Vlad Tenev

we give you the information you need the data basically the real-time market data and sign up in five minutes and you can buy a stock buy stock for no commissions and no minimums yeah so you can sign up for five dollars and at this time the competitors would onboard you it would take a week the commissions were seven to ten dollars on average most of the big guys also had two thousand dollar minimums

So if you were a 22-year-old just out of college, started your first job, it was cost prohibitive to start investing.

And so what we did was we lowered the barrier.

Now you could start investing with $5 or with $100.

No, no.

So for the first couple of years, it was just dismissive.

Like, oh, you know, our customers actually don't mind the commissions.

They recognize that the service we provide is like worth it.

And I think for some of the customers, that's probably true.

Or, you know, these guys are taking the customers that we don't want, young people that have no money, you know, short-sighted.

I think there is a tendency to explain away potential business threats or competitors because you don't really want to have to deal with it, right?

It's like, I've got my own priorities.

What is this thing?

It's in the interest of my sanity to be able to explain it away and not worry about it too much, which is a mistake that people make.

Was there ever a smear campaign against you guys?

You know, later on, I'd say for the first three or four years since we launched to the public, the press and everything around Robinhood was pretty universally positive.

It was like, you know, we're rooting for these guys.

This is like new.

They're kind of young.

It's kind of a David and Goliath story where they're going up against these giants.