The CEO Who Lost 80% of His Company's Value (And Built It Back): Vlad Tenev

Description

Vlad is the co‑founder and CEO of Robinhood, the platform that pulled an entire generation into the stock market and then nearly broke in public during the GameStop short squeeze. In January 2021, Vlad Tenev made a decision that nearly destroyed Robinhood. Wall Street called it betrayal. Customers called it cowardice. He's never fully explained what happened until now. He took the company public at a $32B valuation, watched it lose more than 80% of its market value the following year, and then quietly rebuilt it into the most diversified financial product on the market. In this conversation, Vlad finally tells the GameStop story the way he remembers it: the middle‑of‑the‑night call, the billions in collateral demands, the false narrative that took hold before he could get on a single Zoom, and why a juicy falsehood will always beat a boring truth. He explains why GameStop wasn't actually the hardest moment of his career, and what the slower, grinding collapse of 2022 taught him about running a company when every tailwind becomes a headwind at once. Then he gets into the part most founders never honestly talk about: how he fired the nice version of himself and what happened next. In this conversation, he breaks down the simple system he uses to run leadership meetings, the decision making exercise that helps him decide, and how they're supercharging results with AI. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Find comprehensive show notes here: https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/vlad-tenev/ (00:00) Navigating an Unprecedented Crisis (00:33) The Truth About GameStop (04:30) Why False Narratives Win (07:06) Connecting with Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk (10:39) Surviving an 80% Market Crash (16:02) Firing Himself & Going Founder Mode (24:25) How RobinHood Operates Internally (27:09) When to Hire and Fire (31:33) How he Runs Meetings to Maximize Usefulness (35:13) Why Storytelling is so Important (39:07) Artificial Intelligence (50:03) Mathematical Superintelligence (58:05) AI Models Wil