Snoop Dogg, Nas and Jared Leto have delivered a shot of star power to the latest round
of financing for Robinhood, a new no-commission brokerage website that hopes to make
trading stocks as easy as hitting "X" on Tinder. The startup announced this week that it
raised $13 million in Series A funding, led by Index Ventures as well as Howard Lindzon
of StockTwits and the trio of celebs. Robinhood raised $3 million in seed money back in
December 2013, with early investors including Index, Andreessen Horowitz, IT Ventures
and QueensBridge Ventures, Nas' Los Angeles-based venture capital firm.The app looks
to give average-joe investors a free and easy way to make trades, bypassing firms like TD
Ameritrade or Charles Schwab that charge up to $10 per transaction. "We believe there’s
something inherently wrong with that, and we’re on a path to change it," said a company
statement announcing the funding round. "Robinhood’s powerfully engineered technology
and carefully designed mobile experience will allow everyday investors to trade with zero
commissions."
The company says nearly 500,000 people are already on the waiting list to join the service,
which founders Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt hope to launch in early 2015. The early adopters
tend to be younger than your typical investor, with 80 percent of them between 18-29 years
old, Tenev and Bhatt told Recode.
The new funding will go towards hiring more engineers and designers. Twenty people currently
work for the company, which is based out of Palo Alto, Calif.
Source: Billboard