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Startups & Venture Capital
startupsventurecapital.com · Group blog · on HN since 2016
Startups & Venture Capital is a Medium publication with articles on startups, investing, machine learning, and tech business models.
What HN saysHN commenters cite it mainly for its article on Robinhood's business model, which they say trades on user privacy and order routing.
20HN people shared it
7linked it in comments
19stories submitted
87story points
8 years agolast shared
2016people per year2026
Most-shared posts
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What HN people wrote when they linked it
elliekelly · 2018-12-05
Reminder that Robinhood's business model comes at the expense of your privacy, and in the long run, your bottom line: https://startupsventurecapital.com/robinhoods-exceptionally-clever-bus…
edit: it only just dawned on me that "Robinhood" is supposed to mean steal from the rich to give to the poor yet they do the exact opposite
crankylinuxuser · 2018-06-18
>>"A proprietary program puts its developer or owner in a position of power over its users. This power is in itself an injustice."
>This seems to be slightly ideologically loaded.
It is, until it happens to you. Then the recourse is HN/Twitter/Reddit. If you let yourself have your data exfiltrated, then your final answer is primarily bad PR and/or begging.
One example that sticks out in my mind is the Firebase debacle as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14356409 where costs went from $25/mo to $1700/mo . Because of the extraordinary bad reporting across tech media, their C*O positions responded in kind. This could have ended in a multitude of much worse outcomes, since this is software as a service (aka: data ransom)
https://startupsventurecapital.com/firebase-costs-increased-by-7-000-8…
goldenkey · 2018-02-11
The amount of money saved with Robinhood is often lost in the less than desirable order routing that Robinhood internally provides. This is how they can provide "free trades."
Often they are executing lousier order prices than are available on other exchanges (the actual market.)
Other brokers, that make you pay for trades, send your order out to all exchanges.
Example: save $7 to end up paying 10 cents extra per share on 1000 shares. Looks like you actually got Robbedinhood for $93...
Other brokers take a fixed $7. Robinhood takes a percentage of your orders. Even for an order as small as $300, you can expect to get Robbedinhood for $7 or more (a couple percent.)
https://startupsventurecapital.com/robinhoods-exceptionally-clever-bus…
oil7abibi · 2018-01-25
They also make money by selling orders to high frequency traders. The User accepts at potential 5% markup on orders in exchange for “zero-fee trades.”
https://startupsventurecapital.com/robinhoods-exceptionally-clever-bus…
ricardobeat · 2017-12-21
You need to read the full comments on that thread. Or this counter-argument: https://startupsventurecapital.com/you-fired-your-top-talent-i-hope-yo…
There is a lot wrong with that article and it should not be used as a reference for this subject.
forkLding · 2018-09-11
Better explanation for the layman: https://startupsventurecapital.com/robinhoods-exceptionally-clever-bus…
Some detailed links on payment for order flow:
https://www.sec.gov/fast-answers/answerspayordfhtm.html
https://www.sec.gov/fast-answers/answersmktmakerhtm.html
https://www.sec.gov/reportspubs/investor-publications/investorpubstrad…
https://hub.ipe.com/find-research/white-papers/payment-for-order-flow-…