Transcript
0:00 All right. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the channel. We are here today with a very very special guest. I am here with Abishek Fatapora who is the VP of product management at Robin Hood. Abashek, thank you for being here. >> Thank you for having me. Excited to chat. >> So we've known each other uh for the past couple years now as you have been one of the pivotal figures in Robin Hood. As you've been pushing products, you've been at all of these events that they've been hosting. Uh it's been really cool to see the company's progress. Obviously, there's a big following of people that have quite frankly fallen in love with the product velocity that the company has executed on and I think that's what's made the company one of the most exciting companies to cover in the entire stock market. But to push products out into the world, I mean, it's not an easy thing. There's probably some product managers in tech that are watching this podcast. Uh it's tough to get a product from idea, inception, beta, testing, and then out into the world. Then you have the the the burden of making it profitable because at the end of the day this is a business. So uh I think I just want to start off with this first question which is what has it been like being with Robin Hood since the beginning and being one of the heads of product.
1:07 >> Yeah. Uh I haven't been here since the beginning but I'm uh going on 10 years this year which is uh a long time. If you had asked me like 10 years ago would I still be here? The answer probably would have been no. I I don't think I envisioned myself staying for 10 years, but uh it's been an awesome ride. And yeah, you're right. Building products is hard. I I think one thing you miss though is like one thing that I like to say is like >> I think going from idea to getting the product out is actually the easy part because once you get it out, >> there's like the stream of feedback that comes in. You got to iterate. You got to find product market fit. You got to make it better and better every single day.
1:48 So I actually think launching it is like almost the easy part. >> So the product velocity at Robin Hood I think has been one of the most exciting things over the past uh really three years in terms of the credit card prediction markets etc. Uh can you speak a little bit at a high level before we get into some of the nitty-gritty stuff around >> how you guys philosophically think about product velocity and why you've been able to ship at the speed that you guys are shipping at? Yeah, I I mean I think for me I think the first thing is like it's not a process thing. It's like not some like magic necessary sauce that we have. I think it comes down to having the best people at every uh position.
2:32 The football playoffs are happening right now. I'm like a big football fan. So like you know I'm like a big nerd about the X's and O's and like the positions and the route designs and stuff. I love studying that stuff. It's like a personal hobby. Um, but I think that the thing in football and most sports is like the play design can be awesome, but if you don't have the best talent at every single position, it doesn't really matter. The play just kind of falls apart. So, I think the thing that we've invested in that we really care about is like having the best talent at every position. Uh, that's the foundation for velocity. It's not like some special process. It's not some like special thing we've developed.
3:11 It's like having the best people, pointing them in the same direction, and then executing. >> So, let's get into some of the newest products you guys are launching. Uh, shortselling >> is live. Um, it's it's it's taken a minute. Can you can you walk us through a little bit of the history on how you guys have thought of bringing short selling to Robin Hood and why you thought now was the best time? Yeah, I mean, you know, we've always like we've evolved with our customers as they've evolved. Uh, you know, Robin Hood started as individual stock trading, then we added options, then we added crypto. I think for a long long time, we heard that people wanted shorting, and to a certain degree, we like kind of had it where you could use options to go short, but we didn't have real equity shorting. uh with our number one goal, our number one pillar of our strategies to be number one for active traders. We just realized that it had come that time in our journey that we needed to offer equity shorting uh to offer a great product to customers. You can short options on Robin Hood. You can short futures on Robin Hood, but you couldn't short like the first asset class we had, which was equities. So, we built it. Um we thought it was the right time. It's essential to becoming number one in active traders. I think we built a pretty good product. Early adoption has been great. Uh we're really excited by what we see and the team's continuing to work at it.
4:38 >> What was the hardest product decision or risk tradeoff you had to make in deciding to bring shortselling into Robin? >> Um I think the one that I I'm like particularly the most uh interested in is like how we think about how we show pricing to customers on shorting. Uh, one thing that I always thought about when I make a trade is like the hurdle rate for that trade is really important, right? Which is like how much do I need to make for this trade to be worth it.
5:05 So on the shorting side, I kind of need to know how much am I spending to borrow the stock, right? >> So I think one thing our product does really really well is when you're placing a short, it kind of shows you the daily borrow fee, like very plain and simple, like this is how much you're going to spend on the daily borrow fee if you short this stock. It accumulates on a daily basis. Um, and it kind of makes it really easy to understand like how much do I need to make for this trade to be worth it. And I don't think every product does it that way. Every product doesn't think about it that way.
5:36 So I that's one thing I think our team did that's like really unique and really exciting. It's very transparent. Um, and I I think it actually helps customers think about how much do I need to do for this trade to be profitable, which is like ultimately the core goal of trading, right? How do you decide where to draw the line between empowering the sophisticated users, the like active traders that understand what shorting is >> and then the newer people that have never shorted a stock before? Like from a product perspective, how do you even introduce a product like that to those people?
6:07 >> Yeah, I we think about it in a few ways. I think the first thing we think about is like what do you need to have to be eligible for the product? So for shorting in particular, you need to have margin enabled and that comes with like a particular set of guidelines. Uh that being said, we want to meet customers where they are with their money. So some customers really are active traders. They're looking to short. They're looking to do like more sophisticated things in the markets and we need to be able to offer those products. And then for more kind of novice customers or who are newer to the markets, we obviously want to offer a great experience uh and we want them to be able to slowly level up into more advanced products if that's what they want. um and we want to offer the tools available to them. I think over time we've done a lot of that in the options space. So we launched options then we added the strategy builder we added a lot of educational tools. I think we'll end up going down a similar journey for shorting as well. Uh but you know we started with like what do the active traders really want?
7:09 making sure we have the right guardrails in place and then also doing the right education that we need for people who are curious, they can just try it out um and they can learn. So that's kind of how we think about it. Uh it's definitely like something we think deeply about every time we're shipping a new product. Um and it's something our team pays a lot of attention to and and one thing we've been thinking a lot about recently is like how do we personalize the app experience more based off of what products you're using.
7:38 There hasn't been a ton of that in Robin Hood historically. Uh but it is something we're actively thinking about because as our product suite widens and the product gets more complex. Uh we want to make sure the app responds to your personal needs. >> Yeah. And I think this is a really important point to to to talk about because some of the critiques I've seen from people around Robin Hood is that they introduce products that are too risky to the average investor because you do have a lot of average investors on the product, people that are just getting into it. uh or the flip side of the critique which is a catch 22 is that Robinet doesn't have enough sophistication which is why I can't use their platform and I think from your guys' perspective on a product side is hey we are willing to introduce a product to people and we are going to allow people to be intellectually curious enough to learn about options I mean I did not know what a call debit spread was three years ago Robin had made it really easy to not only build one with a multi-leike option but also understand what you were doing and I I've had some pretty successful call debit spreads that changed my financial life because of your product and the ease of use for it. But on the flip side, if you're trying to short, but you don't have margin enabled, which means you need to understand the restrictions around margin, that's where sort of the guidelines and guardrails are there. So, I think like it's important to embrace and allow people to see these new products, but also have those guardrails to to protect them.
8:54 >> Yeah. I mean, it's something we take really seriously. Uh it's something we think a lot about, I think, for options like and I I think it's really unfair when you look at these products. Sometimes people are just like definitively assume they're risky. With like options for example, there's a lot of ways that people use options to hedge risk. Yes. >> Or generate income or do all sorts of different things. It's not just purely a speculative trading asset.
9:19 >> So I I think you know sometimes these asset classes or these trading strategies get like painted with broad brushes when there's in reality like a ton of ways to use them um and a ton of ways to use them differently. And every customer at the end of the day is fairly unique. We do our work to make sure we get the eligibility right. We do our own education, but then I also think like I I think I watched one of the videos of yours. You were like teaching people how to do like debit spreads or credit spreads or something. I I forgot the exact video what it was, but you had like a pretty in-depth session. There's also like a whole universe of content creators out there that are creating educational content that kind of, you know, we don't actively integrate with, but I think adds to the ecosystem of people learning. And I think generally like people being more in tune with their own finances and being more educated about this stuff. I would much rather live in that world than in the world where like they don't they just don't know about this stuff at all. So I think the whole ecosystem kind of works together a little bit. Um, so I thought your video was really impressive, by the way.
10:28 >> Yeah. Well, that was a three-hour session on covered calls and cash cured puts. Yeah. You know, like >> basic option strategies for income or even for hedging. And like a lot of that stuff I learned because Robin had a really easy user interface to be able to then teach it to other people. So >> I thousand% agree with that. >> Um, okay, let's talk about prediction markets and let's shift towards that. So this has been the latest product on Robin Hood. Uh Vlad recently talked about some of the results. I think three billion contracts in November. I mean it is scaling at a pretty exponential rate.
10:57 >> Yeah. >> You guys had a yes no event in December. A lot of these events are to talk to users and get feedback. What did you learn from how users >> um essentially adapted to some of the new products, the combos that came out and how are you thinking users want to express conviction on different levels when it comes to prediction markets? Yeah, I I think we heard a lot of this at the event and this is also like what I I personally believe like I think the first two categories where prediction markets have found a ton of product market fit was sort of politics and like the last election cycle and then sports obviously like those two have been this tip of the spear tip of the spear and I think it's because like people generally understand those two things but what I heard at the event and what I'm really excited about this year is what can prediction markets do for all sorts of other categories. So, we've been aggressively expanding our inventory of events. You know, there's climate contracts, there's politics contracts, there's economic contracts, there's culture contracts, and I I think there's a couple ways that I'm really excited about. One is like as an investor, I think it can be a really useful like hedging tool, you know? So, I'll just use an example. Um, if I'm invested in a particular stock and there's a new piece of legislation that could really impact that company's business, having a prediction market on whether that legislation is going to pass is actually a really useful tool to help me understand my investment. Uh, and I can use that to hedge. So I I don't have a specific example off the top of my mind, but like that's a really useful use case of prediction markets that I I don't think has quite like reached full market force yet, but I think hopefully in the next year will. I think the other one is like news and information, right? Like right now if I want to understand if something is likely to happen in the world or not likely to happen in the world, I have to like do a bunch of research myself. prediction markets like do a good job of like summarizing the general knowledge of the market into like a simple probability equation so I can understand like hey what is the likelihood of this happening what is the likelihood of this happening so I think as a news and information source it's really interesting as like an investing vehicle hedging vehicle it's really interesting that's the area that I've been thinking a lot about I'm really excited about I also think that's the area where Robin Hood really has a unique opportunity to win because we have stocks, we have options, we have futures, we have indices, we have cryptos. So like the place where you think about all the predictions that can help you inform your investment decisions. It's better to be all in one place. So I that's the thing, you know, I've been really excited about. I think there's a lot of curiosity from customers there, but it just hasn't quite had its moment yet. But I I think it will.
13:57 No, I agree. I think that moment hasn't officially happened yet um in terms of interacting with all the other different asset classes that you have. However, one of the moments that has started to show some I would argue pretty strong product market fit is the speculative nature of it, especially around sports. How do you think about that from a product perspective? And I mean, quite frankly, how do you think about that as an integrated part of a finance app when most people don't really think of that as a financial class?
14:22 >> Yeah, it's an interesting question. It's something we're we're thinking a lot about uh and you know we've had a lot of discussions internally like should prediction markets be a separate surface should it be a separate app should it be integrated and those are all things like you know we're kind of learning as we go and as we explore this asset class I think the thing on speculation is people treat speculation like a bad word sometimes but like a lot of markets emerged as initially speculative markets and then they ended up being very useful for many many reasons. So like I think uh Steve Cork knows this better than I do but like I think options markets went through like a similar journey where like at the beginning there were like a ton of speculation and that was like the general criticism and then over time you know there's all these income use cases and information use cases of options markets right futures went through the same thing um so I think all new asset classes tend to have this journey I mean to a certain degree crypto had this had this whole journey in a very accelerated time frame just like over the last decade and still going through it.
15:30 >> So I I think that's just like a pattern with these asset classes. >> Um I think sports is definitely like the line share of volume and we need to like we need to recognize that. But I think that's just because that's the first product market fit moment. Um but I I think there's bigger product market fit moments to come with some of the information use cases. And I think the first one, by the way, was like the election last year or two years ago now.
15:58 >> Well, so prediction markets wouldn't be a thing if it weren't for the CFTC officially making them legal. Um, which segus into my next question, which is you guys operate in a very highly regulated environment, which means every product that goes out the door probably has to go through a lot of legal checks before it makes it through through the door. How do you guys maintain product velocity without slowing innovation in a highly regulated environment? >> Yeah.
16:22 I think this comes back to the thing I said before. It comes down to having the best talent and that includes inside of our legal teams, inside of our compliance departments and like the kind of the the domain experts who have been in the industry for a long long time. Like if you have the people in those uh in those roles that know the markets inside out, that know the regulations inside out, that are like really truly domain experts, then when you go to them with a new idea, you can really like kind of figure out, okay, how do we do this? What are the rules and regulations? What are the boundaries?
16:56 What's possible? What's not possible? That's very hard to do when you don't have the best legal partners, the best compliance partners, the best ops partners. So, I know I'm kind of like repeating an answer, but I I I think it honestly comes down to having like not just the best product talent and the best design talent and the best engineering talent. It comes down to having the best people in those roles as well. And they want to like innovate and push boundaries.
17:23 >> Yeah. And I, you know, that I' I've had the pleasure of meeting some of the employees at Robin Hood and uh I think Vlad sets the tone of just like the work ethic that's required to be there. And when you talk to some of the employees, >> I mean, they work they work hard, but like you should want to work hard if you're building products for potentially hundreds of millions of users one day. And I think that excitement has always been there.
17:43 >> Yeah. I mean, that's what keeps me going. I I think that's what keeps a lot of the product team going. And I I think mostly for the company, that's what keeps a lot of people going. Uh it's a very ambitious mission. So >> what is the best internal metric uh that you or the broader company thinks of when it comes to capture whether a product is working and whether a product can move from step one to step two all the way to making you think you have product market fit.
18:11 I think like so when I'm thinking about a new product I my my first question is like what's like the thing that's going to help us like get to product market fit and I feel like there's always like a few things that kind of signal product market fit. One is like from a metrics perspective, you look at like retention curves like are people using this thing over and over and over again and does it stabilize at some point and if it stabilizes you probably have a product that a certain group of people find really useful on a repeated basis right that's from a metrics perspective I think the second thing is more qualitative which is like when someone sees this product when they use this product do they like I I like to use this term it's really hard to see but you can kind of see it when you show a customer do their like eyes light up when they see it. Do they like want to run to their friend and tell them, "Hey, look at this cool new thing I just used or checked out." And I think if the metrics show it and then customers are organically telling their friends about it and organically telling other people about it without you needing to like reward them or incentivize them, right?
19:21 >> You kind of have the product market fit moment >> and then you can kind of do anything. Then you can figure out how do I scale this? How do I monetize this? how do I make money? All that stuff. I think the biggest mistake that generally you can make is like over optimizing for like profitability before you know the product is going to like work and find that fit. So you know early on we always make sure like hey is there a path to $100 million business here? Is there a path to a big business here? But then the moment we prove that out, we go back to basics, which is like, okay, now that we know that the business case is there long term, how do we just get to milestone one, which is product in the hands of customers, and their eyes light up when they use it? Yeah.
20:06 >> And then we bridge the gap from there. >> Yeah. And there's some, you know, good examples. I mean, I don't have this feature yet in my app, but I have friends who who have been like, "Yo, this heat map in my search bar is super useful." >> Yeah. >> I don't have that yet. So, I guess you're part of the beta. that's being tested and eventually probably going to be rolled out to me. But that's a hell of a feature because I use a separate website for a heat map every day.
20:29 >> Yeah, maybe we can hook you up with that uh after interview. But um yeah, and I I think you know it kind of goes for all stages, right? Like for smaller features, we'll like run an experiment and we'll see how it does. Or like meaty features, we'll like roll it out to a beta crowd and see how they're doing. See, get their feedback in real time. I think over the last few years seeing this Twitter community emerge and seeing the social community emerge, especially with you playing a big role in it, uh sometimes we just look at social and be like, how are people reacting to different things? What's the feedback we're hearing? That's something we've done with Robin Hood Legend a lot, right? Which is the active traders sort of live on these social platforms. So, we're like very active on social. every little feature goes out, we talk about it, people engage with it, we learn what they want next, and that team is like improving the product every single week.
21:21 So, um I I think for each type of product, it's a little bit different, but the first principles are the same. It's like, does the customer love it? Do their eyes light up? Do they want to tell other people about it? I think in the social use case is that like are they screenshotting it and putting it on Twitter uh without us telling them to obviously um and then like do the metrics show it and then if it's working then you can scale it.
21:48 >> So that transitions us nicely into uh the next question which is Robin Hood it's social. Uh I I did not know you guys were going to launch a full-on social network but you guys did at the last summit. >> Why why why social? Yeah, I I think what we've observed is like more and more people are talking about finance. We think it's a good thing because we think when people talk about finance, they're generally more well-informed. They're participating in the economy. That's like a good thing.
22:17 >> Yeah. >> They want to share their trades. They want to talk about like their thesis on companies. I think going back to the sports team analogy, I think a lot of people are covering companies like they cover sports teams. I I think you kind of do this, you know, they like cover >> like there's like podcasts like covering >> Robin Hood, like your show uh sometimes and like they're covering these companies like sports teams and it was like people love talking about this stuff, but there's this like consistent complaint that when you go on Reddit or you go on Twitter, it's like very noisy.
22:49 It's hard to know what's real. The screenshots are faked. There's a lot of fake stuff. Uh it's hard to know what's legit. So what we heard was people wanted a safe place to do this where they knew that the trades were verified, they knew that the positions were verified and they knew that the people were real and kind of Robin Hood has all the ingredients for that. Uh you have to KYC to be a customer. You have to place the actual trades to share them so we know they're real. Um, and you know, we're even going to try to open up for external sharing. So, like you can carry that to another platform like, hey, I actually did place this trade. It's verified by Robin Hood. Um, so we just thought there was a unique angle there.
23:33 I think social was always something we wanted to do. It was like the original thesis of Robin Hood. Yeah. >> And it just like never felt like the right time until last year. Um, so we like put a small team on it. It's like really a strike team. They've been building it. It's looking really good. We've been using it internally. Uh we're going to do the beta later this year and sorry, later this uh half. And I think that's like one of those examples where we're going to roll out to a small portion and make sure it works because it can go. It's something we want to like manage and understand well before opening it up to the masses. And then we've got a lot of cool ideas that we can do beyond that. You know, I I think there's a really cool element with investor relations.
24:21 >> Like Open Door streamed their earnings into the Robin Hood app uh last quarter >> and I I think there could be an opportunity to intersect it with Robin Hood social a bit. So um I I think there's a that's just one idea, but we've got a lot of like cool ideas that we think we can iterate on. there >> was one of the product philosophies around social also uh I guess from like an internal metric perspective user engagement because if more people are posting about their trades and seeing different things they're more likely to use the product.
24:53 >> Um I think it's definitely something like we think that if social is really successful customers are going to spend more time on the Robin Hood app, right? We think that if they're already spending that time using like Twitter finance, which tends to be noisy sometimes, or Reddit finance, that's probably better for the that's probably better both for the customer and for Robin Hood. Um, but that being said, I think in the early stages, we're not going to like there's not like a single metric we're necessarily optimizing towards. I I think the thing that we are optimizing for is there a healthy vibrant community on Robin Hood sharing ideas having dialogue talking to each other um and is it uplifting their Robin Hood experience.
25:41 >> So you guys over the past couple of years have unveiled um a variety of products that don't have to do with active traders. The first event that I came to, the first ever gold event was for credit card >> and uh banking came out last year and this to me was a really big deal for Robna because now you were saying we are here to become an integrated financial ecosystem, not just a trading app. How have you as the VP of product thought about the wallet share side of the business and how that interacts with the actual core trading business? Yeah, I'm spending a lot of time on that, especially this year. Um, because I think a big chunk of my team is focused on active trading. Uh, a pretty big chunk is also focused on like retirement accounts, Robin Hood strategies, um, and kind of like the brokerage side of the share wallet products. And we have a lot to do there. You know, we don't have a lot of the account types. Uh, we acquired trade PMR. there's a lot of work we've been doing with that company.
26:40 Um, so that's something like I I've been spending a lot of time with and I think the challenge that I I have been personally spending a lot of time on is like how do we make all of this work inside of the Robin Hood app. Um, >> right. >> And you know, I think we've actually made a lot of progress over the last year silently. You know, we moved all the accounts into the home screen. we've been rolling that out and now you can swipe between your accounts. That created some space. That was actually a really positive change. You know, we've been drastically upleveling search recently. Um that's the heat map stuff that you talked about, but there's also some sports stuff in there for prediction markets. There's like a now page. So, we've been kind of like silently upgrading the app. uh kind of preparing for like a world where uh Robin Hood truly is a financial super app. And I actually think ironically I think you and I met the first gold event where we announced a credit card but we also uh shared that app redesign.
27:46 >> Yep. >> Which we actually ended up rolling back. Uh that was like something we we rolled out to some customers and we realized it didn't have that product market fit. So we rolled it back and now we've been taking this approach of like incrementally redesigning the app. And I I would say more of an evolution versus a revolution to the app, but in a way that is preparing us to be a true super app. >> And I, you know, I remember when you guys rolled out the new UI update and people were excited about it because it was a brand new UI after a couple years.
28:22 Uh and then I think I had a couple friends that had it and they didn't really love it either. And and I think as a as a company to have the guts to be like we tried, >> didn't work. We're going to go back to the drawing board. Like that in and of itself is just pure startup culture in a most companies don't have that culture to make a mistake and acknowledge it and just move on and forget about it.
28:42 >> I actually think my biggest my biggest regret with that is like we tried almost for like too long to make it work. Um, that's always easy to say in retrospect, but um, I'm glad obviously we we looked at the data, we tried to make it work for a bit, and then we made a decision to try something else. >> Was that was that tough? Like, did you have to put the nail in the coffin and be like, we're done with this?
29:05 >> Um, I actually think as a personal reflection, uh, I wish we had done it sooner and been more decisive. We kind of let it let it fester a bit. Um, and that's probably on on me, but um, you know, I I think we pivoted and we're in a really healthy place now. And I I think that same team that same team that kind of did a lot of that redesign work is now shipping changes to the app every single week to like improve it, >> right?
29:34 >> And now we we have a vision for the long-term Robin Hood app that I can't share. Uh, but we know where we're headed to be that financial super app, but we're going to get there probably like one step at a time and we're probably going to take a lot of zigzags on the way. Um, depending on what's hot, what's relevant now, what we're learning. Um, so that's a problem I've been spending a lot of time on. And that's kind of at the intersection of this like share of wallet active trading thing because we want to make it work in one app. So uh AI, how are you broadly thinking about AI influencing the entire suite of products at Robin?
30:16 >> Um yeah, AI is big. You know, we started in a few different ways. First is Cortex from last March event. The stock summary, stock digest, expanded it to crypto, ETFs. Seems like a simple feature actually kind of hard to build uh and to do it well. But also I think from an like kind of like unitary perspective, make builds like an AI for us that understands why stocks and ETFs and cryptos move. So like as a building block, if you think about it as like atoms, it's actually like very useful to build that separately. We built customer support AI which is like really useful but like another core building block right because to do customer support really well uh our AI needs to understand our suite of products really really well. Um the third thing is we kind of built some active trader tools that were still um kind of using internally and making sure they're really really good like scanners scripting we announced at the last hood summit um which are for active traders. Those are things that active traders do. They spend a lot of time on but they're very time consuming and they're not particularly accessible. So, um, those three building blocks I think will help us really get to the next level of our AI products over time. I think the thing I've learned is like it's really easy to get not so great AI products out. It's actually really hard to get really really really great AI products out, >> right?
31:49 >> And I I think one principle I always hold with products is like I want I only want we want to move fast, but I only want to ship stuff that we're proud of. Yeah. >> Um, and if we're shipping to 23 like 25 I forget the NFA number, but 25 26 million customers a financial product, the cost of being wrong is very high. So, you know, we want to be we want to make sure that the products are very very high quality. We don't want to ship stuff for the sake of shipping it quickly. Uh, in the space, we want to make sure that when we do, it's like really really good and that people trust it. So I I think what I've learned is like really easy to prototype, really easy to like try stuff, really hard to get to like at scale high quality production um for finance, you know, where the cost of being wrong can be high.
32:45 >> Yeah. I think one example of this is is digest. I mean, I didn't have it for like the past seven months, but when I got it, I I I mean, I really rely on it to see why a stock is up or down. And so you want that to be accurate because that could influence trade decision. Uh >> exactly. >> Yeah. I I think shipping that with the right level of like care was important because now I use it every day and now it's the way I get my news when I look at different price updates.
33:09 >> That's great to hear. Yeah. And you know I think we're like I think building that enabled what we showed at the yes no event like the portfolio digest. Yeah. because like that in a some way is like your portfolio data combined with the individual digests of each thing you hold, right? So it's like we solved like the it's like if you boil it down to like atoms and molecules, it's like we solve the atomic layer of the problem.
33:35 So now we're like kind of bridging molecules. Um it's obviously more complicated than that, but it's like a mental model. Um but yeah, I I think that's kind of like we're really bullish on it, but we want to do it really really well. Um because the cost of being wrong is very high. >> Last question for you, Abby. Thank you for taking the time and then uh we'll do a quick little rapid fire after this. >> Yeah.
34:00 >> How is your role as the VP of product at Robin Hood influenced how you personally think about the markets and investing? I think for me the thing I've learned is like I think great investors have like this ability to take very complex investment decisions and like boil it down into like a series of like very simple yes no questions which is like do you believe this? Do you believe this? Do you not believe this? Would you regret it if this happened? And then like they sum up the they look they basically create a decision tree in their brain. Yeah. Of like these very simple questions and then they reach a very principled outcome.
34:38 >> So I think for like complex decisions in my own life I try to like apply like a similar thing which is like this is a pretty hard decision obviously I have a gut feeling but like what's like what needs to be true for this to be the right decision. What needs to be not true uh to make a particular decision. So, like I I I think that's like kind of the mental models I've learned about like my personal life from just being close to investing. Um, I think the other thing I like to do is like especially with me being super well-versed in options. I will like think of stuff as like oh this is just a put contract on like [laughter] like it's like insurance on this outcome you know like this particular decision is like buying a put contract >> or like if something is like a super high upside I'll just like mentally think about it like a call option.
35:27 >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Uh so I I like kind of use that in my head a little bit which is like fun. Um, so yeah, I I think like I think investing has a way of like simplifying mental models if you do it well. >> I love it. I I've used that so many times. Like like even today I was talking to a friend and I was like, "Yeah, bro." But the way I would hedge that and I was talking about a life thing and I was like, "Did I just say hedge that?" Like it's >> Yeah. Yeah. And you were looking for like a put contract, right?
35:53 >> Basically. Basically. >> Yeah. >> Abashek, thank you so much for taking the time for this. Deeply deeply appreciate it. Uh, a little bit of rapid fire for you. What is your favorite movie? >> Uh, Interstellar. >> Wow, I appreciate that. Shiv and Vlad are back to the future guys, so good one. >> I don't know why that popped into my head, but yeah, Interstellar. >> Favorite book >> or or Arrival? Probably. >> That's a great one as well.
36:24 >> Yeah, I'm a big sci-fi nerd. >> Yeah. >> Favorite book, if you have one? >> Uh, Creativity Inc. That's a great one as well. >> Have you read it? >> I have not read it, but it's that's about Nike, right? >> It's about Pixar. >> It's about Pixar. Correct. Correct. Correct. >> Yeah. Nike is Shoe Dog. >> Shoe Dog, right? >> Yeah. >> Uh, okay. And the last one, actually, no, there's two more. Favorite food.
36:46 >> Oh, Choleur. >> Oh, you just won my heart with that. You >> Yeah, there you go. >> I probably did, right? >> Yeah. From from your mom or from a certain restaurant or >> uh From my mom. From my mom. >> I love it. >> Yeah. Uh, last one is favorite memory with Vlad. Favorite memory at Robin. Not favorite, but just something that pops into your head when someone says one of your memories. >> Yeah, favorite memory. I I mean I I think the easy one to say is the IPO, but I I think like the best memories are forged in like when you're in the trenches. And uh I think it was 2018, we had like this series of like truly like the three like worst days in company like history at that point. We had like a major kind of sav um with our options trading systems. Then the very next morning we like launched this like checking and savings product that we then had to pull down. Yeah.
37:47 >> And I think that series of like highs and lows and I I didn't really sleep for 48 hours, 72 hours and then we had a holiday party to cap it off that Friday. So that Wednesday, Thursday, Friday was like fairly intense. >> Um and you know, we were handling those issues. There was a lot of stuff. I didn't sleep. We were doing a lot of whiteboard accounting um to figure out stuff. I I just think like memories and like relationships are kind of forged in those fires. And I I feel like that was one of the like first big moments where like uh myself at least with Lad and Beiju like it it kind of became a lot more than just like a daily work thing uh where it's like we're like in this I I think the 2021 stuff was like fairly similar 2020 when we were scaling really quickly keeping our systems up every day. It's like when you're dealing with the fires and in the trenches that you forge the bit best relationships. Um, and I probably put those at the top of the memory list and then like the IPO.
38:55 >> So, it was the stuff that sucked the most but forced you to go through it versus like the happiest moment. >> Yeah. I mean, it's like the I I I I think one thing that like Vlad is like really good at and I I've kind of learned is like how do you stay like levelheaded and like >> honestly like somewhat like somewhat humorous in those moments >> cuz it's like it's kind of like it's like satire almost. It's like >> so many things are going wrong, you may as well like try to have a good time with it because that's when you're going to do your best work. Um, so like they actually end up being like really like great moments for the team to get together. Um, and like just forge really strong connections. So, um, and I I think the leadership style that Vlad has in those moments is really effective. I try to deploy some of that. I think generally, uh, people at Robin Hood tend to stay very levelheaded during those situations. I mean, we've been through it, so nothing phases us.
39:59 >> Abashek Fata, thank you. VP of product management at Robin Hood. Really appreciate your time. >> Thank you, man. >> It was great chatting. >> Yeah. Thank you.