Did Robinhood Ruin Its IPO?
Last week, Robinhood restricted trading on GameStop and other stocks caught in the “meme stock” frenzy. Robinhood customers took to Blind, the largest anonymous professional network, to express their outrage surrounding the decision.
With the Robinhood IPO scheduled this year, a Google employee asked the platform if “Robinhood screwed it’s IPO?”
Here is what 8,750 professionals think:
- 83% of surveyed professionals think Robinhood ruined its IPO
See the data here.
Another user asks on Blind, “After this whole thing is over, will you switch from Robinhood?”
- 76% of respondents say they plan on switching from Robinhood
- 13% of respondents say they already did (and shared where they went)
- Only 11% of respondents say they won’t be leaving the Robinhood platform
See the raw data here.
On Sunday evening, Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev explained the decision to halt GameStop trading and other stocks during an interview. “This was a clearinghouse decision, and it was just based on the capital requirements,”
However, Silicon Valley professionals perceive Robinhood’s reputation as an employer somewhat unfavorably.
An engineer at Google shared a job offer from Robinhood they planned on accepting, but they are now reluctant to. The post read, “Had an offer from RH for current TC+10k or so. But. I was about to accept. Now suddenly the world hates RH, and they have 1 star on the app store, and everyone’s claiming they’ll uninstall.”
Here is what 8,300 professionals advised them to do:
- 38% of professionals advised him to stay at Google
- 13% of professionals advised him to negotiate with Google
- 12% advised him to negotiate the Robinhood offer further
- Only 13% of professionals advised him to take the Robinhood offer
See the data here.
A professional at Amazon responded to the Google engineer, “I wouldn’t (accept). No one will trust them after this.”
A professional at eBay said, “I will never hire anyone who ever worked for Robinhood even after this saga. As the latest action shows, they do not have integrity.”
As said by a Citadel employee on Blind, “You need to show growth, not sure what kinda growth they’ll be able to show now.
Really sad for the people working there, they’ve created a good product. And it’s not only Robinhood’s fault. But if you pretend to be helping the ‘regular people’ and then do a 180 once big money tells you to, be ready for the consequences.”