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0In January 2021, Vlad Tenev made a decision that nearly destroyed Robinhood. Wall Street called it betrayal. Customers called it cowardice. He has never fully explained what happened — until now.Vlad Tenev built Robinhood into a financial titan, navigated the unprecedented GameStop crisis, and completely re-engineered the company to thrive after losing the vast majority of its market value.He breaks down the brutal transition from bloated hyper-growth to a lean machine, why a "juicy falsehood is more powerful than a boring truth", and the 3 distinct phases of AI integration separating the winners from the dead.Believe it or not, GameStop was not his hardest moment.
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Approximate Timestamps:
(00:00) The Unprecedented Crisis(00:33) The Truth About GameStop(09:30) Why False Narratives Win(10:39) Surviving an 80% Market Crash(16:02) Firing the Nice Founder & Going Founder Mode(24:25) Rules for High Performance(28:50) The Young Talent Advantage(35:13) First Principles Storytelling(39:07) 3 Phases of AI Integration(50:03) Building AI That Reasons(01:02:59) Fixing Private Market Access(01:20:04) Deciding What to Build Next(01:22:05) Surviving 1800% Inflation(01:31:22) How Robinhood Makes Money(01:39:51) Redesigning the Modern Bank(01:47:47) The Definition of Success
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Check out Vlad:
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Thank you to the sponsors for this episode:
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And a Big shout out to Wouter Teunissen who prepared a book on Robinhood that helped me prepare!
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