Vlad Tenev
Co-founder 2013Background
Vlad Tenev was born in Varna, Bulgaria, in 1987 and moved to the US at age five after his father, an economics professor, emigrated following the fall of communism. He earned a B.S. in Mathematics from Stanford, where he met Baiju Bhatt, and a M.S. in Mathematics from UCLA. After Stanford, Tenev and Bhatt moved to New York and built two high-frequency trading technology companies, Celeris and then Chronos Research, selling trading software to banks and hedge funds. Recognizing that electronic trading firms paid almost nothing to place trades while brokers charged retail investors up to $10 per trade, the pair founded Robinhood in 2013 to offer commission-free trading. Tenev came under intense congressional and public scrutiny in January 2021 when Robinhood restricted buy orders for GameStop, AMC, and other 'meme stocks' during a retail-driven short squeeze, citing a sudden spike in clearinghouse collateral requirements; the decision triggered lawsuits, a House Financial Services Committee hearing where Tenev testified remotely, and lasting reputational damage to Robinhood's 'for the people' brand positioning even though regulators ultimately found no evidence of intentional market manipulation.