Confronting The CEO Of Robinhood - Why Most Investors Lose Money

We are seeing a phenomenon that I have uh never seen. >> The weapon of choice for these new traders are platforms like Robin Hood. >> GameStop shares tanking today. Robin Hood and other brokers making it tougher to trade the stock. >> How tired are you of talking about it? >> You It's okay. You can be honest. [Music] >> So, you created Robin Hood, the financial app that introduced probably millions of people to investing. Do you think that there should be stronger guardrails and stronger disclosures in place? I think it's hard for me to imagine a world where I would say no. >> So, what is your prediction in terms of where the US economy might be headed over the next few years? >> I think technology-wise, we're in probably the most interesting time ever. You have AI, which has the potential to change every single aspect of our lives and the way we interact with the world. You've got cryptocurrency reshaping money itself. And that's why trading and finance have to evolve too. >> So if you were to answer the notso simple question of why did you disable GameStop buy button, how would you now answer it? [Music] Vlad, thank you so much for coming on the ice coffee hour. I feel like this is something we've been trying to do for years at this point. All of us have used Robin Hood. We're big fans. However, we have never seen you and Roaring Kitty together in the same room. >> Yeah. >> How can we confirm you're not the same person? >> I mean, I never claimed to not be the same person. Um, I've tried getting in touch with him in the past, but I don't know. He's uh I'm not convinced he's a real person. >> He's very elusive. >> He's a little elusive. Yeah. Have you guys met him? >> No. >> We would love to. If he's watching this by any chance, Keith, please, we would love to have you on the show. Phenomenal. We've reached out and I don't think he's ever responded. He's never seen it as far as we're aware. >> Yeah. Well, maybe in the next one you can interview uh both of us together. >> That would probably >> I think that would break the internet. >> That really would. >> Yeah. That would be the first definitive proof that we're not the same person. >> That's so funny. So, I I'm curious. So, we have a chart here I want to show you. Why do you think the average retail investor does so poorly in the markets? >> That's a good question. I'm trying to think whether uh it's actually true from my perspective that the average retail investor does poorly. So um because I we we publish um >> thanks >> we publish Robin Hood data around this. We have the Robin Hood investors index and that tracks how our customers do uh relative to the market also what their top 10 holdings are. Um and you know it fluctuates quite a bit. You can compare it against QQQ and and other other tech stocks and ETFs and our customers tend to be overweight in innovation and technology and also crypto. So in times when those do poorly, which happens from time to time, our customers tend to do less well than the indices, but you know in in times like right now where innovation, technology, crypto is is doing well, um they they tend to do very well. So, um I think I think that historical number might be if if I had to guess from a time where there were commissions on every trade and a lot of the studies that show retail investor underperformance assume a $10 commission. And obviously that amount eats into your returns um as you trade more and more. The difference is now we have zero commissions on equity trades and so a lot of those analyses don't make sense and and I think a lot of the conventional wisdom around retail underperformance has been under these sort of antiquated assumptions. >> Is there anyone you think that should not be investing? Is there a type of person maybe where hey this is probably not for you? What we try really hard to avoid is people investing in things accidentally or things that they don't understand. So I think disclosure is very very important. It should be clear to the user what the instrument is. I mean it should be clear that for example it's a it's a cryptocurrency. It should be clear if it's a equity or some kind some type of leverage product. if they want to trade options, uh it should be clear that, you know, they're they're suitable for options. Um, but once once you get to that, if someone's really telling you, you know, I want to invest in this IPO or I want to trade options, um, I I think I think it's hard for me to imagine a world where I would say no, you know, you you shouldn't be doing that. So, you created Robin Hood, the financial app that introduced probably millions of people to investing that would have never been investors otherwise with 0 trades and a very beautiful UI. While that's really good because I think I think everyone should be investing if you're not investing, I think that you're losing out and you're not doing your future self a service. Yeah. There's also the counter side of that which is it could introduce some people that are not super knowledgeable in the markets or don't have the expertise to be investing um to investing and they can end up losing money. Do you think that there should be stronger guard rails and stronger disclosures in place to prevent people without the knowledge to be investing or do you think it's a better thing that everyone just kind of goes in and it's you know the the survival of the fittest? >> I think that um more people should be investing. We we give people lots of options now, right? So, uh obviously for our active traders, we have to be at the frontier there and you can trade options, futures, prediction markets. I mean, we we pride ourselves on having very comprehensive selection, low fees, rock bottom margin rates uh for the active trader market, but not everyone wants to actively trade um or is suitable for it. And so we have Robin Hood Strategies, which which I think is the best robo, the best digital advisor on the market, uh, with some of the lowest fees in there, a fee cap if you have above $100,000, and just like, uh, a beautiful interface and that's been off to a fast start. We we rolled that out just a couple months ago, and it's already at over half a billion in AUM with 100,000 customers. So, it's it's growing quickly. We also have retirement. You know, we've got over 20 billion in retirement assets on the platform. To my knowledge, I think it's the fastest growing IRA product that I've heard of. You know, gone from zero to 20 billion in just a few years. >> And if you look at what we incentivize, Rob, uh, retirement is actually what's incentivized because there's a built-in match into the product on every contribution. So, we'll match 1% uh, for retirement and 3% if you're a Robin Hood Gold member. And you know, we we run match promos and things like this, but if you actually think about what's like intrinsically incentivized, it's our retirement products. And and I think the true story is a lot of people have money in different buckets. So you'll have someone with uh you know, a few thousand, maybe more, that that they're discretionary trading and then they'll have a big retirement portfolio and they'll use Robin Hood strategies as well. So, um, if if you think about the discretionary bucket, the sort of like area of the portfolio, people are self-directing, taking risk, I think I've always viewed that as sort of like competing with the consumption bucket. So, this is probably money you would have spent otherwise. You know, you'd have spent it on entertainment. You maybe would have like bought stuff on Amazon. Um, and and that's what we saw from from the very beginning when we were looking at Robin Hood and where the money that these young people were investing was coming from. It wasn't usually coming from another competitor because Robin Hood was their their first account. Um, and when we talked to customers, they'd say, "If it wasn't for Robin Hood, I wouldn't be an investor. I'd probably be spending this money." Um and and so Robin Hood actually I think took money from the consumption bucket and put it in investing and and I think when you take that lens that discretionary bucket looks a little bit different. That's what I tend to agree with is it seems like Robin Hood kind of took those people that would be spending it on extra streaming services or spending it on random luxury goods or things that they don't necessarily need and they put it into usually with Robin Hood the old connotation. I don't know exactly how it's being used now was that they would put it into like slightly riskier stocks or more fun sort of investments which is I still think I mean magnitude's better than just spending it on some random you know extra expense. >> Yeah. And I think also a lot of the people that really like there there's some customers that are all in on discretionary trading, right? They trade options, they trade futures. And you talk to these people and uh they're basically entrepreneurs. A lot of those folks are entrepreneurs, right? And and you know, we we have meetings with them and and and sometimes we do dinners with our best customers. Uh these people want complete control over all of their finances. They have very strong points of view around many things and and I think that Robin Hood and trading is a way to reflect that point of view. They think certain companies are going to do well. They feel like they deeply understand cryptocurrencies. Some of them are sports junkies and they have like an incredibly deep understanding of different sports teams and what's going on. They're tracking the in the injury reports. So, I think there's a big parallel between self-directed trading and entrepreneurship. If you think about me, um, very few entrepreneurs actually succeed. And if if you think about what it is, it's like a complete 100% leveraged bet on like >> one undiversified thing. Um, >> and you know, is should we have less entrepreneurship? I don't know. I I think we should have more even though, you know, it doesn't always work. I did a a short recently that got a lot of views and it was on Robin Hood. >> Oh gosh. It wasn't the one where you're like, "I'm closing my Robin Hood account. Here's why." Was it? >> No, it was this one. Turn it up. >> So, I bought Robin Hood stock at $32 a share. >> Okay. >> And it dropped as low as seven. I doubled down and I bought more. >> The reason it went down was because I told Jack I bought Robin Hood. immediately goes on his phone, buys it immediately. And I kid you not, the day he bought it >> once that's >> And I told Jack on the podcast, I'm like, "Dude, you got to sell the stock." And he says, "I'll flip a coin and if it's heads, I'll sell. If it's tails, I'll keep it." I said, "It's fine." He flips it. Sure enough, he has to sell the stock. Sells the stock. The next day, it's up 10%. The next day, there was a big announcement that they received an investment. At first, you were telling me kind of a joke, but you genuinely believe this. >> Yes. I actually came across that clip uh on social media and I was expecting like some very deep uh fundamental or technical analysis about your investment philosophy. So it it gave me a little chuckle. It just it just got funnier and funnier as it went along. >> Honestly, my only analysis was that I genuinely like Robin Hood as a company and it's all I see on social media on Wall Street Bets and on Twitter. Everyone just posts the Robin Hood screenshots. Yeah. and very few people ever post Schwab. And I thought just by the metrics of that and the price it was tra it just it made sense to me. And then Jack bought. >> Yeah. Um so I'm curious if you map out all of the users on Robin Hood across a line and this is like people that make a lot of money high risk. People that lose a lot of money high risk. And then in the middle you have like the very conservative investors. Where would you say Robin Hood falls? Like what does this chart look like on Robin Hood as opposed to other brokerages? If you take Vanguard for example or you take Schwab or any other sort of exchange >> I think that well first it's it's hard to actually compare because no brokerage reviews they don't have that data >> data to that granularity. I mean we can track our market share and and we sort of like goal on that and and actually the the goal is to be number one in market share across every asset that we offer >> equities options crypto >> uh margin which has been growing very very well. So um we don't have a goal on the precise decomposition but at a high level um one of the things we really track very very closely is customer retention. So it benefits Robin Hood if customers do better over the long run because our revenue is actually I mean if you if you look at our revenue and divide that by our assets under custody the total platform assets on the platform uh that number has been fairly consistent over over the years. it's kind of like in the 2% range, you know, sometimes a little bit higher, sometimes lower, but basically our revenue scales with the assets under management. So long-term, we're very aligned uh for our customers to do well because if they do well, their account balances increase, our AUM increases, and we're we're a healthier company. Um, and a a few interesting things. one aum now is over a quarter trillion which is which is a big number you know I can I can now say uh trillion when when I describe our even though it's less than one but still I think a quarter of a trillion is a big milestone for us particularly as such a young company >> average account size broke 10,000 per customer and you know criticism of Robin Hood would be these are tiny accounts a few thousand dollars Schwab's at you know hundreds of thousands how how is this ever going to be a serious broker, but you know, account balances are growing and our customers are getting wealthier. They're putting more and more of their dollars into Robin Hood and and I think we'll get there to the point where our customers have, you know, six figure six figures average account size. >> How much of that though is just the market has gone up so much over the last few years in terms of average account size that if the market were to fall, you would see a big discrepancy there. >> Yeah. I mean, we also look at net deposits. Uh, net deposits is the portion of it that's, I guess, under our control. Um, and last year was 50 billion in net deposits. Um, which is a big number, big number. And this year we're on track to exceed that, right? We did uh we've had two of our top three net deposit quarters in the history of the company in the first two quarters of this year. you know Q4 of last year was was quite strong as well but uh yeah Q1 Q2 have been strong Q3 is off to a good start so it's not just the market people are also putting more money >> but but we want to benefit from market appreciation too because if you look historically you know market goes up >> by 10%ish per year and that compounds so we want to be winning in net deposits we want to make sure uh I mean up to our control our our customers are investing invested in stocks and other assets that have long-term appreciation potential. I think the combination of those two make for for a great company. >> How much do you look at specific user data? For example, if you have one trader that's wildly outperforming everyone else on Robin Hood, maybe they're getting like consistent 1,000% returns every single year. And you said you reach out to these people and you'll take them to dinners and stuff like that, but do you ever feel like incentivized to copy trades? And is that even legal to do to like look at all the user data? You see one account just consistently crushing. >> Yeah. Yeah. We we don't really do that. Uh I mean we don't do that and um yeah actually I think traders in particular are pretty sensitive about their privacy and that's why um I mean I think we have certain regulatory uh >> to do that. >> Um I'm not sure it would I I don't know about the legality of it. Um, but it would at the very least be frowned upon. I mean, depending on what exactly we're doing. Of course, there's certain regulatory obligations that we have like we have to do surveillance and look out for things like market manipulation and and things of that nature. But, um, >> yeah. Yeah. Generally, like looking at >> uh who's making money and trying to understand their their uh their, you know, trading strategies. We we don't do that. That's what Jack wants to do. >> That's See, that's the thing. If I owned Robin Hood, I would just go straight to Chris Camilillo's portfolio. If you know Do you know who Chris Camilo is? >> I do know him. Yeah. >> Yeah. I would just go straight to that portfolio and just be like, "All right, you know what? Chris, hire an assistant and just map out every single trade he's doing." >> Here's what we were talking about earlier. What I would love to see is a voluntary opt-in feature where you could opt in and share your trades to other people publicly and all people would see on you because you would stay anonymous is just your account balance. >> And you could comment on a feed and be like, "I just made this trade." and it's like account balance 20 million and people like >> and someone else J 10,000 I'm going all in on Dogecoin and people like okay maybe >> okay so that that's a fundamentally different thing than you know uh us just looking at the data and trading for our own corporate account. So I I definitely think there's value in what you're saying if it's clear to the customer that >> although really quick I just want to say that we had a sponsorship supposed to be going right here and instead of sticking with the script I'm going to be speaking candidly from the heart. Okay, Cozy Earth reached out to us a few months ago and they wanted to sponsor the podcast and we said sure we'd be open to it. 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And now, let's get back to the podcast. >> If it's clear to the customer that, you know, I can opt into sharing my trades and other people can track me and see how my portfolio is doing and maybe, you know, follow along and copy my trades uh within some type of parameters. I I think that would be an interesting product. Actually when Robin Hood started uh I don't know if you guys know this but we we launched in 2013 as a social network. So the name uh before we changed it to Robin Hood was analyst and the idea was that um we have all these retail investors on social media and the internet and they should have the ability to share their point of view uh of stocks. So we took the idea of an institutional analyst, you know, the folks that rate stocks, buy, sell or hold, set price targets, and the attempt was to like democratize that. So anyone can be an analyst. Uh we created this social network where people could rate stocks and write comments. Um and our our initial vision was that once we got approved to be a broker, we would sort of like layer on trading. So you can not only analyze a stock and but but you can also you know buy it and you can see your real portfolio. And sometimes I think about we we ended up making the decision that like these are two very complicated businesses independently to put together >> and the demand for for commission free trading was uh was so high that we just like abandoned all of that for the time being and just focused on making the the trade button as simple and streamlined and easy as possible. But sometimes I think about that because very much in our DNA to to build those types of products. And who knows, maybe maybe some point we'll revisit. >> I would love to see that and be able to track people based on their percentage return, dollar amount return, and account value. >> And would you would you uh you you'd sign up for that network and be willing to uh you'd be willing to opt in and share your trades with followers? >> Yeah. But as long as it's anonymous, as long as people didn't know it was me, all it would show is the account size and what I'm buying and selling. I do not want to be associated to be anonymous or not. I think because I personally wouldn't care if I was, you know, if I could show my trades like Jack Selby just made this trade and then you do the opposite >> and you do the opposite of whatever. >> I think most people would probably want to be known and they could build a following. But uh yeah, I mean I think uh I think if if you I could see the use case for wishing to remain anonymous too, but but I think there that raises a question of like who is this person and why would I follow them, you know? So, we've spoken to a lot of people on the podcast that have either been acquired or they've IPOed and they said after that massive landmark event, their quality of life can slip a little bit and they can feel, you know, some sort of like purposelessness or meaninglessness because they, you know, this is that was their entire existence was building up this company and then you have this massive event to kind of for forego a lot of your equity and ownership of of the company. How have you noticed that work with your life? Did you notice after you guys IPOed there was a quality of life slip or would you say that that was not your experience? >> There was definitely a little bit of a quality of life slip, but I don't know if it was the IPO itself or the timing of it. Um, so we went public in July of 2021 at sort of like the peak of the secular bull market before things went really south. And we were actually one of the last IPOs before the window got shut. I think Ribian went after us by a couple of months, but I think the IPO window shut for many, many years shortly after us. And you you could tell the vibe was shifting right around the time we were going public. Like we didn't have a particularly hot road show. Um it wasn't, you know, >> like some IPOs where it was 60x overs subscribed. So, you could tell there was a little bit of a vibe shift. Like, everyone was kind of understanding the government's printing a lot of money. Inflation is creeping up, so something's going to have to change. And so, pretty soon after our IPO, uh, our stock took a a pretty big hit. You know, we went public at $38 per share. Uh, we traded, I was actually looking recently when when was the exact day we hit the bottom? Mid 2022. Uh we closed at like 680 something. So a huge drop right there. >> What did that feel like at the time to see that? >> It felt rough. Uh it felt rough. And I mean they they tell you that you should ignore the stock price uh and focus on building your business. It's especially hard for a company like Robin Hood whose business is the stock market to ignore stock prices, especially our own. And and also I think it's harder to ignore on the way down than on the way up. Um because on the way down, you know, people get concerned about, you know, the the long-term viability of the company, their compensation if if you look at employees. So hard to ignore uh especially on the way down. And I think they really look to leadership to uh point a way out, right? like show direction and and inspire people so that they know it's a company that's that's worth betting on. So, I don't think it was the IPO itself, but going through a hard time post IPO where we went public after the GameStop stuff, there was a little bit of like short-lived euphoria around the time of our IPO >> and then afterward like the reality set in of um we're a business that was compared to now much more fragile. Um we went through COVID, we transitioned to being a remote first company. We blew out our headcount and grew our headcount 56x. Um people weren't working well together. We weren't shipping and then the macro environment which was a tailwind during co rapidly reversed and and became a big headwind and and people stopped trading. Uh so you know all that happened simultaneously and uh so so I didn't have the problem that you were suggesting which is oh my my job is done like mission accomplished. >> It it was more just like being hit by several freight trains of like unique challenging problems and you know having to like stop them or dodge them and uh and having to navigate that. So, so I felt uh there was no loss of purpose. It was in and >> it was like a slow burn of like different mini crises. >> Do you think do you think that was an overreaction? Because I remember at that time you were trading at a market cap that was equivalent to your cash on hand. >> Yeah. And I remember seeing that and thinking, how how is this not a buy at this price? Because you're basically buying dollar for dollar the cash you have. >> Yeah. >> How does that make any sense? >> I don't know if it was an overreaction as much as sort of us having to build trust with a new set of investors. And I felt like we had to do this when we were a private company. you know, we we raised as a private company, we raised different rounds of funding, seed, series A, all the way up to series G, which was our our last round before IPO in 2021. >> And in a lot of those rounds, you you bring in a new investor for the first time. And I I I always felt like there was a period of having to earn the trust of the new investor. Maybe they don't really understand how we operate. They're trying to figure out did they make a mistake with the did they overpay for the company? Um >> uh they don't really know us that well and um I felt like for each new one there was a period where okay we had to prove ourselves. This is a new person. They don't know us. We had to build trust and I think when we went public it was very much the same. you know, different set of investors. Uh, you know, you had the hedge funds, you had the longonies, you had retail, which for for Robin Hood is a big chunk, but you know, you'd think we'd always have retail, but no, it was a private company. We didn't have any retail. So, that was new for us. >> And and I think that >> there was a period where we had to earn the trust of that shareholder base. And I think we've managed to do that. Finally, I could see the the tide turning in 2024, kind of last year. >> Yeah. From my perspective, it seems like there's still that discrepancy between Robin Hood where people still associate to some degree with more like childish or like ah it's a bunch of early 20s with something like a Vanguard or or a Schwab >> that seems to have more that like legacy push behind it. >> How do you intend to bring Robin Hood to that level? A couple years ago, our best customers maybe would have hundreds of thousands of dollars in their Robin Hood account, maybe millions. But then as we've added more things and we become more established, I started talking to customers who are moving over tens of millions. You know, now I'm talking to customers that are moving over hundreds of millions into their Robin Hood accounts. Um, and you know, my my aspiration would be someone like me, uh, you know, uh, whatever classification I'm in should be able to have all of their wealth in Robin Hood and that should be just optimally managed at the lowest cost. If we can serve someone like me, all of their financial needs, that should then acrue to to everyone. And I I think the problem that the incumbents are ignoring is there's a a great wealth transfer that's uh that's underway. Uh according to to some statistics over 120 trillion is going to be handed down from baby boomers and silent generation to younger generations. And and I think I I see increasingly that Robin Hood has the potential to be the main beneficiary of this. Right? the young people already have Robin Hood accounts. We're increasingly building tools to make Robin Hood more useful to you if your family members are on it. Not just your kids and your spouse, but also your parents. And and nobody's thinking about that problem. The incumbent brokerages, they kind of get worse for you if you if you add family members accounts. But Robin Hood's going to get better. We already have this with banking and with credit card, but it's going to it's going to come to investing as well. There's going to be a multigenerational experience. And I I think Robin Hood eventually for for the mass market will play a role similar to what a family office would do for a high netw worth individual. We can put a family office in your pocket that can manage not just your finances but like all of your strategic life decisions when it when it comes to to your family. And I think I think we'll get there much more rapidly and with a much higher quality product than you know anyone in our industry. So on a personal level, how has your approach to money changed going from someone who didn't have maybe a ton of money to now someone who has plenty of it, especially post IPO and with the recent stock growth of Robin Hood? >> How has your approach to money changed? And also on top of that, we had Michael Sailor on the podcast a while ago. It was very interesting because that day micro strategies went down like a few% and we had calculated he had lost like what hundreds of millions of dollars in personal net worth and and we're sitting with him and then after the podcast he checks his phone probably checks Micro Strategy stock for the first time that day >> and he's just you know meanwhile he's losing hundreds of millions of dollars like how how does this work for you on a personal level and once again the approach to money how has that changed I think one thing that hasn't changed is um you know I I I'm an immigrant. I grew up in a household where we were very conservative about all of our spending. Um and I think that imbued in me once once I got a little bit of money. Um I still have this deep need to make sure I'm getting a good deal on stuff even if it's irrational. So, every time I purchase anything, um, I look at it from an investment lens. Am I getting a good deal? Am I buying some asset that'll depreciate? Um, I would be very reluctant to buy a new car, right? The only time I would consider buying a new car if it's literally like the first one in a model and it's so good and like I can't find a used one. Yeah. >> But, you know, I buy used cars. >> You buy used cars. >> Buy used cars. What What's the last used car you bought? >> Uh a 2021 uh 911 Turbo S. Actually, I didn't buy it. That's a lease. That's a lease. >> Why'd you lease it instead of buying it? >> Got a good deal. >> How often do you look for good deals? And like where else do you save money? >> In everything that I do, I look for good deals. >> What does your wife think of this? >> Um >> does she think like, you know, come on, we can get the new car. We can we're at the point now we don't have to worry about these things. Don't need to buy the manager special flank steak for 70% off. That was >> I think she complains about it a little bit but sort of jokingly because she also understands it's you know the way the way that I've always been the way that I am. And so it's you you take the it's it's what she loves about me. >> It's the principle of it though. It's like you don't even though you can waste the money you shouldn't. >> Yeah. And you know, I think I think there's a bit of confidence. Um, it's a good feeling to feel like, all right, at least I don't have to worry that someone's going to take advantage of me financially cuz this guy's just going to like uh do a colonoscopy on any potential transaction. Does that ever hurt? >> So, I think that's very comforting in a way. >> But when you go and negotiate something, does it ever hurt when they look you up and they're like, "Ah, this guy could afford it. Like, I could charge whatever I want." >> Yeah. You can just look up your name and net worth and if there's a B after your name like it's, you know, I feel like that's a different >> from car salesman to buying a house to like having tradesmen over like everybody I feel like would just give a premium just because they can. >> Yeah. Yeah. But you know there there's ways that you can turn that into a positive too. >> Yeah. I mean, if you think about wealthy people, a lot of times they get free stuff because, you know, you can just be like, "Well, how awesome would it be to tell other customers of your business that, you know, >> you're, you know, selling Lady Gaga a dress, right?" So, they get they get luxury items for free a lot of times. >> What's the craziest free thing you've ever gotten? Do you ever have a really successful trader make a bunch of money? They're like, "I got to send him a gift." >> Yeah, I'm not allowed to accept those unfortunately. I think I I think we have to donate them to charity. Um, by and large, >> they got to change that. >> Yeah. Um, yeah. So, yeah, I don't I don't get a lot of gifts or at least not a lot of gifts that I can keep. >> And so, what about your own personal investing philosophy? How has it changed now? Do you go into more like asset protection mode or how do you view money as you've climbed up this this money ladder? It hasn't changed very much because still uh the like vast majority of my net worth is in Robin Hood shares. >> And how does that feel then like on a swing up or a swing down? I mean Robin Hood was like up 1% today. >> Yeah, you hit an alltime high this morning. >> Oh, amazing. >> You didn't know that? >> Uh I didn't know that. I I mean I knew in the past week we've been doing well, but uh >> how do you not check the share price every day? I cuz even on my account I check I feel like it would drive you crazy multiple times a day >> if you were >> I I do I I don't want to make it seem like I don't check the share price cuz I do uh even though I try not to but but I do try not to. Yeah, because it can be really distracting. Like I don't want to feel because if it's down, you know, four or 5%. Which sometimes it is for no reason. I don't want to have a bad day, right? So, um, and I also don't want to get too excited and think that I'm winning if it's up for no reason. >> That's exactly true. Same thing for the podcast. It's like if we have a video that does really well, I try not to let myself feel good because I know if I do, then when videos do poorly for who knows what reason, then I try not to let myself feel bad. It's like you have to remove your emotions from the reality of the situation. >> It's exactly like that. Yeah. >> Well, really quick, one thing that I've noticed from talking to a lot of real estate investors on the channel is that once you go beyond a few units, managing your finances could be a bit messy. Like all of a sudden you have rents coming in from multiple different sources, property taxes, insurance, vendor expenses out the wazoo. You blink and thousands of dollars worth of expenses disappears in places you didn't even realize. That's exactly why our sponsor Baseline is such a smart tool. It's a banking and finance platform built specifically for real estate investors and landlords. You can separate income and expenses by property, automate rent collection, and it even gives you ready to go tax reports. It's super flexible. You can create as many checking and savings accounts as you want, label them by property, and even automate transfers between them. It basically just helps with keeping everything automated and organized without needing five different apps. But what really sets Baseline apart is its built-in AI powered bookkeeping feature. Every transaction, whether it's a rent payment or roof repair, gets automatically tagged to the right property in the right category, so there's no more guesswork. And if you sign up with our link and fund your account, they will give you a $100 cash bonus just for getting started. So whether you own one rental or a growing portfolio, Baselane helps you stay organized, automate the busy work, and track performance all in one place. Check them out today at baselane.com/istic. That is baselane.com/istic to sign up or just click the link down below in the description, baselane.com/istic. Thank you so much to Baselane for sponsoring this episode. So what is your prediction in terms of where the US economy might be headed over the next few years? I think there's um there's a cloud of uncertainty around these things always, right? So I think you have to you have to uh counterbalance the sort of like bearish indicators uh which are um sort of like productivity growth historically has been pretty low in the in the US and nobody's really been able to figure out why. Um I think outsourcing of the industrial base has been a big contributor to that. you have us printing money, right? And in in a way that's us borrowing from future generations to to fund our spending now, which which I think is a problem. >> Countries that have typically been big buyers of treasuries have kind of gotten out of that market. China probably being the the best example there. >> And you know, there's like seeds of geopolitical conflict or outright war brewing. And that's just uh those are kind of the bearish indicators, right? >> Yeah. >> But there are some bullish indicators too that make me feel very optimistic. Um I think technology-wise where in probably the most interesting time ever like technology keeps marching forward, you have AI that has the potential to solve some of these issues including productivity and the borrowing from the future through uh massive GDP growth. if you know AGI or ASI is is unlocked and it looks like the US is leading in that particularly Silicon Valley which makes me feel very good. You've got cryptocurrency again which the US uh very much in in some ways companies are leading and I think we're we're looking to onshore some of the innovation that's gone offshore in the past few years. And I think you you have some things that uh we're we're proud to be a part of which are ways to reverse the borrowing from the future to fund the present and instead use the present to fund the future like this uh invest America initiative that somehow miraculously passed and was part of the reconciliation bill which would actually fund uh every new child born in this country with $1,000 in uh in in great American companies which I think is very Cool. So, >> what's Robin Hood's plan with the thousand Trump account? >> Yeah. Um, I think it goes very much into our strategy of making financial platform that's multigenerational work for the entire company. So, right now to have a Robin Hood account, you have to be over the age of 18. And I think this is one lever by which we'll expand it to uh folks that are under 18. And you know, whether whether you're zero years old or, you know, a hundred years old, you should you should have an amazing Robin Hood experience tailored to your needs. I'm curious if you I mean, maybe you can't even comment on this, but are there any regulatory provisions or rules that you think are just dumb and should go away? I think you should be able to invest if you're under 18. And I think if you got all those, a lot of people they frontload loss because when I first started investing, I had no idea what I was doing and I tried, you know, selling calls and I was making money and I got greedy and I started buying calls and then I lost everything. Yeah. And and it made me learn so many valuable lessons. But I started doing that once I already started making decent money. And so I lost an amount of money that, you know, is a little uncomfortable to lose. Granted, I'm in a different position now than I still was back then. But I think it's good if you're just getting into investing to have some money that you can lose. And most of the time if you're like 16, 15, 17 and you've made a few hundred over the summer, so much better to lose that than after working for 10 years learning about saving, learn about investing than finally trying and then losing that hardearned cash and then maybe taking a 10-year break from investing because of that experience. >> Funny, I have a a story about that. I was 14 or 15. and I made a Scott trade account when they had $7 trades and I put $2,000 that I had saved up into that account and I was on a penny uh trading forum and I found some like random stocks that people were saying like oh this this whole chart is going to go up and I doubled my money from 2 to 4,000 and I got very confident that how easy that was to make $2,000 lost it all >> but we but that lesson that lesson was amazing on Scott trade and then I got lucky I made it all back I put it into Ford stock I had like $400 left over and I bought Ford stock at like a dollar something a share in 2009 and just forgot about it and it just >> made made it back eventually but it took you know a solid like seven years to make it back but I did >> I started investing I opened up uh a brokerage account at Erade in 1999. So my my dad had given me an incentive because I I was part of this program where uh you had to take the SAT as a middle schooler and if you take the SAT and do well you get into this summer program where you basically get to do math uh do like one year of math in three weeks. Um I don't know you guys heard of this. It was called CTY. >> So anyway, he incentivized me. He's like, "If you get above a 1300 on the SAT, uh, I will give you your score in cash." So, I got very motivated. I was very excited cuz, you know, I was like 12 years old and I don't think he he thought that I would do it cuz 1300 as a 12-year-old is a good score. Um anyway, I got a 1370 and he said, "All right, uh I'll give you a little bit more than than that, but it's going to be in a brokerage account where you're not going to be able to just withdraw the money." I think back then it was even hard to to do that. >> That's smart. >> Um >> and that was in 1999, mind you, right before the dot bubble burst. So, I invested in a bunch of companies. There was uh a time period where I made a lot of money and felt very very confident and then I had to navigate the crash and uh and and and what happened subsequently. But I learned a lot of lessons. Uh I learned what happened when I I learned about company mergers and reorganizations >> because I bought uh stock in this company 3Com. I don't know if you guys remember. No, >> but threecom made the Palm Pilot >> and there was a spin-off. So for every threecom share I had a palm share and I would get the prospectus and I'd be like oh wow I got these free shares. What happened? So I learned about mergers and and reorganizations. I learned about bankruptcies. What happens when the company uh that you that you invested in because you were driving past its office building on the dulles toll road in Virginia and you thought the office building looked very nice. So you bought stock in it uh and then it goes bankrupt and what happens to your stock and I think these are very boring things to read about in a book and actually understand but once you experience it with your own money and your own shares you understand it very deeply and viscerally and it's like engaging to you. So I always said like investing in trading is similar to playing a violin. Like you can't learn to play a violin well by just like reading music theory in a textbook. You have to pick it up and play it. And the first time you play it, it's going to sound very very bad. But if you keep playing it for 10, 20 years, um the sky's is the limit. And I think investing in trading have a lot of similarities with that or playing a sport. >> Yeah. Do you see any other rules though that are out there that you just think to yourself, why does this exist? >> Oh yeah. I think that uh many the accredited investor rule probably a prime candidate. Um >> so if if you guys are not familiar with it or the viewers are basically you can't invest in a private company unless you're a high net worth individual. So there's either a income threshold or a net worth threshold which shuts out 80% of people from investing in private companies. I think it's particularly pernitious now when we have all these AI companies a lot of which are private >> or SpaceX for instance which is you know the leading company in the space revolution which is very very exciting it's very very exciting to a lot of people a lot of potential but it's private so you're you're shut out of it and I think um one fear that I do have about the future is that you've got the genie coefficient at a historic high income wealth inequality is historically high. AI and those technologies um appear or at least there's there's risk of this. It's not clear how it'll shake out, but it it appears that they'll have a centralizing effect. So, they'll probably put more wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer organizations. And my fear is that if that wealth leads to an inflection point in wealth and income inequality and kind of the political unrest and the stressors and like the civil unrest that that that could cause could actually stop progress or thwart progress or or at the best case lead to lots of distractions. I think that's why I'm so compelled to make sure that, you know, we have more people bought into capitalism and particularly with these AI companies that, you know, more normal people can be invested and and exposed to the upside there because otherwise I think um yeah, I think we could have some negative effects. What would you say is your strongest doomsday argument for America's economy and what the average person should be doing about that? And then on the other side, the strongest argument for a flourishing economy over the next 10 years. >> I think the strongest argument for a flourishing uh economy will navigate this this technology and societal transition well, right? Like we're aware of the problem. We're going to we're going to make the fixes. We're going to invest and make sure the US is at the center of these technological shifts and we'll kind of like make the necessary adjustments to our policies to ensure that that's the case. Making it easy for the best talent around the world to come here working for our companies. um encourage capitalism which means protecting it and making sure that more and more people are bought into the system as investors which I think we can keep uh we we can play a strong role um and then GDP growth uh inlects and actually compensates for the spending and we balance the budget that way. So I think that's a nice scenario. negative scenarios. You know, uh you look at people losing confidence in our currency, uh getting into conflict, uh increasing spending much uh more aggressively and much further, losing talent to other countries that are more businessfriendly. Um yeah, th those those are all negative things and um could lead to instability. Although, really quick before we go into that, don't worry. This isn't a sponsor, but we do need your help. Right now, one in 10 people around the world don't have access to clean drinking water. It's something so basic that all of us just seem to take for granted. That's why we're teaming up with Mr. Beast, Mark Robber, and thousands of other creators to help raise $40 million to bring safe, sustainable water to 2 million people worldwide. >> So, join us in donating. The link is down below in the description. It would just mean so much to us. Honestly, even if it's just a dollar, it'll help make such a huge difference in somebody's life. Again, that link is down below. Thanks so much. And now, let's get back to the episode. So, being able to have access to massive amounts of investor data, financial data. How do you think that people's personal financial approach will be completely different a decade from now with how fast things are moving? I'm sure you have your finger on the pulse of what people want to be investing in, the changes they want made. I think that uh what we're seeing now is that a lot of our customers are heavily invested in innovation names um on the public side. So you have Nvidia, Tesla, Apple, Amazon. Uh a lot of uh a lot of like mag seven investing is happening and I think people are making a bet that you know those are going to be the industries that drive the future and and I think so far at least this year it seemed like a preient bet. Um I think another lens is looking at what the wealthy people are doing. Wealthy people are diversifying. They're investing in private companies. They're investing in real estate. Uh, as I'm sure you guys know, uh, I saw real estate in your chart as well has has done very very well. So, wealthy people have access to these things. And right now, retail investors on Robin Hood have like >> not great access admittedly. I think that's going to change and we're going to open up the floodgates to that. And what that's going to do is I I think there will be a positive downstream effect of more entrepreneurship. More people will be starting companies if uh you have access to retail capital and the you know quarter trillion on Robin Hood and other platforms. What I don't think will change is uh the appeal of investing. I think investing will become more attractive. It'll become more necessary. I think everything that we're seeing with AI and even if you believe in these scenarios where you'll have large-scale labor force disruption, job loss in some sectors, you kind of saw a preview of what that looked like uh in 2020 at the beginning of co and what happened was lots more people started investing in the markets. So I think that's a durable effect and and uh I think that if if I had to guess investing will be much bigger portion of of every individual's life 10 years from now than it is today. >> Here's what here's what I'm thinking is that 10 years from now we're going to have 247 trading where I could go online or on Robin Hood and trade at 2:00 in the morning and I want to see shares prices go all the time. >> Well, you basically already have that. I mean, we have 24-hour market except on Saturdays and early part of Sundays. >> Exactly. But I want I want more of that throughout everywhere. And then I also want it so that I could send individual shares from one person to another. So if I want to give Jack one share of Robin Hood, I'm able to transfer it like I would of Venmo. And then lastly is I think no one has been able to truly get real estate in such a way that you could like swipe up and buy something or cut out all the middleman involved in real estate or somehow securitize a property. And every platform that I've seen, I would never put my money in these things. But I think there there's a way where you could turn a house into some sort of like a swipe up or co co-ownership with people. >> That third one I'm very interested in. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Big opportunity. >> I want to see a place where if real estate continues going at the same pace that I could own a house with like three other people equally >> in a way that just works online. I don't know how that would >> work logistically, but I think that's the direction things are at least heading. >> Yeah. And real estate's a big market, so it's a big potential. And if you look at high net worth individual, 10% of your portfolio is is real estate. So, yeah, I think uh I I think uh that that's one that I care about. >> What are your plans to get into real estate? Well, we have uh we have mortgages now through a partnership with Sage Home Loans. And um I think I think that's been a good use case. Proves to us that our customers care about home ownership. They care about real estate uh both in terms of like buying a home themselves, but but also they think about it as an investment. So I think um I think I think we'd get into it in two ways and I'll speak speak to it generally. I think there's one viewpoint where it's uh an investment and you know it's part of a diversified portfolio and and I think over time as with any investment that's a part of your portfolio we want to have access to the highest quality assets and make them available to retail. The other thing is there are certain investments and people think about them as as investments but they're like physical things that people own. I mean like watches a good example. A lot of people invest in watches. They collect them. You invest in art, but maybe you don't really want >> 164th of a painting. You actually want to take custody of your art and hang it up on your house. >> Or you invest in classic cars, right? I mean, >> yeah, >> classic car market, collectibles market has been >> uh very active market >> and I think we'll want to open up access to that, too, because there's a whole realm of investments that you think of as investments, but you want to hold it in your hand. I think we're starting to explore that a little bit in our banking product and with the credit card. Uh right now you can redeem your rewards points into physical gold bars and and that's actually a very attractive offering to people, believe it or not. And of course you can buy gold ETFs and get exposure, but there's something about holding a piece of gold in your hand and putting it in your safe that uh that people really really love. They like to touch and look at their investments. So we'll get into that as well in a bigger way. >> But from mortgages, why not do that yourself? Why not do everything in house? >> Yeah. I mean, there's different parts of a mortgage, right? There's the servicing and the user experience, which actually means, you know, selling you the mortgage, communicating the the value of it, um, taking doing the billing and, you know, putting it in your budget. >> Uh, and I think that's integral to the customer experience uh, in in many ways. So, I think over time you'll see us get deeper and deeper there, and we'll we'll probably own the customer experience and the servicing. Then there's the actual loan itself, you know, giving someone the money uh and and taking that risk. >> And I I just think like that's more of a utility product. There's thousands of banks and uh different types of lenders in the US that would be willing to compete for the actual economics of that. And and I just think um we we might do some of it in the future, but Robin Hood is less differentiated in providing the utility loan service. But why not then allow other users to fund loans? >> I mean >> peer-to-peer lending of some sorts. >> That's been tried before for sure. I mean, you know, Lending Club started with that model and I think um what they find over time is the peer-to-peer aspect becomes a little bit more of a gimmick and the people that are like driving the volume tend to be sort of like institutional lenders and and players that have large amounts of money. Um, I think individuals are less interested in these types of loans as uh as sort of like investment opportunities. I mean, we don't we don't hear them uh being in high demand, they'd prefer to invest in in other things. But if if it changes and suddenly you know we have all these assets and we want to give customers the option to you know back invest in loans or fund them uh the the philosophy is like go where customers are demanding and if if they want that type of selection we we would certainly consider it. >> And what about with tokenization and the future of that? >> So tokenization uh is very interesting. I I think it's the biggest innovation in capital markets in well over a decade. And there's two ways to think about it. One is um for outside the US, I think tokenization will be the best and simplest mechanism to get exposure to US stocks and other assets. So in the same way that stable coin has become the best way to get access to US dollars if you're outside the US uh tokenization of equities will be the best mechanism to get exposure to US equities and other assets outside the US. So it'll become the best platform for US stocks. It will become sort of a global unified platform where you can you can invest in stocks inside the US. You get 24/7 trading. You get instant settlement. You get a lot of uh back office improvements to how a company like Robin Hood can operate that lead to lower costs which eventually be passed on to consumers in different ways. And you also get the capability to take any asset no matter how illquid or scarce uh to be tradable 247 just like a stock or crypto asset. And so I think the the biggest opportunity in the US would be tokenizing uh private companies and actually making them tradable real time just like public stocks and and making them understandable, easy to use, liquid. Um so yeah, we're excited about that and we we've built the technology. We we have a working tokenized uh tokenization of US equities in the form of stock tokens is live in the EU right now. Uh and and you saw we demonstrated tokenization with private companies as well with the SpaceX and Open AI tokens. >> What's the risk of that? Is there a risk that the tokenization price just goes up so high that it's worth fundamentally way more than the underlying company? >> Yeah, there there's certainly that risk uh uh for for privates. Um and you know in in some places for Publix where it's completely untethered from the real market there there's that risk as well but for our uh stock tokens in the EU uh the the two are tethered. So right now we call it phase one of our stock tokens offering every trade actually is backed by uh a one forone trade that happens in the traditional market. So if you buy, for example, an Apple token in the EU will go out and actually uh buy a real share and then mint the token. So then you know you're getting you're getting a good price because it's the price that's uh available on the best of of the exchanges. Now the downside is there's no 247. But what'll happen in phase two when we list the tokens on Bitstamp is you'll basically get the best of both worlds. If the traditional markets are open, you'll get the best price available on the traditional markets. Uh if it's better than, you know, the price on the secondary token markets and if the traditional markets are closed, um you'll be able to trade. So, so I think that's how the the problem will be solved. >> Who thinks of these ideas? Is this you or is it a team? >> Well, we have an amazing crypto team. Uh a lot of great engineers. Johan who's the GM of our crypto business started off as uh an engineer here. Um so the team is very very good and back in the depths of the crypto winter I think it was 2022 when when we were talking about tokenization we we actually said um you guys remember DeFi summer in 2020. Mm- >> So this was like when DeFi became popular and it was the kickstart of the crypto bull run in end of 2020 and 2021. So they called it DeFi summer and it kicked off uh the broader resurgence of the crypto market around that time. So we we uh said to ourselves, okay, what if what what would it take to uh actually get out of this bare market and and get a new crypto bull market? Wouldn't it be cool if Robin Hood actually instigated that? So, we called the project Robin Hood summer uh internally. >> Um, and then, you know, I think it it's early, it's a little bit early to tell, but like tokenization is definitely becoming a bigger thing. I wrote a I wrote a opinion piece in the Washington Post and gosh the the number of questions I got about that opinion piece and the number of our competitors that suddenly made tokenization a top business priority after that was was staggering. So I do think the next uh crypto summer will be by and large driven by real world assets tokenized on blockchains. I think I think you're starting to see that with the stable coins too. Yeah, >> stable coins like a tokenization primitive. >> Yeah. >> What about the increase in prominence of AI? How do you expect that to affect the overall stock market? Do you think that a few companies are going to be massive winners or do you think that the broad access to AI is going to lift a lot of the the smaller companies that now can do things at a low cost? Like the big companies used to use economies of scale. Now everyone has access to AI which just decreases the cost of of labor and and production. >> I think thus far what seems to be happening in public markets is the gains seem to be acrewing to a relatively small portion of companies you know mag 7 the companies that are leaders in AI are are defines though you right typically the ones that own the centers themselves. Yeah, I mean you have uh you have you have the infrastructure layer for sure and and also the chip makers Nvidia I mean all these companies that are training models are by and large doing it on Nvidia chips now Nvidia is the world's most valuable company um but yeah it's still if you I'm sure you guys have looked at this chart if you look at the S&P 500 and compare the returns of MAG7 over the past year to everyone else it's like mag seven is huge everyone else is kind of flat which indicates to me that there's sort of like a centralizing effect to this. Now, I don't know if that's going to be indefinite. I would think as the AI tools get better, you'll have more my my prediction over the long run is you'll have more single person companies like one individual will be able to use AI as a huge accelerant to starting a business. And in the same way that you know if you wanted to start a software company in the '9s you'd have to like manage your own data center but you know AWS came along the cloud software providers came along and suddenly you don't longer you no longer need that those 50 people to like buy servers and rack and stack if you want to start an internet company. I think you can think of AI as fulfilling a lot of these specialized functions that you would have had to spend a lot of your time thinking about. Um, and then you know if if Robin Hood gets in and you have something close to capital as a service where you can press a button and get money in your bank account for starting your venture, I think we'll have a lot more more companies. Now, >> really quick, let's talk about something that every growing business runs into at some point. You hit a wall where you just need help. You can't do everything yourself. And thankfully, that is where our sponsor Upwork comes in. 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Post a job today and hire tomorrow with Upwork. So, head to upwork.com. That is upw.com or you can just click the link down below in the description. Seriously, guys, I've used them plenty of times and had amazing experiences. So, I highly recommend it. upwork.com. Thank you so much to Upwork for sponsoring this episode. Now, really quick, I just want to say that when Jack and I first started the Ice Coffee Hour, we had to figure out everything ourselves from the best cameras to use, the best editing equipment, how to get guests, every day presented new challenges. That of course is why today's sponsor is so helpful and so relevant and that would be Shopify. Shopify is basically your all-in-one business partner. They power millions of businesses worldwide. From major brands like Mattel and Gym Shark to entrepreneurs just getting started. And here's a fun fact. 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You can create a million dollar business with a $1 per month trial at shopify.com/ic. We've had so many people on this podcast that have made millions of dollars with Shopify. And you can too with a $1 per month trial. Try out that business, make the money. Shopify.com/ic. Thank you so much to Shopify for sponsoring this episode. As a CEO of a massive public company, a concern of many people is that AI is going to be taking everyone's jobs. Do you notice this to be somewhat the case? Like if you don't replace some labor with AI, you're just going to lose out to competitors and do you think that that's a valid fear or how do you as someone with many employees see AI competing with uh the labor force? How do you see that relationship? >> Jobs uh certainly will change over time. some some things that you can now do entirely with AI uh should be done entirely with AI. Uh I think I think uh I think we have to shift as a society and not artificially protect those jobs but work on making sure the people that are on that path are are able to pivot and do something that you know is is more valuable to society in the same way that you know you wouldn't protect lamp lighters right and it was funny it's very romantic in a way people used to come with those torches and light all the lamps Um, I think I was in London last Thanksgiving and they have one part of the city where they're still like protecting the lamp lighters. I do think humans will still be at the center of things and there will be lots of opportunities for for human ingenuity um at least for the foreseeable future. I think the jobs will change and um nobody can think about you know you've heard this term the singularity right the singularity Ray Kerszershw intelligence explosion I think it's inherent in singularities that they're hard to think about but I think we have pretty good clarity over what the next 2 to 3 years at least is going to look like probably 5 to 10 I think we're still far away from you know humanoid robots coming into our houses and you know burping our our children or putting them to sleep. So, uh yeah, I I think I think humans are going to be calling the shots for a while, which means that there will be new and more interesting human jobs. And in the same way that those of us that were early adopters of smartphone technology in the 2000s or early adopters of the internet or early adopters of like spreadsheets in the 80s, if you were an accountant, for instance, you have a huge advantage. And what I've been telling folks here is at some point it's going to go from being an advantage, which which I think we're in now. If you really use these AI tools, you're at an advantage to everyone else. And at some point, probably rather quickly, I mean, we probably don't have five years. I'd say we have two or three to a point where if you're not AI native and if you're not conversant in these tools, you'll be at a disadvantage relative to anyone else. So, I don't think people should worry about AI taking their jobs. I think people should worry about someone that's AI conversant um you know be being more valuable than them in the market and you should prepare yourself for that scenario. >> How should someone prepare themselves for that? Like what should they learn or what do you recommend people do? >> I mean think about it like uh a child, right? Um I think like you look at children using computers in the 80s and 90s and they would just like play with them, right? they'd like play with it. Uh it takes time, it takes interest. I think the problem with with uh uh that a lot of adults have in the workforce are they're very busy. They have existing tasks and you know sometimes when you get those tasks done, you're just tired and you don't really have time. And you know, we have other things going on. We have families, but at the end of the day, it it just takes dedicated time to play with these new technologies. And if you can integrate that play with your work, if you can actually like figure out how to use it while you're working. I'm I'm a huge proponent of integrating work and play in your personal life. And I think having them be separate world worlds is uh not a long-term sustainable strategy. Um but yeah, you just have to like play with it and tinker. I think that's the best way. >> Do you ever feel misunderstood by the public just being who you are and running the company that you do? Yeah, I mean I've gone through the GameStop stuff, so uh definitely used to it. >> But how tired are you of talking about it? >> You It's okay. You can be honest. >> Uh it's just such a complicated thing. Yeah. So sometimes I just don't know what aspect of it to discuss. But uh >> that's the thing is is is when all that went down I remember Graham and I were talking and he was making videos on it covering it >> and I defended >> and and Graham he came to me and he was like he was like do I defend them like like how what kind of a position do I take on this? Because unfortunately the way that YouTube works the way that if you're making videos to appeal to the masses you need to have a villain especially when people are hurting. Totally. And so you can either choose that route, the politically expedient route of making a villain, getting everyone to love that, or you could choose sometimes the the hard truth, which is the more nuanced approach of like, hey, these things aren't as cut and dry as you guys may think them to be. >> Totally. >> Yeah. That's what sucked back then because I remembered I think we had a call >> and >> you had done a few podcasts at the time and everybody hated the podcast because you're like, "Oh, you're just a paid shill for Robin Hood." Even though you were never paying anybody. It was just I'm happy to go on and talk about it if you want to hear me out. And I'm sure even this some people will think, "Oh, they must have been paid or something." No, it's just like this is an honor to be here. We've been trying to do this for years. Like, we're just excited about it genuinely. But I remember at that time, and it's still to this day, >> if you go and defend Robin Hood over GameStop, you're just on. And if you go and say, "Uh, oh, Robin Hood disabled the buy button because they're in bed with Citadel and all this." Everyone's like, "Oh, yeah. Thank you. That's >> Thank you for standing up for the little >> Yeah. And uh and you know, if you say, "Oh, that's or that's just the conspiracy theory or that's totally wrong." Then they're like, "Oh, of course he would say that. What do you think he's going to admit to colluding with Citadel on a podcast?" But, um, I I think I've I've gotten some, uh, some advice from some people who, um, have unfortunately been through some like, uh, crisis comm situations, right? Some crisis comm situations. Um, uh, Daniel Le from Spotify has has been through some as well, and we had this conversation where he was like, um, there's like various stages to a communications crisis. There's like when you see a little bit of smoke happening and then there's like a brush fire is kind of the middle stage and at some point it becomes uh an inferno, a conffluggration and you've completely lost control and you can't put out the inferno. You kind of just have to like get out of the way um because you're not going to control the message. And I think the unfortunate thing with GameStop is the time where it was a small brush fryer or like a smoke was uh very short and uh it it actually ended and it turned into a inferno before I woke up. So I was I I woke up and my phone was unusable because I was getting so many like text messages and tweets. It was like, if you've seen that video, I think Kim Kardashian posted it at some point where she turned off do not disturb on her phone and this thing was just like uh >> just the notification. >> It was just unusable. >> Yeah. >> So, it was it was like that. >> And what Daniel said is the conventional wisdom is you kind of just have to hide during the inferno. And then um when when everything when when everything is rubble and everything is a mess, then you kind of like poke your head out and do an Oprah interview. Um so I didn't do that. I actually got out right in the middle of it and I uh I did a bunch of interviews, right? Sorcin Quomo. Uh I had the congressional hearing. I did the Elon Clubhouse. Um, and and you know, sometimes I think about what if I had just it was very hard at the time because everyone's like, "Oh, we need to hear from Vlad. We need to talk." But in hindsight, I probably should have like let the dust settle a bit and then did one big interview. >> No one's ready for nuance. Like I heard you and it it it's hard for me to understand cuz you explained it in such a way that was complicated. >> It was way too high level your explanations of what actually went down when you could break it down. If you just made your own piece of media and you were like, "This is exactly what happened. This is, you know, they requested this amount of liquid capital to back these things and then and then and then this is when I got the text. This is how long we've been a company. This is how much capital we have. What am I like?" There's no option for the company. Like if you controlled everything and put that out there instead of more candidly trying to hope that you're able to relay a very nuanced and hard to articulate perspective like live that's that made it a lot more difficult. >> You explained it like an engineer even for me I was like I have to go and listen to this like twice just to okay that happened this happened. Okay. >> You have to know how it actually works. >> Yeah. >> How the system works. I think I think I I botched the communications on that to some degree for sure. Um uh it was obviously not fatal for the company, but uh I think obvious I think I could have done a much better job. Uh I think there were two issues. One of which you point out, I just got out there too early without actually even knowing the full information of exactly what happened, who the players were involved, who was talking to, who there was like a cloud of uncertainty and there was just we needed to say something and we were getting roasted for like not commuting, not communicating fully and and properly, right? um which I would say we communicated properly but certainly we didn't communicate with the full there were there were more details that were released as soon as we got them >> and we're and we're confident in them and actually you get in a lot of trouble for both communicating wrong things um that you then have to correct right cuz that just feeds the the trolls even more if they're like oh well see >> they were lying they changed the story so something something so you have to be accurate and truthful and we have to make sure everything is like correct. Uh, and you know, so you saw our communications got more detailed over time. But in hindsight, we probably should have just chilled out and like come up with something comprehensive and full as our first thing. >> The second thing was just sleep deprivation. Um, and it was like I was on these interviews after pulling many all-nighters because it was all hands on deck during that time because Robin Hood was a small startup and we were dealing with not just this like issue but also historic volumes. We were the number one app on the app store. It was very rare for a for a finance app ahead of like Instagram and Tik Tok, right? >> And all kinds of things get strained when you're when you grow too fast as a financial app. So, we were dealing with that. And so, you know, I I came on uh these podcasts and these interviews, and by the way, everyone was remote, so it was actually hard to coordinate. And my face was kind of pale, and they're like, "Oh, he looks kind of like a vampire. That's not that's not very confidence inspiring." >> Um, and you know, it was uh yeah, all all conspired to make that not ideal, I guess. So, if you were to answer the notso simple question of why did you disable GameStop buy button, how would you now answer it? >> Oh, I mean it was just to comply with regulatory requirements. Yeah, basically if you don't comply with regulatory requirements, they can come in and shut down your business. And and then what happens is it's not just the people that traded GameStop that can't trade, but nobody can trade. all the buy and hold investors that are just holding uh you know shares in their accounts they they uh they get hurt. So >> so people are going to ask then who's in charge of the regulation? >> Yeah. So the the the tricky part is um regulations have multiplied over time. A lot of these things date back to DoddFrank which was uh created in the wake of the global financial crisis and you know Lehman went belly up you had Bear Sterns and they were like okay how do we how do we protect this from happening we just have to make sure the capital requirements go up early so that we prevent a a huge systemic issue from from crashing the market and I don't think they anticipated that a lot of those capital requirements would just get triggered by retail investors, you know, buying up meme stocks. But >> why why couldn't the price just continue going higher indefinitely? Like, wouldn't you think that at a certain price there's going to be a seller on the other end, and if there's not, the price just goes higher and the retail investors just figure it out amongst themselves? Like, why does there need to be a capital requirement behind that? >> Yeah, I mean, I think part of the reason is that a lot of trades happen on credit effectively. So, you buy the stock and you have to deliver the shares a couple of days later. You have to pay for them a couple of days later. >> And I think what's happened a lot in the past when you have these short squeezes and some stock uh goes up, it then goes down. And then if you know you have that two-day period where uh people have to pay for the cash sometimes they don't show up with the cash and they're like oh uh I made a mistake or yeah someone else made that trade it wasn't me. So so you have reversals and and I think that's a big problem. So, uh, now, of course, if there's real-time settlement and the cash and the shares exchange hands right away, there's there's less of an issue, but yeah, I mean, there there's good reasons for these things. Um, I think that you do see a lot of a lot of strange behavior when there's market euphoria or strange things happening and a lot of people are like looking out for their best interest as well. Uh the other thing that's interesting is if you look at actually what happened um trading volume was very very high in those meme stocks uh during that entire week and and January 28th was a Thursday and then the weekend came and then we had like the Super Bowl. >> So a lot of people I think blamed Robin Hood for uh for you know the subsequent uh collapses in in some of these stocks. But I think a big part of it was it was just the weekend and people moved on to something else. You know how an internet mob uh doesn't usually hold their attention on one thing. Um I think they just you know market markets were closed. They moved on to something else and then there was the Super Bowl and and so many other things. >> Yeah. >> Plus there were other brokerages platforms that disabled the buy button. >> So you saw a huge just like when when the market opened on Monday there was just like a big difference. Do you think something like that could ever hap happen again like with with GameStop? Because I feel like that was such a once in a-lifetime opportunity that I >> So which stock is it? >> Actually, now there's this thing about how uh people are asking Chad GPT for what stock to buy, right? And uh you know what happens if it just >> has a billion users and it tells everyone the same about that. >> Yeah. Um >> yeah, I mean I don't think it's going to be exactly like GameStop. it it's it's rarely the same exact thing but I think something analogous uh could happen and you know I think this thing of like let's say the same AI model develops a very very deep relationship >> um >> with you know all of the users chat GPT might get to a billion weekly active users before the end of the year and what if that gets them to all buy the same stock >> see I'm thinking why is there not or maybe this is highly illegal what's the stop somebody from making an AI company that just recommends at the same time every day one stock to buy and that's it and people could just choose to buy that stock >> probably highly illegal that's like marketulation >> I don't know if it's if it's AI and it's random and you're not trading ahead of everyone else who's to say that I can't post anonymously >> I'm just saying who's to say I can't post every morning I am buying this share I am buying this share I am buying pay this share. >> I mean if you if you think about it um that's some of the concern around copy trading which you know not very popular in the US >> but like you know in Europe copy trading has become a thing and >> I think that's the criticism about it hurting it's called >> Graham and I have this idea and we honestly it wasn't in our outline to bring up but I just thought of it right now and I wanted to run this by you. So we were thinking what if every single day there is one coin flip and you can either on a prediction market bet heads or tails that's it and you have to bet on a certain side for every like dollar you put up on heads there has to be a dollar put up on tails or I don't know you know however that would be figured out how that middle amount would be figured out but basically you can bet heads or tails one coin is flipped every single day it's a massive cultural moment for the coin flip everyone tunes in 12 pt or something like that and then it's 50/50 and you can do it. >> Yeah. >> No house advantage. >> No house you you know Robin Hood could do this and take tokenize it and take point you know 01% and the only overhead the only overhead is one quarter >> because you got to flip the coiner. That's it. And you could film it, you know, and live stream it and that could happen every single day. That should exist. >> I think that's an interesting idea. Yeah. I mean that that could be a prediction market, right? the daily >> just the one quarter flip and that is that's such like a free marketing opportunity cuz I just know for a fact that would go viral so simple we just don't have the infrastructure to be able to make that happen like there's no way every day >> but we want to do it and I would participate you know and I would be like today heads who's like part of the heads gang you know >> yeah and just have it like a hundred bucks maximum >> I think uh I think there will be a nice novelty effect for that but I would be surprised if it has a lot of longevity I I think it's kind of like HQ trivia. Like it's it's very nice for a little bit, but then >> there's so many interesting prediction markets that are now available on Robin Hood. I mean, we keep adding more and more varieties. You can look at um best AI model at the end of 2025. That's an interesting one to me, right? Because >> uh I think right now I was looking Gemini is like 53%. >> Uh Chad GPT I think was below 20%. So, I think uh I think there there's lots of interesting things you can do that would probably eventually take people's attention away from the the coin flip and and I think a lot of people like track these things. So, you know, you can do the Emmys now. Emmys are interesting. >> So, I could I could put money on the Fed rate decision. >> Fed rate decision. The economic ones have been have been have been cool. Uh the sports like uh there's uh pro baseball. So, there's a a wide variety of things to choose from, >> which make me think it's it's interesting, but probably something that would have a short-lived. >> It would be really cool if you forced it so people could only put in $1 and you can cash out at any time, but it does 10 days in a row and it caps at 10 days because, you know, one to the power of 10 or whatever the thing is, it's like it's a million dollars. And so you can try to turn $1 into a million dollars, but you could only ever put in $1 and you can like parlay into the next the next one and you could cash out anytime and you maybe in the beginning select, you know, heads, heads, tails, heads, tails, tails, heads and up to 10. >> And then somebody if a 100,000 people do it, there's going to be >> Yeah. People that be make million become millionaires off of $1. That would be the coolest marketing opport I'm telling you. >> I would love that actually. >> Just put in a dollar and then after 10 days it resets. >> Yeah. Well, you know, uh, if the folks at Cali are watching, uh, that show might be interesting. >> Yeah, because because then at that point, when do you turn from investing just to straight up gambling? That's a dollar >> at that point. Yeah. >> Yeah. I think investing >> I I think uh Yeah, I think I think with this particular one, uh, it it'd be hard to argue that there's a particular predictive skill involved. >> Is is that how the predictive markets are able to operate in such a way that's not considered gambling? because there is it's not random chance that you could have specific knowledge on something and and feel like you have uh more experience to bet on that outcome. >> Yeah. Or uh a hedging benefit. >> Yes. >> Right. So uh could could there be knowledge or skill involved or is there a a hedging benefit or a speculation benefit to these markets? I mean, if you think about it, um, if you're trading futures and these are prediction markets are by the same regime, the CFTC that regulates futures. Um, do you know, do you have a deep understanding of like the price of copper or corn, you know? Um, some people do, some people actually study this. A lot of people have some dependency elsewhere in their life on the price of copper and and they're hedging against it. And so what makes a a vibrant derivatives market is three different market participants in equilibrium. You have the speculators who have a point of view on what the price should be and they're speculating. uh and some people call speculators gamblers. But if the technical derivatives parlance, it's it's speculators, but you need them also because you also have the hedggers and the hedggers are trying to offload risk, but not everyone can be hedging because then the price gets out of whack. So you need the speculators to actually bring the hedgers into equilibrium. And then you have the third group which is the arbitrageers. The arbiters are basically playing a lowrisk, low latency game. They're connected to every market and they're like, "Oh, corn's at a dollar here and at it's at $2 here. I'm going to buy up all the corn for a dollar and sell it at the same time for two." And they provide a valuable service, too, because >> you want to make sure that if you're hedging or speculating, you don't really care about which market you're going into because there's overhead in that. So they make sure the prices are uniform across uh across everything. So there's a lot of people that just think trading in general is gambling. I I reject that premise. I think that these are useful markets and and people are people are uh providing valuable services and kind of hedging their risk, speculating or sharing a point of view. And how does your own personal portfolio look today? And how do you allocate across public markets, private markets, stocks, bonds, crypto, real estate? >> Um, yeah, the vast majority of my portfolio is Robin Hood. Uh, so I'm so I'm highly concentrated. Uh, I do have some public markets exposure, but basically when we went public, I had to uh lose discretion over all of that. So, uh, yeah, I don't have discretion over, >> you know, the the lion share of my trades, meaning they they happen in a trust that, uh, other people kind of decide and and manage for me. And I I think the um the idea behind that is because I run Robin Hood, Robin Hood's a big company, even the perception of like somehow being exposed to data and using that to make make trades could be risky. So, we just decided to handle that by me not having discretion over any trading. >> That's interesting. >> Yeah. >> But you you get reports, you know, every every month or two from your wealth managers that say, "Okay, you know, we put some money into this. We did this." But you don't have any discretion over that because you're worried people would paint it in some sort of a picture of like, "Oh, you're using user data." >> Exactly. >> To make trades, copying Chris Camilo. >> Um Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, that that could be like a distraction at best. And so, interesting >> and, you know, it's, uh, relatively small because I'm, you know, 90 plus% Robin Hood. Anyway, >> speaking of Robin Hood, why why does Robin Hood focus more on live customer service reps where you could just easily one number like MX Platinum where they pick up on like the first ring and you talk to a person. >> We actually do have that. We recently rolled out something called Robin Hood concierge where you know if if you if you have a lot of money in Robin Hood or your trading activity is high you can be eligible for Robin Hood concierge and you have a person that you can actually text with. Um and then so so it's kind of like barbell strategy. I don't think we can give every person uh Robin Hood concierge but we can do it to a small portion of people and usually those are people that have needs. I mean if you have a large Robin Hood portfolio if you can't get a hold of a person that becomes a problem for you. So so we we do we do that offering and actually more and more people are in that category. So we're going to have to continue to scale that and make that better. And then for everyone else, we've been making huge investments uh in in our AI customer support where I actually think we're best-in-class and we've been making lots and lots of innovations. And the goal would be to get the best customer support experience delivered to the mass market with AI. And eventually it won't just be chat and email, but you'll be able to to call our AI. And you know, some people some people actually don't like it. M >> you know they immediately when they figure out they're dealing with an AI they want human human but the AI is getting very good and even now it'll probably I I think we should probably do a better job of the AI convincing people that it can be helpful say are you sure like I can I can really help you solve your problem I think over time the percentage of people that don't want to deal with AI as they get confidence that it's that it's actually going to solve your problem is going to go down >> I think once your account gets beyond a certain point, it should unlock automatically a live rep. >> Yeah. >> Where it just goes to a cell phone or something like that. Just immediate pickup like MX Platinum. >> That's essentially what Robin Hood concierge is. >> And what's the dollar amount that you have to have? >> I don't know if we've publicly shared it. Uh if if it is, it's it's on our website, but and if we haven't, I think it's still early, so we're kind of like tweaking it. But it's not just a dollar amount. It's also you can have a low dollar amount but be a a very active trader. Yeah. And that qualifies you as well. >> What would you say are the biggest levers Robin Hood has pulled to get ahead of the competitors? For example, obviously initially offering the the free trading and setting that standard. Um the 3% cash back and the credit card, the 2% AATS match. >> That was a that was a massive one. >> That was huge. What would you say are the biggest levers that Robin Hood has pulled and how are you going to stay ahead of the competition from here on out? >> Yeah, I mean I think I think at the and it's funny that you mentioned the AATS match that's gotten more and more sophisticated over time and now we actually have personalized matches. So, if if you look um you know on on social media uh and sometimes there's confusion about this because people post things and they're like, "Well, I got this match. Well, I got this other one." Um I think we'll still run our broad marketing matches around events and and certain product rollouts, but yeah, they're personalized. And I think that takes a lot of technology sophistication to actually deliver people personalization in a in a safe way. So, I think we're investing a lot there. But I think the underlying thing is just uh technology like we we want to be at the forefront of technology innovation. I think compared to the incumbents that gives us a big advantage because we can just uh be more efficient, roll out products faster, uh learn from our customers, learn from, you know, what's worked and what hasn't worked for us in the past and iterate more quickly. So I I think that's been a big advantage and you know relative to the smaller startups which do tend to move faster than big companies I think the scale and the reach and the fact that we have so many customers and so many assets is is an advantage as well. >> So we want to do a lightning round and we're going to mention a few different offerings and then you can say if you plan on implementing them soon if they're plans far out in the future and we're just going to go through a list. >> Yeah. >> Solo 401k. solo 401k is interesting. Um so we we've done a lot on the retirement side. Um I think the IRA covers a lot of needs and then there's um a big business opportunity which is slightly different of of 401ks which is essentially a B2B offering. I think that one we've been thinking a lot about and we know that we want to do one we want to expand our offerings to serve businesses as well but our first bet there is uh registered investment advisors I think that's more interesting so registered investment advisors is the near near-term opportunity that we're tackling there >> business accounts >> business accounts is on our radar yeah um and I think there's a lot of things that a business account could be. Uh, but yeah, we're definitely we're definitely looking at it. I I wouldn't say near-term, but on on the radar. Trusts, >> big request. Big request. Uh, yeah, we've been hearing we've been hearing a lot about trusts. Um, >> I think that for a while Robin Hood was just one account. big focus has been on um making making it so that people get the benefits of retirement accounts and all the different things. So, it fits into the multigenerational strategy I was telling you about. So, I I can't give you a specific date, but definitely on our radar. >> Yeah, that to me is the biggest one. And you'll get huge account sizes doing that. >> For sure. Yeah. >> Insurance, >> not in your term. >> HSAs, >> I think that Yeah. Not not a huge request. Long-term, yes, but not not uh I wouldn't expect it very very soon. >> Some sort of a social platform. >> Well, you know, I talked a lot about uh how the how the origins of Robin Hood were as a social network. Um I think that you'll see elements of that that are useful to customers. Um, but in terms of full full-fledged social platform, I think I think you'll have to be in suspense. Yeah, I I think uh I think that one if it comes um you know, it'll it'll it'll surprise you guys. >> Robin Hood dating account size matching, portfolio strategy matching. >> Uh that would that would be dependent on social. I think that would that would have to be a fast follow to the social network. >> Robin, so you could have two high-risisk individuals, you know, or two low-risk individuals with covered calls. >> Anything with anything with messaging, I think eventually uh evolves into a >> wealth management. >> Ah, we already offer it. >> There you go. >> Yeah. >> Financial education >> already offer it >> like on a but I'm talking like a YouTube channel sort of thing. >> We have a couple of YouTube shows. We have like options content uh that I think Obie is still doing and then a podcast called the week that was which is market commentary with Steph Gild >> and then uh we also have Sherwood Media which is our media company. >> Fixed income products. >> So you you can trade uh and buy fixed income ETFs. Um >> what about like annuities or like you could buy a certain fixed income product? Yeah, bonds um don't don't currently offer um but yeah, on our radar for sure. >> What ideas have you shot down recently? >> I think I think there's a lot of great ideas that just with with uh minimal with relatively few resources and the ability to focus. It's more of like a do it later sort of thing. >> So I I think we've looked at things like uh 401ks. We've looked at uh employee stock purchase plans. So if you're an employee of a company and you you want to buy that stock, >> uh could we be the platform that offers that? I think that's an opportunity. I mean, a lot of people get accounts and and business that way, but it's just uh our focus from B2B standpoint has been RAIA custody and and I think that's such a big opportunity that we want to we want to make sure we feel good about nailing that before we expand to other businesses. >> What ideas do you want to do, but regulation blocks it? >> I think right now in the US tokenization and private markets are the big ones. um like accredited investor rules prevent >> clear and simple access to private markets. Uh and and I think eventually we'll have to get there. So that that's far and away the biggest I mean there there's probably little things here and there but but I don't think they're as meaningful as private markets access and tokenization. >> One of the things I found most interesting about the Robin Hood story because I went and did copious amounts of research. listen to all of your podcasts, all of your interviews, and it seems as though the strategy of Robin Hood was to simply take less profit than competitors. That was basically what you guys did with like, you know, free trades, with a bunch of different things with the the credit card, the 3%. It's just like do what the other people are doing, but just have less fat in the process. >> I think that's certainly a part of it. I I'd say um the user experience and just building great products is the the core, but in financial services the pricing model is is a key part of the customer experience. It's not like, you know, selling iPhones, for example, where the the price point of the iPhone, whether it's $1,000 or $500, is a big driver to your decision to purchase. Um because I I think people are less sensitive. That's more of like luxury product. Um and the the pricing is further away from the the value prop. But in in financial services, the user experience and the price are very very tightly coupled. So you know conventional wisdom is you don't want to compete on price, you want to compete on value. But in financial services, I think price is is is really intricately tied to value. So I don't think for commission free trading uh or for a first product it was solely offering at a lower price. I think that was a part of it but it was also having a really nice mobile app. Nobody was doing that. >> I agree to instant onboarding being able to like onboard and buy your first stock in one session rather than having to like fax documents. Dude, for me to go from Scott Trade >> to then taking a bit of a break to Robin Hood because I believe Robin Hood was the first stock trading app I downloaded I think was Robin Hood. >> Yeah. >> And I remember it being so incredible that like, oh my gosh, I could buy a stock for free. Like that was for me at the time life-changing. >> There were other apps, but they were mostly like scrunched down versions of their websites and the web view. So they didn't work particularly well. And for a while we were getting questions, how did you guys do your onboarding? so good. Like even things as simple as onboarding. I think we put a lot of craft and and care into the design. And you know, you mentioned the credit card. >> There's lots of of ways that you could work with the economics of the credit card. I mean, some people look at APRs. Should we adjust the APRs? There's the annual subscription fee. There's uh there's, you know, the cash back. And so even like making the pricing really good is nonobvious because you have to figure out what the the levers that work well for for your particular customer is. >> You would be so disappointed to see my Robin Hood portfolio. So disappointed. Like I I'm such a better investor than what my Robin Hood portfolio indicates. >> Well, I mean uh I don't know. I think uh yeah I uh I wish I could become an investment advisor that uh now I can now I would be able to talk to you about the the stuff. Um but I have a feeling that you'll do fine. >> It was funny though. It was the exact next day as soon as he sold it. >> It's it's actually uncanny. Uncanny. I had I had so much I had a lot of Robin Hood stock. I had a lot of Robin Hood and I have a ton of Palunteer and I had long calls on all of it. And then, you know, this is I like went all in right at the peak. I remember it was December of 2020, whichever 2020 the December peak was. And then everything started going down. Someone got margin called. They lost. I'm not going to say who. They lost all of their Robin Hood long calls, Robin Hood equity, as well as uh Palunteer stocks and and and calls. >> Also, I do want to mention since we're wrapping this up, we are going to be donating to Team Water. Mr. Beast is raising $40 million this month and it's something that uh would mean a lot to us if you're willing to help out down below in the description. Come join us. We even have Jeff behind the camera helping us out the winner of Beast Games. So given that it would be really neat if you donated and uh Vlad, we really appreciate your time on this. >> Thank you guys. >> Thank you for coming on the podcast. >> Join us for Hood Summit in a couple weeks where we're going to announce some new stuff that I think you'll really enjoy. Deal. >> Thanks for watching. Till next time.