Gretchen Howard (MBA 2002) came to HBS in part because she had a story in her mind about how her career would start: It was 2000, the apex of the dotcom bubble. She would move to Boston, study business, partner with a technologist from MIT, and build a transformative tech company. “I recall idealistically writing my admission essay on this,” says Howard.

That particular vision didn’t materialize, in part because of the dotcom crash that began during her time at HBS. After graduation, she worked as VP at Fidelity Investments, growing their retail business, and then moved to Google in 2006, first focusing on scaling operations and then becoming a partner at Google Capital (now CapitalG), investing in late-stage tech companies and helping founders grow their businesses. The experience at Google was revelatory, with Howard learning new skills and surfacing existing ones. And she discovered that she had miscast herself in her own origin story: She wasn’t the starry-eyed tech founder, she was the architect and builder. “I realized that there needed to be someone else—the genius who had the vision to come up with the idea. But then, once they had it, I could add value by scaling efficiently, accelerating the business model, and building the leadership team.”

Howard started at the mobile brokerage company Robinhood in 2019. Tapped to help it scale and manage its operations teams, she is responsible for everything from brokerage and crypto operations to customer care to recruiting. And while the role offered Howard the opportunity to apply her company-building skills, the company’s mission, “democratizing finance for all” was the main draw. “Knowing from my prior career experience just how many people don’t feel worthy of being in the stock market, or don’t know how to get started—and seeing the demographics be so skewed—it felt like such an important place to spend my time,” says Howard.

In this conversation with the Bulletin, Howard talks about that mission’s endgame—what can happen when a more diverse set of investors get access to the market, how finance can become as culturally relevant as art or music—and why the retail investor is woefully misunderstood.

You’ve been at Robinhood now for three-and-a-half years. How has the organization evolved in that time?

The mission is the same—to democratize finance for all—and we continue to attract people who want to participate in their own financial future. If I think about the people who make up Robinhood, it’s people who are humble, people who want to have an impact, and people who have a passion for the customers we are serving.

We have scaled tremendously. We have grown to approximately 22.8 million net cumulative, funded accounts. The steep growth slope has been up and to the right for many years and, on top of that, we’ve had incredible transactional volume with little lead time.

It has definitely been the hardest scaling challenge of my career. We have had to adjust quickly to rapid customer growth and changing market dynamics, all while still launching new products and services to remain competitive.

Robinhood has adapted to many changes and, if anything, has proven to be a disruptor in how it has taken the concept of investing and turned it into something more relatable. Listen, we’ve had our highs and lows—as any business would—but we’re building a business for the long term. We are focused on growing in a way that will allow us to continue to serve the customers we know really well while building for new and prospective customers. Evolving to meet customers’ needs along their shifting financial journeys is incredibly challenging, but also incredibly rewarding.

Robinhood’s mission is to democratize finance for all. What happens to the market, and the companies in the market, when you have a more diverse set of investors? What are the ripples when we remove barriers to finance?

I don’t think we know all the ripples yet. What I do know is that Robinhood customers are upending this industry. That makes a lot of people who are considered the old mainstays of the stock market very nervous. Robinhood is changing how the industry thinks and how people talk about investing.

It started with Robinhood Financial eliminating commissions; that really changed the game. A lot of other brokerages followed suit, but then we introduced other new offerings like fractional shares.

And beyond that, how can firms like Robinhood provide educational tools to new and experienced investors? And how do we create a platform for investors of all different levels? Something else that’s really important to us is making sure we are welcoming: How does someone—particularly a new investor—feel worthy enough to begin investing? And when do they feel knowledgeable enough to get started? Financial services jargon is really scary for newer investors to overcome. In the United States, we don’t teach children how to manage their finances in school. So even when people graduate from college or graduate school, many don’t have the tools or even the understanding of what should be a basic life skill. The good thing, though, is that we are seeing a shift—especially with this generation right now. Talking about money or investing is no longer such a taboo topic. When I grew up, people didn’t talk about how much one was paid, and people definitely didn’t talk about finances. That is different today.

Through social media and the immediate connections people have to brands, customers are able to have direct dialogue with companies they love (or hate). We think about this when we look at our platform. We want people to feel welcomed and to engage when and how they need us. We have a product called Say that allows retail investors, for instance, to ask questions at quarterly earnings meetings (something that was historically reserved for the analysts). And now some of our peers are also embracing this opportunity to give retail investors a voice.

We talked about fractional shares, a product that you launched to allow a new group of investors to get in, but I’m interested in how else you think about developing products for underrepresented groups. How do you actively seek out their needs?

I think we have to build something that is accessible for all. To do this, you have to take into account a lot of different inputs. Once you’re able to identify what you’re building and who you’re building it for, then you can focus on execution. We consider a few things when we’re executing, including asking ourselves: Have we truly listened to our customer needs? How do we test for usability? How do we innovate and add value to our customers’ experience?

There’s a difference between how you build a product and how you engage or show up in the world. On the latter, the company is doing a lot around external affairs and community partnerships with different stakeholder groups. For example, we just launched a four-year partnership with West Virginia University, making it the first D1 school to offer financial education coursework for every student-athlete. Our goal is to launch more of these across the country.

Do you think that these retail investors, broadly speaking, are misunderstood? And if so, what do you think we should know about them?

It’s hard to broad-brush. I will say that I don’t have any tolerance for people who talk down to retail investors and dismiss them as uneducated or unworthy. It strikes me as incredibly egocentric and paternalistic. I inherently believe that people have the ability to learn, to take control of their own destiny. But like any competitive industry, people are reluctant when disruptors like Robinhood come along and change the game. The dismissive attitude we see toward our customers or our platform often comes from more traditional financial services businesses that have dominated the space for a very long time. Their outdated approach has been such a disservice to the retail investor.

I wonder if you think that this idea of the empowered individual investor can coexist peacefully with your larger institutional investor? Surely it’s not a zero-sum game, right?

I believe they can. People in the industry must be dynamic and pay attention to what’s happening around them. I’m a learner by nature, so if I’m a company, I’d want to hear from retail investors or any new cohort beginning to bubble up and garner attention in my field. I’d want to understand their voice and where they are coming from. Just look at social media and other platforms over the last several years—the retail investor voice was able to capture everyone’s attention last year. That is true power. Companies need to pay attention to that.

When you think about advancing this mission of democratizing finance, what do you see as progress toward that goal? What are the signs or data points that you watch?

Some of the clearest measurements we track are the level of participation within the US markets and the increase in retail investors. I’m very proud of the increases we’ve seen in the percentage of women investors and underrepresented groups, including Hispanic and Black investors. It is incredibly motivating for me, and I think we are at the beginning of this sea change.

Can there be a shift where finance is as culturally relevant as music or the arts? Possibly. We need to really listen to and learn from this generation and how they interact with each other. As they take more control of their financial future, they’re going to have access to tools and resources they’ve never had before. They are going to have more influence as a retail investor. They are going to create a dialogue around it and possibly affect the destiny of these businesses.

This is how I picture it going forward. People will feel like investing is not as removed from their day-to-day life, like they actually have this connection to the companies and the industries that are driving our economy.

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