BAIJU BHATT

Born in 1984 to Indian immigrant parents in the US. His father is from Rajasthan.

Grew up studying math and science. Went to Stanford, where he studied physics and met Vlad Tenev.

The two hit it off over a shared obsession: why did it cost $10 to trade a stock when the actual cost was fractions of a penny?

After Stanford, they started two fintech companies together — Celeris (a high-frequency trading firm) and Chronos Research (selling trading software to hedge funds). Both were mildly successful but not world-changing.

In 2013, they founded Robinhood with a radical idea: zero-commission stock trading for everyone. The timing was perfect.

Millennials wanted to invest but hated the $10-per-trade model of E*Trade and TD Ameritrade. Robinhood made it free, mobile-first, and dead simple.

The app went viral. By 2020, Robinhood had 13 million accounts.

Then came the GameStop short squeeze of January 2021 — Robinhood users piled into GME, AMC, and other meme stocks. When Robinhood restricted buying due to clearinghouse requirements, Congress hauled Tenev (not Bhatt) to testify.

Robinhood went public in July 2021 at $38 per share. The stock promptly cratered 85% over the next year.

Bhatt stepped back from day-to-day operations in 2022 to focus on his role as Chief Creative Officer, then eventually left Robinhood to pursue other ventures.

Robinhood is the main event — the company that forced every brokerage in America to go zero-commission. Before Robinhood, Schwab charged $8.95 per trade.

Now they charge $0. That's Bhatt and Tenev's impact.

Before Robinhood, he co-founded Celeris and Chronos Research, both in the trading technology space. Post-Robinhood, he's been exploring new ventures in technology.

Bhatt thinks like a physicist turned product designer. He looks at systems and asks: where is the unnecessary friction?

With Robinhood, the friction was commissions and complexity. His approach is to identify something that costs far more than it should and build a better mousetrap.

He's not a financial investor in the Buffett sense — he's a builder who creates financial products.

Forcing the entire brokerage industry to go zero-commission. In October 2019, Charles Schwab announced it was eliminating commissions — directly because of Robinhood's competitive pressure.

TD Ameritrade, E*Trade, and Fidelity followed within days. Robinhood's existence saved American investors billions of dollars per year in trading fees.

That's a genuine structural change to the financial system.

The GameStop crisis. In January 2021, Robinhood restricted buying of GameStop, AMC, and other meme stocks because it couldn't meet the clearinghouse deposit requirements triggered by the trading frenzy.

Users felt betrayed. The "democratize finance" company was stopping people from buying stocks.

Congress investigated. Trust was shattered.

The stock went from $70 post-IPO to under $7 within a year. Bhatt and Tenev built something revolutionary and watched it become a punchline.

Remove friction. Make it simple.

The user always comes first. Bhatt believes that financial tools should be as intuitive as social media apps.

If something requires a financial advisor to explain, it's broken. The controversial part is that some critics argue this simplicity encourages reckless trading — making options feel like a game when real money is at stake.

Very private. Indian-American, parents are immigrants.

He's not married publicly. Lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Known among colleagues as deeply introverted and technically brilliant.

Stanford University. Studied physics.

Met Vlad Tenev at Stanford. The physics background shows in his systems-thinking approach to financial products.

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