Congrats to Robinhood on Today's IPO!
![As Robinhood becomes a public company, Index partner Jan Hammer highlights what he sees as its defining characteristics. All illustrations by Jiaqi Wang.](https://www.indexventures.com/media/original_images/09_IPO_1920.gif)
"Congrats Baiju, Vlad and Robinhood team on today’s IPO! You’ve opened up the world of finance, brought down barriers, and demonstrated that everyone can be an investor."
— Jan Hammer, Index Ventures
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The financial crisis brought the system to its knees. Instead of staying on the sidelines, you did something about it: you launched Robinhood.
![RH_Twitter 5_Occupy.jpg](https://www.indexventures.com/media/images/RH_Twitter_5_Occupy.original.format-jpeg.jpg)
450,000 people lined up to get access to the app. The queue broke all waitlist records. Enthusiasm was unprecedented for a financial product. Clearly this wasn’t just hype: it was the product that the next generation of financial consumers had been hungry for.
![RH_Twitter 1_Waitlist.jpg](https://www.indexventures.com/media/images/RH_Twitter_1_Waitlist.original.format-jpeg.jpg)
You saw how incumbents charged hefty fees and demanded high deposits. You shook the industry by introducing zero-commission trades.
![RH_Twitter 2_Zero Dollars.jpg](https://www.indexventures.com/media/images/RH_Twitter_2_Zero_Dollars.original.format-jpeg.jpg)
You married beautiful and intuitive design with complex, custom-built technology. You refused to compromise on what lay under the hood, creating an entirely new type of brokerage from scratch.
![RH_Twitter 4_Brilliant Design.jpg](https://www.indexventures.com/media/images/RH_Twitter_4_Brilliant_Design.original.format-jpeg.jpg)
The two of you are perfectly complementary business partners. You bring reason and emotion, back-end and front-end, ambition and pragmatism. You stood side-by-side and built a world-class team.
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You always believed in creating a standalone public company, and took the hard road at each step of the way – you never lost sight of your vision.
![RH_Twitter 7_Hard road.jpg](https://www.indexventures.com/media/images/RH_Twitter_7_Hard_road.original.format-jpeg.jpg)
While everyone was fighting over the same customers, you rewrote the rules of what it means to be an investor and got a new generation to take part.
![RH_Twitter 8_Pie.jpg](https://www.indexventures.com/media/images/RH_Twitter_8_Pie.original.format-jpeg.jpg)
Since founding the company over 8 years ago, you’ve continued to win new supporters. You raised funds to grow and brought on partners who share your vision and ambition.
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I am immensely proud of what you’ve achieved. It’s been an absolute privilege to work with you and we're wishing you the best of luck as a public company. Onwards!
Published — July 29, 2021