The Robinhood Mafia
The PayPal Mafia is arguably the most iconic startup mafia group in the tech scene. But many other startups, like Google, Tesla, and Apple, have produced a line of ex employees who go on to start their own influential startups.
Today, we're digging into the Robinhood Mafia which has so far founded 18 companies and raised $500 million collectively.
We briefly spoke to Peter Dun, an alumni of the Robinhood Mafia, and asked him what he learned most from working at Robinhood and how it helped him start his own company, Feathery, a form builder for product teams.
Peter was a former Growth Engineer at Robinhood, and recently raised $4 million in a seed round led by Index Ventures.
"Robinhood's fast growth highlighted the importance of solid, well-tested user forms and funnels. That led to me starting Feathery to supercharge that process." - Peter Dun, founder of Feathery
If you’ve missed our previous tech mafia posts, make sure to check them out here.
PS: Are you a Robinhood employee/alum interested in getting your community together to invest in the community (and earn carry/other benefits along the way)? Or are you a member of another community that you think would make for an amazing startup investment community? 😉
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Democratizing stock investing
Robinhood's story began almost ten years ago at Stanford University, where co-founders Baiju and Vlad became roommates and classmates. After they graduated, they went to New York and started two finance companies, making trading software for hedge funds.
They realized that big Wall Street firms paid very little to trade stocks, while regular people had to pay fees for every trade they made. This bothered them, so they decided to make products that would let everyone join the financial markets, not just wealthy folks.
After a couple of years in New York, they went back to California and started Robinhood. The company's goal was to use technology to encourage everyone to get involved in finance. They named it Robinhood to show they wanted to make things fairer, like the legendary character Robin Hood. Their unique early marketing strategy helped them get one million sign ups even before the official launch of the app.
Robinhood went public in July 2021. Although it started out as an investing platform for beginners, it's turned into a into a full-fledged investing and banking platform.
The Robinhood Mafia
Most money raised:
Parafin
Parafin was founded in 2020 in San Francisco by three former Robinhood employees. Parafin's Chief Executive Sahill Poddar, who was Robinhood's head of machine-learning, teamed up to launch Parafin with Ralph Furman, president of the startup and ex data scientist at Robinhood, along with Vineet Goel, the company's chief product officer, who served as head of risk and fraud engineering at Robinhood.
Parafin has raised a total of $244 million from investors like Ribbit Capital, Thrive Capital, SVA, and Mischief.
It provides small businesses with cash advances and customized, embedded financial products through the platforms they already use, such as on-demand marketplaces, point-of-sales solutions, and vertical SaaS.
The concept of embedded financial services is becoming increasingly important, especially for small businesses that may lack access to traditional financial services. Parafin's approach addresses this gap and showcases the innovative ways technology can drive financial inclusion.
Rising star we're excited about:
Atlantic Money
Atlantic Money was founded by Patrick Kavanagh and Neeraj Baid. Kavanagh was Robinhood’s first angel investor and an employee, and Baid was one of its first engineers. The duo worked on a number of projects together including building out its crypto brokerage.
In 2020 they both left Robinhood and moved to London where they decided to launch Atlantic Money, a new money transfer service which is a direct rival to companies like Wise and PayPal.
They raised their seed round from investors like Ribbit, Index, Kleiner Parkins, Harry Stebbings, Elefund, Amplo, and in true startup mafia fashion - from the founders of Robinhood.
Atlantic aims to be the cheapest app out there for money transfers over £1000. It's currently only available in the UK, with plans to expand to other European countries.
Full list of all the incredible members of the Robinhood Mafia
Companies covered:
- Beach House Group
- Parafin
- Pahdo Labs
- Fanhouse
- Resourcely
- Sei Labs
- BusRight
- Floor
- Vial
- Atlantic Money
- Kalder
- Loop Support
- 1Flow
- Feathery
- Uprise
- Orkes
- Coinfeeds
- Say
Parafin
Founder: Ralph (Furmaniak) Furman, Sahill Poddar, Vineet Goel
Robinhood Role: Data Scientist, Head of Machine Learning Engineering, Head of Risk and Fraud Engineering
Capital Raised: $244M
Investors: Ribbit Capital
Stage: Series B
Parafin helps grow small businesses through embedded financial services enabled on the very platforms on which SMBs sell & transact.
Vial
Founder: Simon Burns
Robinhood Role: Growth
Capital Raised: $101M
Investors: General Catalyst
Stage: Series B
Vial is a CRO delivering faster and more efficient trials for sponsors through its end-to-end technology platform.
Pahdo Labs
Founder: Daniel Zou
Robinhood Role: Software Engineer, Growth
Capital Raised: $17.5M
Investors: BoxGroup
Stage: Series A
Pahdo Labs develops an Anime-style action MMORPG and game creation platform.
Daniel is the founder/CEO of Pahdo Labs in NYC, who ventured into blending gaming, social interaction, and anime. Earlier on, he was a pivotal force on Robinhood's growth team, mastering referrals, SEO, and viral launches.
Fanhouse
Founder: Amy Shen
Robinhood Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $21.3M
Investors: a16z
Stage: Series A
Fanhouse is a social platform that connects content creators with their top fans.
Sei Labs
Founder: Jayendra Jog
Robinhood Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $35M
Investors: GSR
Stage: Series A
Sei Labs pioneers open-source tech for the Sei Blockchain, a rapid Layer 1 blockchain merging Web3 and Web2 scales. The experienced team previously worked at Google, Goldman Sachs, Robinhood, Nvidia, and Databricks.
BusRight
Founder: Chris Fischer
Robinhood Role: Software Engineering Intern
Capital Raised: $9.5M
Investors: Underscore VC
Stage: Series A
BusRight operates a school-bus tracking application that is intended to improve student safety.
Chris Fischer, BusRight founder and co-founder, boasts internships at Robinhood, Google, and NVIDIA, enriching his journey as an entrepreneur.
Beach House Group
Founder: Shaun Neff
Robinhood Role: Brand Advisor/Investor
Capital Raised: $10M
Investors: Monogram Capital Partners
Stage: Series A
Beach House Group is a consumer product solutions company that creates and commercializes brands to meet the needs of the consumer. The company's expertise spans from brand and product development, design, licensing, and procurement services.
Floor
Founder: Christine Hall
Robinhood Role: Crypto COO, VP of Product Operations
Capital Raised: $8M
Investors: B Capital
Stage: Series A
Floor is an app that aims to make non-fungible tokens (NFT) more accessible and understandable.
Rising Stars
Atlantic Money
Founder: Neeraj Baid, Patrick Kavanagh
Robinhood Role: Product Manager, Business Operations
Capital Raised: $7.5M
Investors: Index Ventures
Stage: Seed
Atlantic Money provides global money transfers at a flat fee of £3 or €3, up to £1m or €1m. A leading international payment service, offering the most affordable solution for foreign currency transfers.
Kalder
Founder: Kevin Jin, Gökçe Güven
Robinhood Role: Tech Lead, Crypto Product
Capital Raised: $3M
Investors: 8VC
Stage: Pre-Seed
Kalder is a unified web3 brand loyalty platform for brands and creators to drive meaningful engagement, onboard new users, and reward superfan communities.
Resourcely
Founder: Aladdin Almubayed
Robinhood Role: AppSec Engineering Technical Lead
Capital Raised: $8.3M
Investors: Felicis Ventures
Stage: Seed
Resourcely lets you provision resource templates that are secure and compliant by design.
Loop Support
Founder: Dean Yim
Robinhood Role: Director of Brokerage Operations
Capital Raised: $1M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Seed
Loop Support helps growing companies provide great customer support.
Dean Yim, Loop Support's founder and CEO, a Diet Dr Pepper enthusiast, leverages data science to assist companies in hiring exceptional SDRs.
1Flow
Founder: Kai (Jiabo) Feng
Robinhood Role: Product Marketing Consultant
Capital Raised: $2.1M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Seed
1Flow is a fast and easy way to understand your app users, so you can reduce churn, grow faster, and build the right features.
Kai (Jiabo) Feng, CEO of 1Flow, grew a B2C app studio to 7-figure revenue.
Feathery
Founder: Peter Dun
Robinhood Role: Growth Engineer
Capital Raised: $4M
Investors: Bain Capital Ventures
Stage: Seed
Feathery is a powerful form builder for product teams to build customizable, developer-friendly forms.
Uprise
Founder: Jessica Chen Riolfi
Robinhood Role: Product Consultant
Capital Raised: $1.4M
Investors: Hustle Fund
Stage: Pre-Seed
Uprise is building wealth management for all - bringing the tools and the tricks of the 1% to everyone.
Jessica Chen Riolfi, Uprise's co-founder and CEO, brings rich expertise in product, growth, and global expansion. Adept in fintech, payments, eCommerce, and consumer tech, she's committed to enhancing lives through tech-driven products.
Orkes
Founder: Boney Sekh
Robinhood Role: Engineering Leadership
Capital Raised: $9.3M
Investors: Battery Ventures
Stage: Seed
Orkes is a cloud hosted, fully managed version of Netflix Conductor.
Boney Sekh, co-founder and CTO of Orkes Inc, brings 18+ years' software architecture experience, spanning media, finance, and startups.
Coinfeeds
Founder: Bhavya Agarwal
Robinhood Role: Machine Learning Engineer
Capital Raised: $2M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Seed
Coinfeeds is an API that tracks and aggregates news and social sentiment for crypto enthusiasts.
Say
Founder: Julio Fredes
Robinhood Role: Senior Manager, Finance & Strategy
Capital Raised: $8M
Investors: Point72 Ventures
Stage: Seed
Say is a technology platform that empowers shareholders to access their full ownership rights.
The platform features proxy processing, fund reports, trade confirmations, post-sale prospectus delivery, voluntary corporate actions, and class actions processing.
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