Stock Trading and Crypto Startup Robinhood Eyeing an IPO

Currently valued at $5.6 billion, zero-free stock trading app and crypto exchange Robinhood is growing even bigger and is searching for a chief financial officer as it prepares to offer an initial public offering (IPO). Barely two and a half years ago, Robinhood was largely under the radar but since then it has grown immensely – it began its meteoric rise when it raised a $110 million Series C at a $1.3 billion valuation in April 2017. This was followed by a $363 million Series D which was led by the Russian-backed DST Global.

As it stands, Robinhood has what it takes to make a viable Wall Street debut thanks to the impressive figures mentioned above and the immense growth of its premium subscription for trading on its Robinhood Gold margin.

Baiju Bhatt, the Co-Founder of Robinhood, made an appearance on TechCrunch Disrupt yesterday and during one of his talks, he mentioned that they were indeed looking for a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and they would be going public soon.

Hiring a CFO will certainly present a great move forward for the five-year-old Silicon Valley startup company that has positioned itself as the go-to place for both the new breed of e-trades and traditional stock brokers as well.

“It’s something that we think is very much in the future for Robinhood, being a public company, I think, aligns very closely with our mission as well. And it’s definitely on the horizon. I think, not in the immediate term, but something we’re thinking about,” Bhatt stated.

As far as the IPO goes, it is likely that the company will have to convince potential investors that in spite of the current downturn in the prices of cryptocurrencies, the company will still be able to allow them to trade their cryptocurrencies for cheaper than what competitors like Coinbase have to offer.

“I don’t think we have any plans to bring margin trading in crypto, but we’ve seen people that come in because they’re interested in crypto substantial number of those people say hey, maybe I’m also interested in investing equity markets,” Bhatt added.

“We opened up Robinhood Crypto to customers in the US because we thought that this was a big change that is coming to the financial system and we wanted to make sure that if this was something that customers were going to do that yesterday’s business model didn’t follow tomorrow’s financial system… I think we still believe that this is something that’s going to matter long term. So we feel strong about offering it.”