Robinhood Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Baiju Bhatt Steps Down; Will Remain Member of the Board

Robinhood Markets co-founder Baiju Bhatt is stepping down from his chief creative officer role. The Indian American has played a crucial role in the Menlo Park, California-based investing platform’s growth and innovation. He launched Robinhood with Vlad Tenev in 2013 and served as its co-chief executive until 2020, when he transitioned to chief creative officer. He will remain a member of the board.

In a statement announcing his departure, Bhatt said he co-founded Robinhood in 2013 because he “believed we could change our financial system for the better.” He said it was “the seed of an idea — born from the Occupy Wall Street movement and inspired by ideals of democratizing finance for all.” As co-CEO, he “helped grow and transform Robinhood from an idea into a movement – one with millions of customers all across America and hundreds of employees,” he wrote.

As the chief creative officer, he “worked with teams of incredible builders to bring products like Robinhood Retirement to life,” he added. “It has been an honor and a privilege to work with some of the most innovative and creative thinkers in the industry,” he continued.” Robinhood has been my life for the last decade, and while I’m leaving my day-to-day role, I’ll remain a member of the Board of Directors,” he added. “There is so much more work to be done to realize this mission, and I’m going to remain a part of that.”

FinanceFeeds notes that the “leadership change comes as Robinhood continues to navigate the dynamic and competitive landscape of financial services, aiming to uphold its commitment to making finance accessible to a broad audience.” Noting this is departure “marks the end of an era” the website providing Forex industry news said the company “pushed the boundaries of traditional finance, challenging established norms and opening the market to a new generation of investors”

Bhatt is the son of Indian immigrants, Pragna and Praful Bhatt, and and grew up in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. He is married to Adrienne Sussman and the couple have a son.  Bhatt has a bachelor’s degree in physics and a master’s in Mathematics from Stanford University. He then moved to New York where he met Tenev The two built two finance companies, selling trading software to hedge funds. Following the 2011 protests of Occupy Wall Street, they witnessed issues that were taking place in the financial industry at that time.  “We were in the center of a lot of the frustration around the financial system,” Bhatt told the Wall Street Journal in a February 21, 2020 interview. “A lot of people were feeling like it was fundamentally broken.”

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This is where the idea for the formation of Robinhood came from. “With their newfound experience in the world of finance, they realized that big Wall Street firms pay effectively nothing to trade stocks, while most Americans were charged commission for every trade,” according to the Robinhood website. “They soon decided it was more important to build products that would provide everyone with access to the financial markets, not just the wealthy.” They then moved back to California and built the company. 

MEAWW reported that during pre-registration for the app, Bhatt and Tenev “told the users to refer the app to their friends if they wished to move up the list, resulting in over 1 million waiting users when the app was launched on Apple’s App Store.”

Bhatt told the Journal that throughout his career, “he has learned the importance of reinventing one’s job as companies grow and evolve.” He noted that the “kind of problems that we were solving when we were building our first app is very different from the problems that we’re solving today,” and added, “In order for us to be successful…we have to be able to and be open-minded enough to reinvent ourselves every six months.”