Getty Image
2020 was a tough year for basically everyone, but Robinhood didn’t have much to complain about, as millions of people flocked to the trading platform to give this whole “investment” thing a chance to stay busy during the pandemic (and get your game correct when sports betting basically ceased to exist overnight)
Robinhood had already attracted a lot of attention before last year thanks to his attempt to interrupt the way people buy stocks and shares with commission-free negotiations and an ethos that promised to “democratize finance for all”. Last month, the company partnered with Goldman Sachs to prepare for an IPO in an attempt to profit from its $ 20 billion valuation, but there seems to be a very good chance that it will be reevaluating its plans as a result of what happened last week.
If you’ve been on Twitter for more than ten seconds in the past few days, you’re no doubt familiar with the GameStop saga that put Robinhood in warm water with a temperature that rivaled the surface of the sun. After Reddit users unleashed a shopping frenzy that triggered GameSpot shares, Robinhood decided that the best way to handle the increase was to prevent people from buying more of them.
Surprisingly, his customers were not at all satisfied with this development and, in a short time, Robinhood found himself dealing with a flood of negative criticism and threatened with collective action after being pursued on charges of market manipulation.
CEO Vlad Tenev eventually did the media round to address the absolute disaster and decided to empty another magazine on his company’s already bullet-ridden foot, while bravely defending the decision to suspend stock sales of GameStop and other companies that obtained or / WallStreetBets Treatment suggesting that it was no big deal because people could still invest in other companies on the platform.
It is safe to say that the bold strategy was not worth it, and Robinhood was forced to seek an additional $ 1 billion in funding after a change that not only angered its users, but many of the employees who were less than thrilled to see the company apparently do everything in their power to threaten their very existence.
Fortunately, Robinhood took his complaints seriously and did everything he could to atone for his sins, giving the nearly 1,000 people who work there * checks notes * $ 40 in DoorDash credits.
I am perplexed that the apology did not go as well as they probably expected.