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The founders of Robinhood had a tough time with VCs early on, as the product had not yet launched or gained regulatory approval. However with a viral product and freemium business model, the company fetched a $1.3b valuation just a few years later. Robinhood has saved consumers over $500m in commissions.
You look at 2008 where we bailed out the banks, and the middle class, in a lot of ways, got stuck with the bill, and then in the years of the recovery since then, 90% of the returns have accumulated to the top 1%. It feels very, very unfair, and the margins for these services, which used to be brick-and-mortar but are now completely electronic, are way too big. The margins of financial-services companies are astonishingly large relative to what's actually going on, and what that translates into is almost literally they're taking money out of your pocket and putting it in theirs. As part of this latest funding announcement, we released some numbers about the business, and the one that I'm most proud of is that we've taken half a billion dollars, over $500 million in saved commissions.
http://www.businessinsider.com/robinhood-app-vlad-tenev-founder-free-stock-trading-valuation-2017-7
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