Robinhood Quiz: How Well Do You Know Trading?

Robinhood was built on the belief that everyday people deserved the same market access that Wall Street professionals enjoyed. Two Stanford alumni came together after the 2008 financial crisis to change retail investing in the United States. The company was formally incorporated in a specific year that marks its official beginning.

When Robinhood entered the market, most brokerage firms charged investors a fee every time they bought or sold a stock. Robinhood disrupted this by removing that cost entirely for retail users. This move forced nearly every major brokerage in the United States to follow suit and reconsider their fee structures to stay competitive.

Before building Robinhood, the two co-founders had already worked together at a high-frequency trading firm. Their very first joint venture was a company focused on algorithmic trading. After about a year, they moved on to a second venture that built automated trading tools for financial institutions, which eventually led them to create Robinhood.

Robinhood does not earn money through traditional commissions. Instead, it routes customer orders to third-party market makers in exchange for compensation. This practice is common among several US brokerage platforms but has attracted regulatory scrutiny and ongoing debate about whether it truly serves the best interests of ordinary retail investors.

Vlad Tenev, one of Robinhood's co-founders, had a strong academic background in mathematics. After completing his undergraduate degree at Stanford, he enrolled in a doctoral programme at another California university. He left that programme when his business partner convinced him to pursue their shared goal of opening up financial markets to everyone.