Robinhood's Sarah Pinto: Bringing Private Markets to the Public

Sarah Pinto (0:00)

Only about 1% of Americans have any exposure to privates because most people aren't accredited. Even if you are accredited, you have to be invited into rounds, you have to be invited into funds, you have to have hundreds, if not tens of thousands of dollars to invest, and then you have to be able to bear the illiquidity. And for most people, those things just aren't true, which means that they can only watch companies like Anthropic or OpenAI emerge from the sidelines. They can't be a part of it, they can't actually benefit from that value creation. And that's really what we're trying to solve at Robinhood and the purpose I see in this job.

Beezer Clarkson (0:48)

This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Please see full disclosures in the show notes and in the end of this episode. Welcome to Origins, the podcast that dives deep into the business of venture capital, where we learn how the people behind the capital, both GPs and LPs make decisions. I'm Beezer Clarkson, Managing Director at LGT Capital Partners. My co-host Nick Chirls can't join us for this one, so you just get me today. Today's guest is Sarah Pinto, Head of Robinhood Ventures and President of Robinhood Ventures Fund II. Sarah spent nearly eight years at Laurene Powell Jobs, Emerson Collective, where she led growth stage investing and backed companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and Coinbase well before they were household names. Before that, she started her career at the World Bank's International Finance Corporation after studying international development at the Harvard Kennedy School, then spent a decade in private equity and growth equity. A couple years ago, she joined Robinhood to help build something that hasn't really existed before, a publicly traded venture fund that lets anyone, accredited or not, buy shares in a portfolio of private companies on the same exchange as any other stock.

What makes this conversation especially timely is that Sarah just launched Robinhood Ventures Fund II, or RV2, which is a $200 million vehicle focused on Y Combinator startups. They kicked off the roadshow on August 3rd and went public on August 13th on the New York Stock Exchange. And unlike a typical IPO roadshow, which is reserved for institutional investors, this one was streamed on the Robinhood app and YouTube for literally anyone to watch.

Sarah, it is so wonderful to see you again. It's been far too long and thank you for coming on Origins.

Sarah Pinto (2:35)

Yes, 100 percent. It has been too long. It's so nice to see you and thanks for having me.

Beezer Clarkson (2:40)

Yeah.

So for those that don't know, Sarah spent close to a decade investing in mission-driven growth stage companies at Emerson Collective. And you've backed names that are now incredibly familiar to everybody. But back when you did them, they were not. Folks like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Coinbase. And then you left to go build a public market product at Robinhood. Could you just sort of walk us through the decision to leave and how that happens?

Sarah Pinto (3:06)

Of course. So the truth is I've actually been an investor for longer than that. And even though I looked like a fresh 25-year-old, I've been investing since July of 2008, which was a very interesting time to start being an investor. But it means I saw cycles early, and I've been focused on tech since 2010 and largely at the growth stage. So even if it is true that I invested in Anthropic before most people knew Claude, it's a little less true for companies like Coinbase than OpenAI, but I'll take the praise.

The run at Emerson was absolutely incredible, and I'm incredibly grateful and proud that I got to build our venture efforts with Laurene and with Steve and the team.

It's the kind of job that is really, really hard to leave. I think the through line of my career which leads more directly to Robinhood than you would think, is really the intersection of investing and purpose. And I think investing is such a fun job that I'm incredibly privileged to do because you get to revisit your priorities constantly. The world, particularly when you're in tech, changes on you every single quarter, if not month, if not week with AI.

And so you get to always learn and then you get to walk in the footsteps of amazing people and learn from them and watch them and identify gravity, which to me is it's the best job in the world. And so there's that and then there's purpose. I went to the Kennedy School originally for grad school because I thought I wanted to work for the World Bank because really what I wanted to do was to use finance as a way to make positive change in the world. And so the kind of investing I was doing at Emerson was very aligned with that. And then today the kind of investing that I'm doing at Robinhood is very aligned with that because it is giving people who historically didn't have access to what I think is the most exciting asset class in the world. It's creating products that give people that kind of access. And in my opinion, if you want to have a healthy democracy, everyone needs to feel like they can have skin in the game and that the best companies can be theirs. And that's just really challenging at a moment in time where companies aren't going public anymore. And you might not know this, and I didn't fully know this before joining Robinhood, but only about 1% of Americans have any exposure to privates because most people aren't accredited. Only about 10%, 12% of Americans are accredited. If you're not accredited, you can't invest in privates at all. And then even if you are accredited, you have to have, as you know, you have to be invited into rounds. You have to be invited into funds. You have to have hundreds, if not tens of thousands of dollars to invest. And then you have to be able to bear the illiquidity. And for most people, those things just aren't true, which means that they can only watch companies like Anthropic or OpenAI emerge from the sidelines. They can't be a part of it. They can't actually benefit from that value creation. And that's really what we're trying to solve at Robinhood and the purpose I see in this job.