对话Robinhood创始人：散户的意志，胜过所有“聪明钱”

Source: Master Investor

Compiled by Odaily (@OdailyChina); Translated by Azuma (@azuma_eth)

Editor's Note: Robinhood recently launched Robinhood Chain, and the new wave of Meme coin mania based on this network has re-ignited the long-dormant cryptocurrency market. Some active investors even see it as the beginning of a new cycle for the industry.

Last week, Robinhood's founder and CEO Vlad Tenev appeared on the Master Investor podcast. During the show, Vlad Tenev outlined Robinhood's history and path to success. He discussed everything from Meme stocks to Meme tokens, looked ahead to the investment value of asset tokenization and private equity markets, and emphasized that "retail investors are the true smart money."

Below is the full transcript of Vlad Tenev's conversation on the Master Investor podcast (edited for length and clarity), compiled by Odaily.

Opening Remarks

Host: Welcome to the Master Investor podcast. I'm your host, Wilfred Frost. In this show, we speak with the world's most successful investors, business leaders, and political figures, sharing the experiences and insights behind their success, hoping to provide our listeners with more investment perspectives.

Today's guest is Vlad Tenev, the co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Robinhood. Robinhood is a financial trading app that truly pioneered commission-free trading and has brought many innovations to the industry since.

Founded in 2013, Robinhood went public in July 2021 with a market cap of around $32 billion. However, less than a year later in 2022, during a broad market downturn, the company's stock price fell roughly 80%, shrinking its market cap to about $6 billion. Now, Robinhood has made a comeback, with a market cap nearing $100 billion (currently slightly above $90 billion) and assets under custody reaching $380 billion.

They're back, and stronger than ever. We're thrilled to welcome Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev to Master Investor.

Vlad Tenev: I really enjoyed that trip down memory lane.

Host: Which part did you enjoy more? The ride up, or...?

Vlad Tenev: Probably now (laughs). Yeah, now is the most interesting part.

History Revisited: The 2022 Correction

Host: Let's start with that major correction. This isn't just Robinhood's story; it's the market's story.

You have a unique insight into the behavior of almost all traders, especially retail traders. Before that market correction, which also hit Robinhood's own stock, could you see signs of a bubble forming in your customers' trading activity?

Vlad Tenev: Yes, during the pandemic, I personally had my suspicions, though I wouldn't directly call it a "bubble."

If you recall, in 2020, the U.S. government began massively printing money, sending out stimulus checks directly to households. Yet, if you looked at various inflation forecasts at the time, no one expected a significant rise.

For example, long-term inflation expectations reflected in the 10-year Treasury yield were roughly around 2%. I remember thinking, how is this possible? The government is printing money, but inflation isn't rising.

The government didn't invent a perpetual motion machine; it can't defy economic laws. So, some assumption had to break eventually. To me personally, what happened later wasn't particularly surprising, even if it might have been a shock to the broader market.

By late 2021, inflation started to pick up noticeably, eventually hitting multi-decade highs, higher than any period in the last 30 years. Once you see inflation go from near zero to 9%, 10%, a policy response – raising interest rates, tightening monetary policy – becomes inevitable.

In my view, this was almost unavoidable and entirely foreseeable.

Host: So, can we simply say that the main cause of the correction was the subsequent high inflation and interest rate hikes? Or were there signs of overvaluation even before that?

I'm mainly referring to the Meme Stock mania. Looking back, shouldn't we have realized that these companies weren't profitable, yet their stocks were doubling in price in a very short time?

Vlad Tenev: I think these things are inherently interconnected.

Looking back at the timeline, the most famous Meme Stock rally happened in January 2021, just weeks after another massive round of fiscal stimulus in the U.S. We could see this clearly in Robinhood's data.

Every time stimulus checks went out, we'd see a massive influx of money into the market just days or weeks later. Looking back at Robinhood's huge growth during the pandemic, there were several key reasons.

First, people had almost nowhere to spend money. Most offline activities were shut down. Everyone was at home, making digital activities – including investing in the stock market – one of the few options still available.

Second, people had more time. They could learn about investing, follow YouTubers, and engage with financial content creators.

Also, interest rates were at zero. If you recall, in 2019, the Fed was raising rates, with the federal funds rate peaking above 2%. But in 2020, after COVID hit, they quickly cut rates back to zero.

On top of zero rates, we had multiple rounds of fiscal stimulus. All these factors were collectively driving the stock market up.

Of course, there was a sharp crash in March 2020. But it was short-lived, quickly forming a classic V-shaped recovery. Without such rapid, massive fiscal stimulus and loose monetary policy, the outcome could have been very different.

Host: Interesting. I was at CNBC then, and our ratings also soared during that time. As you said, people had nothing else to do, so their attention naturally turned to the capital markets.

Vlad Tenev: Exactly. Everything was closed except the markets.

Retail vs. Smart Money

Host: I brought this up because I want to ask later if you see similarities between today's market and back then. But before that, I want to touch on something else.

I've heard that your customers – Robinhood is largely retail-focused – have actually performed better in the market compared to institutions. We've interviewed many guests in recent weeks who talked about "Smart Money" vs. "Dumb Money."

Now, more and more people believe the true "smart money" is actually retail. They successfully bought the dip in October 2022, April 2025, and March 2026. Does this trend still hold? Are your customers still seeing the market more clearly and willing to buy when it's cheap?

Vlad Tenev: Absolutely, I've always believed that. A lot of the time, the so-called "smart money" might be a little too clever, and that's not necessarily a good thing.

Institutional investing has become increasingly indirect and abstract. Fund managers spend more time observing the macro environment, constantly adjusting portfolios based on various macro indicators. Often, they sell a stock for reasons completely unrelated to that company's fundamentals.

For example, they might sell simply due to macro factors like tariffs. Tariffs force them to reallocate capital, leading to a seemingly counterintuitive situation where they sell companies like Palantir, even if that company might be unaffected or even benefit from the tariffs.

Retail investors, on the other hand, have a much simpler thought process. They buy and sell stocks because they believe a specific company will do well in the future. So, when faced with macro events like tariffs or interest rates, retail investors often show more resilience.

They focus on "How is this company performing?" "Do I like its products?" "Is revenue growing?" "Are margins improving?" "What's its Rule of 40 looking like?"

This is still relatively sophisticated analysis, but they won't just dump all their stocks and rotate into fixed income because of a geopolitical event, which is exactly what many institutional investors would do.

Does Today's Stock Market Mirror 2022's Bubble?

Host: Let's talk specifically about Robinhood. As you mentioned, you went public in July 2021, shortly before the capital markets entered a very difficult period.

Do you feel you caught the last train? Because in the following years, the IPO market was not friendly to companies like Robinhood.

Vlad Tenev: Yes. The window for IPOs was essentially closed for several years. Since we later launched IPO Access, we had a front-row seat to the IPO market.

After it closed, it took a couple of years before a crack appeared. The IPOs of ARM and Instacart were arguably the first to reopen the market. I think that was in 2023. In a way, they were precursors to the full market recovery we saw later.

The IPO market truly reopened fully only last year.

Host: The reason I'm circling back to this is to ask: Do you see a sense of déjà vu with SpaceX's public listing now? Similar to Robinhood's situation – you went public just before the window closed. If you had waited a bit longer, you might have missed the chance, as the market then experienced a two-year downturn.

Now SpaceX is public, and people are wondering if all these other companies can follow. OpenAI has indicated they might not attempt an IPO for now. Does this feel familiar? How do you see the current market dynamics compared to back then?

Vlad Tenev: Everyone is asking the question: "Are we in an AI bubble?"

What complicates this is that a huge amount of capital is being poured into AI, and the industry has already developed relatively clear business models.

These model companies sell tokens to enterprise clients and individual users. OpenAI, for instance, has a substantial subscription business. So, unlike many past bubbles, AI companies today have real business models and growing revenues.

The real question has become: Will the enterprises paying heavily for AI shift from a "willing to experiment, cost-insensitive" phase to a more ROI-focused phase? If they start measuring ROI strictly, will revenue per customer grow or shrink going forward?

On the other hand, a significant factor is that a vast number of enterprises and consumers haven't even started using AI yet. For example, look at Claude Code; its user base is in the tens of millions, far from billions. So, there's still a very long growth runway. That's why, despite the real revenues today, I still feel the AI industry is in its very early stages.

So, I think the logic for judging IPO timing is different now. Another thing I've realized over the years is that, no matter the era, we always feel we're at a historically significant inflection point, on the verge of some unprecedented, massive change.

But looking back, these market cycles are actually getting shorter. For example, the IPO window closed in late 2021 and started reopening in 2023. On a longer timeline, this is just a sinusoidal cycle.

No phase is permanent. Even if the IPO window closes temporarily, it doesn't necessarily mean it will take a decade to reopen.

Host: From what you observe in your customers' behavior, do you see any warning signs now similar to the period before the 2022 correction?

Of course, SpaceX is clearly not a Meme Stock. It's a trillion-dollar company. But some might draw parallels, saying it, too, was pushed to a very high valuation without commensurate profitability and could fall again.

I'm not comparing it to GameStop. I'm asking if you see any signs in customer trading activity that remind you of the period before the 2020-2021 market adjustments?

Vlad Tenev: I think the companies our customers invest in today are predominantly large enterprises with real profitability, standing at the forefront of their respective industries.

You mentioned SpaceX, and there's also Nvidia, Tesla, and other chip companies. The entire chip sector has been performing quite well recently, and our customers are very interested.

So, the biggest difference between today and 2020-2021, I believe, is the presence of what I call a "nostalgia" investment sentiment. Many Robinhood users are Millennials. Back then, they were investing in companies they felt were "unfairly suppressed" by pandemic-era policies, like GameStop, movie theater chains, airlines, car rental companies. Even under the rosiest assumptions, it was hard to call these companies technological innovators. In fact, they were somewhat being disrupted by market trends, COVID, online entertainment, streaming, etc.

Today is completely different. Our customers are now predominantly investing in innovative companies that are actively disrupting their industries; they are at the very forefront. Of course, you can debate P/E ratios and other valuation metrics, but I think there's little debate that these companies are genuinely changing the world.

A Founder's View on the Path to Success

Host: Let's turn the focus back to Robinhood. Before discussing Robinhood today and its future, I'd like to look back.

In hindsight, what do you think was the fundamental reason Robinhood was able to rapidly gain traction and user adoption in its early days? I know commission-free trading is a big one.

Vlad Tenev: I believe it was the combination of three factors that made Robinhood's product resonate so widely.

First, as you mentioned, commission-free trading. At the time, other brokerages charged $7 to $10 per trade. We were completely free. So, we successfully opened up a new user base – primarily young people who didn't have a starting capital of one or two thousand dollars.

Later, we also attracted a lot of active traders. For someone trading a hundred or a thousand times a month, even if our platform had some functional or tooling gaps compared to professional brokerages, the economics of zero commission made Robinhood incredibly attractive. So, at least on the business model front, we had a winning advantage.

Second. Besides pioneering commission-free trading and establishing a model now adopted industry-wide, we also pioneered mobile-first trading. Robinhood was the true leader in the industry's shift to mobile. Before Robinhood, some brokers had apps, but mobile was an afterthought, an add-on.

We bet that mobile internet was the future and that people would primarily manage their financial lives through their phones. Not just for convenience, but because mobile inherently offers real advantages. So, we designed our product from the ground up for mobile. I believe Robinhood truly created the mobile brokerage category and made it the dominant form in the market. We've always been the leader in this space.

Third, and this is a crucial point, is the set of values that the company represents. Looking back at the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, many of our users were at a formative stage of life. I graduated college in 2008 and started graduate school. My co-founder Baiju had just started working.

Right around that time, Lehman Brothers collapsed. The Global Financial Crisis erupted. For our generation, the overwhelming sentiment was: the financial industry created this problem, but society as a whole paid the price.

Financial institutions made bad decisions. The costs of the crisis were, in a way, socialized, but those responsible barely faced any consequences. Meanwhile, the benefits of the post-crisis recovery flowed back to the financial industry itself, to those who already held assets, and to the "insiders" – the top 1%.

This later fueled the Occupy Wall Street movement and shaped a sense of disenchantment for an entire generation in the early 2010s. So, I believe people were desperately in need of a new solution.

Robinhood provided just that. It said, instead of abandoning the entire system, why not truly participate in it? That's why I believe the