Vladimir Tenev | Ep. 184

Summary

FULL SEND PODCAST – Vladimir Tenev | Ep. 184

Release Date: February 3, 2026
Host: SHOTS Media / Full Send Podcast Team
Guest: Vlad Tenev (Co-founder and CEO of Robinhood)

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Overview

This dynamic episode features an in-depth conversation with Vlad Tenev, co-founder and CEO of Robinhood. The discussion spans Vlad’s personal journey, the origins and growth of Robinhood, innovations in fintech, industry disruption, responses to major controversies (e.g., GameStop), new products, the intersection of crypto with equities markets, artificial intelligence developments (including Vlad’s AI company Harmonic), and broader societal questions. The tone alternates between candid, energetic, and thoughtful, filled with practical insights and memorable anecdotes.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Vlad’s Background & The Birth of Robinhood

• Origins and Inspiration
  • Vlad didn’t set out to become an entrepreneur; he studied physics and math at Stanford and initially pursued a math PhD at UCLA ([04:23]).
  • The 2008 financial crisis was a catalyst:

    “My first month in grad school, Lehman Brothers went under... My co-founder and best friend called me up... ‘I think we should [start a finance company].’ And I thought...why the hell not?” – Vlad Tenev ([05:20])

  • Robinhood was their third attempt after two quick failures. Vlad likens his journey to a “hedgehog digging…to eventually get this big structure” ([06:39]).
• Product Motivation
  • At the time, most brokerages had outdated mobile presence and high fees per trade ([07:41]).

    “Up until relatively recently, E*Trade was charging you $7.95 a trade.” ([08:21])

  • Robinhood’s key insights:
    1. Mobile-first revolution – most finance companies were late to mobile
    2. Elimination of commissions – trades went from $7–$10 to zero
    3. Societal momentum – post-crisis distrust in big finance opened the space for a new brand ([08:59])

    “Robinhood really resonated...more of an optimistic view... If we make it easier to plug as many people in...maybe that leads to a stabler and more prosperous society.” ([10:56])

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2. Growth & Disruption in the Brokerage Industry

• User Growth
  • As of this episode, Robinhood has ~27 million accounts, with rapid acceleration during market/cultural moments: Snap IPO, Brexit, 2016 Election, COVID-19, etc. ([12:00])

    “The Snap IPO... everyone was excited...it was our biggest day ever.” ([12:36])

• Industry Shifts
  • Robinhood’s fee-free model triggered a domino effect of legacy brokers slashing commissions, causing huge stock price drops for competitors and industry consolidation.

    “Within...a couple of weeks, all of our big competitors replicated our business model...E*Trade became part of Morgan Stanley, TD Ameritrade became part of Schwab.” ([15:39])

  • The “Blockbuster–Netflix” analogy is used to describe disruption ([14:53]).

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3. Evolution Beyond a ‘Beginner App’

• Product Expansion
  • Robinhood now targets both first-time investors and sophisticated traders.

    “We rolled out a product on desktop called Robinhood Legend...the best and fastest improving active trading product.” ([17:06])

  • Additional offerings:
    • “Robinhood Strategies” – a ‘just invest’ button for simple, automated investing ([17:33])
    • Expanded banking features, including a VIP “Robinhood Concierge” and a popular gold card ([30:19])
• Integration of Banking and Partnerships
  • Collaboration with GoPuff for cash delivery – turning a VIP experience (e.g., First Republic’s cash trucks) into a mass-market digital service. Piloting in California and New York ([19:00]).

    “You can get two grand delivered to your house within an hour... I did it, it was like 15 minutes.” ([21:45])

  • Aim to digitize all traditional banking with “no compromise” experiences ([20:13])

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4. On Cash, Crypto, and Tokenization

• Future of Cash
  • Vlad argues cash will persist for a while, likening it to the slow death of dial-up internet ([23:26]).

    “Are we still going to have [cash] in 25 years? I’d probably take the over.” ([24:37])

• Crypto Products & Tokenization
  • Robinhood is a top US player in retail crypto; “Robinhood Connect” competes directly with Moonpay as a fiat-crypto onramp ([39:47]).
  • Tokenization of Real World Assets:

    “We’ve tokenized about 2,000 public stocks in Europe. Also piloted private stock tokens (OpenAI, SpaceX)...the obstacle is regulatory clarity in the US.” ([41:19])

  • Tokenization is described as the future, especially for handling illiquid assets (artwork, private shares, collectibles), potentially transforming private markets ([45:46]).

    “From the standpoint of a normal consumer, they’re not going to be aware that their stocks are tokenized...but you’ll have instant settlement...” ([45:46])

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5. Robinhood as a Social & All-in-One Platform

• New Social Features: Whale Watch / Social Trading
  • Robinhood is launching “Whale Watch,” allowing users to follow the trades of public figures (politicians, investors) and fellow users who opt in ([26:10]).

    “It’s going to start out with politicians and other investors... but then also, if you’re on the platform and you choose to opt in, you could...” ([27:18])

• Portfolio Transparency

  “The great thing is...we have that signal of actual trades, so people know there’s some verification that you’re not just bullshitting.” ([28:52])

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6. Leadership Lessons & Company Culture

• Scaling Robinhood (3–4,000 Employees)

  “A lot of the conventional wisdom about leadership...is kind of wrong...Not enough is spoken about having really high standards... It’s not easy on people. It’s tough. It requires long hours, lots of attention to detail.” ([30:55])

  • Robinhood is positioned as high-impact, “do in one year what takes others 10–20 years” ([31:32])

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7. AI, Aristotle, and the Future of Automation

• Harmonic & Aristotle: AI for Math Reasoning
  • Vlad co-founded Harmonic, aiming for “mathematical superintelligence” – AI that can reason and verify math proofs.

    “There are six questions [on] the International Math Olympiad. Our model got five out of six...We’re now at the point where new knowledge is being created by AI...” ([52:10],[54:41])

• AI’s Impact: Opportunities & Threats
  • Single-person companies or “unicorns” (valuation over $1B) will emerge as AI dramatically lowers the barrier to entrepreneurship ([76:38]).
• Job Market Effects and Societal Change

  “There will be an explosion of new jobs and job families in the future…much more entrepreneurship, single-person companies. You’ll probably start seeing single-person unicorns very soon.” ([76:38])

  • AI likely to boost productivity; some tasks (e.g., telemarketing, basic legal review) are particularly vulnerable, while others (sports, live events, podcasting) are more resilient ([74:50],[80:24])
  • Education: AI teachers are conceivable, but Vlad voices mixed feelings—“Would you want your kid being taught by an optimized robot?” ([78:56])

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8. GameStop, Brand Backlash & Conspiracy Theories

• GameStop Controversy Reflection
  • The halting of GameStop trades in 2021 was a major brand hit—“probably not until 2025...did we fully recover.” ([34:50],[34:55])
  • False narratives (hedge fund collusion, “White House called me” etc.) spread easily and are hard to combat ([37:55],[38:32])

    “There was a Reddit post...The juicy narrative that’s simple and nefarious...took hold, and we didn’t do a good job quelling it.” ([38:40])

  • Lesson: “If you just keep winning, people will forget.” ([36:24])

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9. California, Policy, and the Business Climate

• California's Challenges
  • Vlad loves CA but acknowledges business difficulty, regulation, fiscal issues, and the impact of “billionaire taxes” possibly stifling entrepreneurship ([66:21]).

    “California...if we’re not careful...don’t want to lose that entrepreneurship. I’d like to see—push for—California to become the best place to do business.” ([67:06],[68:46])

• Billionaire Tax Critique

  “People’s perception...is someone got their money unfairly, like through inheriting...but in California, most billionaires are founders...” ([69:30])

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10. Culture, Collectibles, and Real World Assets

• Collectibles as Investments
  • Vlad collects watches, signed first edition books, and discusses potential future investment platforms for collectibles (cards, artwork, NFTs) ([49:39]).
• Physical vs Digital Consumption

  • “Digital book sales grew fast but then plateaued at something under 20% of total book sales.” ([50:23])

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11. AI Hardware & Human-Robot Interaction

• Most home robots look “terrifying” like the Terminator—Vlad would prefer friendly C3PO-style robots ([90:47]).
• Early consumer “AI as a service” tools are likely to be widely adopted before physical robots take off in the home ([91:56]).

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12. Societal Implications: AI Relationships, Education, and More

• Early experiments (1960s Eliza) saw people develop feelings for AIs—a phenomenon that persists with today’s tools ([94:38]).
• The blurring line between human interaction and AI in entertainment, advice, and companionship is both fascinating and “terrifying” ([95:49]).

  “Aristotle will not do this...Not at this point. I don’t think anyone has a romantic relationship with Aristotle.” ([95:56])

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Notable & Memorable Quotes

• On Robinhood’s Mission:

  “We weren’t saying the system is broken, let’s burn it to the ground. We’re instead saying let’s make it easier for everyone to be an owner in America’s best companies...” – Vlad Tenev ([10:56])

• On the GameStop fallout:

  “[It] hurt [the brand] quite a bit. We're still sort of recovering...there was the very sexy false narrative of hedge fund collusion...People love conspiracy theories. So that took hold, and we didn't do a good job of quelling it.” ([34:55], [38:40])

• On Industry Disruption:

  “It was a bloodbath...like—legacy carmakers all announcing, ‘we’re going fully electric’ in two weeks. That’s what happened in brokerage.” ([15:39])

• On the Promise of AI:

  “You’ll see single-person unicorns very soon...there will be more, not less, wealth created.” ([76:38]) “If you open [AI tools] to the public, people will do really amazing things.” ([77:40])

• On Downplaying Tech Dystopia:

  “I’m optimistic. There will be an explosion of new jobs...If you own the thing disrupting you, you're kind of rooting for it a little bit.” ([78:27], [84:50])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Robinhood’s Origin Story: [04:16]–[07:41]
• Mobile, Fees, and Trust Revolution: [07:41]–[11:52]
• Growth Milestones & Industry Impact: [12:00]–[16:33]
• Product Evolution (advanced tools, banking, GoPuff partnership): [16:48]–[22:44]
• On Future of Cash/Crypto/Tokenization: [23:21]–[46:03]
• Social & Community Features (Whale Watch, Portfolios): [26:07]–[28:52]
• Leadership Philosophy: [30:47]–[32:04]
• GameStop Incident & Reputation: [34:39]–[39:26]
• Crypto Strategy, Tokenization: [39:47]–[46:03]
• Collectibles & Alt Assets: [46:59]–[50:58]
• Harmonic & Aristotle (Math AI): [51:07]–[55:41]
• AI’s Impact, Industry, and Speculative Futures: [74:46]–[81:44]
• California, Regulation, Economic Policy: [66:14]–[71:51]
• Human/AI Relationships, Societal Change: [92:29]–[96:04]

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Additional Memorable Moments

• Physical Gold Card Flex: Real gold Robinhood card weighs 37g, costs $7,000 to replace ([56:07])
• First Bitcoin Experience & Missed Fortunes: Vlad almost bought Bitcoin at $2 but didn’t—now “kicking himself” ([60:03])
• Crypto Origin Stories: The “Bitcoin pizza” guy became a recurring meme ([59:49])
• Collectibles Boom: Discussion of Michael Jordan PSA 10 rookie cards, Pokemon, and signed science fiction books ([47:09]–[49:39])
• Societal Tech Shifts:

  “If you think about our ancestors a hundred years ago...what we do now would look like not real work.” ([76:38])

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Flow, Energy & Tone

The episode flows with familiar, brash energy typical of Full Send – quick back-and-forths, playful ribbing, and genuine curiosity. Vlad matches the informality but brings clarity, humility, and vision. Even technical subjects are broken down with real-world analogies, and the team isn’t afraid of tangents about AI girlfriends, collectibles, and culture.

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Summary Takeaway

Vlad Tenev offers rich insights into the evolution of consumer financial platforms, the consequences and opportunities of disruption, the challenges of leadership under scrutiny, and the dawn of an AI-powered society. Robinhood’s roadmap demonstrates a clear ambition to go far beyond “beginner investing”—toward a global, integrated, and democratized financial and technological future.

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For anyone who wants a snapshot of where fintech, AI, and digital culture intersect, this episode is an essential, entertaining listen.

Transcript

[Host]

Alright guys, welcome back to the full send podcast. We have Vlad, the founder of Robinhood. Very, very interesting episode. Before we get into it, you guys know the deal. The big game is this Sunday. I am absolutely nuking, nuking a Prize Picks lineup this weekend. I don't know exactly what it is. I'm still crafting it. Follow me on Prize Picks Heil. It'll be up there soon. I'm still making some last minute decisions. If you guys have any good tips or pick ideas. DM me on Instagram too because I'm gonna be chefing up my picks soon. But I'm taking the Patriots to win because on Prize Picks if you guys didn't know, obviously you can do your player lineup but you can also choose who's gonna win the big game. Absolute game changer for the app. Also, there's a max discount. You guys need to be aware of. Drake may he only needs one passing yard. Add that into your lineup, it's just gonna boost your entire pick. Also, if you guys have never tried out the Prize Picks app for some reason, use code Nelk. Plug that in when you download the app and put in just $5 and you're gonna get $50 for free and take advantage of code and elk. I am so fired up for this Sunday. This is like Prize Picks heaven. Download the Prize Picks app. It's available in so many different states including California and Texas. I'm going to be watching the game at the Prizepix headquarters. It's going to be electric.

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[Vlad Tenev]

I like that one too but I just, I don't want to get a John Mayer or like a watch named John Mayer. You know.

[Guest/Co-host]

Are you AP or no?

[Vlad Tenev]

I. I know a little bit.

[Guest/Co-host]

I don't have seen a ceramic skeleton.

[Vlad Tenev]

The Is it a royal Royal oak?

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah, I don't get paid quite enough yet to get that but yeah, hopefully in a year or two when these.

[Host]

Guys were in timepiece trading hat and.

Shirt on the last three.

[Vlad Tenev]

What do you have there. Is that also a presidential. Yeah, I know yours.

[Host]

So you're a big watch guy.

[Vlad Tenev]

I wouldn't say big. Got into it recently. Yeah, I like the mechanics and the engineering of it, you know. So I started just like getting complicated complications. Yeah. So sort of got into it through that.

[Host]

What's that piece you got there?

[Vlad Tenev]

This is a sky dweller.

[Host]

Wow.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah.

[Host]

That's nice.

[Vlad Tenev]

It's the most complicated Rolex ever made. So it's like a big, thick, complicated guy. Not to talk about other podcasts, but the acquired podcast.

[Guest/Co-host]

I do.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, yeah. Have you heard the Rolex?

[Guest/Co-host]

No, I have that one saved. I'm in the middle of the Google one. Right.

[Vlad Tenev]

Oh, the three parter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good one too.

[Guest/Co-host]

Really good one.

[Vlad Tenev]

Part three. Really good.

[Guest/Co-host]

Oh, it happened.

[Vlad Tenev]

But yeah, basically like Rolex hasn't made a new watch in like 75 years. This is kind of the first one.

[Host]

Really?

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah.

[Host]

Wow.

[Vlad Tenev]

Like a new fundamental mechanism. So this is a. It's a big. I think the sky dweller is like a relatively big deal because they just like, they're a company that. It's like a Porsche 911. Right. Once you get the basic design, you just kind of like makes small tweaks. So.

[Guest/Co-host]

So how are you the first one to have.

[Vlad Tenev]

No, no, I got this retail. Yeah. One of the last to have it.

[Guest/Co-host]

Well, we all got a rollies on, right? Yeah.

No.

What are you rocking?

[Host]

John's got Apple Watch.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah, I gotta get my steps.

[Host]

The president of Happy die with us for this one, John. We had to sub Salimo. And we also got Vlad, the CEO, co founder of Robinhood, the biggest. The biggest platform in the world, in your space. Right.

[Vlad Tenev]

Thank you, guys. Yeah. Glad to be here.

[Guest/Co-host]

Harmonic two.

[Host]

Harmonic two, we want to talk about that too.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

Do we know how many users Robinhood currently has?

[Vlad Tenev]

About 27 million. Yeah. Wow. 27 million accounts, mostly in the US but large and increasingly growing international presence too.

[Host]

I'm really interested.

[Vlad Tenev]

I just.

[Host]

It would be sick to take it back and just kind of get your story of how you started. How did you get into launching the app Robinhood?

[Vlad Tenev]

It was a bit of a meandering path. You know, when I. When I grew up, I didn't really know about entrepreneurship, so I came to the west coast to go to Stanford. And Stanford, as, as you guys probably know, is sort of a epicenter of entrepreneurial activity. I mean, you not only have the school, but you have the venture capital industry. You have a bunch of big Companies like Google and Meta now, but like a long history. So I came to Stanford to study physics and switched to math. So I was sort of like outside the typical entrepreneurial lane. You know, I didn't go there with the intent of being an entrepreneur, but you're exposed to it for sure. And I think that planted a little bit of understanding. So actually when I graduated Stanford, I went to UCLA to pursue a math PhD and my career goal at that time, or my perception of what I would be, would be a math professor. I thought I would be, you know, one of those guys that. Sitting in an office with a couch and a chalkboard thinking and coming up with new math proofs. And my first month in grad school, Lehman Brothers went under. So you had the start of the global financial crisis. And my, my co founder and best friend from college who had gotten a job, he was also a math and physics guy. So we met through that. He had gotten a job at an algorithmic trading firm. Basically you can think of it as a hedge fund that trades its own partners money, so no customers. But he had gotten a job at a algorithmic trading firm up in Marin county, just north San Francisco. His first month on the job. My first month in grad school, Lehman Brothers went under the start of the global financial crisis. So he calls me up and he said, hey, you know, this might sound like a crazy idea. If you ask your parents whether the global financial crisis would be a great time to start a financial company. They would probably think that it was a terrible idea, but I think we should do it. And I thought about it a little bit and I said, why the hell not? Let's go. Let's, let's. This, this is new. I'm young, let's try this thing. And one thing led to another. So Robinhood wasn't the first idea we had. It was actually the third we had. We had a couple that were relatively fast failures. But, you know, it's like an animal that I really appreciate is the, 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, what ended up happening with Robinhood. We, we sort of like started understanding the financial problem and then you get deeper and deeper and deeper and you can kind of draw a straight line to where we are today.

[Guest/Co-host]

Would you say? Part of the problem that you also solved at the time was most banks and most brokerages, their mobile presence was very like Bad, like, yeah. And I remember once when, you know, we have a mutual friend, Ron Rofey, and he was telling me about Robinhood, and I was like, well, what's the difference? You know, I think at the time I was trading on E Trade, he liked it way easier, way simpler. You know, this new generation is going to understand how to use this. And I remember when I download Robinhood, I was like, wait, that's it. So I think that's a big problem that you had solved back then. Now, now everyone's trying to duplicate it. You know, you see the.

[Vlad Tenev]

Well, also, and at the time, I don't know when you started, but up until relatively recently, E Trade was charging you 795A trade.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yes. Yeah. And you didn't have that. And I remember he told me that and I said, how's that possible? How do you not pay for a trade? He said, no, there's no fees, trust. Go buy something and you're not going to pay anything. So, yeah, so there was that, that, that pain point of the transactions. But think, you know, that was a big thing. You know, even going back to, like, social apps back then and everything, you just made everything so much more intuitive as well. And I think that that's where the young people were able to understand Robinhood.

[Vlad Tenev]

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. 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 Robinhood, a lot of people didn't think that their serious financial matters could be done on a phone app. You know, they thought phone apps were for games. And so we had to overcome that. The other thing was the commissions, right? Everyone else was charging 7 to $10 per transaction. We lowered it to zero, which was very disruptive. And then the third thing was people were just kind of like, disillusioned with the state of the financial system after the financial crisis. So the financial crisis sowed some seeds of disillusionment because a lot of people Saw their friends, maybe their parents, losing their jobs. And then the recovery over the next five to 10 years was very much unevenly distributed. So the financial crisis itself was kind of perceived as this sort of like, screw up by the financial industry. You know, there were these subprime mortgages, these risky bets that went the wrong way. And, you know, the entire market collapsed as a result of it. Nobody was punished, nobody went to jail. Right. And the recovery just accrued to the wealthiest people, the top 1%. And so you had a lot of trust. You had the Occupy Wall street movement, you had all this sort of like, societal frustration that manifested as just a lack of trust in the big financial companies. And so I think a new brand, the door opened for a new brand in the space. And I think Robinhood really resonated with people because it was a little bit more of a optimistic view. We weren't saying with Robinhood that the entire system is broken, let's burn it to the ground. We were instead saying if we it easier to plug as many people as possible and you become an owner in, you know, the best companies and what America's building, then maybe that could lead to not just you doing better as an individual, but like a stabler and more prosperous society.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah.

[Host]

When did you notice more active monthly users? Like, how did you get to 27 million? Is that what you said?

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, I mean, I think that, like.

[Host]

Was there a moment when you guys looked at the stats and you're like, holy shit, we have.

[Vlad Tenev]

Oh, how do we end up with 27?

[Host]

And how did you achieve. What did you notice that you guys did to achieve more?

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, I think the story of Robinhood was really, you know, consistent product improvements that led to compounding growth. There were also these moments that were sort of like these seminal moments where we had huge increases in growth in a relatively short amount of time. So, for example, I still remember the Snap ipo. And Snap was very much sort of like a Gen Z younger millennials company. And everyone was excited about it. And at the time, that was our biggest day ever, Right when Snap went public. And a lot of us don't remember it because it was so long ago, but yeah, that was a company of our generation going public for the first time. And then we had big elements like Brexit, the 2016 presidential election where we had spikes of growth. We had Covid, obviously, which was probably the first time we had growth that we weren't prepared for.

[Guest/Co-host]

I was going to say Covid was the first time I used Robinhood.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, I Mean, that was just like three big waves converging to make it so that investing goes from maybe like the 15th thing in line that people think about to like top three.

[Guest/Co-host]

Well, I was gonna say I had no background, didn't know what I was doing, got Robinhood. And it was just so easy to use. Like once you deposit. I remember I was like, Pen Gaming, Wynn Resorts for the two I bought. And I thought I was like, of course you wanna make money. But I was like, yo, this is so much fun and so easy to use. And everyone in my circle was kind of doing the same thing. So I guess just that time is when I started using it. I don't know if you ever used it, but that's really what changed for me. And then it makes you so interested. But it was just how easy it was to do it. I couldn't even figure out E Trade. I don't know if E Trade was tough, but something about.

Yeah, I know it's a dumb question, but I never hear about anyone using E Trade.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah. So what happened with the retail brokerage industry is you have a bunch of these companies that basically we're not prepared for Robinhood's entry into the space. And. But at first they sort of weren't taking us very seriously. They're like, well, you know, our customers don't really like mobile trading. They prefer to pay commissions. I think if you, if you read the reactions to, you know, the industry to Robinhood in the early days, it was a lot of just like. Like how Blockbuster. Right?

[Guest/Co-host]

Like how blockbuster looked at NetFL.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, I think very similar. And then what happened was in 2019, they had to scramble and pretty much all of our competitors had realized within a period of a couple of weeks that they had to replicate our business model, which was crazy. I'd never seen anything like that. I didn't think it was possible. But like one after the other, within the span of a couple of weeks, all of our big competitors replicated our business model. They said we're going to, were going to zero commissions. And what happened was TD Ameritrade and E Trade, when they announced this and they kind of had their hand forced because it wasn't just us anymore, but their, their other big competitors, their stocks went down by like 35% in one day. So I mean, it was, it was a bloodbath. The best analog that I can give and this hasn't happened was, let's say you're a legacy carmaker and all of the legacy car makers within the period of A couple of weeks said, we're going fully electric. That's like the equivalent of what happened in the brokerage industry. And as a result of that, two of the big players, E Trade and TD Ameritrade, couldn't continue on as standalone companies, so they got gobbled up by bigger conglomerates. TD Ameritrade became part of Charles Schwab. E Trade became a part of Morgan Stanley. So there's just a wave of industry consolidation into these, like, large asset managers.

[Guest/Co-host]

I feel like Robinhood has, and I was. The reason I was talking about, like the COVID is it has like this perception that it's like a beginner app. So it's like first users that want to get in the stock market. Would you agree that it still kind of has that representation of this is for new traders, people new to the game?

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, I, I think that for a while that was our number one focus. We were laser focused on being the best place to get started investing. And that was just all, all that, like 100 of our energy and you can think of our marketing, what went toward that. But it's not the case anymore. Now Robinhood has expanded and we have some of the most sophisticated tools for active traders. So. So some people go through different paths. Some people start investing in trading and then they want to get more sophisticated, more active. They start getting interested in things like options or futures, other derivatives. And, you know, they, you know, start trading on desktop with like their six screens with the charts and everything. So we have a path for those customers. We rolled out a product on desktop called Robinhood Legend, which I think is the, is the best and also the fastest improving active trading product that's been doing really, really well. And we have some people that, you know, they want to invest. They don't need to be at the absolute frontier. They just want to be able to buy stocks, build a diversified portfolio. We have tools for them. We rolled out this awesome product, Robinhood Strategies, which you can think of as a just invest button on your phone. I want to put money into an account. I want, you know, Robinhood to handle everything for me and put me in reasonable stuff, completely set it and forget it, reasonable tax optimizations, things like that. So we do that. And, you know, a big part of what we've also been doing recently is just expanding to fill all of your financial needs. Like, you should never have a reason to take money out of your Robinhood account. And we should be able to help you with good products across all of your financial needs.

[Guest/Co-host]

They got excited Speaking of taking money out of Robinhood account, about the new future. The.

Yeah, yeah.

The partnership with Gopuff.

[Vlad Tenev]

Oh yeah.

[Host]

That is crazy.

[Guest/Co-host]

Oh my God. That's just a cash delivery.

[Host]

Can you explain that to us?

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah. So, I mean, it's pretty simple. There's a product called Robinhood Banking, which I think is the best banking product out there right now. It's, it's different than the other neo banks. The other neo banks tend to go after a paycheck to paycheck customer, right. So it's sort of like you go to 711 to get cash. We wanted to do it differently. We wanted to give you a digital private banking experience. So imagine you're a high net worth individual and you go into sort of like your beautiful private bank lobby with the marble columns and mahogany desk and you get treated like a vip. That's what we want to recreate. One thing that wealthy people have is they're not going to like the ATM in the Tenderloin to get their cash, right? They have a truck delivering cash to their house. Actually there was a great company called First Republic Bank. Maybe you guys have heard of it. It didn't survive the banking crisis of a couple years ago, but their shtick was great service, private banking, high end. And they served a lot of founders and entrepreneurs in the Bay Area in particular, but not a great digital experience. Brick and mortar. And they had this, they had like the cash truck deliver money to your house so you don't have to go to an atm. So then we asked ourselves, can we take that experience, which is really nice and legitimately very useful, and make it available to the mass market. And then we realized, well, you can get your food delivered, you can get a car coming to your house to take you from place to place. Why can't we do the same for financial services? Why don't we? And there's been sort of this idea that the bank branch is obsolete and should be replaced by technology, but we're not quite there. There's still a lot of things you have to go to a bank branch for. Cash being the most important. So you can think of, of cash delivery as our first step and the biggest step to digitizing the entire banking experience with no compromises like it should be better not worse to remove the branch. And I don't think a lot of people have gotten that right about digital banking.

[Guest/Co-host]

But can you just like walk us through? So if I need a couple grand I can go on Robinhood. And then it's partnered with GoPuff. And I can get 2K just delivered to my house within an hour.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, you can. Within. I did it a couple weeks ago. It was like 15 minutes.

[Guest/Co-host]

Is two grand the max?

[Vlad Tenev]

I think two grand is currently. Currently the max. And it's still rolling out. I think it's live in California and New York and expanding from there. So there's nothing magical about the max. It's just we have to start somewhere.

[Host]

Is there an hour limit on it? Like, like, does it work at like 3am I think I'm just wondering for.

[Guest/Co-host]

You, why is that?

[Host]

I'm just wondering why would I need.

[Guest/Co-host]

Two grand a day?

[Host]

I'm wondering the hours of operation.

[Vlad Tenev]

We do get this question. I think right now it's not 24 7.

[Host]

Okay.

[Vlad Tenev]

But nothing stopping it from being 24 7.

[Guest/Co-host]

Are you guys the first ones to do this?

[Vlad Tenev]

I. I mean, I'm sure others have. There are ways to get cash delivered, you know, for First Republic, sort of like being.

[Guest/Co-host]

We have our ways as well.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah. But yeah, yeah. I don't think anyone's doing anything like what we're doing, which is sort of like a digital, almost like call it doordash experience for. For getting your cash.

[Guest/Co-host]

I think that's the coolest thing ever. Nothing's worse than having to go sit at the fucking bank and wait for maybe 30, 45 minutes to get.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah. Also if you think about. If you're. If you're in a major city and you need cash and let's say, like you're a young woman, right, and you have to go to the atm, there's a legitimate safety concern. Right. Where it's like, well, I need to find someone to go with me. This is kind of sketchy. A lot of the ATMs are just covered in graffiti. You have the card skimmers. So, yeah, I think it's. Obviously people like to talk about it, but I think there's legitimate usefulness for a lot of people.

[Host]

What's the future of cash in America? Will we ever be like a cashless society?

[Vlad Tenev]

I think that's a really good question. I think that a lot of people really like cash. It's still very large. I forget what the latest statistic was. I had it when we announced this. This product. I want to say it's like a huge amount of money, like tens, hundreds of billions, maybe even more are transacted in cash on an annual basis. Now their percentage is going down, but is it going to go to zero? I mean, you probably. I don't know if you guys heard this, but I think AOL just shut down Dial up like a couple months ago.

[Guest/Co-host]

I thought I saw that.

[Host]

I thought it's a parody Internet.

[Guest/Co-host]

I saw something on Hex.

[Host]

Yeah, Internet.

[Vlad Tenev]

I thought dial up Internet was one of the leading revenue streams for AOL up until, like, relatively recently. And I think they just shut it down.

[Host]

So who the hell is still using Dial Up?

[Vlad Tenev]

I don't know.

[Guest/Co-host]

I thought it was a gym.

[Vlad Tenev]

Mostly older people. Wow. Right. Like, if you're in your 80s and maybe you don't really need the. You're used to it working a certain way. So will we have cash in a hundred years? Probably not. I mean, I'd be surprised. But are we still going to have it in 25 years? I'd probably take the over.

[Guest/Co-host]

Well, just real quick too there. It's like, it pisses me off. These restaurants that aren't cashless. You can't even use cash at certain restaurants. I don't know if you've had that experience, but it's the biggest pain in the cash.

[Host]

It's kind of worse when it's cash only, though.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, you get both.

[Host]

Cash only is more in New York.

[Vlad Tenev]

You know, you still go to a lot of places that are cash only.

[Guest/Co-host]

This is kind of off topic, but one of my favorite phases, I think it was during COVID was like the Forex trading. Did you ever see that? Where people would gather at like a house and they would raise money for Forex?

[Vlad Tenev]

Forex, like currencies. Trading currencies.

[Guest/Co-host]

Do you have any knowledge on that?

[Vlad Tenev]

I know what Forex trading is.

[Guest/Co-host]

People really came after it for being like the biggest scam. I was just curious if you have any opinion on it.

[Vlad Tenev]

I don't think trading currencies is inherently like, nefarious. A lot of people do it, a lot of institutions do it. I think the challenge comes in when you put in a lot of leverage and. And if you couple the leverage with, you know, selling trading courses and other services to people that don't really understand it. So, you know, there's a lot of people on the Internet that are, you know, promoting trading courses and strategies. Yeah, yeah. There's. There's no shortage of unscrupulous characters, for sure. As with anything, anytime you have a tool and the potential to make money, I think there's people that abuse it.

[Guest/Co-host]

You guys are coming out with a cool future, though. Robin Hood social.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

Right. And what's that? I saw something. I don't know if it's out yet, but the whale. Whale watch.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

Is that.

[Vlad Tenev]

Is that out yet, like, or it's coming out soon? Yeah, we're, we're kind of like putting the finishing touches on it internally and testing it. So we have it internally and the next step is to start rolling it out. And I think that's part of our thinking. For traders for a long time, Robinhood was a tool, so you'd get the idea elsewhere and then you just go on Robinhood to trade because it's low cost and easy to use. But I think we're increasingly going to move to all in one platform where you're not only trading, but you also get the idea for the trade either from our AI tools like Cortex or our community is Whale Watch.

[Guest/Co-host]

Like, we, we have a partner price picks where you can go on the app and you can see like someone's picks for Sunday football.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

So Whale watch, is that like on. I can go on Robin Hood and hypothetically see what Elon Musk is buying.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah. Or Nancy Pelosi.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah, Nancy Pelosi.

[Host]

That's what you got to watch, right?

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Vlad Tenev]

So it's going to start out with, you know, politicians and other investors that have to report their, their trades. But then also if you're on the platform and you're trading and you choose to opt in, you could, so I characterize that way.

[Guest/Co-host]

Portfolio.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, you could opt in your portfolio.

[Guest/Co-host]

And so I'll be following his, but I will not be following yours because when I follow your price fix.

Oh, it's bad.

[Vlad Tenev]

Well, then, well, you know, there's the inverse. Kramer. Right. So sometimes someone that trades badly. Yeah, because you could just do the opposite. But yeah, and, and the other great thing about it is we're adding more assets. So we have stocks, we have crypto, we've got options in future futures. Now we have prediction markets. You know, I think one of the reasons that these things haven't worked particularly well in the past, talking about sort of financial, business, social networks, is the variety of content isn't super rich. But with prediction markets now, you have trades around pretty much anything. So I, I think that's going to be a great tool for, for, for social trading and social media.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah, I think I'll do good there. But I do think there's a big void of portfolios. You know, my friends will always ask me, like, what are you buying? What were you looking like? You know, instead of like texting them like, oh, look at this specific, you know, sector or this company. I would love for them to just follow me. Yeah, yeah. Without knowing the balance, just like this is what I hold, you know?

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah. And I think that's the great thing about it and why Robinhood is uniquely positioned as a social media platform. It's because we have that signal of what are your actual trades, so people know that there's some verification that you're not just bullshitting.

[Guest/Co-host]

Right.

[Vlad Tenev]

Putting random things out there.

[Guest/Co-host]

How fair is it for, like, a beginner on Robinhood that's a college kid in his room, as opposed to, like, a billionaire getting access to, like, IPOs and stuff like that?

[Vlad Tenev]

I think the most fair in the industry by a wide margin. In fact, one of the criticisms we get with IPOs are that we hear from a lot of people, hey, I've got $5 million or more in my Robinhood account, and I got one share of this ipo. I think there's a balance. If anything, the feedback that we're getting is we've gone too far the other way and that we actually don't value or really prioritize. Customers that have been with us and grown with us and we've shifted a little bit. I mean, we've heard that feedback, and it's like if someone started with us when they were 20, and now they have a big portfolio now they use us for a lot of stuff, they probably should be getting a higher tier of support. And so we launched programs like Robinhood Concierge. Obviously, we've got Robinhood Gold.

[Guest/Co-host]

I think I'm still on the waiting list for that one.

[Vlad Tenev]

For Robin Hood Concierge for Gold. Oh, you're for the Gold card, you mean?

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah, for the Gold Card for a while.

[Vlad Tenev]

We can hook you up with that.

[Guest/Co-host]

That's why I came here.

[Vlad Tenev]

Card's been very popular. Yeah. We've been rolling it out aggressively. I think we announced recently, crossing half a million card holders. So the problem is more and more people keep joining the list. We can't. We can't roll out fast enough.

[Guest/Co-host]

Been looking at this for a while, Vlad. Yeah, I'm still.

[Host]

How many employees does Robinhood have?

[Vlad Tenev]

It's between three and 4,000.

[Host]

Wow. So what have you learned as you've scaled on, like, the best attributes as a leader?

[Vlad Tenev]

I think a lot of the conventional wisdom about leadership that you read about is kind of wrong. Yeah. I think you really have to look at that stuff from first principles. Yeah. Because there's a lot of things that are safe to talk about publicly, like being nice and sort of, like, being employee friendly and not enough is spoken about, like, having really high standards. I think this is changing a little bit. I think recently the environment is shifting to where more and more people are, are talking about this stuff. But getting, achieving really hard things is, is not easy on people. It's tough. It requires long hours, it requires like a lot of attention to detail. So, yeah, I don't think Robinhood is like a great place to optimize for work life balance by any means. It's a place where people come to work intensely and they want to have a lot of impact and they want to do in one year what would take a normal company 10 to 20 years.

[Guest/Co-host]

How far out are we from AI dropping, like tips on when to buy or sell?

[Vlad Tenev]

You can do it right now. You can ask Rock for a stock tip. It'll give you a stock tip now whether it's trustworthy and whether it'll make you any money. That's, that's another question. There was a study done, I think it was last year, benchmarking performance of AI models in picking stocks. And, and it was funny it. They underperformed because they missed the AI boom. So, yeah, I think it's a tricky thing. I mean, if everyone's using AI to buy the same stocks, will those stocks outperform in the long term? I think unquestionably people are using it across the entire life cycle. Idea generation. And then some enterprising folks are automating things and building these bespoke strategies.

[Guest/Co-host]

Robin also has that feature when I'm looking at a specific stock that I hold. Says others have also purchased similar stocks. Yeah, and these are like similar stocks to what you're holding here, which is pretty much very similar to the answer I get from Grok as well. I'll tell Gro I'm holding this company. What are some other companies that I should be looking at similar. Then I'll go into Robinhood and Robinhood's recommending me those same. Similar.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, that one people also bought.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah, yeah, that's what it's people. Which is pretty, pretty cool.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah. We can look at, with our system, overlap between holding of different stocks and we can just surface that information.

[Guest/Co-host]

That's a great place to look at like other stocks you want to get or, you know, if you're looking at, let's just say, for example, Tesla, like people who hold Tesla. What else are they buying as well? And that's. And I assume it's real data, right?

[Vlad Tenev]

It's real data. Yeah. One of the things we work really hard to do is we don't want to outside of like certain circumscribed areas. We don't want to make recommendations or push customers in a certain direction, but we want to give them all the information that they're looking for to make the decisions. So we have some areas where we do make recommendations like first trade or you know, upon request. And then Robinhood Strategies is obviously a fiduciary advisory product. And then we, we also acquired an advisory platform, trade pmr where you could get a human advisor to help you with your finances. That's cool. But yeah, by and large the core of the offering is self directed, meaning you just use it to get information, but the trading decision has to come from the user.

[Guest/Co-host]

One of my favorite phases was roaring kitty with GameStop. And I know that Robinhood faced a little bit of backlash for not being able to buy GameStop at a time. Is that accurate?

[Vlad Tenev]

That's right, yeah. For one day you couldn't buy GameStop.

[Guest/Co-host]

And what did that do to the Robinhood brand?

[Vlad Tenev]

Overall, I think it hurt it quite a bit. I mean, to some degree we're still sort of recovering from that or I should say it was probably not until 2025 that we, you could say, fully recovered from, from that hit. And that was a tough moment for me. You know, that was five years ago. So I know now I look like a confident, you know, executive that's on top of everything. Back then I was kind of a kid, you know, and it's sort of like I'd been in the lab working on this software, not really talking to the media or anything.

[Guest/Co-host]

You weren't public facing until after.

[Vlad Tenev]

And suddenly it's like, oh, you got to go on cnbc, you got to go to testify in front of Congress and damn, I mean, I think if, if I had to do that now, it would probably have been much better handled because I think the core of the Gamestop issue, like if you look at what actually happened, it was like risk management, us complying with regulations, our hand was forced essentially. And I think our competitors basically had to do the same thing, but they kind of did a better job of explaining it, plus they were just much smaller. So we were the brunt of all of the anger. Even though it affected pretty much everyone in the industry. Yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

What I like about you though, Vlad, is during that moment, because I remember and I even remembering you go on X or Twitter at the time, going on tv and there was two things. It could have either been the end of Robinhood or you keep winning. And I always tell everybody, either content creator, friends, founders, and I always Even talked to Ron about this is like, he won if you just keep winning. Because the whole GameStop situation, which I don't think we need to talk about much longer because it's five years ago, but I forgot about it until, like, last night, like, we were talking about topics and I even went to Grok. I was like, hey, what are tough questions we could ask Vlad? And the first thing that came up was GameStop. I'm like, GameStop, that was so long ago. But, like, people forget. If you keep winning, people will forget. And, you know, and that's what you did with Robinhood. And I'm not here to gas you up. I say this behind your back. All Ron, is, you know, if you just keep winning, people, and learn from mistakes, of course, don't ignore the mistakes, but learn from the mistakes. Fix them, but just keep winning. And I think that's where Robinhood's at.

[Vlad Tenev]

Right now, to some degree. It's almost. It's good in a way that it came up with that because it just means we haven't had any big controversies. Knock on wood. Where's the sword? Yeah. In the past five years.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah, right. That's the best crime could come up with is asking about GameStop five years ago. And like, God bless you.

It was a big moment, too. Like, I remember when it went down. And I'm just saying, like, I. I'm not throwing shady. I'm just saying it was like, you know, like a lot of people saying, why are you still on Robinhood when that happened? So.

[Vlad Tenev]

Oh, no, for sure. I mean, it was a big brand hit. To your point, I think that what happened was there was the very sort of sexy false narrative of hedge fund collusion. Like, oh, Robinhood was colluding with all these guys, and there was a rumor, I don't know if you guys remember this, that the White House called me and asked me to shut down trading of GameStop. Now, this thing went nuts on social media. There's a Reddit post about Joe Biden in the White House. Made a call to. To Vlad Tenev.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah.

[Vlad Tenev]

Some fake engineer had posted it saying, I overheard the conversation. The White House was. Was on the horn.

[Guest/Co-host]

Great source.

[Vlad Tenev]

And. And Sequoia Capital, one of our investors, had to publish a statement publicly saying that they weren't involved in this White House Robinhood thing. So, you know, the. The juicy narrative that's, like, simple and sort of like nefarious. People love conspiracy theories. So that took hold, and I think we didn't do a good job of, like, Quelling it.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah.

[Vlad Tenev]

So you ask a random person on the street, they're like, oh, well, GameStop. Wasn't that just like the hedge funds and Robinhood? But yeah, no matter how much we do or what we say, people have that. That thought. Yeah. And it's hard to dispel the.

[Guest/Co-host]

It was five years ago and you still got to hear about it.

Well, thanks to you.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Vlad Tenev]

It's a little bit less sticks.

[Guest/Co-host]

Right, Yeah, I forgot all about that.

What are you doing now with cryptos becoming so popular? Moonpay does a great job. That's a platform I use. And what are you doing to compete with the Moon Pays of the world?

[Vlad Tenev]

Well, so moonpay, their number one business is a fiat on and off ramp. Right. So if you want to get dollars into native crypto, into like a wallet, moonpay is almost like an infrastructure provider. And we have a product that is competitive, maybe a little bit less known, but it's called Robinhood Connect. We partner with some of the biggest wallets. We use it obviously for. For ourselves and significantly cheaper on average. And I'd say crypto and Robinhood evolving in a couple of different ways. And it's a big business. Like, if you look at us by market share for retail crypto, we're kind of like top two, but pretty close to number one in the US and we're expanding outward. The thing that I care most about is actually using crypto technology to power real things. So tokenization of real world assets, we call it. Can we take a real asset like a stock or a private company, which is my. The thing I'm most excited about, and put it on crypto technology where it benefits from 247 trading, global liquidity and just like integration with the existing large crypto customers.

[Guest/Co-host]

Doing that a little bit in Europe right now, right?

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah. We've tokenized about 2,000 public stocks in Europe. We also piloted private stock tokens. So we were the first to tokenize OpenAI and SpaceX shares. And we gave them out to European customers in the form of a giveaway, which worked incredibly well. So we've got the technology to tokenize private companies and make them tradable 24, 7. Just like stocks. The obstacle is really regulatory clarity.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah, I was gonna say when's that come to the US but are you.

[Vlad Tenev]

We're working on it. Yeah. With the US there's two barriers, actually. And in Europe there's less incidentally, in the US you have to solve private company accreditation laws that make it so that right now you have to be an accredited investor, basically a high net worth individual to invest in private companies. And there's also tokenization of securities, which falls into crypto market structure, which right now, right now you're not allowed to actually tokenize securities in the US and make them available to retail, which is actually why you have so many meme coins. It's sort of, you know, connecting real stuff to crypto technology is illegal. And that's why, that's why the, the lion's share of the market in the US is just things that aren't backed by real value on crypto technology.

[Host]

All right, guys, I want to interrupt the pod really, really quick to tell you guys about Moonpay. Whenever I'm doing anything in the crypto space, if I'm buying crypto, if I'm selling crypto, I am using the Moonpay app. What I love about the Moonpay app is they have every form of payment on the planet. If you guys are new to crypto too, you can own a piece of a bitcoin for as little as $20 and you can get it in seconds. Also, Moonpay's been around now for six years, so they're forming some crazy partnerships in the space. One of their partnerships is with Trust Wallet. Trust Wallet is one of the most popular self custody wallets in the world. With Trust Wallet, you control your crypto fully, no compromises. And thanks to Moonpay, you can fund your wallet instantly using your favorite payment methods. It's the fastest way to go from cash to crypto, all while keeping full control of your assets. Also, every Monday, we do Moonpay Mondays on our Nelk boys Instagram where we give away a thousand in bitcoin. All you got to do is just DM us your Moonpay Wallet address. We post proof that we send a thousand every single Monday. So if you're looking to get into crypto or you want a shot at winning a thousand in bitcoin every Monday, just download the Moonpay app, do your own research, obviously, and shout out to Moonpay, the best crypto app in the game.

Let's get back on the podcast. You don't have to say which one, but have you like, fired on a meme coin?

[Vlad Tenev]

I have some meme coin exposure, yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I won't, I won't recommend my favorite one because anytime I do that, I get a bit of, I get a little bit of grief from pretty much the fans of all the other coins. I love all of my, all of my meme children equally.

[Host]

What makes you, like, want to get a meme coin?

[Vlad Tenev]

If I really believe in the community behind it, yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of. I think a lot of people are flipping about meme coins and they're like, what's the point of this? But I think if, if you actually look at what's happening here, you have someone with the. The ability and the power to create an asset that trades 24. 7 globally, gets billions of dollars of liquidity in five minutes or less. It's a huge capital markets innovation. I mean, compare that to what it looks like to IPO a company. You have to spend a year and tens of millions of dollars and work with teams of lawyers. And by the way, it's still only available in the US on a limited set of exchanges, primarily during east coast working hours. So I think if we combine these two things, it becomes really interesting. And that's where I think Robinhood's focus is on crypto. It's not actually the pure crypto technology. It's the intersection. How can we apply crypto technology to trading and holding assets that have fundamental utility that people really care about?

[Host]

Is that the future of stocks, tokenization?

[Vlad Tenev]

It's the future of private markets, for sure. I think from the standpoint of a normal consumer, they're not going to be aware that their stocks are tokenized. I mean, they'll just see that.

[Guest/Co-host]

It'S just a. Bella.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah. If you look at it right now, Robinhood has a pretty good experience for trading stocks. Of course, one of the benefits of tokenization is another GameStop cannot happen. But of course, nobody is sitting there worrying about another GameStop until it happens. Right. But, yeah, you'll have instant settlement, which is one of the technical reasons why the whole GameStop fiasco occurred. So there's certainly benefits. But I think if you ask, what can I not do now that will be made possible by tokenization? You'll be able to tokenize a private company. You'll be able to tokenize a Picasso or a work of art. So it's these, like, assets that aren't liquid right now that are really hard to trade. You can plug them into an existing infrastructure that instantly makes them tradable 24, 7 and liquid.

[Guest/Co-host]

This is kind of off topic, but something that's so hot right now, and I just see it every day, and I'll use Logan Paul as a specific example. Yeah, but you've seen, like, his Pokemon card that's worth $5 million.

[Vlad Tenev]

I have seen that. Yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

Do you do any sort of like the card investment? Because it's like really hot right now.

[Vlad Tenev]

Me personally, I'm not a Pokemon card collector. But there is a class of investments which are sort of like investments that also have utility. So it's not just sitting there custody in an account somewhere, but you know you're also wearing it. It's like a piece of jewelry or you know, you have it in your house like a piece of art. Even real estate maybe is, is in that category. So there's definitely like investments that you want to see in a spreadsheet and you want to watch the value go up and down. There's certain investments that are like collectible or, or have utility that you also want to use. So we're definitely thinking about that. And the goal would be for Robinhood to give you the ability to invest in, in everything. And not just invest in everything, but anything that relates to money moving in and out or being held in your account. Robinhood should help you with whether we're holding it for you or you're doing it yourself. And you should expect tokenization. I mean all of those assets are in scope collectibles which you can think of As, I mean NFTs. One of the original crypto use cases was digital collectibles. So tokenization can help you digitize real world collectibles as well.

[Guest/Co-host]

I do think a card to look at though. Michael Jordan PSA 10 rookie.

You have one?

I don't have one, but there's only like 300 something of them. And a year ago they were worth 250 grand each. The least expensive one right now you could find is 600 grand. There's only like 300 of them. I think there's like a whole economy around Michael Jordan. I say Michael Jordan. There's a lot of athletes but like Michael Jordan's just always going to be a legend.

Dana has one. I'm only sure.

[Host]

Yeah, he has a lot. I have a Charizard but it's like PSA negative one. It's like it's so bent.

[Guest/Co-host]

I have a Lou Gehrig rookie card.

No way.

I swear.

You did or you Dad?

[Vlad Tenev]

I did. I did.

[Guest/Co-host]

That shit's gone.

[Vlad Tenev]

Any Beanie Babies?

[Host]

Oh yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

Are those up in value too?

[Vlad Tenev]

I mean I, I think so.

[Guest/Co-host]

I, I saw something about someone asked me like if I'm into Beanie Babies. I just don't know enough about it. I just think Michael Jordan will always and forever be a living icon and.

Yeah, yeah, I'd agree with you.

But not a living icon, just a legend.

[Vlad Tenev]

For a while I got into collecting signed books, like signed first editions.

[Host]

What do you got?

[Vlad Tenev]

I've got some good science fiction. I've got some signed Asimovs. Heinlein. Are you guys science fiction fans?

[Guest/Co-host]

No.

[Vlad Tenev]

Asimov's Foundation. It's. Yeah. Legendary books. So.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah. Sometimes. One interesting thing, if you had to guess what percentage of books sold in the US are digital, like Kindle version versus physical, what, what would your guess be?

[Guest/Co-host]

1% are digital.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah. What do you think it is? Do you think most are digital or.

[Guest/Co-host]

No, I feel like it's got to be digital.

[Host]

I think physical.

[Vlad Tenev]

I think most people would say it's like digital just ate into the market. But north of 80 are still physical.

[Host]

I believe that because if you're going to read a book, if you're into reading, you want a physical book that you can.

[Vlad Tenev]

And most people that buy books don't actually read them. It's like a gift. That's something to put in your bookshelf. It's like a piece of art.

[Guest/Co-host]

Like 90 of my books are there.

Yeah.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

I have a huge bookshelf and people come over like, do you read all that? Like, no.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

I don't even know how I got it.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah. So, like, digital book sales grew fast initially, but then it kind of plateaued at, I think, something under 20% of total book sales.

[Guest/Co-host]

What else are you working on? Like any AI companies, you're going to start up Harmonic.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

All right. Yeah, but we should talk about Harmonic. I mean, it's pretty fascinating.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah. A couple years ago, I started a company called Harmonic where I'm exec chairman of. So I don't have an operating role, but I'm still very involved. And Harmonic's role, Harmonic's goal is to build mathematical superintelligence. And what we mean by that is AI that can reason mathematically and where. Where you can verify 100% of the reasoning. So no hallucinations. And the first area where we sort of like pointed harmonic at is. Well, the end goal is to actually solve really big important problems in math and science research level, big problems. But where we've started was math competitions. So there's this high school competition called the International Math Olympiad. You're nodding. Maybe you're a. Are you a former mathlete?

[Guest/Co-host]

Hell, no.

[Host]

Grade 4.

I ran times tables.

[Vlad Tenev]

Okay.

[Host]

But after that, when it came to.

High school, when it came to, like, calculus and shit, I. Yeah, yeah. So timestables days, I was popping.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah. So around grade Six. There's this thing called Math counts, which is sort of like the beginning of it. Then you go into the math competition circuit, so you can think of it as like Olympic qualifiers. So there's the amc, there's the amy, the American Invitational Math Exploration. If you do well on that, you go to the usamo, the USA Math Olympiad. So I, I tapped out at the amy. That was like my rung of. That was my ceiling. And then if you do really well on the USA Math Olympiad, they take like the best five people and they represent the US at the International Math Olympiad, the imo. So this year Aristotle, which is harmonics math model, got a gold medal on the imo. So there are six questions. They're ridiculously hard. Our model got five out of six of them correct. And then we were like, okay, we don't want to just keep this as a research result. Let's open it up, let's actually release it to the public and see what people do with it. And people have done some incredible things. There's these unsolved math problems, research level called Erds problems. Have you guys heard of erds? So he was the world's most prolific mathematician. He would travel around the world and basically stay at his friend's places for a couple of weeks. And his friends were all mathematicians and he would work on their math problems with them. So he was kind of like a traveling mathematician. He was so prolific that there's a thing called an Erdos number, which is basically your erds number is 0. If you've got, well, Paul erds number is 0. If you'Ve co authored a paper with him, it's 1. If you'Ve co authored a paper with someone that's co authored a paper with Paul Erds, it's two and so on. So it's kind of like the Kevin Bacon number. How many degrees away from Kevin Bacon? If you're in a movie with him, your Bacon number is one. Funny enough, there's also a thing called an Erds Bacon number where you add the two and there is someone with an Erds Bacon number of three. Wow. So they co authored a paper with Paul Erdos and they were in goodwill hunting, so they were like 2 degrees away from Kevin Bacon. Anyway, over history, there are about 1100 Erdos problems that were collected from his travels. And you know, there's a guy that made a website collecting them and everything. About half of them are solved already, half of them are unsolved. And Aristotle, our model, either solved or assisted in the solving and Verifying of something like 11 of them. So it's like. It's crazy. And, you know, I would have guessed it would have taken maybe a year after us getting the IMO gold medal to make these types of contributions, but it took two months. So we're now at the point where, like, new knowledge is being created by AI and it's not just. Just pulling things and. And putting them together.

[Guest/Co-host]

Dude, I wanna. Can we go to Vegas and play blackjack after this?

[Vlad Tenev]

I feel too.

[Guest/Co-host]

I feel like you've spent some time playing blackjack.

[Vlad Tenev]

I have played a little bit of blackjack. I. I don't think. I don't think I'm particularly good.

[Guest/Co-host]

Aristotle. We gotta keep.

Well, he's a good math guy.

[Vlad Tenev]

I was just. What was going through my mind was. I don't think we can use Aristotle to play back blackjack.

[Guest/Co-host]

I don't know if you ever heard this. You remind me of the guy from 21. The other one's at MIT.

[Vlad Tenev]

I have seen that movie. Yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah.

[Host]

That movie's sick.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, I love that movie. Yo, Vlad, do you have the gold card on you? Taylor, does you guys see the Robin Hood gold card? No, it's actual real gold.

[Guest/Co-host]

Wow. What are your thoughts on gold in general? Gold and silver through the roof these days.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah. That's pretty crazy, isn't it?

[Guest/Co-host]

Robin Hood pushes buying gold, don't they?

[Vlad Tenev]

We do have. I mean, to your point about. Sometimes you have an investment that you want to hold in your hand. Physical gold you can get through Robinhood. And it's been incredibly popular. Oh, yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

Wait, that's not the waiting list.

[Vlad Tenev]

I'm on the VIP banking client.

[Guest/Co-host]

Let me see that.

[Vlad Tenev]

Robin Hood heavy.

[Guest/Co-host]

And how do I get in that?

[Vlad Tenev]

Ask Mr. Tenant.

[Guest/Co-host]

This is a huge flex.

How much gold is this?

[Vlad Tenev]

I think that's 37 grams.

[Guest/Co-host]

So what happens if I lose this and I gotta replace it?

[Vlad Tenev]

You'll get the card's worth 7K.

[Host]

All right. How do we get one?

[Guest/Co-host]

That's why I can't have this. Because I'll lose this. If you leave this at a bar.

[Vlad Tenev]

If you lose it, you can't spend any more money. But you gotta it.

[Guest/Co-host]

So is it 7k to replace it?

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, you can replace it with a solid gold one. You can also get. That's Vlad's, a less expensive but still very nice metallic gold. And there's also a 24 karat gold variant that's sort of halfway in between.

[Host]

What happens when you pull this out at a date to pay?

[Vlad Tenev]

This is actually 10 carats.

[Host]

That probably works like a charm.

[Vlad Tenev]

It goes well.

[Host]

Yeah.

[Vlad Tenev]

The one disappointing thing is that people pay for so much. So much with Apple pay and digital. Yeah. That you have less occasion to actually take your card out.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah, yeah.

[Vlad Tenev]

But yeah, restaurants, people love it and you know, whenever feasible, I prefer to pay the old fashioned way rather than.

[Guest/Co-host]

Just what kind of perks you get. As opposed to like an Amex one big one.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah. 3% cash back on all categories.

[Guest/Co-host]

That's huge.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah. Best. Best cash back of. Of any card I'm in. And you can use your rewards to buy physical gold. So gold bars.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah. That's a big thing right now. Physical gold and silver.

[Vlad Tenev]

Copper and silver has been having a. A moment as of late for sure. Can't identify why, but I think multiple factors. You know, there's like geopolitical supply constraints and shocks. There's like the data center build out which uses a lot of these precious metals.

[Guest/Co-host]

I think that's like copper's up, but.

[Vlad Tenev]

I think silver is used in data centers, if I'm not mistaken too. And then you also have just like inflation fears. So it's a combination perfect storm. Probably mostly geopolitical, though.

[Guest/Co-host]

Friend of mine told me once, crypto's great because it's made by the people. Dollar is not great because it's made by government. Gold is great because it's made by God. Yeah, that's always like stuck with me.

You got that written above your bed or some shit?

No, I just heard it like two days ago actually.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, well, some people think crypto is made by God too.

[Guest/Co-host]

Well, I guess.

Yeah.

[Vlad Tenev]

Nobody knows who made it. Yeah, true.

[Guest/Co-host]

Bitcoin.

It's the guy that no one can find him. What's his name?

[Vlad Tenev]

Satoshi.

[Guest/Co-host]

That's what he's talking about.

Yeah. Can we go find that guy? Do you think he exists or.

[Vlad Tenev]

No, I don't know. I mean, how would I know? Yeah, I don't know what is there?

[Host]

No one knows how crypto started.

[Vlad Tenev]

No one knows.

[Guest/Co-host]

No one knows. Well, if he doesn't know, then isn't.

It just the worst?

[Vlad Tenev]

This guy was on message boards in the late 2000s talking about Bitcoin, and he just put it out there. And then eventually he just disappeared. Stopped posting on the message boards relatively early. I think his Last message was 2010, maybe 2011.

[Guest/Co-host]

The Internet loves to show those poor guys that like forgot their, their code or lost their ledger that has like 50 million on it and they've been searching for it. Yeah, like the guy that paid was the Pizza dude, didn't he?

Oh, yeah, that's the worst story.

[Host]

He pays for that pizza with like five bitcoins or something.

[Guest/Co-host]

No way. More than 10,000 coin.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, bro.

[Guest/Co-host]

10,000 bitcoin.

[Host]

10. Oh, God.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah. I feel so bad for that guy.

[Host]

When did you first buy bitcoin?

[Vlad Tenev]

So back in 2011, I became interested in mining it. So I started mining some bitcoin. But. But back then, of course, it was less sophisticated. So you. There weren't mining pools and you had to get lucky and. And get 50 bitcoin by just solving a block. I don't know if you guys looked into detail how it works, but it was hard to get. So I was like, all right, let's run it, see what happens. Never mind anything. Never got any bitcoin. And I was about to, like, sign up for one of these websites, these kind of early sketchy websites that sold bitcoin. There was one called Mount Gox. I don't know if you guys remember, this thing actually started as a magic, the Gathering trading Card exchange. People would trade their magic the Gathering card. That's why it's Mount Gox mtg. Right. But it turned into. It was the biggest bitcoin exchange of, like, the first era. And I signed up. I was about to put money in, buy Bitcoin in 2011. It was like $2 a coin. And then before I did it, Mount Gox got hacked and the price of bitcoin went down by 70%. And I remember I was like, dodged a bullet. I was just about to buy this stuff. It's dead. So I didn't buy it. And yeah, now. Now I'm kicking myself.

[Guest/Co-host]

We all have those stories.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, I have a little bit of bitcoin. Not much relative to my overall net worth, but, you know, I have a little bit, of course. But yeah, not as much as some. Some of the early true believers, that's for sure.

[Guest/Co-host]

I don't think anyone's story is going to be worse than the pizza guy, though.

[Host]

No.

[Guest/Co-host]

Well, that thing pops up in my X feed like once a month.

[Vlad Tenev]

You don't think the pizza guy had other bitcoin?

[Guest/Co-host]

If I were him, I would just.

[Vlad Tenev]

Come out, be like, hey, listen, I have 200,000.

[Guest/Co-host]

Like, I had 200,000 jokes on you guys.

[Host]

I don't know, really craving pizza.

[Guest/Co-host]

They never talk about the guy that accepted that. That was the biggest, the best transaction ever.

[Vlad Tenev]

If you had a hundred thousand bitcoin, would you be out there talking about it? I mean, most people probably wouldn't.

[Guest/Co-host]

Well, if the memes made out of me and, like, the world feels bad for me. Like, me, like, every time it comes up. Maybe. I don't know. Or maybe. Yeah, maybe Jokes. Jokes on us.

[Vlad Tenev]

He probably wants the world to feel bad for him.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't rob me. Yeah, yeah.

[Vlad Tenev]

Has a meme about which one? The boy from Bulgaria. Oh, yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

What is that?

[Vlad Tenev]

It was another GameStop thing where it was from my congressional testimony, which is actually a little bit of a strange thing happened. So the whole testimony was virtual. It was on zoom. I really wanted to do it in person, but, you know, it was in the middle of COVID So. Yeah, one of the. So as. As part of a congressional testimony, every witness.

[Guest/Co-host]

Or.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, I think. I think you call it a witness. I was a witness. Has to give a opening address. And, you know, as part of my opening address, I talk about my Bulgarian. I was born there, and I immigrated and whatnot. And for the first time, I think, in history, my opening address was interrupted by a congressperson. And I'm not exactly sure why. I think it was some technical glitch. But, yeah, they turned it into a meme where they sort of made it look like I was dodging a question by talking about my Bulgarian. Humble beginnings.

[Guest/Co-host]

When'd you come out here?

[Vlad Tenev]

1992. Yeah, it was five.

[Guest/Co-host]

Oh, wow.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, right after the fall of communism in Europe.

[Guest/Co-host]

Escape that.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

Citizen now.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

You have a relationship with the current administration? Like Trump.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, up until.

[Guest/Co-host]

I don't know why immigration made me think of that, but. Yeah, but we always got to talk about the President.

[Vlad Tenev]

I've been to the White House a handful of times in the past year, which was very fun, mostly around two areas. One is crypto, and the other is Invest America Initiative, or Trump Accounts, which is the thousand dollars for an investment account for every newborn initiative, which is very cool. Like, right. Right in line with our mission to make everyone an investor.

[Guest/Co-host]

Well, Robinhood being integrated into that.

[Vlad Tenev]

The details of. Of that haven't been shared yet. But what I can tell you is we've. We've had a bunch of conversations, and what I've told the president, we've told the administration repeatedly is we love the initiative. Like, we think that it's so underrated.

[Guest/Co-host]

Like, no one talks about.

[Vlad Tenev]

Also, if you. If you think about all the things that we do as part of. Just like running a country, we're racking up debt. Who pays for the debt? Right. Future generations. So a lot of the things that we do as a society is sort of Optimizing for our own self interest at the expense of the future generations. And I think there's relatively few things that flip that. It's like, oh no, we're going to take our money, put them away so that future generations can benefit more. So the fact that it's like one of the few sacrifices of its kind, I think is what makes it really special. So, yeah, we want to make it really big. And I think there's things like this that have been tried, but they haven't had the full weight of industry and the best technology companies behind them. And this one feels a little bit different. Yeah, you got Michael Dell and Brad Gerstner and a bunch of people just actually deploying a lot of resources and, and their own money behind the initiative. So I think it's got a good chance of really moving the needle.

[Guest/Co-host]

You guys are based in California still, right?

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah. What are your thoughts on all these big companies moving out of California? Ever crossed your mind at all?

[Vlad Tenev]

It's crossed our mind for sure. And obviously there's the whole billionaire tax. Yeah, I mean, I'm not intending to move out of California because I love California. Right. I love what it represents. I think it's, it's a great state, but I think it's becoming an increasingly more difficult place to, to do business. Right. Yeah. And, and I think that there's a big risk of like, you know, the, the fable of the, the goose that laid the golden egg. Yeah. You learn about it in school. Yeah, it's, it's kind of like what's going on here. Right. Like California, Silicon Valley, a lot of founders, a lot of entrepreneurship. It's a big part of the economy. And Yeah, I think if, if we're not careful. Yeah, you don't, you don't want to lose that. I think that that's like a big part of what makes California great. So I'd like to see, and I'm obviously intending to stay and push for this California to actually become the best place to do business in the country. I don't think that it should be, it should get complacent. Yeah, right. I think there's a, there's a real risk of complacency and, you know, the weather's great, for sure, but like, why not be great across the board and actually like, recognize that what we have is good and, and lean into that. And also, you know, we've got to figure out how to get the fiscal health better. That's for sure. The fiscal health is, is not good. And I think, I think it's a structural problem. I don't think one time taxes will fix the problem. I think that the problem is on a structural level. And for sure there's like a big effort to root out and weed out fraud and abuse and like mishandling of taxpayer funds. The fact that we pay so much in taxes and the schools and the infrastructure are sort of like mediocre invest that'll be exposed.

[Guest/Co-host]

Our boy Nick Shirley going after California next.

[Vlad Tenev]

So I think there's a lot of problems for sure. But yeah, I'd rather stay and fix them. And I feel much prouder about doing that.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah, I feel the same. By the way, I still live out here. So everyone heard you're leaving?

No, changed my mind today. Yesterday when I got back here.

[Vlad Tenev]

Okay, where were you going to go?

[Guest/Co-host]

Miami.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, a lot of people have been going there. That's where I live.

[Guest/Co-host]

That's where he is.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

But yeah, and I was born and raised out here. So you know, someone told me outside of taxes, which, which I do have some thoughts on that, that billionaire tax, I think the billionaire tax is not really a billionaire tax. I think they'll eventually go after middle class and everybody. I think it's just disguised as a billionaire class tax to get people to vote for it. But.

[Vlad Tenev]

Well, also I think it's really dangerous marketing in a way. I can see how it's effective because when people think of billionaires and I recognize you villainize them. Well, you know, I'm a billionaire, but I wasn't born a billionaire. Right. I grew up poor and created businesses that created value and hired lots of people. But I think most people's perception of a billionaire is someone that got their money unfairly, like through inheriting it from generations and generations. I think in California it's particularly stark because most billionaires are founders. It's people that have created jobs and created businesses and industries and you have of AI and chips and software all epicentered here. So really it's a founder tax. Right. And then you ask, well, do we need to be disincentivizing founding companies? Most people will probably tell you, okay, I don't like billionaires. But entrepreneurship and creation of companies and industries is very, very valuable. So I think it needs a bit of a reframe and people actually need to understand what we're talking about.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah, agreed.

[Host]

I see like Billie Eilish talking a lot about that. So annoying. It's like off.

[Guest/Co-host]

No. Yeah, the acceptance features at the award shows, you always are going to get.

Something about war shows are scams.

Yeah.

Golden Globes and mentioned one thing about Iran the other night. Like that's, that's crazy because it's not the trendy thing.

[Vlad Tenev]

There's been a lot of talk about the entertainment industry and how, you know, Hollywood and California has become the center of that. But over the past 10 years or so, more and more people are leaving to do like the entertainment business elsewhere.

[Guest/Co-host]

Oh yeah.

[Vlad Tenev]

Whether it's filming in Canada or Atlanta, now increasingly overseas, a lot of people.

[Guest/Co-host]

Are filming in Canada for tax reasons. Is that right?

I mean tax maybe is one of it, but I think registration, like cost regulation, like there's so many rules and like, like unions and all that stuff in California. California just doesn't make it easy for anybody to stay in California. And that's why entertainment's leaving here.

[Vlad Tenev]

Entertainment's leaving. And then if you lose entertainment and tech, what happens is that, is that.

[Guest/Co-host]

The California we're talking about Los Angeles right now, Los Angeles is dead. Because Los Angeles was really built on like, you know, nightlife and you know, going out and you know, all these different cool, up and coming, aspiring actors and actresses and musicians being out in the town and that's what Sunset Boulevard was. But now it's like you don't nearly lived in California, in Los Angeles, nor do you want to because of the crime. And it's kind of lost its soul for that reason because now they're scattered. They're in Miami, they're in Austin, they're in New York, they're in Nashville.

[Vlad Tenev]

Find a, a big movie or TV show that's filmed here. Right. I think you'll have a hard time.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah. And that's now like, you know, we call the Yellowstone effect where it's like, all right, well they're going to go in other states and they're going to film more western style, Southern country style shows. And now you see the growth of like all the different Taylor Sheridan franchises because they're filmed in Montana, Fort Worth, Texas, Tennessee. And now that's the new genre of shows is the, those western ones that.

[Vlad Tenev]

You know, they're filmed on location.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah, yeah. So and that's why, you know, it's the yellow sun effect. But Vlad, the other thing I want to ask you, always out of curiosity, I usually ask, ask my buddies this off camera, what is your AI chat bot of choice? Like when you use, when you AI something when you go to chat like rock, Gemini GPT.

[Vlad Tenev]

It used to be Chat GPT pretty much exclusively though now I've been Finding myself using Gemini more and more. For a long time I was resisting it. But then you keep hearing, well, you know, Gemini has gotten quite good and they've done a nice job. I mean, Google has really. They were kind of left for dead a couple of years ago with the whole AI stuff. But Gemini is quite good. And then what's really impressed me more recently is Claude code. You guys ever tried Claude code?

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

So they had a crazy update this week.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, the Claude code for not code.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah.

[Vlad Tenev]

Right.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Vlad Tenev]

The amazing thing about Claude code is like, you can write custom software to do tasks for you that Chat GPT cannot do. So, for example, you could say, write a script to log into my bank account or log into my email, pull all the transactions, put it in a table. And it used to be that a year ago that would just break and it would be frustrating because you'd be, you know, chatting back and forth with it and you'd spend more time trying to get it to work than you would to write it yourself. But I think it's recently gotten to the point where it's legitimately useful and time saving. So I think that surprised me.

[Host]

What are some jobs AI will take over that you think people aren't expecting?

[Vlad Tenev]

I can give you what job I think will be safe. I think you guys are okay. I think Podcast bros, though. It's so funny. I gave a TED Talk on this. For sure there will be AI job disruption. Right? Like I would, I wouldn't, I wouldn't study to be a telemarketer right now.

[Guest/Co-host]

I told my lawyer to his face yesterday. I was so pissed that I can't wait till AI takes your job. I cannot wait.

There is one thing too. The only area you're wrong is there's this guy that spent like $70,000 on this girl's only fans and she was an AI the whole time.

[Vlad Tenev]

Oh, yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

And he got exposed for it and he's going through it right now.

[Host]

I met a guy in the sauna.

[Guest/Co-host]

That does that the other day for an AI girl.

[Host]

He makes AI girls and runs their only fans.

[Guest/Co-host]

It's crazy.

[Host]

And people have no idea they're AI.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

Guys these guys meet.

[Host]

You never know you're going to talk about the sauna at the gym.

[Guest/Co-host]

It is kind of a crazy thing to think about though.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah. But I think there will be. There will be an explosion of new jobs and job families in the future. And if, if we were to see them, we would think they're not real work. Much like, if you Think about our ancestors a hundred years ago and if they were to look at what we're doing now, it'd be like, that's not a job nobody's getting, nobody could possibly be getting paid for doing what they're doing. They're just sitting around chatting about stuff, right. It would look like not real work. I think in the same way there's going to be jobs in the future that don't look like real work to us today. And I think what they'll look like is from a practical standpoint, it'll be a lot more entrepreneurship, a lot more single person companies. You'll probably start seeing single person unicorns like very soon. I don't think we're very far away from that.

[Guest/Co-host]

I agree.

[Vlad Tenev]

So there will be more, there will be more wealth created. But, and I saw this, I've seen this with Harmonic as well. I think there's kind of two worlds, right? One world is the AI companies who own all these big data centers and all these GPUs and build the models are going to be like creating all the products and benefiting from the products in like a first party way, right? So they'll centralize and control all the value. The other world is they'll actually give AI tools to everyone and those people will create products that capture value. And so in that world it's much more distributed and kind of decentralized. So I think what we're seeing now is it's more the latter. And I think the latter is more interesting. I think it's going to be a better business opportunity. So I think one thing nobody expected is we have such amazing AI tools on our phones and it's cheaper than a cell phone plan, right? So yeah, I think even with Harmonic, when we rolled out Aristotle Public, we saw people using crazy stuff with it. Not just the Erdos problems we were talking about earlier, but solving problems in computing, in linguistics, stuff that if we manage centrally and we were doing ourselves, we wouldn't do as good of a job of. But if you open the tool to the public, people will do really amazing things. So that's the world that I believe in and that we're pushing to build. And I think if we end up in that world, which I believe and hope we will, it'll be an optimistic rather than dystopian future.

[Guest/Co-host]

I'm optimistic about AI. I mean, obviously everyone, every day I hear someone worry about AI taking our jobs. But I think AI is going to be boost productivity and I think if you're more productive at Your job, you get paid more. And now, you know, you, you pay, you know, you get paid more than. And then people realize, like, this is now the new standard. Let's hire more people like this that know how to use AI.

That, that's what about, like, AI replacing, like, education.

[Host]

That's what I was going to say because you said you want to be a teacher. Will ever be, like, just AI teachers?

[Vlad Tenev]

That, I mean, I don't know. Would you want your kid to be going to a place where an optimist robot is, like, teaching them?

[Host]

I have no idea.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah, but, well, I think there's ups and downs to that because you have teachers teaching kids in classroom stuff that parents don't want them talking about.

I think the least safe is lawyers. I think the most safer sports.

I think lawyers are safe.

Oh, yeah, your dad's a litigator. No, I'm talking about the lawyer. Like, hey, can you look at this quick contract for me?

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

You know, get back to me three days later, charge me fifteen hundred dollars.

[Host]

You could probably do that already, right?

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah. I just send it to you redline.

[Host]

This contract for me, basically.

[Guest/Co-host]

Well, I mean, I, I, yeah, but if I don't feel like reading it for you, like, I'll just send it to Grok real quick and be like, hey, what should I. This is something my lawyer agreed on two years ago. Like, took a look at this and let me know what, what my lawyer would have said. That's what I do. That's what I do with Grok. Now, I don't know.

[Vlad Tenev]

I would be surprised if, if sometimes these things are counterintuitive. My bet is there would be more lawyers 10 years from now and more software engineers. Back when I was a kid, my parents would tell me, you don't want to be a software engineer. All those jobs are getting shipped off to China. So it'll be. We didn't hear that.

[Guest/Co-host]

Tenure. Yeah, China and India profession. Yeah, we used to hear that.

[Vlad Tenev]

You know, back in 1996, the first AI victory over humans was Deep Blue, IBM's AI model. AI chess model beating Gary Kasparov.

[Guest/Co-host]

I remember that. Yeah.

[Vlad Tenev]

Right. And so it was like the end of chess. It's never going to go back. But now the chess industry is bigger than ever. It's like 5x bigger, three times as many grandmasters. The grand prizes are bigger than ever. Turns out nobody wants to watch AIs playing chess. Right. Yeah, they just want to. Even though Magnus Carlsen would get destroyed by the best chess.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah, Chess is in that category. Of sports. You know, I think sports are completely safe. I think that, and I think that's why you also see these big sport deals, whether NFL team, NBA team valuations through the roof. I think NFL team just, you'll see your first 10 billion dollar NFL team sold soon. You know, the UFC doing a big deal with Paramount, $8 billion. I think like, you know, I think that the networks know now, like, all right, this is the one thing that AI will never hurt. You can't AI a sport. Or in the case of chess, which one could argue chess is a sport. You know, I think those real life ones can never, will never be disrupted by AI.

[Vlad Tenev]

I mean, I agree with you. There's empirical evidence like AIs are already better at it, but we're not watching them so unlikely that there's going to be some tipping point where oh well, if they're only this much better, then we'll start watching it. I think it's the human story that's the product there. Right.

[Guest/Co-host]

But I think you'll see like cartoon series. I mean, we've talked about it like, you know, maybe using Grok imagine for like a cartoon series or you know, like those could be AI, you know, you could make next. I mean, degenerates could be, you know, you can make the next south park of Family Guy, you know, via AI. I think you could do stand up comedy specials, maybe even through AI. But sports, yeah, with AI.

[Host]

What's your biggest worry with AI, if anything, if, if things are not handled correctly?

[Vlad Tenev]

My biggest worry is that the people aren't behind it. So you actually compare AI with crypto. And, and whenever there's like some regulatory overreach or something that's like anti crypto out there, either by the government or lawmakers, there's like a huge retail army of crypto fans that are fighting against it. And even you could argue this. Last election, the 2024 presidential election, crypto became a massive constituency that actually swung lots of districts and votes in favor of the Trump administration, which like openly embraced crypto much earlier than I think. The, the Harris campaign tried some tepid efforts to reach out to crypto people, but they kind of felt flat and never looked genuine. So. And I think the reason crypto has this army is because from the very beginning, normal people could get access to crypto. You got the pizza guy. But it started out as a retail phenomenon, whereas AI, you've got companies that are private, that are still only accessible to a relatively small circle of wealthy individuals that keep getting wealthier now these companies are worth hundreds of billions. And you know, you do have Google, that's, it's good that now Google's being competitive. So now that if you're a public market investor, retail shareholder, you can get access to it. But Google's a three billion dollar company, right? So it's not like you can get in 3 trillion. Yeah, sorry, off by three orders of magnitude. It's a 3 trillion company. So, so it's not like you can get in early and actually ride that appreciation. So my biggest fear is that you have all this fear about job loss. And I think the best antidote is if you own this thing. It's like if you own the thing that's disrupting you, you're kind of rooting for it a little bit. But the only people that are rooting for AI are the investors, venture capitalists and the researchers that work there. And I think if that continues to be the case, it's going to be the biggest problem because what's going to happen is there's going to be public pressure if we don't do it right, is going to come out against AI and then you get into national security risk and all of those scenarios. So I believe in it, but I think where I can help and what I'm really focused on is making sure that normal people can invest in these companies. Companies.

[Guest/Co-host]

Well, how would we as like regular people use Aristotle? Like how would a regular consumer, like the 3 of us use Aristotle?

[Vlad Tenev]

I think in the first instance it's a more specialized product. So it's very useful if you're a mathematician that's trying to do research in frontier math. But then it'll expand and I think as it expands the use cases will get broader. So beyond mathematicians, the next use case is creating software that's verified and correct. And the first places where that's going to be useful is in mission critical domains. So domains where if your software screws up, the consequences are really huge. So think chip design, right? If you screw up the design of a chip and you're fabbing it, that costs hundreds of millions or billions. And like if you could speed that up and increase the, the, the reliability and you can verify that the design is good, you might be able to like 5x the, the speed of development there, which is, which is big talk about automotive control systems for, for cars, financial services and crypto. How many times do you hear about a blockchain vulnerability that leads to hundreds of millions of dollars being siphoned off of crypto protocols? So I think it'll start there in verifiable correctness in safety critical domains. But then we see a world where if the tools get good enough, the cost of provably correct AI code will approach the cost of just any code. They'll both go to zero. And so then all software will be verifiably correct. And then I think then it becomes much more broadly applicable.

[Guest/Co-host]

So it's more of an enterprise, would you say? More of an enterprise?

[Vlad Tenev]

At first, yeah, I think it's mostly enterprise, but I think there is a path where if we actually succeed in this, then you could have something like a ChatGPT or a Claude code. And Aristotle now feels very much like Claude code. You could have one where you're very, very highly confident that what it's telling you is right and it makes sense.

[Guest/Co-host]

Because you have Robinhood as far as your consumer product. But you've been so great at understanding what an average person, what their behaviors are. That's why I was actually eager to see if. All right, well, I ever use Vlad's AI.

[Vlad Tenev]

Well, you can give it a try.

[Guest/Co-host]

It seems like it's a little bit.

[Vlad Tenev]

Well, one of the amazing things that we've been seeing from Aristotle is amateur mathematicians. So if you're a mathematician or if you start thinking about a math problem and start solving it, it's very difficult for a non insider to do that for a couple of reasons. One is it requires a lot of specialized knowledge and it's very like tough to get that unless you're in the math community. The other thing is, let's say you come up with something, you figure something out, who's going to read it, you have to convince someone to read your paper and you'll probably get dismissed as a crank. Right. Who's this guy? He's not even affiliated with the university and he thinks he figured something out. But with AI tools like Aristotle, you have these citizen mathematicians, which is someone that maybe is a software engineer or retiree. They like math, they're starting to figure stuff out. And now they don't have to convince a mathematician to verify and check their paper. The system will do it by itself. So I think what you'll see is a lot more people doing math. And also downstream of that, like you'll see normal people using AI to make scientific discoveries, which I don't think anyone's expecting, but I think you'll start to see that in the next six to 12 months.

[Host]

Very interesting stuff.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah. And you know, you'll have a normal person and the thing Is math is like the first step. Everything depends on math. Physics is dependent on math. I mean, modern physics is just math that's applied in a way. And then if you want to think about contraptions and gadgets, that's all downstream of physics. So engineering depends on physics. Albert Einstein, arguably the greatest physicist of all time, his job was a patent clerk. So he was checking people's inventions. Why? That's how you could apply physics. Knowledge downstream of physics is like creating little contraptions and patenting them. So you know, where does it end up? Normal people creating like actual things with AI that you could sell and that are useful. So you'll have the return of like citizens patenting things, which I think will be really cool.

[Guest/Co-host]

What are your thoughts on AI hardware like robotics, wearables?

[Vlad Tenev]

I'm excited by it. Like I, I would be an early adopter of that. I'm less excited about at least. Oh, I, I have two thoughts about it. One is I'm a little bit less excited about having these robots that I'm seeing advertised in my house like washing my dishes or.

[Guest/Co-host]

Oh, that was.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah. Picking up my kids toys.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah.

[Vlad Tenev]

Well, I was like, why, why do all these things look like the Terminator?

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Vlad Tenev]

They all look terrifying, right?

[Host]

Yeah.

[Vlad Tenev]

Why do you make them look like the Terminator? Why don't you have. I would have C3PO in my house.

[Host]

Kind of like the bumbling, like a less intimidating one.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, they all look scary.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah. Make it look cute.

[Vlad Tenev]

My guess, if I had to, and I could be wrong, of course, maybe the product market fit for those will be picking up your kids toys or washing dishes. I would look at things where they're at your house, but you don't have to interact with them or you don't have to be home. Like construction site. I think humanoid robots in a construction site is probably like a better use case. If I could just have them build my house when I'm not there or fix it. I'd much rather do that. So, yeah, I think it's clear that it's coming. We've been making a lot of progress. We're probably not too far away from being able to, to buy them. I think like the movie her, you know, you guys seen that with the Airpod thing that's going to happen.

[Guest/Co-host]

Oh my God.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

You don't want to be that guy.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, I don't want to be that guy. But I think a lot of people. Yeah, I think that form factor will happen.

[Guest/Co-host]

You'd say you'd Have. You'd be afraid to have them in your house doing, like, cleaning up in the house. And it would just. You wouldn't be in favor of that.

[Vlad Tenev]

For me, personally, right now, I haven't seen one that I would get excited about having in my house. Yeah, I don't think. I don't think. I don't think I've seen it yet.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah, the moment your robot starts talking back to you too, then it's going to be a real issue.

You're not winning that fight.

[Vlad Tenev]

No.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah.

[Host]

You think people will have like, robot girlfriends one day?

[Vlad Tenev]

There was a movie on Netflix about that with Megan Fox. Did you see that?

[Host]

No.

[Guest/Co-host]

If it looks like Megan Fox, I might be interested.

[Vlad Tenev]

I mean, I think that you're already having people. There's been articles about this. I haven't seen it myself, but. But Character AI. Have you heard of Character AI? So this was this company. Noam Shazir started it. It got basically gobbled up by Google in some strange transaction. So someone told me, hey, there's a Vlad Tenev. There's three Vlad Tenets on Character AI. I'm like, what are you talking about? What do you mean there's a Vlad 10? There's a Vlad Tenev bot on character AI. So I downloaded it to check it out, and this thing was a sex bot. So do you guys know the movie that Dumb Money?

[Host]

You have your own sex bot.

[Vlad Tenev]

Something. I deleted it once. I. But yeah, it was like, all right, you're chatting with Vlad Tenev. He is at home when you come home from a hard day at work, and he's, you know, making you a casserole. Right. And you can see I'm not going to get into the details of the rest of the conversation, but there are people out there that are chatting with AIs in a.

[Guest/Co-host]

Well, it's probably the only fan stuff you're talking about.

Well, no, My girlfriend goes to ChatGPT for relationship advice all the time. And when I went over there, girlfriend, it's not just my girl, just do girl. And the Chat GPT knew so much about me and it freaked me the out.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

I was like, what the hell? I didn't even.

[Host]

She needs AI to handle you.

[Guest/Co-host]

She was talking to the Chat GPT in the living room and I thought there was another person in there. And then I walked in and she introduced me to the ChatGPT and I was like, this is fucking.

[Vlad Tenev]

Well, so that for sure is happening.

[Guest/Co-host]

That's.

[Vlad Tenev]

But then there's also people talking to Chat GPT as their girlfriend.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what he's talking about.

That's what I'm saying. It's like her best friend.

No, I know, but she's just getting advice where he's saying, like, it's actually a human. Like, they're, like, emotionally connected to the person.

Have you seen anybody that's at that. Like, do you have any friends or anybody that's at that stage?

[Vlad Tenev]

Me, personally, no. But actually, back in 1960, there was a project. It was an academic project to create. It was like, one of the first AI projects called Liza or Eliza. Did you guys hear about this? It was like. It was supposed to be a therapist. I thought it would. They would design a basic AI therapist that would. You could talk to about your problems. This was in the 1960s, and they cut that project off because people were developing romantic feelings toward the AI therapist. It was the most primitive AI. It. It would basically just, like, ask you how you felt about it. So you'd be like, oh, you know, I'm having this issue. Okay. How do you feel about it? Thanks for asking. Yeah, exactly. But how do you really feel about it? So the algorithm wasn't.

[Guest/Co-host]

Why'd they cut that off if it was? It seems like it was working well.

[Vlad Tenev]

Because people were developing romantic feelings toward it. So it got weird back then.

[Guest/Co-host]

I feel like now, then they would approve it now.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah, probably.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah.

Terrifying.

[Vlad Tenev]

I don't know if that's good or bad for society, but it's definitely happening.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah.

[Vlad Tenev]

It's.

[Guest/Co-host]

Can't be stopped.

Well, they talk about, too. It's like, now people don't even communicate, as much as.

[Vlad Tenev]

I'll tell you one thing. Aristotle will not do this.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah, I hope.

[Vlad Tenev]

I don't know. Not at this point. I don't think anyone has a romantic relationship.

[Guest/Co-host]

Aristotle's gonna want to make us go back to school. Excited for that. Yeah. Excited for everything, man. So.

[Host]

Well, thank you, Vlad. We appreciate you.

[Vlad Tenev]

What is this? Happy dad? Fruit punch.

[Host]

This is our alcohol brand. It's a. Oh, really hard seltzer, hard tea, lemonade. So we launched it about four years ago.

[Vlad Tenev]

It's. No, no, no mocktails. It's all alcoholic.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah, it's light alcohol. 5% alcohol. Hard seltzer. This. That's their tea variation. We have a hard seltzer. We also have a lemonade. In partnership with realtree. Yeah. Our business is using our platforms to build CPG brands. So going in and looking at different categories that are growing, that could use disruption. So, Happy Dad. Well, full send Merch was the first one. But then happy dad, which is grown.

[Vlad Tenev]

It's.

[Guest/Co-host]

It's a top three seltzer in most states. Top four in some. You know, just going after really a person who just wants a light drink, you know, getting away from beer or hard liquor.

[Vlad Tenev]

Totally. I like the hats, too.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah.

[Host]

Yeah, we'll trade a hat for.

[Vlad Tenev]

Are you guys. Dad.

[Host]

A hat for a gold card.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

I'm a new dad.

[Vlad Tenev]

I'm a new dad.

[Guest/Co-host]

Yeah. I got a six month old right here.

[Vlad Tenev]

Oh, yeah.

[Guest/Co-host]

They're not dads that they know of. We'll find out in 16 years.

[Host]

Hopefully not.

[Vlad Tenev]

Hopefully not.

[Guest/Co-host]

All right. Thank you. Appreciate it, man.

[Vlad Tenev]

Yeah. Fun chatting.

[Guest/Co-host]

Foreign.

[Vlad Tenev]

It's the biggest game on the planet and nobody breaks it down like Jim Rome. Super bowl run.

[Host]

Who do you think will be the.

[Vlad Tenev]

Last one standing this year? Fearless debate and the best callers in sports. I don't care what you say. Defense wins Super Bowl.

[Host]

That defense absolutely is super bowl caliber.

[Vlad Tenev]

The quarterbacking sure as hell wasn't. He's the spitfire of sports. Smack. A lot to get to and I'm not sure you're gonna like all of it. Honestly, I don't even care if you like all of it or not. I have a job to do. The Jim Rome show. Get up in here. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.