Robinhood’s Vlad Tenev on predicting the future

24:18And that's what I spend a lot of my time thinking about.

24:21Ellis:Just even like the vision for the company. Those feel like different paths conventionally, I would say. Well, the vision for the company is to become your financial super app. And what we mean by that is, you know, for a long time, Robinhood was people's secondary financial account. Right. But so I would say it probably does fit into the secondary financial account vision. but we don't want to just be your secondary financial account. We want to be your primary and secondary. So we believe that Robinhood can be the place where all of your assets and all of your dollars are held and we can process all financial transactions.

25:02And what we've seen is that as we add new products, a lot of times engagement and usage of our existing products increases. So when we launched retirement, for example, there's a big question internally about whether retirement was going to cannibalize our trading business. And the argument makes some sense theoretically, right? Some people have a certain amount of money. If you believe that money's going into Robinhood and maybe before it was going into the individual brokerage account. Now, if half of it goes into the retirement account, maybe we would end up hurting ourselves because it would now be going to a place where we would monetize it less.

25:52But actually, that didn't end up happening. And what we saw was that the folks that were using retirement actually increased their activity in their individual brokerage accounts. They used us more because it started clicking in their heads that this is now my financial account. I do all of my finances here. We saw a similar effect with the credit card. When someone became a primary gold card user with a credit card, we saw a positive impact to brokerage. And again, same reason. I'm a gold member. I'm doing everything with Robinhood. Let me look around and see if my gold membership actually gets me any other benefits.

26:32And if those other products are good, I'll give Robinhood a fair shake and probably first shot at my business.

26:40Ellis:I think when you've spent as long and as much time as you have on trying to build trust as you built all these things over time, I think it makes a lot of sense that that aggregate value would be increased. The customer's consideration for each new product would be higher than it would have been had it would have been a separate app. But I saw an ad today in the Wall Street Journal that said, if you're looking for a broker that's not also your bookie. We invite you to try public. A different perspective on maybe some of the conflicts from the producer of this product point of view. Do you have any response to that?

27:15Yeah, that's a funny one. One of the differences between traditional sports betting and prediction markets is that the trades are happening on an exchange with buyers and sellers. And so there's no house that is incentivized to have customers lose, right? So that's sort of the retort to the specific bookie comment. The other thing is a lot of these brokers, you have to understand there's a competitive marketplace here and not everyone can match our product velocity and how we serve our customers. And obviously, the business has been going very well, not just prediction markets, but, you know, last quarter, we had record net deposits into the platform.

28:00Retirement accounts have just been on a huge influx of assets, 25 billion plus. Gold card had half a million plus cardholders. So the ecosystem as a whole is very, very strong. Now, prediction markets are the fastest growing business we've ever had. And I think we've seen these criticism before, but what's happening under the hood is our competitors are working as hard as possible to like replicate this. I mean, I think that company was making a lot of hay about how company, how, you know, retail shouldn't be trading options. And they were kind of against it. And then, of course, until they launched it, until they launched options trading.

28:45Ellis:Classic comms tactic. And now they're incentivizing by giving you contract rebates and things like that. So I think this is just people have their interests. If I was in their position, I'd probably try to have some kind of media strategy that stems the tide and prevents them from losing customers. and I do think there's a legitimate, like some customers just don't like to see it and some customers don't like all the products we offer. So there's a legitimate challenge that we have as we add more products. How do we make the experience cohesive and how do we make sure that we only show to customers what they want to see?

29:36And I think that's going to push us towards solving some really interesting challenges with personalization and machine learning and making sure that actually your Robinhood experience is what you want it to be. And we're giving you the products that you're most suitable for and that you want to engage with. And I think we're in the early days of that. There's a lot more to do there. I think on the last earnings, you said that the prediction business in October was bigger for you all than the whole last quarter combined. And it would have been doubling quarter over quarter. So what is driving this?

30:13Is it mostly sports? Is this just speed running all the sports betting companies? Or what is it really fundamentally? I mean, sports is a big chunk of it for sure, but we're also seeing engagement across in non-sports categories. For a while, our prediction markets business was like sports only. And we recently started rolling out to other categories like economics, technology, politics. Now we have over a thousand contracts. And one of the things we believe is that the non-sports landscape is going to evolve very, very rapidly. And there's really interesting things that you'll be able to do that haven't been built yet.

30:55But yeah, sports has been a huge driver. Also, anytime we roll out a new product, it takes time for customers to understand it. A lot of people have never heard of prediction markets. it's a little bit more technical and arcane. And, you know, the dynamics are different than what they're used to with traditional sports books. So as they become familiar with it, as there's more events that they hear about, as we get a little bit better at incorporating it and integrating it into the product experience, which I think there's a lot of room for us to improve even further, we see growth. So, and I think there's tailwinds as well.

31:37I don't think that there's so many ways we can continue to improve it and make it more useful and better. Look at you. You're a veteran public CEO already. Tailwinds. You got all the words. I love the word tailwinds, actually. That's, I think I picked that up from my CFO. It's like, it's a romantic. It's like you're a sailor out at sea, you know? Yeah.

31:59Ellis:Any particular contracts you hope to see personally in the near future? I'm really interested in contracts that are more personalized. And what I mean by that is not that, you know, you'll be trading a contract on Alex's status or whatnot, but really that, you know, let's say you were concerned about flood or fire risk in your primary residence. I mean, maybe you submit some information about yourself to a transparent market and you get a real-time price for market makers. And I think you can imagine that that could be disruptive to the insurance industry, right? There's no reason why I have to pick up the phone and have these giant companies pricing my risk in an opaque way when the entire financial market with all of its liquidity and everyone plugged in can kind of do that.

32:59I mean, regulators are going to come crashing in on this if it gets to that level, don't you think? Well, I think you already see it with weather contracts, precipitation. You have it sort of in a generalized sense. There's fire contracts, wildlife. That's the whole purpose. That's how this industry started, right, is people hedging their risk. Now, why does it have to be only available to farmers and people running large institutions when individuals would like to have certain risks that they're legally required to hedge in some cases? And so, yeah, not to say that there's not going to be stakeholders that are going to fight prediction markets.

33:42You're already seeing it. But I think the power and the efficiency is just undeniable. What you were saying about farmers and hedge funds and stuff having access to this already made me think about, I wonder if this is something you have felt leading the company is you often get criticized, I think, for, you know, quote unquote gamification or bringing these things to the masses that potentially have negative externalities or could get people down a bad path if they get too levered or whatever. And then frequently, I think the other side of it that I hear from you and others is also, well, look, like this, this was already available, but it was for a select few.

34:22And so kind of, it seems like the mission you've had since the beginning is democratizing. I mean, I know that's been, that was the thing that you would say, but like the prediction markets idea is, I think taking what, yeah, farmers, hedge funds, what they already do and bring it to everyone. And that is disruption in the classic sense. And it has positives and negatives to it. No, I mean, I'm sure you're also thinking about like, yeah, there are going to be unforeseen externalities of this at scale. Right. Yeah. And by the way, there's no leverage in our prediction markets currently. So they're fully cash collateralized.

34:58It's a longstanding criticism of every financial market that they're speculators. But I think, I mean, when you look at the futures markets, when they became accessible to retail several decades ago, it was the same thing. You know, people were trading grain and oil and orange juice futures and pork bellies. And, you know, there were speculators in there and a lot of people had concerns about that. Every financial market had speculation. But I think the thing most people don't understand is speculation is actually an important part about it's necessary for the functioning of these markets. You can't just have people hedging.

35:43You can't just have arbitrage. Even if you read The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, one of the seminal books of value investing, he talks about how speculation is actually integral to the proper functioning. So I don't think we can get rid of it. Now, I don't think everyone should be speculating and certainly not with a huge chunk of their capital, but we believe in markets. And so I think this activity is actually crucial to the proper functioning of all of the markets. Would you ever bake that idea into the products where Robinhood says, hey, like, you can do this, but just FYI, you're about to put 40 % of your portfolio in something that's a little YOLO.

36:25Like, could you guide people more that way? We actually do a little bit. I mean, for example, when you have a leveraged ETF or, you know, a similar high risk instrument, we let people know, you know, that this is something that's leveraged. It's not for long-term holding. We also, you know, indicate if something's like gotten to a point of large volatility, like we give those little alerts. If a company is bankrupt, you know, or has filed bankruptcy. So there's examples where we definitely let customers know. I think it's also a delicate balance because if you're an active trader and you know what you're doing, we don't want to put so many frictions in your way because then you'll just get annoyed and start using the products of our competitors that don't do those things.

37:23The state of Massachusetts was like historically very protectionist about this stuff. So I don't know if you guys remember, there's a story about how they banned their citizens from participating in the Apple IPO in the 80s. you know at the time it was like oh this is risky most people shouldn't be and i think in general it was from a good place but then imagine multiple decades later this is like an example of it's sort of a negative example of nanny statism gone gone completely wrong i mean you've prevented people from like exercising their point of view and in hindsight making a lot of money.

38:05Ellis:Yeah, I think that's true. But I also feel like there's a big difference between like an outright ban and like those commercials you see on TV that say we're going to give you$500 for free if you bet five that know that when someone shows up, they're probably going to lose it because that's the only way that they can make that offer. You know, how do you think about that stuff when you see it on TV or maybe even when PMs come to you with with ideas that, you know, would work, but might feel a little icky. I think we're generally pretty conservative about those things. I mean, obviously there's always a gray area where there's discussions, but we benefit, I mean, if you look at Robinhood as a business, our revenue scales with assets under custody.

38:52And so the healthy customer relationship for us is someone whose account balance monotonically increases over time. So, you know, it doesn't bother us if you're allocating some of your portfolio and you're trading options, you're trading futures, you're trading prediction markets. But we're actually quite aligned with our users in the sense that like we benefit as their account balances grow and their relationship deepens with us. And that's kind of how we've been successful. If you look at asset growth on the platform over time, it's not a churn and burn business where people put money in and then their account goes to zero.

39:34Like this is a compounding business.

39:38Ellis:I'm just I'm a product person. I'm just so fascinated by, you know, this kind of conceptual idea that maybe you bring some money into a product and there's two buttons there. One is to put it in retirement and one is to put it on the Packers. You know, if times are ever tough, you could see a world where someone comes and says, hey, let's make the Packers button a little shinier or a little bigger or make it number one in the rankings. And that's what I think brings some interesting decisions being a platform that includes both. So, yeah, your job is not an easy one. Yeah. And I think that historically, it's been very difficult for a regulated business to actually make recommendations at that level, right?

40:23Because the areas where you could make recommendations are pretty circumscribed. You know, there are all kinds of things govern making a recommendation to open a new account or how much money you should invest in a certain thing. And our solution to that is not to get away from it. We make recommendations, but they have to be in specific areas where we make it clear that, yeah, we're telling you we have a fiduciary duty. We think that, you know, you should invest in this. Support for this show is brought to you by Solonis. Ever feel like you're being told to wave this big magic AI wand and everything will just be better?

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41:36AI needs context. Solonis provides it. Learn more about how the context model gives enterprise AI operational clarity at C-E-L-O-N-I-S dot com slash context. When I got a new car, I thought my insurance premium would increase and empty my bank account. Like if Fetween won the lottery.

41:54Ellis:I've invested most of my winnings in chicken tenders because they're bomb. But bro, I bought a house and it's sick, bro. I'm thinking the floor is going to be all trampoline, bro. With the helipad on the roof. The contractor said it's structurally unsound. They're just being babies. But switching to Geico saved me hundreds, so my bank account is safe. It feels good to save some hard-earned cash. It feels good to Geico. Another thing I know you're thinking a lot about is tokenization. and I know this is a big priority. You've tokenized, quote unquote, a lot of companies so far. You want to do more.

42:29As someone who is even, you know, versed in these topics, it's a little heady for me to understand why the world needs this. And I know you're, you know, crypto is a big thing for Robinhood. It's a huge business. This has, you know, synergy with that. But explain it to me like I'm a middle schooler. Like, why in the world are you trying to tokenize companies? Yeah, on public companies outside the U.S., it's quite difficult to get access to public companies. A lot of people don't have a traditional broker that's available in their country, but they do have crypto firms. So crypto firms have become the gateway to get access to U.S.

43:10dollars. I think in the same way, tokenized stocks will become the gateway to U.S. assets. There might not be a local broker that is low cost, but if you get the stocks on the blockchain, you get certain benefits like 24-7, instant settlement, better economics on stock loan and borrow. But the main thing outside the US is actually just access. Now, within the US, it's a little bit more incremental. And so I think adoption will be slower. I think tokenization of public stocks will be an ex-US phenomenon first, as we've demonstrated. I mean, we've gone live with it, ex-US, right? But in the US, it's a little bit more incremental.

43:54You're going from 24-5 trading, which we offer, to 24-7. You've got instant settlement, which means that a GameStop situation can never happen again. Oh, thank God. That's a nice benefit for me, maybe less for most people. I think stock loan and borrow could be disrupted. It's a very opaque lending and borrowing market for shares that I think could be improved. And you have some benefits of portability and self-custody, which, and this is maybe slightly contrary interest to say, but you can make it so that your stocks can just easily leave your brokerage. You're not going to be dependent on a broker.

44:35you can transact and trade tokenized stocks as long as the blockchain is up. So private companies are a different story. Very hard to get access to even in the US. And there's problems because even if you're accredited and you want to transact in private shares, your options for doing that in a simple and easy way are pretty manual. And the alternative trading systems that exist that try to provide real-time matching generally don't have very much liquidity. So you could be waiting quite a while before you could make a trade. And when you do make that trade, it's kind of a manual process where you're sending DocuSigns to people if you guys have done that.

45:22Not a ton of liquidity in the secondary market unless it's like a really hot name. Yeah, but if you plug it into crypto technology, and I wrote a piece on this in the Washington Post a little bit under a year ago, you solve the liquidity problem because you're plugging this into a network, a global network where, you know, you've seen meme coins get billions of dollars of liquidity within a few hours. And I think blockchains have shown that they've been very effective at directing and aggregating liquidity to assets that people actually want. So you don't have to build a whole exchange from the ground up.

46:00You can leverage the existing usage and liquidity on crypto. That makes sense. But I've heard you also say that there's this digital nimbyism going on with companies to this idea when you go to them and you're like, let me put your stock on the blockchain. They're not huge fans. You first, I think, pitched this with OpenAI and SpaceX. I don't think they took to it too well. Do you find that you're still meeting a lot of resistance here, or are you optimistic? Where are you at now? I think eventually it'll happen, and we're looking to accelerate it. But, I mean, we know which way this is going to go.

46:35It's very, very clear. We have a product, IPO Access, which we launched for our own IPO in 2021. and our own IPO was for its size, the largest retail allocation at the time at north of 20%. And we had some other companies use it as well who are willing to go on the journey with us. But by and large in 2021, when I had this product, it took a lot of cajoling and a lot of just like asking for favors to make sure retail gets access to these IPOs. When we would get the allocations, they were pretty small. It was like, okay, we'll do Vlad a favor. We'll give him 1 % of the IPO, 2%, whatever. But there was skepticism.

47:24Executives were hearing from their bankers that it was a bit of a strange thing. And if you're an executive taking your company public, most of the time, it's just, let me get through this so I can focus on my business. I don't necessarily want to be an innovator in providing retail access to these instruments. But I do want to be an innovator in that. So I worked very hard and I pounded the pavement. We got a good IPO suite. And then the market basically shut for a couple of years. And an interesting thing happened in the interim. I think it became more obvious to the public. It had been obvious to me for a long time, but more obvious to the entire startup community that public companies that have retail fan bases and followings get rewarded.

48:16In some cases, we're pretty, pretty high multiples, right? You see Palantir, you see some others. And now when the IPO window opened, basically everyone's coming to us and asking us if they could have feedback on their retail strategy. How can they engage retail more? and a large number of the IPOs that have been on consequence have come to us and actually listed on the platform and in some cases given retail bigger and bigger chunks. And now they're talking about it. So I think the same thing is going to happen with private markets as well. We're kind of in the phase where it's a new thing. We're kind of the only ones that are trying to do it.

48:54Nobody really wants to innovate when they're raising a financing ground, but the setup is very similar to IPO access. Like it's the same set of constraints. And my prediction is within the next two years, it'll probably be faster than IPO access, probably even one year, it'll be normalized and you'll have the best companies available to retail because they'll just see that having that retail fan base and the supporters as early as possible is going to be immensely valuable. You look at AI in particular, where are the fans? I mean, it's a very popular technology. Adoption is very, very quick, but who's defending the AI companies in public?

49:41It's basically their investors and the community of AI researchers. And the general perception, I would say, if you're looking at what's happening in the media and even in public discourse, there's a lot of fear and uncertainty and it leans negative. I think there was an article talking about how this is like, at the same time, the fastest adopted technology, but also the least popular. Right. And, and, and that's, I don't think that's a healthy combination because I think that if the public is against AI, um, it's gonna, it's gonna, it's gonna be a headwind, not a tailwind for the industry and for innovation.

50:23And I think the best way is to get people owning this stuff and not just have it go to the high net worth individuals and the institutions, but get it distributed to regular people. I think it will be good for the technology. And I think my opinion will at some point hopefully be a little bit more widespread.

50:44Ellis:You're working on a lot of things right now. I saw you launch 10 new product suites in 2025. Curious how you're running the company differently now than previously. I feel like I heard that you don't have any one-on-ones. You have over 20 direct reports. How do you think about all that? I've got a great, great GMs, a great team. The core Robinhood team, the people that are running the company, making decisions, A lot of them have been around for a long time and gone through our share of crises together, right? Not just GameStop, but also the IPO and the subsequent market correction, the crypto market and the SVB crisis.

51:30So we've gone through some ups and downs. Yeah, how's your blood pressure?

51:36Ellis:That's a lot of crises right there. I stopped tracking it you know for a while I was very I don't know if you guys felt the same I was wearing my Apple watch and I was thinking about all this health stuff and now I've gone very mechanical I'm like I don't want to see it um yeah I I kind of know when I haven't slept well so I don't I don't need the device I'm becoming more of a Luddite as I as uh as we as we keep rolling out more business lines but yeah that that's really the short of it I think I have a great team around me. I think we're working well together. Culture is something you evolve over time when you make mistakes and you fix them.

52:16And I think we iterate pretty quickly. I think you have to, but we're sort of not apologetic about being a company that wants to move fast and actually innovate. Yeah, you've seen some crazy lows and it feels like right now you're at this insane high i think you're the second top performing stock this year you're on this product terror i know i wish we did the interview a week ago um you were the top well you well there's still weeks left in the year um but do those lows let's recheck it it might have changed a i don't know recheck it um and also on the last earnings call i caught the joke about your you had like a co award that kicked in because the stock gains and i think your salary is going back to like 40k or something is that right yeah but pretty much i think this was a un um not not a lot of people caught this but i had some grants back in 2019 we were a private company that had share price targets of around 50 and 100 and you know a year ago the stock was trading at i think in the 20s and then of course with the tariffs it dipped back down uh so i i don't think that we had forecasted all of those rewards hitting but here we are there you are so that that was the cause for our our mix our miss on tax expense and employee bonus rule was what's your bonus okay cool um how do you keep yourself grounded in a moment like this especially when you're going into next year um you are full-on founder mode uh this i'm sure your board uh trust you immensely after this year, not that they didn't before, but how do you ground yourself and keep looking around the corner for what could disrupt you, so to speak?

54:02Look, we have to remind ourselves to not get complacent. I try to remind our employees of that as well. And I'm saying it to the employees as much as I'm saying it to myself, right? Like, I know inevitably I've been through so many of these cycles. There's going to be a time in the future where everyone thinks we're shitheads again um uh hopefully less acute than times before and generally i believe the trend will be up but you know it's it's always cyclical to some degree and um that's just what we sign up for who didn't want to talk to you before who wants to talk to you now let's name some names i mean honestly i i don't know no i didn't get too many podcast best invites back in 2020.

54:45That's fair. That's fair. Well, we're glad to have you on. We met over a year ago. I don't remember where the stock price was, but it was early on in the predictions markets thing. It was before the US really opened up. Before the election. Yeah, before that. And you were talking to me about it in the context of the media and how you were thinking about the media, because you have a media arm, you're doing a social network now. And I hadn't really heard of it that way. And actually, yeah, we should we should actually just go to that. The social network thing, I think Ellis and I are both fascinated by.

55:16Me as someone, well, we both covered social networks and then Ellis worked at one. But you're rolling this out. It's not fully out. But are you really taking on finance Twitter here? Is this the goal? You're going to go toe-to-toe with Elon on this? I mean, maybe. It's not the way we think of it. But I think we have certain advantages. We have a highly engaged customer base that's rather large. We have the ability to build great technology. I mean, you might have seen where we've been live streaming our product events and our earnings with live video in the app. And we've been able to include interactivity as well.

55:58So we could run polls and different sort of like UI elements. I thought you were going to say the users could

56:06Ellis:slime you or something if they felt like it. Next earnings. If they felt like it was too boring, yeah. We should add that. But Opendoor last week actually live streamed their own earnings in our app. So we've been working on building this earnings information and data ecosystem. You can ask shareholder Q &A. And I think the interesting opportunity for us is actually becoming the place where the ideas are generated and shared. And can we be the first place where you actually post something interesting that has like financial or business or economic content? And I think the advantage that we have is because we're going to be where the social network is and the transaction, we can solve the verification problem to make sure people aren't, you know, faking their trades and posting inaccurate information.

57:03And the more assets we add, so now with prediction markets and options and futures and equities, you can imagine the stronger kind of that network effect would be. Like you could actually get diverse content. It's interesting. Lots of opinions. And can we become the place where you actually post first? I think that's going to be the challenge but if we get that I think it could be the best source of business and financial content out there you know if this works you are going to get the call from Elon and he's going to go what the hell are you doing you know that's coming I don't know that that's the case necessarily and I think to some degree a lot of the big social media products are looking to add finance in there so rather than us just sitting around and getting disrupted did.

57:56Can we try to figure out what what the best way is to integrate that into into one experience?

58:02Ellis:It's definitely a compelling package with social 24 seven markets. I think I saw the top replies to one of your tweets about, you know, these kind of always on markets idea was a bunch of memes of people looking very tired, like I'm tired, boss. You know, we all know this is fun, but it's also addictive. I mean, I don't even bet any money on fantasy sports, but I had to stop because every single time I was on the toilet or up late at night and couldn't sleep, I'm looking at it. I wonder what advice do you give to young people today to kind of come up with these new norms and modulate that behavior?

58:38Ellis:Because it is fun. You feel like there's always more to learn, whether it's with stocks or the prediction markets. Yeah, I think it's very, very tough for a young person now when you have so much, you're bombarded by digital stimulus. And, you know, I recognize that I have a mobile app that people use, but I actually legitimately don't think, I mean, if my kids spent more time investing and learning how to trade on Robinhood, I don't think I would feel as bad because, you know, it's just, there's social media. Yeah, there's YouTube, there's Minecraft and... Better than Shrimp Jesus, Doomscroll, what we're saying?

59:23Yeah, I just think that it is a problem and it's something that I worry about. And I'd like to contribute to making it better for sure and eventually scale that. But yeah, if I had to think about like one personal cause that I legitimately really am worried about, it's just like digital addiction so uh i don't have all the answers but you said yeah you said as robin hood scales you find yourself wanting to be more of a luddite i mean that's interesting right a lot of the founders who run these digital products and these platforms you talk to them and it's like you you get drained yourself right it's a lot yeah i think it's unnatural to be in front of a screen for so much of of your life um and you know when the smartphone came out it was just the superpower, right?

1:00:13The people that were good at using smartphones, I think had an advantage, but now, you know, we're spending so much of our time on smartphones that it's become a tax. It's almost like, you know, if the person next to you is, is using it more, you're at a disadvantage. And, and I think it's unfortunate that technology kind of, uh, uh, evolves in, in that direction. Well, maybe we can end it here. You're, you're live streaming your earnings. You just did it at the Chase Center. I imagine these will get more ornate each earnings. I'm expecting more spectacle. Are we going to get a pre-earnings walk-in where you've got the designer bag, the jacket, you know, the shades?

1:00:54Final Countdown is playing. Yeah, Final Countdown is playing. Are we going to, is that coming or are we just going to do post-game? You know, the inspiration for earnings was an NBA post-game interview. Right. Where we thought to ourselves, okay, after, Let's say the analogy is like game three of the NBA finals. It's not over. It's not game seven. It's actually you're somewhere near the beginning of the series. But if you have a good quarter, it's sort of like interviewing LeBron after the Lakers win. He's got a little bit of swagger. He's thanking his teammates. He's looking good. Maybe he's wearing his shades.

1:01:32If the Lakers lose and you're interviewing LeBron, he's got the towel on his head. Maybe he throws some shade on his teammates. But it's informative and entertaining either way. So if they could make it so that an NBA postgame interview is worth watching, we should be able to make earnings worth watching as well.

1:01:53Ellis:I mean, it's not easy, is it? It's like, how much can you really say that you aren't prepared to say? Well, I mean, we've been able to do quite a lot. Turns out quite a lot. And it's been baby steps. Like we went on video and now I'm at the point where if I'm reading a script, it's hard for me to not sound robotic. It's hard enough even without a script, to be honest. So I operate best when I just have like an idea of what I want to talk about. But the rest of it is kind of extemporaneous in a sense. So I think we've been able to make it more engaging while still obviously providing the necessary information and communicating the results well.

1:02:35And hopefully it leads to an investing public that's more informed because they're actually watching and listening to the earnings calls. And I think in order to do that, we have to make them a little bit more engaging. It's a nice microcosm of the Robinhood product strategy as well. It's like, you know, yeah, if people are more interested in this stuff, they'll engage with it more. And I think in the same way, if people are more interested in their finances, they'll engage with their finances more and you'll get great outcomes as a result. Well, next time, if you walk out with the shades on in the pre-game walkout, we'll know that it was a good quarter, right?

1:03:12Well, I've tried the shades thing. Actually, if you saw my France event, I wore shades. Now, there was a debate about this. And, you know, the folks that I was working with were like, don't do the shades. if people can't see your eyes, it's untrustworthy and they're not going to like it. And the funny thing was after that event, if you see the Twitter photos, the ones where I'm wearing shades, people are like, oh, he looks like a scammer. And then, you know, the ones without the shades were were fine. So, okay. That's bad advice. I learned that it's actually true. Yeah. Shades are no good. Shades are no good.

1:03:50Vlad, really appreciate this. Thanks so much. Yeah. Always a pleasure. Thanks to Vlad for coming on the show.

1:03:57Ellis:We're new here, so please follow, like, subscribe. You know what to do on all your favorite platforms of choice at AccessPod, including YouTube, where we have full video of the show and time codes so you could jump around. If you like this episode, please leave a five-star review or thumbs up and share it with a friend. It means a lot. You can find me at Hamburger on Twitter and at Meaning.Company. You can find my newsletter at Sources.News. Access is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producer is Shiraz Dume. See you next week. Bye. You always got to do the bye, don't you?

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