Skip to main content
https://www.highperformancecpmgate.com/rgeesizw1?key=a9d7b2ab045c91688419e8e18a006621

Robinhood hires CapitalG partner to lead operations

Robinhood’s human resources department is keeping busy this month, announcing this morning that the zero-fee stock trading app and cryptocurrency exchange has tapped CapitalG partner Gretchen Howard (pictured) to lead operations.

The news comes two days after the well-funded startup hired Jason Warnick, a long-time Amazon executive, as its chief financial officer. Warnick, Amazon’s former VP of finance, joins Robinhood amid speculation the fintech ‘unicorn’ is gearing up for an eventual initial public offering.

Robinhood hires 20-year Amazon veteran to CFO role as high-flying startup eyes IPO

Howard, who’s joining as a vice president, has been a partner at Alphabet’s growth investing arm since 2014. Before that, she was a vice president at Fidelity Investments.

Earlier this year, Howard helped source CapitalG’s first investment in Robinhood, though another partner, David Lawee, lead the deal. In addition to Robinhood, she’s worked closely with CapitalG portfolio companies CreditKarma, Lyft, Airbnb and Gusto.

Robinhood brought in a $363 million Series D funding round led by DST Global in May. The company raised the capital at a more than $5 billion valuation —  a 4x increase from its valuation one year prior. In total, Robinhood has secured $539 million in equity funding from ICONIQ Capital, Thrive Capital, NEA, Sound Ventures and several others since it was founded in 2013.

“I’ve been inspired by the velocity with which Robinhood builds and launches high-quality products and share their passion for democratizing financial services,” Howard said in a statement provided to TechCrunch. “While it’s bittersweet to leave Alphabet … I’m excited to remain in the Alphabet family and work closely with the CapitalG team from the portfolio side.”

While it seems to be more common for former operators to transition into venture investing, VCs, too, opt to switch sides of the table from time to time. Howard is a great example of this, as are two former Andreessen Horowitz investors Balaji Srinivasan and Asiff Hirji, who currently serve as Coinbase’s chief technology officer and chief operating officer, respectively. Coinbase is an A16z portfolio company.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp steps back from board director role

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp is relinquishing his role as a board director and switching to board observer — where he says he’ll focus on product strategy for the ride hailing giant. Camp made the announcement in a short Medium post in which he writes of his decade at Uber: “I’ve learned a lot, and realized that I’m most helpful when focused on product strategy & design, and this is where I’d like to focus going forward.” “I will continue to work with Dara [Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO] and the product and technology leadership teams to brainstorm new ideas, iterate on plans and designs, and continue to innovate at scale,” he adds. “We have a strong and diverse team in place, and I’m confident everyone will navigate well during these turbulent times.” The Canadian billionaire entrepreneur signs off by saying he’s looking forward to helping Uber “brainstorm the next big idea”. Camp hasn’t been short of ideas over his career in tech. He’s the co-founder of the web 2.0 recommendatio
Post a Comment
Read more

Drone crash near kids leads Swiss Post and Matternet to suspend autonomous deliveries

A serious crash by a delivery drone in Switzerland have grounded the fleet and put a partnership on ice. Within a stone’s throw of a school, the incident raised grim possibilities for the possibilities of catastrophic failure of payload-bearing autonomous aerial vehicles. The drones were operated by Matternet as part of a partnership with the Swiss Post (i.e. the postal service), which was using the craft to dispatch lab samples from one medical center for priority cases. As far as potential applications of drone delivery, it’s a home run — but twice now the craft have crashed, first with a soft landing and the second time a very hard one. The first incident, in January, was the result of a GPS hardware error; the drone entered a planned failback state and deployed its emergency parachute, falling slowly to the ground. Measures were taken to improve the GPS systems. The second failure in May, however, led to the drone attempting to deploy its parachute again, only to sever the line
Post a Comment
Read more

How the world’s largest cannabis dispensary avoids social media restrictions

Planet 13 is the world’s largest cannabis dispensary. Located in Las Vegas, blocks off the Strip, the facility is the size of a small Walmart. By design, it’s hard to miss. Planet 13 is upending the dispensary model. It’s big, loud and visitors are encouraged to photograph everything. As part of the cannabis industry, Planet 13 is heavily restricted on the type of content it can publish on Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms. It’s not allowed to post pictures of buds or vapes on some sites. It can’t talk about pricing or product selection on others.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Morgan Celeste SF Blogger (@bayareabeautyblogger) on Jan 25, 2020 at 7:54pm PST Instead, Planet 13 encourages its thousands of visitors to take photos and videos. Starting with the entrance, the facility is full of surprises tailored for the ‘gram. As a business, Planet 13’s social media content is heavily restricted and monito
3 comments
Read more