Vlad Tenev

Like one of our customers went out of business.

And so we lost a bunch of revenue that way.

Other customers were sort of like not biting.

So we were at the same time having this crisis.

sort of like angst or this existential question of, you know, we have a business that's making a couple million in revenue.

We're sort of able to feed ourselves.

Maybe if we scratch and claw, we can get to 10 million in revenue.

But am I really going to be proud of myself?

Like if I'm, you know...

80 years old, looking back on my life, sitting with my grandchildren and thinking about what I accomplished, am I going to be proud of myself for building this tool for hedge funds to trade and make more money?

Yeah, and then I thought about it, and I said, not really.

This always felt like being in the gym, in a sense.

Like, I'm doing this to, like, get resources or get the opportunity to work on something else.

But that other thing is going to be what I'm really excited about.

With Robinhood, that changed.

And when we got the idea and we started working on it, we knew in our hearts that it was a really big idea.

And if we actually brought it into the world successfully, it could change the world.

Yeah, three years.

So we first got the idea at that party in San Francisco in February of 2012.

It was right around my birthday, turned 25.