Latest / Giant Ideas / "Hard Work, Grit, Tenacity and Not Giving Up" - Robinhood Co-Founder Baiju Bhatt's Life Lessons

Transcript

"Hard Work, Grit, Tenacity and Not Giving Up" - Robinhood Co-Founder Baiju Bhatt's Life Lessons · Giant Ideas

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I've been professionally operating in industries where I don't know what I'm doing.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know finance when I started it.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't understand aerospace when I started this, right?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's usually in the process of failing an idea that I'm like, this is the actual idea.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: We're back.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: Last week we looked forward to a very futuristic vision that you are building, Aetherflux, data centers in space, solar panels in space.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're going to take a little bit of a walk down memory lane.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think maybe we start again with what we have here in the office.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's called the chalkboard of destiny, where you originally uh scoped out the idea for Robinhood.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us a bit about that.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this this chalkboard has been with me and uh with my co-founder for many, many years.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um it was originally in our we lived together off campus at Stanford for You guys like super close to Stanford.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we were we're besties at Stanford.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: We took all the same classes together.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: We're both you know only children, both children of immigrants, both grew up in Virginia.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Families both moved to the US because our parents were pursuing higher educations here.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Both had some variation of this haircut when we met.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and we were both studying physics and math and took a lot of the same classes together, became very good friends.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh coincidentally, one of our very good math friends is a fellow by the name of Andrew Yarmola, who happens to be uh heading up engineering here, which I think he might be right around the corner.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a new thing, but a continuation, I guess, too.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, very good.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because chalkboard has a lot of good juju.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's the word.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Love it.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I read that 75 VCs rejected you guys.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Is that was it was it more with hundreds?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the seed round.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: So take us back.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: What was the idea?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: What are they thinking about that many notes?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what was it like back in the day getting rejected by a lot of people?
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: And what did they miss, I guess?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I remember it quite well.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: So let me tell you the criticisms.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, young people will never invest in the stock market.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, you'll never figure out how to build a business here.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's no what's the business going to be?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: How are you ever going to build a business?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, you have no idea how to do this.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: You're a math kid, so is your co-founder.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't see Google on your resume anywhere.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't see any of the big tech companies.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know how to build consumer products.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Also, you'll never get you know any of the capital to do this because we're rejecting you, amongst other reasons.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Those top through are pretty that one's a bit self-referential, the last one, but yeah.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't it how that works?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So, what like why don't you just go and build a photo sharing app?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: No, no way.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like, just why are you doing this?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Just go build a photo sharing app, go build a social network.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's where all the interesting stuff is happening.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: This finance thing, it's not gonna work.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Don't don't work, don't worry on it, don't work, don't work on it.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: What would you look for now if you were on the other side trying to find the next Bai June Vlad?
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: What would you be looking for to not miss it?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: The people.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: The people, yeah.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is the thing.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: At at the seed stage, the early stage, like whatever you're working on then, it's probably gonna change.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And if it doesn't change, then you're a bad entrepreneur.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because as a good entrepreneur, you have to be aware of the circumstances and like be willing to iterate on ideas, right?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I actually think kind of one of the hallmarks of being a good entrepreneur is being a person that changes their mind a lot.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: It means you're testing your ideas out, you drive your dread steak in the ground, and this is what I think it is, and you sort of test the idea.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And if you learn something new, you're not the dogmatic one that says, Well, I'm gonna stick to my original idea.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, no, I'm gonna do the I'm gonna like basically, you know, gradient descent my way to the thing that I think is gonna work.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it actually at the early stage is so much about the entrepreneur.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Are they in it?
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Do they have that dog in them?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Are they going to be relentless in figuring out how to get to success?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um and is the opportunity big and interesting, right?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is also kind of looking back much more clear.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Is if you think of the sliding scale of like easy ideas versus hard ideas, they're kind of all hard.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like building a company is just hard, hard.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And if you start on something that looks easy to begin with, it might turn out to be hard in a different way.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it's easy to understand, therefore, a lot of people understand it, therefore it's super crowded and competitive, versus something that looks really hard and therefore nobody's working on it.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a strong first principle-based view on what the idea there is, yes, and the people.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the people, you'll cut through.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Rather than pass and match in too much.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we're gonna try and get a little tactical here for the some of the entrepreneurs listening.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do it.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: So you've launched the product.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: When did you have a sense that it was working?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: And was the moment you were like, okay, we've got some product market fit here.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Very early on.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was the day that we released the version, the first version of the website.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually pretty startling.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I had not seen product market fit for a consumer product before this.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: I've been looking for it.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: That was kind of the thing that I was very, very keenly interested in figuring out, which is how do you build something that millions of people that you've never met will find useful?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: How do you do that?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: What's the playbook on that?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like, where's that?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Give me the textbook.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like, uh, how do you do this?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it frankly seemed like magic when people would figure it out.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And this is like the thing about finding product market fit with a consumer product is it's you know it when you see it, and it's rather elusive.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it's like catching lightning in a bottle.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it's very, very elusive.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: You guys had a super creative website launch, I remember at the time, like a countdown.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh a wait list.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Wait list.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: But it was like it was pretty innovative.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it in in turn, I think there was a lot of people that then kind of did the same thing afterwards.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Which not hating.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: There was uh there was a a a company back in the day um called Mailbox.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember that?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was an iPhone app that was like an inbox app.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember being like, holy cow, this is like the best design product I've ever seen before.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think they were then acquired.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think they were, I think they were acquired by Dropbox, if I remember correctly.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think no longer exists.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: But they had a a weight list mechanism where when you signed up for it, it showed you the number of people behind you in line to use their product, yeah, and the number of people in front of you in line to use the product.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought that was just super compelling.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so we ended up doing a variation of that with uh with the first announcement.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: So it was you know, zero commission stock trading.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And if you typed in your email address, you would get early access and we'd show you where you were online.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that value proposition was compelling enough that just loads tons of people signed up, basically.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: But that is the that is the hard part to figure out what that was.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: What is that thing?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people didn't like it, it that's not necessarily something people were looking for.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, yeah, yeah.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like, how do you communicate what the thing is and how does it fit into people's and did you already know how you would make money down the road when you guys were offering this thing for free, or you're like, hey, let's just get loads of users on, we'll offer this thing for free and we'll figure it out in time.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think the the approach was so different, and like the way the business would operate would be so different that we knew how traditional online brokerages made money.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like we would look at the public filings and kind of try to infer what the business model could be, but it's so dependent on how many people use it, what kinds of people use it, meaning is it a bunch of wealthy people, or is it you know what ended up being the core user base, which was frankly a lot of younger college-age Americans.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was kind of the core bread and butter.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was young people that use it.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, with such a cool inversion of the existing business model.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I took real issue with the way that it operated before.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because again, this is kind of my viewpoint, and I'm paraphrasing here a little bit.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: But my view was like before before Robinhood, before we created, the primary use case for investing in the stock market was for retirement age Americans, retirement age families.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was plus or minus a handful of years.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is a tool to help you with retirement.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: By extension, the majority of people that use these products were of that age range.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember that juxtaposed with the backdrop of Occupy.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember that?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: Where our generation was, I mean, they were angry.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: They were angry about the way the financial system worked.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Occupy Wall Street.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Occupy Wall Street.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: They were angry about the way it worked, and um I remember thinking to myself, this is kind of Genesis of the company, uh, there's another way here, right?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's one way in which what a lot of people are advocating for, which is you tear the system down, right?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: The system's broken, like we gotta start over from scratch.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: At the same time, as a child of immigrants to this country, I'm like, what is going on here?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like this does not make any sense.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: This financial system is the envy of the whole world.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: People literally give up their lives and relocate here because this is a land of opportunity.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like I live this, my family did this.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and to see a generation of young people be like, this this thing's broken, it's not for us, like tear it down.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're like, there's another way here, which is you can actually have more people be a part of the capital markets and more people share in the outcomes, good or bad, and not feel disconnected from it and therefore sort of feel like they're not participating in it.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so the the other option was you get everybody a part of it.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: I want to come back to that.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: I want to come back to that point.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, okay.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of your did you have a North Star metric when you guys did start growing that you were focused on?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: And what were the growth channels that worked best for you guys as you went from, I guess, zero users to now millions of users?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there was a lot of organic growth.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: There was people sharing links to using Robinhood on social media.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: That was kind of the bread and butter in the early days.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: It was almost entirely word of mouth.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: So just have an amazing insight and product that grows that grows virally.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: That would be the the best way.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: But did did was it?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, build something really useful for people.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And if you do people will use it, and communicate it in a way where we talked about this earlier.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: So that property of transitivity.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like this is the by the way, this is kind of the key.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh can you can you can you elaborate on that?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is a math concept applied to building consumer products.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Does the messaging that you have have the property of transitivity?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning, if I explain what the product is to you and you explain it to somebody else, what is the version that you explain it to somebody else?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you play the game of telephone, like after three or four hops, or people are like, oh yeah, it's a Chinese restaurant, and you're like, oh, we're online stock brokerage, you know, like what do we?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: It just totally got lost in translation.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so what what what I really focused on then was spending a lot of time with actual customers, or or I guess not even actual customers, hypothetical customers, people in the real world, and being like, here's what we build.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: What is this?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, like how would you explain this to somebody?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: How would you explain this to a friend?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: How would you explain this to a family member?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: And through that very, very simple thing, you can learn more about why your product exists, why it will work, why it will fail, than talking to any number of professionals in the industry.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like just go directly to the primary research.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: How do you have an idea for the product?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: You've written it down on a website, it's in an email, it's in marketing documents, whatever, right?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Put it in front of people and be like, explain this.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like, your job is now to explain this thing to a friend.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what are you gonna say?
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: I remember like looking for that to draw insights and be like, oh, we I interviewed 10 people where our team interviewed 10, 20 people, right?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: And we kept hearing this way of describing it, and then it's really succinct.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I like the way it sounds, or like, you know, it's a it's a very like colloquial way of describing it, and we just take that and incorporate that into the messaging.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing, it sounds so easy, but it's actually very hard to do this, right?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because it requires such clarity of thought what goes into the product, and I think saying no to so many things, so it sounds easy the way you're describing it.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I definitely think the focus on primary research is sensible, but having built you know quite a few products myself, it's it's much harder to deliver on it than in practice, which is why it's it's quite rare.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um also coming back to Steve Jobs.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: I remember one of his fair famous interviews quotes is like around attention that people give.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: People don't give a shit.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: No, you do not give shit what you're working on.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: Totally self-interested on whether it's people are in their own little little zones, right?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're gonna make something and you want other people to find it useful, you don't have a lot like the you are the human nature dictates that you are not going to get much attention from people.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, so whatever you're doing, if it's too complicated, it's dead on arrival.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it's gotta fit into people's lives, it's gotta be simple, straightforward, and it has to like map to something that they cared about independently of your product.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you really capture that when you start talking to people that you've never met before.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, I would go into a lot of I mean, I did this sort of customer research thing with our researchers, appliance people, and engineers.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: I would take them all into the random parts of the US and be like, let's go interview 30 people an hour-long back-to-backs over this week.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And by the end, like your face feels like it's gonna fall off your head.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's that's a good transition.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you you you led product, right?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: That uh at Robin, that was but you guys were co-CEOs, yeah, which is a pretty unusual setup, I would save as we tip typically look at teams to back, we would generally um not like co-CO models because you kind of want one person to be the tiebreaker when things are tough.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: But you guys had an incredibly successful collaboration doing that for over a decade.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um what was the secret?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: What any any tips?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Very high level of mutual trust.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Or sorry, high level of mutual trust and respect and admiration.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's the key.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's and I guess I guess zones of excellence.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: My mental model for it always was um whichever one of us feels passionately or strongly about a problem or an area of the business, it's like let that person run.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: So defer to my co-founder whenever he felt passionately or strongly about.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Passionate and I guess very capable at.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the the capable part comes from that mutual trust, respect, and admiration, right?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like I fundamentally admired and trusted and respected his ability to solve problems.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think the other part of it also was there was a friendship that was at the core of it.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's so powerful.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's so underrated, right?
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: So they're like basic things, right?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: These are basic human things.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: And startups are hard.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't have mutual trust, mutual respect from a friendship, or you know, with the Collins being brothers, right?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a huge competitive advantage when it when it goes right.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: How do you maintain a friendship during all the tough times that come in a startup?
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: And what was the most dire nadir that you guys had at Robinhood together?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think that particular moment has been pretty well documented.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: The little thing called GameStop.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that was That was bad.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: That was really hard.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Super hard, super challenging.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: How'd you get through it?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh like grit, tenacity, and not giving up.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: There I mean, it it was, yeah, it was to this day, it's like Jesus, that was, brings up.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's very challenging.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's like definitely the most challenging professional experience that I've had.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's also clarifying, focusing, builds a ton of character.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you kind of live through all the permutations of the hardest version of doing what you're doing.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: How do we get through it?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, hard work, grit, tenacity, and not giving up.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Not that I think it's the most important thing.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: Fight another day.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, fight another day.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Robin Hood, super impactful company.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's very much delivered on the mission that you guys set out with.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's democratized access to investing in a in a huge way.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um I remember we were talking about democratizing finance when democratize was not a thing.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Now it now it certainly is.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: But you guys did it, um, which is amazing to see.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it's uh, you know, it's changed culture, it's brought way more people into the financial systems, but it hasn't been perfect, right?
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's probably some interesting knock-on effects that you probably hadn't anticipated maybe when you started the company.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: We've now seen the emergence of prediction markets.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that's good or bad.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Different people have different views.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: What's your take on all of that?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's been an incredibly disruptive technology.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that, you know, people use technologies and tools in lots of different ways across the board.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think the thing to me that is the most important thing and the thing that I kind of look back on with the most pride on is this the thing that I talked about a couple of minutes ago, right?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Is when we started the company, young people across America uh the how to paraphrase it, not knowing what you were doing with your finances was kind of cool.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know what I mean?
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, yeah, I don't care about that stuff.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like that sort of like counterculture thing where it's like, yeah, that that stuff is tame.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna live my life and be cool and free.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, I remember thinking to myself, like, that's not cool.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like, not knowing about your money is not cool.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's not cool.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's self-destructive, yeah.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: And like our our culture and our society reinforcing people being uninformed about this stuff is not a good thing.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and instead, we should live in a world, we should have a society where people understand it's a very important and powerful thing that they need to develop their own way of doing through the course of their lifetime.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: What is this thing?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like being a good steward of your own money and a steward of your own resources, and taking a degree of personal agency over that for yourself.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: And when you fast forward the clock to a decade and a half almost now, um there's a vibe shift, right?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Where young people It's almost the opposite.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost the opposite.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a point of pride for people.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, yeah, I know what I'm doing.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm investing, like, you know, I figured this out, I'm researching stuff, I'm learning about stuff.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's very to me, that is like a hugely positive societal change.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Where again, the mission and the genesis of this thing is we wanted to, we we as people wanted to live in a world where our peers were invested in the outcomes of our capital system.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: And any other alternative was gonna be really tumultuous and and crappy, right?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's like there's a lot of there's a lot of phenomenon that emerges from it, but fundamentally people care.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's giving people choice, giving people the potential to participate in tools.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think ultimately, I think that's a really that making them culturally relevant, making them a part of people's day-to-day lives.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: I do think prediction markets is the one thing I I'm not yet sold on because I think it creates such a financialization of social reality in an interesting way that has very unknown knock-on effects.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: But I think democratizing the ability to invest for me, that's just like a that's a net positive.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I wish we had more of it in Europe and the UK, to be honest.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm gonna finish off with some personal questions.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've inverted this interview.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: We usually start the converted the clothing too.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's a really nice cardigan, by the way.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Likewise.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's great on you.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: If you had to choose three photos next time, we should switch pins too.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: I want the shoes.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: We can do that too.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um and the necklace.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: This is a question we ask all our guests.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: But if you had to choose three photographs that define your life, uh, what would they be?
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: And and what have you learned from them?
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: One of them's gotta be the IPR.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm putting it in your mouth now.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: No, that was that was immediately gonna be one.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think um trying to trying to think about what the third one would be.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um the first one is very obviously ringing the bell and having my eldest son on my shoulders.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I have a picture of that up in my my my my desk at home.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: And did things change for you after the IPR?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean in mentally, emotionally.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Course, right?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's a different different chapter.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's as an entrepreneur, in my humble opinion, that is the one of one of the Mount Everest that you climb.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: Clearly.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's that's absolutely one of them.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: I would say another one was visiting Caltech with my dad when I was in high school, and my mom as well.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think that one is really interesting because you may not know this about me, but I lost like nearly a third of my body weight in high school from exercising.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up and I was a very, very overweight kid.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, a very overweight kid.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that was like taken before I lost all that weight.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: I looked like a different person six months later.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: What's the secret?
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Don't eat and exercise.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: I guess eat a lot less and exercise.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: That that old formula.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that old formula, calories in, calorie out.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: I would say the third one that comes to my mind is a picture.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: I my parents have this picture at home of me when my mom and my dad and I lived in Alabama when I was a little kid.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: My dad would take me and he would put me up in this tree um right by our house.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: And like, it's like a very warm, war when I think about that, because like from that age, I can't really remember any of it.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: I can't remember what happened, but I remembered the word made me feel.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: The feelings, yeah.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds like you're very close to your parents.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and my son and my boys as well.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: Must be proud of you.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: And last question, um, you can't be humble on this one.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, which typically isn't a problem with Americans, but you know, we got we got we got we gotta ask, so say it.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what is it about you that's enabled you to be so successful?
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I really when I put my mind to something, I do not give up.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I have a mental rule for myself, which is um whatever I'm trying to do that's new, just rush to the finish line.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like starting an idea.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've been professionally operating in industries where I don't know what I'm doing.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know finance when I started it, didn't understand aerospace when I started this, right?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: And my viewpoint on it is whenever I try something new, um try to fail as quickly as possible and don't be afraid of like seeing an idea through to failure, because um I've found this pattern that it's usually in the process of failing an idea that I'm like, this is the actual idea.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's usually in the last 20% of trying a new idea out that you're like, well, this was wrong, but it it was it if I had not gotten to this place, I wouldn't have known that that was the idea.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that that's like, and the thing is, like when I set my mind to something, I do not give up.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you're all in.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: I am all in.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also not a great multitasker.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I do things and I just do them.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a big believer in periods of deep imbalance, like when you're obsessed, like you're all in, and then you know you have this concept of kind of chapters in your life.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that really that really resonates with me because I think maybe you want a life of balance over the course of your life, but there are gonna be periods where you have to be very like imbalanced and to just achieve the goal and and get the joy of of going all in on something for a period.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: All right, man.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: The balance becomes a thing when you're a parent, it's a little different, I think.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you gotta have a bit of it.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, man.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: This has been such a pleasure.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's been great.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome, really enjoyed it.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh love the cardigan too.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: Let's uh let's change clothes more often, and uh great to see you.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, likewise.