based products.
I think that in the beginning
Um
Yeah, uh Robinwood was a simpler business. We offered equities trading. At the very beginning we didn't make money and eventually it became payment for order flow and margin lending and
interest on on uh on balances.
But now Robin Hood is uh
Financial super app.
We have twelve we have eleven business lines as of the last earnings call that generate a hundred million in in revenue or more.
And
I I think the general principle is
We make money in all of the standard ways transactions, interest on assets.
uh lending based revenue.
But we like to compress the margins.
And
Yeah.
operating much more efficiently.
So through the through our use of technology.
We can offer our services at
Uh.
Much
Uh.
much lower cost.
And we can actually give to our customers the difference.
So that
You're actually at a financial disadvantage.
using any other product than Robin Hood.
Um
So yeah, I think
Unfortunately it's not as simple as like, oh, free trading or not commissions.
We we do make money in other ways, but generally using
Using Robin Hood should be
Cheaper, higher value, more cost effective.
across our entire product suite than any of our competitors.
Why do you think your credit card was so successful? Like everybody has a credit card. Yeah. There's a hundred different ones. They're super it's it's almost like when I saw how simple yours was in a way, I was like, Oh my God, this is like Steve Jobs coming back to Apple, taking 400 product lines and making like nope, we're doing four computers.
Or simplifying everything. It's easy to explain the value prop.
Three percent cash back on all categories.
Right. And if you're a credit card
Nerd, which many people are.
If you're like
one of those people that follows the points guy. Um there's entire businesses like related to like
Just
Optimizing points.
Yeah.
I mean it
But you know, a lot of people don't want to play that game either.
They wanna say, okay, I d I don't wanna spend my time working in spread sheets and figuring out, okay, if I spend this much on travel, I use this one card and for my groceries, I use that, and for my gas, I use this.
Um
So it this very s very compelling value proposition is say three percent.
On all categories.
Because
What that allows you to do as uh
As a spender.
is to say this is just my default card. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna this is gonna be at the top of my wallet. Sure, I have the opportunity, the ability to do more work. If I want to do more work, maybe I'll pull out some other cards for
other scenarios.
But
I also know
That
If I don't want to think about it.
This card is is really good.
in general as a default. And I think
I mean in in some cases if you look at
the really successful e commerce companies like an Amazon.
what they've been able to do is do such a good job.
that they become the default place you go to buy stuff. And sure, maybe
At this point, if you want a comparison shop.
And you want to buy a new belt.
Yeah. And you really wanted to like save
On on the belt.
You could probably find it cheaper somewhere else.
But
They do a good enough job.
And
They serve you well for
such a large majority of things that they become
The first option.
I think that's what we've been able to to achieve.
With the credit card.
And
You know, e even though it's still
E even though it's still not
completely generally available.
We do have over half a million card holders.
Or among the fastest growing credit cards.
Um
And
You know, more people keep joining.
It's like
credit card companies
typically have had to really think about cost of customer acquisition. Because
They have to pay for
for for customers to come in.
But we have such strong word of mouth that customers are coming faster than we can let them off.
Um
And that's just entirely from
peer to peer reviews.
uh existing happy customers posting
About how much they love it on social media.
I think that's been a huge driver of of its success.
Two questions. Why do you think like somebody like Amex just doesn't copy that?
Uh, can they not because it's a structural problem and they can't do it from their cost structures different than yours? Like what what prevents them from doing that?
I I think I think it's a cost structure problem. You look at the big credit card companies.
And they have tens of thousands of people.
Right.
Tens of thousands of people that are
Manually.
uh servicing
the these accounts.
And
You know, that they spend a ton of money on marketing.
So
Uh.
Yeah, I think the the actual
Economics
of of the card program itself.
Or
dwarfed by the economics of like the large headcount needed to to operate the businesses.
I think those are very, very painful decisions because not only
Um
I mean not only are you talking about like shrinking
uh head count.
But also
In order to do that.
You actually have to
have the technology to to be able to automate
the the entire servicing process and the underwriting.
And I think we had an advantage because we were able to build this from scratch.
So you could start from first principles.
So
I I think um
Yeah, I I think is it's very, very challenging problem to solve.
I don't envy them.
No, it's it's hard when you're in the incumbent and you're faced with it. You can run up I I think of this as like uh you know, if you're you don't have the resources, maybe as like American Express in some in some sense, you do know. But I mean when you started you didn't. Yeah. And what do you wanna do? You wanna run upstairs because they're like fat and happy and
So it's gonna suck to run upstairs, but they can't chase you because
Uh, it's gonna be they're gonna be out of breath, they're gonna be panicking, they're gonna have hard attack like they can't keep up with the velocity that you can move at.
Yeah and by the way, I think that
Um if we can put pressure on
the the credit card companies to start modernizing that'll be good for them and for the consumer.
So
Um
But you don't get three percent like in a transaction fee. So like how is that from balances? Is it from like oh you're only paying that out once a year, so you get to keep that during the
And earn interest on it. Like how does that work? So here's the great thing. Um the other thing that we have that
at least the pure play credit card companies don't have is
Uh
A brokerage business.
That ties into it.
So
In order to get the three percent cash back, you actually have to deposit the funds
into your brokerage account.
And so we've created this flywheel through Robin Hood Gold where
By using the credit card.
You also use the brokerage product, and of course at
At the beginning, it was mostly the other way. So existing brokerage customers would adopt the credit card, but increasingly we're seeing
People coming to us for the credit card. And then we
We we actually get them to use
brokerage and our wealth management offerings as well. And what we've seen
Is that
The more product
you use of Robinhood the more engaged customer you are.
It lifts all boats. So each of our other product lines benefit.
And I think that's what's really pushed us to more rapidly diversify.
And
add new adjacent product lines rather than just getting deeper and deeper into
Into into brokerage.
So basically
Uh, and we saw this with retirement as well.
If someone uses the credit card
As their primary card.
they put more of their wealth into Robinhood, more of their money into it, and they become a more profitable customer to us.
And that allows us to
close the gap between the rebates we get from the networks and the three percent we
We pay back to customers. If you had to rank sort of the three products that matter most.
When it comes to transferring my financial institution, making you the primary financial institution, what would they be?
Yeah, I mean making us your primary financial institution is really about coverage.
And and the goal is for Robinhood to be
Not just your secondary, but also your primary account.
We wanna be both. We can be your secondary account and your primary account, your backup and your and your main
Um
Mm-hmm.
Most of the time.
When you actually ask people
What's your primary financial account?
They'll talk about where their paycheck lands up. Their bank account.
And you know, for a while we weren't really playing in that space.
But you might have noticed.
Uh a couple weeks ago we started rolling out Robin Hood banking.
And if you look on social media
Robin Hood banking's a hit. I mean people love
everything about the product experience. We've we we've really the team there has really done a nice job sweating the details.
And building a a comprehensive banking offering.
And
It's a combination of
Things that you won't get anywhere else, like
Real time cash delivery.
Uh, which is available in New York. So if you're actually here uh domiciled, you can try that out. That's rolling out more broadly as well.
But also just the bread and butter.
Child savings accounts, joint accounts, so that you can have
uh shared finances with your spouse.
Uh
a family first experience where you can actually manage the finances of the whole family in one place.
So it's
Yeah, combination of differentiated features you won't find elsewhere.
Amazing economics.
Where you have the opportunity to earn high rate.
of interest not just on savings but also on checking.
Which by the way is a huge annoyance for people that the banks play this game of like your money goes in and out of your checking.
And of course will penalize you if you tried to take money in and out directly of your savings too many times for no reason.
Um
Other than
To collect
the high spread on checkings.
So the
It's it's basically a little bit of a stupid tax where they try to like penalize you for
for doing wrong things and
I think that um
Or sorry, penalize you for doing the right thing.
So
I think
You know, not to be too pejorative. They're running their business and people are
uh they they provide valuable services for people
But I think that's an opportunity for us to to differentiate.
It's almost like the run for the institution versus the customer. That's how I think about it whenever I deal with a bank and th they do this thing where it's like, Oh, if you want to earn interest, you have to open a savings account. It's like are you incentivized by me opening a savings account? Because like
even if it makes it harder for me. So there's a bit of friction and like you get a little bit more float because of that. Yeah like that's oriented around you as a bank. That's not oriented around me as a consumer, because me as a consumer, I don't want another bank statement.
I don't want another Pin card. I don't want another thing that I have to keep track of. Yeah. I just want one account. Just pay me the interest on that account.
Yeah, I I think that's right. Um, and I think sometimes to be fair, there's a delicate line
Between
These things.
Um
Because
You know, they they have to they have all kinds of like safety and soundness constraints.
And all of that. So we'll go deeper on that for a second, because I I would really love to understand why legacy is
not adapting quickly to a changing world, perhaps, in the most optimistic sense, or it just remains that way. I mean I I think at one point
There was a a rule. I think this was uh
Uh.
I I didn't study this, so you might have to uh look it up.
And we might have to correct it.
Uh I think for a long time
Banks were actually
prevented from paying interest on savings.
And and the fear was that
you know, if they start competing over paying interest or sorry, they were preventing from paying interest on checking.
And the fear was
If if there was a ton of competition over paying the highest rate on checkings, it would affect the
safety and soundness of banks and it would lead to more bank failures.
And and so the
you know, the the FDIC or O C C came in and they said, you know
No no interest on savings. I think that was later repealed.
But you know, by that time, of course.
the interest you collect.
from from the checking accounts was such a big line item part of the P N L that it's hard to part with that.
Right. And so they they sort of like became structurally
Reliant.
On it.
Um
And uh
Yeah, it
How how do you how do you adapt if you have trillions of dollars in checking?
that you're used to paying to to earning five percent.
On
And you suddenly are talking about
giving the majority of that back to the customer and and taking no profit.
Um
You know, you you do that.
very, very quickly and
Your
Earnings.
Go down.
Profitability goes down.
If you're public.
you know, that that could have a impact on the stock price and suddenly it becomes a safety and soundness concern.
I was thinking about this driving here this morning. I was like
I wonder if the
The
ultimate end game is like the mortgage ties people to financial institutions in a way.
uh'cause they can tie the mortgage to other products, they can tie it to your paycheck it's deposited. And then I was thinking, well
Open Door wants to enable like one click buying of a house.
And if they were to integrate with Robinhood or somebody else or a financial institution
You could literally enable that on the spot. You can enable like, oh, your mortgage is granted, it's approved, uh
And it seem it'd be like seconds.
Yeah, and and we have a mortgage uh
partnership with Sage Home Loans that gives you seventy five basis points off of uh the national average.
Because you have better information.
About people too, right?
You have
History, complete history, information.
And you can use that with AI, I would imagine, to actually probably generate
Better
Predictive outcomes.
Yeah, humans.
Yeah, I think the hard part about the m the mortgage business is very rate dependent.
So
Um
I don't think we necessarily want to get into the mortgage underwriting business or holding mortgages.
But
We we want to get
We we want to help people with all of their financial needs.
And I think for that one being a network and
Allowing different banks to compete.
Over
Who can offer you the the best possible rate.
As a consumer.
Is is probably
the road we're gonna keep going on.
But ultimately isn't doesn't that come back full circle a bit to the tokenization?
Uh so like you might pool those mortgages.
Uh at the risk of sounding like two thousand seven here.
pool those mortgages and allow people to retail investors to partake in those
Mortgages, no?
I haven't thought deeply about
Whether we would securitize mortgages. Um
My
feeling is that
I mean at at at the end of the day, um
We just want
W we'll just enable what offers customers the
you know, lowest cost.
Whether it whether tokenization enables that or
You know, you can connect directly to
A network of banks that can compete over your mortgage traditionally.
I think w remains to be seen, um
You you could argue actually tokenization at first would have a disadvantage because the banks won't be tokenizing. And so you probably have to meet them where they are and
give them the the information in ways that
They can support.
But yeah, over time that's likely to shift.
Uh if if they
They they tend to be laggards of of technology. So
If you know, five to ten years they're doing
More mortgage originations and
on chain then um
You you could imagine it.
it being the the primary market for that.
We always end these interviews with the same question, which is what is success for you?
For me personally.
I think success
Is
Um
creating dramatically more value.
for the world than you create for yourself.
So
Um
Yeah.
I I think I would feel good if the aggregate impact
Mm-hmm.
On the rest of the world.
And I think
obviously it should be positive. I I think it is is is much bigger than
What happens to me personally.
Um
And I think that's what's pushing me to
As you said, further
Ownership.
Uh make it so that everyone has skin in the game.
Um because I think that if
If if I can play a part in doing that across
Privates.
Publics.
Mm.
post IPO
And make it so that more people own
Uh
the great industries of of this country
will lead to
Not just
Smarter and
more well off individuals, but also a more stable and and prosperous society. And I think that's the that's a legacy that I would I would get excited to.
tell my grandchildren proudly uh about when they're
You know.
Huddled around the
The fire.
On Christmas.
It's a great answer. Thank you so much for taking the time today.
Thank you, it's been fun.