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Home > The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish > Inside the Mind of Robinhood Co-Founder Vlad Tenev
Podcast: The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish
Episode:

Inside the Mind of Robinhood Co-Founder Vlad Tenev

Category: Business
Duration: 01:50:38
Publish Date: 2026-03-03 11:00:00
Description:

Robinhood's co-founder reveals the brutal reality of surviving an 80% market crash, going "founder mode" to cut corporate bloat, and what actually happened during GameStop.

Vlad Tenev is the co-founder and CEO of Robinhood. Not only did he navigate the unprecedented GameStop crisis, but he completely re-engineered the fintech giant to thrive.

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:

https://investors.robinhood.com/management/vlad-tenev

https://www.linkedin.com/in/vlad-tenev-7037591b/

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Follow Shane Parrish:

X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/shaneparrish⁠

Insta: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/farnamstreet/⁠

LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/shane-parrish-050a2183/⁠

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Thank you to the sponsors for this episode:

+Granola AI, The AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings: https://www.granola.ai/shane

Check out the Granola Notes

+Download The League App today and find your perfect match! https://click.theleague.com/qmhm/0vdzsmj5

+Shopify: https://shopify.com/knowledgeproject

+.tech domains: Nothing says tech like being on .tech https://get.tech/


And a Big shout out to Wouter Teunissen who prepared a book on Robinhood that helped me prepare!

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