Robinhood is understood for propogating memestock mania, making its founders billionaires, and altering how People make investments. However a mannequin of company governance and succession planning? Effectively, add it to the checklist. The corporate’s rigorously deliberate CFO transition that underscores how far the corporate has come—from a scrappy startup navigating hypergrowth and market turbulence to an S&P 500 agency centered on sturdy, disciplined execution.
The Menlo Park, Calif.-based fintech and buying and selling platform, which affords conventional asset and cryptocurrency buying and selling, introduced in November that CFO Jason Warnick is retiring. He’ll transfer into an advisory position within the first quarter of 2026 and stay with the corporate till Sept. 1, 2026, as Shiv Verma, SVP of finance and technique and treasurer, steps into the highest finance job. Fortune lately sat down with the duo at Robinhood’s Washington, D.C., workplace to delve into how they orchestrated the handoff—and what they realized alongside the way in which.
As we speak Robinhood has a totally built-out finance group and a spot within the S&P 500. In 2024, the corporate earned $2.95 billion in complete web revenues and annual web revenue of $1.41 billion. This marked Robinhood’s first 12 months of GAAP profitability 12 months since going public in 2021. Robinhood is rising quick—its income is already approaching half the scale of mid-tier monetary companies like T. Rowe Value and Broadridge.
However when Warnick joined the corporate in late 2018 after twenty years at Amazon, the finance perform was barely a dozen individuals. Verma had been employed as treasurer weeks earlier, plus there have been a handful of accountants, and one finance contractor.
In speaking with Warnick and Verma, each primarily based on the West Coast, they conveyed a startup-like vibe on the firm: casual, by no means stuffy, and open to concepts and debate, and at occasions, laughter. “I truly instructed him it’s not too late if he desires to vary his thoughts,” Verma quipped of Warnick’s pending retirement. “I’ll miss him as pal.”
Verma considers himself as tremendous analytical. “I’m a math man; a former bond dealer,” he stated. However what he realized from Warnick is the flexibility to delegate. In any other case, you may “begin at six within the morning and go until midnight,” he stated. “And I’ve a 3 month outdated at residence.”
“His spouse is actually upset with me, proper?” Warnick quipped. “She loves Jason; she’s not such a fan of the timing,” Verma parried again. “Though, she is genuinely comfortable for each of us,” he added.
The camaraderie between Warnick and Verma started as members of a crew, led by Robinhood CEO Vladimir Tenev, that navigated the corporate by way of some tough waters. In March 2020, Robinhood suffered a significant app outage on one of many greatest up days in market historical past, leaving customers unable to commerce because the Dow surged, Warnick recalled.
“We weren’t engineers, and you’ll really feel type of helpless,” he stated. However he and Verma rapidly concluded that their position was to not repair code however to triage stakeholders. That meant calling bankers, traders, and board members in actual time and being as clear as doable, Warnick stated. That groundwork, he believes, helped Robinhood increase billions of {dollars} in early 2021, when meme-stock volatility and surging volumes once more harassed the platform. The capital increase was geared toward strengthening the corporate’s monetary place and supporting its speedy development on the time, Warnick stated.
Constructing a successor by design
This transition was years within the making, one thing you may count on at a 100 12 months outdated Fortune 500 agency however not essentially a nimble disruptor. “We’ve been joined on the hip for seven years,” Verma quips. However over these seven years, Warnick steadily expanded Verma’s remit—from treasury to finance, then investor relations, company improvement, benchmarking and buyer technique, and partnerships. Alongside the way in which, Verma employed a devoted treasurer and a VP of finance, typically at Warnick’s urging, to permit him to step again and focus on higher-leverage selections.
That deliberate scope enlargement mirrored Warnick’s personal development at Amazon, the place his tasks grew, finally culminating in oversight of a 500-person finance group and a task as chief of workers to the CFO. At Robinhood, the identical mannequin meant that by the point the transition was introduced, Verma was already managing greater than half the finance group and performing as a central node throughout the enterprise. He has attended each board assembly since Robinhood went public, co-presented earnings, and repeatedly joined audit and danger committee classes.
Verma describes the final seven years as a compressed Silicon Valley lifecycle: early buildout, pandemic-era hypergrowth, the GameStop frenzy and IPO, adopted by a pointy selloff. In 2022, Robinhood lower roughly 30% of its workforce and shifted to a normal supervisor mannequin. “We’ve come a good distance,” Verma stated, “to a really expert public firm.”
A very powerful ability of a CFO
As we speak CFOs are anticipated to personal the numbers, but in addition act as core strategist, digital chief, and enterprise change agent. Earlier in his profession, Warnick stated he was as soon as requested by a mentor, What do you assume is a very powerful facet of a CFO’s job? He answered, capital allocation.
“That’s necessary; that’s what drives future returns for the corporate,” he remembers his mentor telling him. “However you don’t get to allocate the capital your self.” A very powerful ability a CFO has, Warnick stated, is influencing the final word decision-maker—the CEO. “So our job is to convey knowledge and finance into the dialogue and affect the end result,” he stated. “And I believe that that’s one space the place Shiv simply shines.”
Verma spends a variety of time with Tenev, the board, and cross-functional leaders in engineering, authorized, compliance, and danger, specializing in the choices that matter most for Robinhood’s long-term trajectory, he stated.
For the finance leaders, what appears to be like like succession planning was arguably actually the muse of a stable mentorship. “He’s nonetheless my first name after I’m combating one thing,” Verma stated of Warnick.
As for Warnick’s retirement plans, they’re nonetheless being fleshed out, however will embody journey together with his spouse, as they’re now empty nesters. One factor’s for positive: if Verma desires some recommendation, he’s solely a telephone name away.
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