Robinhood’s resurgence? Vlad Tenev aims to turn his stock-picking app into a personal finance institution. Image credit: Winni Wintermeyer for Fortune
A red Lotus Esprit sports car pulled out of a Spanish-style mansion and a luxurious backyard pool and drove through the security gate. Vlad Tenev smiled as he gripped the wooden ball-shaped manual gearshift and stepped on the accelerator. Soon, the car was speeding along a winding oak-lined road in the Los Altos Hills, heading into the heart of Silicon Valley.
The 1987 Lotus sports car is eye-catching, with sofa-like leather seats that feel like flying close to the ground, and mini cigarette lighters and ashtrays in each seat armrest. The car has a top speed of 148 miles per hour, which is quite standard. For a billionaire who can easily fill his garage with McLaren and Bentley cars, it’s an unusual journey, but it clearly makes Tenev very happy.
For the Robinhood CEO, the Lotus is the fulfillment of a childhood dream. Many grown boys dream of driving the car that they saw in their childhood video games. The Lotus also embodies the unconventional design and outside-the-box values that Tenev has been trying to promote at the company.
Cars can be a symbol of rapid progress and independence, or they can portend a fall off a cliff. Those feelings ring true for Tenev and the company he co-founded, which in just a decade have been everything from feel-good startup to villain. Now, for the first time, Robinhood is on a path to success.
This is the digital cover story for Fortune’s August/September 2024 issue. Image credit: Winni Wintermeyer for FortuneWhether
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you like Robinhood or not, it’s undeniable that it has changed the way Americans invest more than any other company in modern times. It popularized large-scale impulse purchases of stocks like GameStop and Dogecoin, but also spurred the brokerage industry to emulate its no-cost, mobile-first approach. Robinhood has grown quickly: It had 24.1 million funded accounts and $135 billion in assets under management as of the end of May, up from 12.5 million in 2020. It has also changed the demographics of investors, giving millions of people access to the stock market for the first time.
Robinhood has also changed Tenev. The 37-year-old first-generation American has weathered multiple crises, some of which he caused, that Silicon Valley veterans believe would have crushed most CEOs, but Tenev has emerged more savvy and focused. Tenev’s career is just getting started. He is not content with Robinhood being just a stock-picking app for young people, but wants to build it into a competitor to the likes of Fidelity and Charles Schwab over the next half century, serving a wider range of customers while actively applying artificial intelligence and blockchain technology. Tenev envisions Robinhood as a powerful personal finance machine designed for increasingly sophisticated users who are less likely to suffer heavy losses on high-risk investments.
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