Vladimir Tenev

Let's try this thing.

And one thing led to another.

So Robin Hood wasn't the first idea we had.

It was actually the third.

We had a couple that were relatively fast failures.

But, you know, it's like...

An animal that I really appreciate is the hedgehog, right?

The hedgehog just like finds a spot on the ground and it just keeps digging and digging and digging.

And eventually you get this like big elaborate underground structure.

And I think that's what ended up happening with Robin Hood.

We sort of like started understanding...

You know, you see the... Well, also, and at the time, I don't know when you started, but...

Up until relatively recently, E-Trade was charging you $7.95 a trade.

Yes.

I think there was a perfect storm of three things.

Number one, the mobile revolution, as you point out.

Financial companies were late to adopt mobile.

And it was kind of like, I don't know if you guys remember this, but when Amazon first came out in the 90s, it was a little bit of a...

uh people had to get over a hump to be able to put their credit card into a website to buy things there was just like this idea that it's a new thing it doesn't really feel particularly secure of course now we understand it's probably much more secure than reading your number out over the phone but back then there was a lot of hesitancy and at the time when we started robin hood a lot of people didn't think that their serious financial matters could be done on a phone app

They thought phone apps were for games.