Ryan Knudson

So it's a really challenging time for Vlad and for Robin Hood.

And as he told this to me, he basically decides to take a little bit of time with his family, go on a trip and try and get some perspective.

So he goes on a family trip to Maui and...

He gets this call, hey, we're hearing that Sam Bankman Freed, the now infamous crypto founder.

Right, this is pre-jail.

He's looking to buy a piece of Robinhood.

And this is basically a sign that Robin Hood looks so weak that it's now a potential takeover target.

This is a real low point for Vlad.

Right, exactly.

So I guess it's as low as you can get when in Maui.

He essentially decides to take this back to basics.

He even thinks to himself, let's say the board fired me tomorrow and they brought in my replacement.

Like, what would that person do?

And how can I kind of start from the ground up?

One thing he realizes is that the company is essentially not focusing on the right customers.

And their chief brokerage officer was talking to me about it and compared it to an airline whose frequent flyers hate the airline the most.

It just didn't really make sense for the business.

So Vlad basically decides that he needs to start from square one and rebuild the company with these traders at its core.

He essentially offers them a better trading platform, more products, more ways to trade, and especially most recently in the past year, these access to newer markets that maybe competitors aren't offering yet.

Zero-date to expiration options, which are these ultra-risky, fast-expiring contracts that require perfect timing, and they come with huge risk but huge reward as well.