20VC: Vlad Tenev on Robinhood's $85BN Resurgence | Tokenizing SpaceX & OpenAI | Building Nine Revenue Lines Over $100M | Why Crypto Will Be Robinhood's Biggest Revenue Line | Why Stablecoins Will Replace Banking Rails

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

Vlad Tenev is the Founder and CEO of Robinhood, the greatest story on Wall St of the last decade. In the previous 18 months, Robinhood has increased its net revenue by 58% to nearly $3B; a $500M loss in 2023 turned into a $1.1B profit in 2024. Robinhood's stock is up roughly 4x, lifting their market cap to north of $80B. Today, Robinhood has nine lines of business that do over $100M in revenue.

Agenda:

00:00 – "Tokenization Is The Biggest Innovation in Finance"

03:28 – How Robinhood 4x'd Its Market Cap in 8 Months

06:40 – AI Writes 50% of All Net New Code at Robinhood

10:02 – Why Robinhood Built a Secret ChatGPT for Support

12:11 – The One Customer Type That Transformed the Business

15:29 – "CoreWeave Is Retail's Way Into AI" — The Meme Stock Defense

18:05 – Inside Robinhood's Tokenized Private Shares Product

21:23 – "Capital as a Service" — Vlad's Wild Vision for Startup Fundraising

24:10 – The $100M Revenue Line Vlad Wishes He Could Kill

26:45 – Robinhood Is Building... Cash Delivery Trucks?!

29:55 – "We Were Shipping Nothing": Vlad on the 2020–2022 Culture Crisis

33:20 – What Line of Business Will Be the Biggest For Vlad in 5 Years Time

35:11 – The One Competitor Vlad Actually Respects

36:55 – From Men's Health to Japanese Toilets: Vlad's Weirdest Quickfire Yet

38:40 – "I Was in the Dumps": What 2022 Taught Vlad About Resilience

40:00 – Where Robinhood Is Headed: The Next Decade of Financial Infrastructure