The Near Death Experience of RobinHood

In January 2021, Vlad Tenev made a decision that nearly destroyed Robinhood. Wall Street called it betrayal. Customers called it cowardice. He has never fully explained what happened — until now.

Vlad Tenev built Robinhood into a financial titan, navigated the unprecedented GameStop crisis, and completely re-engineered the company to thrive after losing the vast majority of its market value.

He breaks down the brutal transition from bloated hyper-growth to a lean machine, why a "juicy falsehood is more powerful than a boring truth", and the 3 distinct phases of AI integration separating the winners from the dead.

Believe it or not, GameStop was not his hardest moment.

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Approximate Timestamps:

() The Unprecedented Crisis
() The Truth About GameStop
() Why False Narratives Win
() Surviving an 80% Market Crash
() Firing the Nice Founder & Going Founder Mode
() Rules for High Performance
() The Young Talent Advantage
() First Principles Storytelling
() 3 Phases of AI Integration
() Building AI That Reasons
() Fixing Private Market Access
() Deciding What to Build Next
() Surviving 1800% Inflation
() How Robinhood Makes Money
() Redesigning the Modern Bank
() The Definition of Success

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Check out Vlad:

investors.robinhood.com/management/vlad-tenev

linkedin.com/in/vlad-tenev-7037591b

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Thank you to the sponsors for this episode:

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And a Big shout out to Wouter Teunissen who prepared a book on Robinhood that helped me prepare!

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The Near Death Experience of RobinHood | Vlad Tenev, Co-Founder

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