My guest is Archit Shah, who recently stepped down as General Counsel of Robinhood, where he was the company's first lawyer. We talked about building a legal team from one person up to fifteen, launching Robinhood Crypto into territory no retail broker-dealer had touched, and why every new fintech still runs on the old financial plumbing. And yes, we got into crypto and GameStop.
Top Insights
- Archit joined Robinhood as its first lawyer after being an IP litigation partner at Kirkland & Ellis, drawn in by founders Baiju and Vlad and the idea of a company built on democratizing finance with zero commissions.
- When you build an in-house legal team from scratch, the first hires should be generalists who can learn any area of law fast; narrow specialists only become the priority once the team is around fifteen people.
- Launching Robinhood Crypto was genuinely uncharted: he says he doesn't think any other retail broker-dealer had an affiliate doing cryptocurrency at the time, so the regulatory groundwork started from zero.
- New fintechs compete with the traditional financial system but also depend on it; you launch by partnering with existing players like a clearing broker-dealer (Apex) rather than rebuilding the whole stack.
- Archit calls himself a "read the details, read the law" lawyer, and rates a stable, long-term outside-counsel relationship as the "true independent check" on his own narrow view of a problem.
- He's a self-described crypto skeptic overall, but sees real traction for stablecoins and finds the NFT idea of status-signaling interesting, comparing it to conspicuous consumption in the physical world.
Listen Now
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
Full Transcript
Khurram Naik: This is Khurram with Khurram's Quorum. My guest today is Archit Shah, who just recently stepped down as the General Counsel of Robinhood, which he joined as its first lawyer. We talked about what Archit learned in the course of managing the legal and regulatory landscape for a pioneering financial services company. And yes, we talked a little about crypto and GameStop. Enjoy. Archit, great to see you. Great to talk to you again.
Archit Shah: Hey, yes, good to see you, Khurram.
Khurram Naik: You know, I just want to start by asking you, and this is going to get kind of deep already, but you were talking about ATMs, reconceptualizing the technology of ATMs at the time they came out, and thinking about them as a type of fintech. So something that's interesting to me is, in your time at Robinhood, to what extent were you looking at historical precedents for insight about how to chart this new territory? I feel like, especially in the history of finance, the deeper you go, the more you see recurring patterns, on a several-hundred-year scale, if you really look for those patterns. So I was curious. You strike me as somebody who has a broad range of interests, and I'm curious about how much you drew on financial history to say, okay, here's precedent and here's where we can be heading, and here's the ways we fit into the path, and here's the ways we depart from it, and here's what to do about it.
Archit Shah: Yeah, I think there are a lot of lessons you can draw from products and services that have come in the past. And I don't know about hundreds of years, but over the past several decades there have been a lot of iterations of financial services. Technology has pushed a lot of the financial services delivery mechanisms from person to person to online. And the current era in the last 10 years is not the first push online. In the 90s there was the start of electronic trading at larger scales, and in the 80s maybe on the more market maker and institutional side. Each of those iterations and generations had financial services that we can learn from. So certainly it was something that any fintech lawyer looking for ideas for how to structure things, and how things have and haven't worked, learning from history is critical. And then in the more recent history, there's always competitors that you can learn from, looking at how they've structured products and services, and seeing what are the good ideas you can pick from there to find your own path.
Khurram Naik: Maybe the last thing, specifically. You and I are about the same vintage, so we remember what the dot-com boom was like, and that coincided of course with day trading as a phenomenon. I think maybe it was last week I was just pulling up old commercials from the 90s for day trading and their players. I think anybody should do that. So were there lessons learned from that era that Robinhood was conscious of, or that you were conscious of, I should say, in your role, and said, okay, well here's lessons we can learn from this and here's things to do and here's things to avoid?
Archit Shah: I don't know if I have anything concrete in that vein. And I think it's less about lessons learned than, as I said, maybe ideas for how to approach things and, on different issues, how to structure things. Certainly going back and looking at commercials for laughs about what was considered groundbreaking back then is something. On the other hand, in terms of practical legal advice, a lot of the rules have changed, a lot of the directions that regulators have taken things have changed, there's a lot of guidance that's come out since the first iteration of electronic trading. So I don't know if there's anything more concrete that you can point out in that vein.
Khurram Naik: I think something that's really obvious about day trading in the 90s is you had companies underscoring how potentially lucrative it was, but I think part of what people were also saying is what a fun and liberating lifestyle it is. And so it's interesting, because if you watch any of the, there's so many, I think, late 90s movies, like say American Beauty or Office Space or all these kinds of movies, and a Fight Club I'm thinking of too, there's so many of these movies, and we pull them up, and the way I pull them up, I'm so struck by seeing everybody in suits. Even down in the pits, everyone's wearing a suit. So life was very much a straitjacket for a lot of people. A lot of people fell very much at the winds of corporate America, whatever. And of course, with the explosion of Silicon Valley over the next 20 years and the cultural changes that emanated from there, even before COVID suits aren't a fraction of the part of society that they once were, right? So what's interesting about the distinctions of this era to that era is, in the dot-com era, so many people looked at this as something that's very much the escape from what exists already as options for people. But the cultural departure now is that people have some more freedom. There's this concept of the creator economy and the gig economy, and there's all kinds of ways to style your life. People are bringing a lot more of their lifestyle now. So it's interesting to contextualize Robinhood in this era, in this creator era, where people are already inclined to pursue their own lifestyle, and this is congruent with the ability to have control of your finances, which is congruent with those other goals. So it's interesting to see what a different context Robinhood supplies there. And relatedly, I think what's also interesting is we talked about gamification, and that's novel about Robinhood, but I think what's also interesting, to tease apart from it, is the $0 commission. So those two things, I suppose you could have had one or the other, it wasn't logically necessary, you had them both. So I wonder if you'd just comment on thinking about these different pieces of the puzzle for accounting for Robinhood's growth and notoriety, if you will. Yeah, what are your thoughts on that, Archit?
Archit Shah: I think a lot of that goes sort of beyond what I would say is my bailiwick from a legal perspective. But what I've seen, and if you look at the broader trend of history, the democratization of trading, the democratization of finance, started a long time ago, as people went from, hey, you have to pay a mandatory $50 commission, and the only option was to call your broker. And it went down from 50 to 30 to 20. And along the way, Merrill Lynch gave way to Schwab and Fidelity and E-Trade. So in terms of the march towards making it more accessible, that's been a long journey for the industry. And on the cultural side, I think it's the same thing. Cultural winds have been blowing for a long time. It does remind me, speaking of old commercials, we just went past the Super Bowl, and thinking about E-Trade commercials of old, there was, I think, some dancing babies and some monkeys before that, in the late 90s, early 2000s. So kind of also having that irreverent cultural attitude, or the not-the-suit lifestyle, as you're referring to.
Khurram Naik: Well, I know it's a question that you've probably been asked a number of times, but so what was it, going back to several years ago that you joined Robinhood and joined as their first lawyer, what was that initial spark for you that drew you to it? Because it was a significant departure from the kind of work you were doing, which was large litigation, I think largely IP litigation. So that seems like a really big leap. What made you want to take that leap, and what was it that drew you to Robinhood?
Archit Shah: Yeah. As an IP litigator, it's a big change of field to jump to going in-house, to being a fintech lawyer. It was a great opportunity for me. Having met the founders, Baiju and Vlad, they had this beautiful vision and this idea that we could create a mission-focused company on democratizing the financial system. Zero commissions seemed like a pie-in-the-sky idea, but they made it happen, and after sitting down with them and starting to understand what the mechanics were and what the road map was to a successful growing company, it was a great opportunity and not one that I could pass up. At a personal level, I've always had an interest in finance, so it was a great opportunity to take what I had learned in terms of bridging between technology and law and help this company move forward.
Khurram Naik: Now, were there other fintech or fintech-light companies that you were considering at the time?
Archit Shah: No. That's not an opportunity as an IP litigator. I was a partner at Kirkland & Ellis. Certainly I was thinking about what my career could hold, but this was something where one thing led to another, and I was able to find my way to having a discussion with Baiju and Vlad, and that led to this great opportunity.
Khurram Naik: And what was, you mentioned an interest in personal finance, or finance personally, so what was that interest you had?
Archit Shah: As a prosumer user of brokerage apps, going back to my undergrad days and originally being on TD and using Thinkorswim, and E-Trade in between, and Fidelity for a long time, and Vanguard, I feel like I've had an account on every major retail broker-dealer app.
Khurram Naik: And so it seems like, I have noticed something that you've mentioned, I remember reading a previous interview years ago and you talked, you've mentioned how you had sustained this interest on the side before you joined, and that when you hire, that is something that you also value in a potential hire, that someone doesn't necessarily need to have the employment experience, but if they have sustained an interest in something on their own, then that is something that's notable to you. So it seems like you've always had this curious mind, that you had this interest in finance and you're keen on learning. So I'm curious, in your tenure at Robinhood, what were the things that you were learning on the side?
Archit Shah: Yeah, that's a great question. In the first couple of years, it was cryptocurrency, which was an on-the-side thing for a while until it became an on-the-job thing. So that was certainly there. I got great exposure to a lot of different areas of expertise at Robinhood, great engineers, great designers, and just the conversations with them and understanding how they approach their work, how they approach their craft, was fascinating, interesting, and a great learning experience. So yeah, a lot of different areas. Got some training in cybersecurity and how to think about cybersecurity issues, got some training on how to think about marketing and growth and things like that. So that was part of the job and certainly part of the value that you get out of these in-house roles.
Khurram Naik: Well, let's then talk about marketing and design, because, well, I guess marketing, because of course the Robinhood platform has exploded in recent years. So what are the rules of thumb, or what are the principles that you've learned about marketing that you think are really powerful and that you think are applicable elsewhere?
Archit Shah: Oh, that's a tough question. I think one of the things that I have been impressed by in what I've seen at Robinhood and other companies that are successful is having brands that are animated by a purpose really works. It really seems to resonate with customers. As a consumer myself, it's a lot easier to buy into a brand that has a real philosophy, that has a story, that has an ethos about it.
Khurram Naik: What's a brand that you're an evangelist for right now?
Archit Shah: Oh, I've been a long-time evangelist of Ubiquiti networking gear. Love getting new Wi-Fi routers, getting the latest and greatest there. So I was expressing that answer. Yeah.
Khurram Naik: So, okay, so back to interviewing. You, I remember you said that you learned some fascinating things in the course of interviewing, and you had people from a really wide range. What was the most left-field hire in terms of background that you hired?
Archit Shah: You know, I don't think I would put it that way. I think the way I would put it is, as the in-house team grows, as you start with one lawyer, as you get to two and five and ten, the narrower specialization comes later. Your earlier hires, there's so much ground to cover that nobody's going to be an expert at it all. So it's sort of less relevant, a specific experience, because those early members of the legal team will be able to leverage some of their specific expertise, but then a lot of it is more of the general ideas about how to learn different areas of law, how to attack different problems, how to find outside counsel, how to work with outside counsel. So it's maybe more of a gradual ramp in terms of, by the time the legal team is at 15 people, you're starting to be a lot more focused in terms of the expertise you're seeking.
Khurram Naik: So then one of the ways that your role changed in that period of time, because at first you're the only lawyer so you've got to field everything, and then you're able to build this team and eventually, first you have some other quasi-generalists and then eventually get more specialists. So how did your role change as that progressed?
Archit Shah: Yeah. In terms of managing a growing team, day one, you're sort of in the weeds every day, every minute, and as there's a team that you're working with, you get the opportunity to step back a little bit on some of the issues and delegate and have people manage different areas on their own. As a practical matter, the way the Robinhood team grew and the way that I had decided to grow the team, a lot of the more general in-house work I had a more direct, hands-on role as I hired people. I wanted to put them in the spots to have the highest leverage, and so they were mostly working with business and product folks on development of new products and services, on improvements to new products and services. So I ended up managing more of the routine in-house work, and real estate, and then working with HR and finance and all of those issues that are more common to a growing business, so that the people who are heads down and focused could be really in the highest-leverage, highest-growth points, where you really needed that focus.
Khurram Naik: And in that period of growth, what would you say is the moment or the accomplishment you're most proud of, where you looked back and said, you know what, I really nailed it?
Archit Shah: I think the speed with which we were able to launch Robinhood Crypto and really get that going was impressive, and it was not just lawyers but engineers and operations folks and designers and everyone, all-hands-on-deck effort. So that was really an impressive thing to see. And from a Robinhood legal team perspective, I think the fact that I was able to build out a legal team that was diverse in a lot of different ways and pulled from different backgrounds, different experiences, I think that's something that I'm really proud of.
Khurram Naik: Can you speak a little more about the legal dimension to launching the crypto platform? Like what was exciting or rewarding for you in doing that?
Archit Shah: It was uncharted territory. I think when Robinhood Crypto was launched, I don't think there were any other retail broker-dealers with an affiliate doing cryptocurrency. And so our discussions with regulators, our discussions with our counterparties, a lot of it was starting from new ground. Like, okay, this is what cryptocurrency is, this is how it's going to work, this is what it means to the customer's existing brokerage accounts. So being able to cover that new ground was just intellectually fascinating and challenging.
Khurram Naik: And so I'm really interested, and we talked a little bit last time about the kind of regulatory environment that you worked with. I think people maybe have, well, I don't really know what people's conceptions are about the regulatory environment that you were facing and what it did actually look like. But I'm kind of curious to hear, what are the things you think the United States regulatory system gets right? What are the things that you think our regulatory system does really well?
Archit Shah: Well, I'll answer from my perspective, my little corner of the world. I think what we've seen in the last few years, for the, I guess, explosion of fintech is one way of putting it, a lot of different innovation from a lot of companies in different areas. I don't think that's possible if regulation is too locked down, too prescriptive, and too limiting. It's certainly true that the regulatory environment imposes constraints on new businesses and new business models. But on the other hand, if you look at the trajectory of the last decade, a lot of innovation has happened. So I think that is something that the regulatory environment can point out as a success. I think the other piece of it is a lot of regulated institutions that have high touch, whether it's FINRA or the SEC or banking regulators. A lot of that high-touch, relationship-based regulation is helpful in protecting the integrity of the financial system. And I know there are challenges there, and I'm not an expert to speak to the causes and roots of our last financial crisis, but for the most part we've been able to weather a lot of changes, and I think that's in no small part due to the fact that regulators are engaged with a lot of different institutions.
Khurram Naik: Now, when you say high touch, one way of looking at it is high barriers to entry. So do you feel that, do you agree with that, I guess? And then do you feel that barriers to entry are beneficial or a hindrance, or how do you find that balance?
Archit Shah: Yeah. There are barriers to entry in the sense that you do have to figure some things out to launch a financial product or service. When I look at the landscape today across a variety of financial services, I don't think that barrier to entry is prohibitive. One of the things that I think is helpful in that regard is the ability to launch standing on the shoulders of giants. You don't have to reinvent the entire financial services stack to launch a new product. In the broker-dealer space, you can get an introducing broker-dealer put in place and have a partnership with a clearing broker-dealer, and that'll carry a lot of the regulatory burden and regulatory infrastructure for you. So you can focus, as an introducing broker-dealer, on the things that introducing broker-dealers need to do, the relationship with the customer, or the app, or whatever the interface is, and all of those types of things, without being solely responsible for things like the regulatory capital and the back-end clearing accounting, all of those services. So that's one onboarding ramp in the broker-dealer space. I think that's parallel to this sort of neobank world, where you don't have to be a bank or get a bank charter to launch a bank product. So when I look at the barriers to entry, oftentimes it's more about finding the right set of partners to launch the product or service that you want to launch. And I think that's a model that helps the financial system maintain that regulatory control while at the same time enabling innovation.
Khurram Naik: What makes for good partners in banking? How do you align incentives, and how do you make sure you're dealing with good counterparties that you can build with?
Archit Shah: So, I think from the legal and compliance perspective, particularly in this area of new companies, new market entrants, the best partners will help you learn the landscape. They'll help you understand the underpinnings of the regulatory pieces and how they fit together. When you have that kind of a partner, it really helps the business grow faster, so you don't project yourself or aim yourself in a direction that's guaranteed to run into problems. I think that's the best case. I think the worst case is if you aren't able to get feedback on why things are structured the way they are, and then you're left shooting in the dark.
Khurram Naik: Well, I want to continue the conversation about barriers to entry by doubling back to something you were saying about what you're proud of with your team at Robinhood, which was building a diverse set of attorneys. So tell me more of what you mean by that.
Archit Shah: Yeah. As I started building out the legal team at Robinhood, I wanted to hire attorneys with different backgrounds, not all from law firms, not all from in-house departments, not all from government. And then trying to find the people who would best be able to fit in and work with a growing fintech company, and work with our internal clients and communicate and really integrate with our internal clients. So the first 10, 15 people coming in to Robinhood's legal team, that was the route, and there wasn't one single profile or one single template that I was trying to pick from. And I think it's important, not just for in-house legal teams, but for the legal field generally. I have a strong belief that there are so many paths to success. Some people are successful via being heads down and reading every single piece of precedent and every decision. Other people are successful by building on relationships and learning from their relationships. Other people are successful from being able to efficiently work with outside counsel or efficiently work with other attorneys, that kind of thing. So if you're using a cookie cutter to hire, you're going to run into problems, because you're not going to have that diverse skill set.
Khurram Naik: Yeah, I feel like you've met plenty of attorneys in the first group who are all about the precedent. They've read every federal circuit case and they can tell you all about what the standard is for obviousness, or whatever. But so tell me more about that second group. Talk about the people that are very relationship-driven and are able to capitalize on that. What does that look like?
Archit Shah: Sure. I mean, I think it's efficient communication, being able to understand, from an in-house perspective, it's often the client service, working with your internal clients. It doesn't do any good if you're talking about an IP issue to know all of the precise factors on obviousness, if you aren't able to communicate that with the engineering teams that are actually working on, say, an invention disclosure or a patent issue or something like that. So there are those types of relationships. A lot of attorneys will have good relationships with people, whether it's classmates, former law firm partners or colleagues, whatnot, to be able to bootstrap knowledge, to know how to tackle a problem. Like, okay, hey, we have new privacy regulations coming down the pipe, who do I turn to? And to kind of caricature the distinction, one approach would be saying, all right, let me just read the entire new set of the new CCPA. But I think there are other attorneys who are successful and say, okay, well, let me find out, there's 25 different law firms publishing "here's your guide to the new CCPA regs," right? But to really peek behind that and see which ones do I actually want to turn to to get advice quickly, that's another skill.
Khurram Naik: Which of those buckets do you feel like you fit in?
Archit Shah: I'm the first bucket. Read the details, read the law. My instinct is always to look for an appellate court opinion discussing whatever issue it is to orient myself.
Khurram Naik: And so is there a particular bit of analysis that you're really proud of, something that you figured out and feel like, ah, that's, you know, I'm really proud of my ability to pull that out?
Archit Shah: I don't think there's anything that I can go into on that front. But yeah, I mean, there's certainly been times in my career where there's a sentence in a federal circuit opinion or a sentence in an appellate court opinion where it's like, that is going to have ramifications down the line. And so, yeah, you get proud of that, though maybe it stays inside for now.
Khurram Naik: So something that I'm wondering at this point is, we've charted out, it seems to me that Robinhood was kind of the vanguard of this, really tackled it and paved the way for a lot of other things that say, hey, I can do that too. They're having outside success and they're really making people more tuned to possibilities. So in some ways, it paved a landscape for others. And so I'm kind of curious. There are going to be any number of people listening who say, it's pretty incredible that Archit spotted this opportunity when it was nascent and not even this realized thing. And so now, yes, there's a bigger field, and maybe that means it's even more hard to navigate past them, not sure. So what advice would you give to someone who is setting out to say, how do I find my mission-driven company? How do I find someplace that I can grow the way that Archit grew Robinhood?
Archit Shah: Yeah, well, for me, being married to Moncy was the key. She's the one who found the opportunity for me, having met one of the VCs for Robinhood at a conference, Sheel Tyle, who was working at NEA. And he had mentioned that, hey, they're looking for a GC. So that's how I got the opportunity. So it's marrying well. But in terms of generally, I think there are a lot of sources of information, you've got to stay up with all of that, whether it's Twitter, now it's Clubhouse, there's all sorts of online things. And if you're keeping up with the field, you'll have a sense for what you think is interesting and what you think will work. It kind of goes back to what I was saying, for attorneys to have areas that they're interested in learning about, that'll give them a jump on opportunities that'll really resonate with them.
Khurram Naik: So, in your time at Robinhood, what was the most annoying thing you heard from someone outside of the company?
Archit Shah: It's a good question. I guess at a personal level, the idea that Robinhood is for day trading. It's a zero-commission trading app, you can do what you want with it. Maybe that's the easiest thing that jumps out.
Khurram Naik: And so what, I mean, is there any, what are the things you feel like people would say, what are the other misconceptions that you feel like you'd want to correct, or that would help somebody have a better understanding, from your vantage point, of the benefit of Robinhood? Or maybe another way to talk about it is, what do you think Robinhood's legacy will be in five, ten years?
Archit Shah: Well, I think it's just been this long journey already, and there's a long journey still to go in terms of democratizing the financial system. From a personal perspective, having seen the last four or five years of Robinhood's history, coming in with zero-commission trading as part of being mobile-first and bringing this aspect of the financial system to a new set of customers, to a new generation, and then seeing the rest of the industry follow to zero commission, that in and of itself, that would be an amazing legacy. But I don't think that's it. And I've certainly seen what Vlad and others on behalf of Robinhood have been saying over the last few weeks. While there's a lot of work still to do, and there's a lot of democratization of the financial system still to go.
Khurram Naik: What do you see as the really interesting frontiers in our society for ways to democratize financial access, or to lower costs, or improve overall access?
Archit Shah: Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of progress has been made on banking-related services, reducing fees, everything from, I know the Robinhood debit card has cut a lot of ATM fees and gives ATM access at more reasonable levels, all of those different things. And I think neobanks have another piece of that. But if you look at the overall financial system, there is a lot of fees and fee-based revenue that's probably disproportionately falling on the lower socioeconomic strata of society. So I think that's a key piece of democratization that needs to keep happening.
Khurram Naik: And it seems to me that you were able to take this risk on joining Robinhood, there was a significant risk to this. So I'd love to talk a little about what are the circumstances that enabled that, and what are ways that you think our system should facilitate that for other people?
Archit Shah: Yeah, that's tough. Again, marrying well is a piece of that. As a family, you have a financial picture that you're looking at, and it's helpful to have two incomes. As another piece, at a personal level, I felt like I was a software engineer before I was a lawyer, and that always gave me a little bit of comfort in taking some risk, because worst come to worst, I can always go back to coding and get a job doing that. So I feel like I still have those skills, maybe a little rusty, but at a personal level, I think that can be a lot of comfort, saying, well, worst case, I can always do that.
Khurram Naik: Is there anything you miss about your coding days?
Archit Shah: You know, I think there is a comfort in software engineering, to a good extent, that comes from being able to test your creations. With legal work and creative legal work, you don't know what the reaction will be until it's out there. And oftentimes, if you're working on contract provisions or something like that, maybe it never gets tested, and that's usually a good thing. But when it does get tested, there's a moment of uncertainty as to how it plays out. You can minimize some of that, it never goes away, but you can minimize that in the world of software development and software engineering.
Khurram Naik: And it seems to me, with the achievement that you've had here, with all you've achieved, your tenure was a big success for you, personally at a minimum. So now, what comes next for you? What motivates you, what excites you from here, having accomplished what you've accomplished? What's left?
Archit Shah: Yeah, no, I'm excited to find another opportunity to join a small team. And I don't know if that would be as a founder or co-founder, or if that would be joining an early-stage company. But I really enjoyed the growth trajectory, going from a 50% to 100% to 200% to 1000% company, and building a team and all of the work that comes along with that. So I'm excited to look for that, and don't know what that'll be, but keeping my eyes open and my ear to the ground to find that next opportunity.
Khurram Naik: What's the difference in the path between being a founder or co-founder versus joining a team? Like, what are the relative considerations you would take? What would it take for you to do one or the other?
Archit Shah: Man, if I had the idea and the vision to jump onto, I would certainly try and do it, but lacking that, I'll try to find a founder whose vision I can support.
Khurram Naik: And so, I want to talk a little more about, we can get back in some of the weeds on some of the finance infrastructure, because I think that's something that people don't really understand. We were talking a little bit last time about one major misconception people have about fintech, maybe including Robinhood, which is the existing financial architecture that it is operating on. So can you talk a little about that?
Archit Shah: Yeah, I mean, I think if you're sitting there thinking, okay, well, these new fintechs are competing with the traditional financial system, that's true, they are, but they're also reliant on it. And I think that's one of the things that's maybe underappreciated, the extent to which, to start a new broker-dealer product, a new bank product, a new lending product, you're building on a lot of existing financial institutions. You'll be talking to banks, whether it's Wells Fargo or Goldman Sachs, or whoever it is, you'll be talking to the less well-known names. Apex is a clearing broker-dealer that a lot of fintechs have built introducing broker-dealers on. There are some banks that are well known for supporting neobanks. And there's a lot of other players in the system. In the card space, there's all kinds of vendors. So if you look at that, I think that's endemic of this industry, which is the regulatory complexity and the operational complexity is so big, you can't start a new company in this space and expect to build from scratch. You're going to have to build on top of something. And so it's no different than, on the engineering side, having Amazon and Google to build on.
Khurram Naik: What are the ways in which people don't appreciate that crypto, maybe, has some of those, a lot of what's being built in crypto and DeFi is similar?
Archit Shah: On the crypto side, I guess I'm probably not informed enough to speak about that. I have to imagine that those institutions are being built out, and maybe the best example is the fact that Ethereum exists as a baseline foundation, the ERC-20 and ERC-721, to build these other sort of tokens and infrastructures on top of.
Khurram Naik: When did you first develop an interest in crypto?
Archit Shah: You know, I recall hearing about it in 2014 and thinking, I might try to buy one of these Bitcoin things, and never getting around to it, or not figuring out how to open an account or whatever. And I sort of vaguely followed it. Once I joined Robinhood, I think I was surrounded by people who were more interested in it. And some people joined Robinhood who had academic experience in analyzing or thinking about cryptocurrency. So it was a great lunchroom conversation, well before Robinhood was thinking about doing anything with crypto.
Khurram Naik: Are there any ways in which you would be bullish on crypto?
Archit Shah: Um, that's a good question. I'm maybe more generally a crypto skeptic. Stablecoins and all of the different use cases seem to be getting some traction. And over the last couple of weeks, I've seen a little bit more about NFTs and the idea of status signaling through crypto tokens. That's an interesting idea. I don't know if it'll be successful, but there's certainly some analogies to conspicuous consumption in the pre-digital era, the physical world.
Khurram Naik: Well, it's interesting, because I feel like, we were talking about this technology stack, and I feel like there's this sociology stack to finance as well, right? And the status and these other factors are a big part of what even enables why we even use finance as a tool to begin with. And I'm kind of curious here, we can take the example of something like GameStop. There's a really long conversation about the sociological implications of this, and you can debate even whether there are any at all. But I think some interesting things to talk about there are, what are the ways in which we're disconnecting some sort of underlying fundamental analysis from the valuation of the security? And where are the ways in which we're in this sort of post-capital type phase where things are just floating off into the ether and, like you're saying, they're serving these sorts of other purposes apart from some strictly financial purpose. So have you given any thought to what are some of the interesting sociological implications right now from the use of some of these technologies that we're talking about?
Archit Shah: I guess I see it as more of a continuum, building upon the financial innovations of the last 100, 200, 300 years. And so, I guess the debates are not gone to this day, but you'll still see some people saying, we need to return to a gold standard, and that US dollars have to be backed by some value. So the idea of fiat currency itself is innovative and novel and challenging and interesting. And if you take that to the next level, it's decentralized and pulled out from one government and floating out in the ether, so to speak. So in that sense, it's kind of a continuum, and the idea of, okay, these things, you mentioned the value being decoupled from some kind of physical reality, but that's kind of been true for a while, the dollar is the dollar, and it's not really coupled to much of anything other than, okay, in the future you might need to use it to pay your taxes, and the US government will be there collecting taxes, so at least you have that guarantee that they're going to take some payment for that. So I think the crypto system pushes to the extremes some of the ideas that we've seen previously. Why does a Van Gogh go for whatever, tens of millions of dollars, if someone can make a near replica for a hundred bucks or a thousand bucks? So you take that to the logical extreme, and now we're selling a hundred-pixel avatars for tens of thousands of dollars.
Khurram Naik: Now, you earlier described yourself as a prosumer of these brokerage products. Do you consider yourself to be someone who generally believes it's good to be living in the future, or that you like being one of the people to test technology first? What's your personal attitude or approach to technology adoption?
Archit Shah: I like to be an early adopter, but I don't like to pay the early adopter premium. So I think I'll put it that way. I'm certainly not one who has the latest digital camera or the latest gaming system or something like that. But on the other hand, I do like to know what's happening. So my hack to that is to be maybe half a generation behind, to save some of it. That's probably about where I am.
Khurram Naik: You know, just to connect to something that you talked about earlier, you were talking about the benefits of hiring from this broad range of people, building this diverse team, people that are somewhat generalists, but you yourself, you'd grab yourself as somebody who's in the weeds, will read the statute or look for an opinion kind of a person. And I'm kind of curious, because clearly the path to Robinhood came through a set of relationships, and you underscore the importance of building relationships with regulators. So it strikes me that relationships have been important to you. So what are some of the most important relationships that you developed in your career?
Archit Shah: Yeah, that's a good question. I think to progress in a law firm, for example, you have to have great relationships with people there, with people in your class and at your level, but also people who are at varying levels of seniority. And you can learn a lot from watching the most senior partners there, and hopefully build a relationship so that you can get some more tailored feedback and not just learn by watching, but learn with the interaction. So that's there. And I think, over the last few years at Robinhood, there's obviously the relationships within the company, and maybe those are more clients and personal relationships, your internal clients and personal relationships. But in terms of the law, I would say there's a lot of value in the relationships that you have with outside counsel, and the stability that comes with outside counsel that's with you for a number of years. They are the ones who are able to pick up on trends and pick up on the broader 360-degree perspective. Your perspective is so focused on your one scenario, but having the outside counsel relationships you can trust means that you can get more than just that one perspective. It's the true independent check.
Khurram Naik: Now, when you're evaluating outside counsel, you mentioned trust and you mentioned credibility in that expertise. So how do you find that fit? Are there ever circumstances in which some of the teams have a lot of expertise, but you just don't feel like there's someone that you can rely on in a certain way? What is the set of criteria you're using? Tell me more about that process for how you identify counsel that you trust and you want to build work with.
Archit Shah: Yeah. I think there's obviously, let's call it the blocking and tackling, being easy to work with, meeting and sending documents and following up with redlines, making it easy for them to be your lawyer. We certainly had outside counsel at Robinhood who didn't meet that bar, and for whatever reason it was tough to schedule meetings, or we were just not the priority or whatever. I don't want to speculate too much as to what the reasons were, but it just wasn't a good working relationship. So that's absolutely critical to get there. On the substance, that trust element is built on working through issues and situations over time. It's when the feedback that you get and when the information and guidance that you get is actionable, and plays out over time as making sense with respect to that little piece of the law as you learn more about it. Those are the situations that help build that relationship.
Khurram Naik: So, it seems to me that those relationships are ones that you can maintain over time. So what are the ways that you think, those are ongoing assets, so what are the ways you think people should be cultivating a pool of relationships in the field now? I mean, apart from being general counsel, being in a position to select outside counsel, what are the things that anybody in any field, no matter what your role is, should do more of to grow relationships with trusted people of any tenure, or maybe you can say it's something like that?
Archit Shah: Yeah. No, I mean, I think one of the things that's been interesting about the pandemic is kind of laying bare how easy it is, if you put in the time and energy, to do networking. And now, if you reach out to anyone and say, hey, I'd love to chat for 20 minutes to learn about how you're approaching this area, I think people are, you won't always get a hundred percent hit rate, but it's certainly an easier route to building that set of relationships than I think people get credit for. And of course, it's an investment, you don't have any immediate return or any immediate need to do that, so you have to make time to do it. And it's easier now than ever, and maybe it stays that way going forward. With Zoom, you can network with people anywhere in the world.
Khurram Naik: And to that end, what are your views? Because I mean, you're based in the Bay Area. So I think there's some pretty trite answers about the longevity of places like the Bay Area or New York City. I think you'd be foolish to short those places. But I'm kind of curious if you've got some more refined views on that, in view of what you're saying about the ability to build relationships. Do you expect the next team that you would work with to be in the Bay Area, or do you not have any particular expectation of that?
Archit Shah: You know, I think that's interesting. As a big-law lawyer by training, you are used to working across time zones and offices and a distributed team. This era of distributed work is a little bit different, with Zoom or Hangouts or whatever you're using. But when I was at Kirkland, there'd be times where I'd be on the phone for hours with someone who was literally one floor down, and that was just easier to work that way. So it was no different whether we were in different time zones or not. We were in the same building, we still didn't see each other. So that happens, and you're kind of used to working that way. So I think lawyers are maybe a little more ready to move to a distributed work environment. There is still, I think, some of the magic of serendipity and relationships in the Bay Area, which will keep fueling it. I'm not super long on it. I think it's the sort of beginning of the end, in that sense, of the Bay Area being unique in the US and in the world from an entrepreneurial perspective.
Khurram Naik: Yeah, I mean, it may not be bad to, again, democratize entrepreneurship. I think that could be a net benefit to society, probably.
Archit Shah: Yeah, absolutely.
Khurram Naik: Yeah, is there anything that you miss about being at a big firm?
Archit Shah: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that you trade off being in-house versus being in a firm is, especially at a big-law firm, you're working on, 100% of the issues you're working on are hard problems that are at the cutting edge or critical to the company. They're willing to pay hundreds or a thousand-plus dollars an hour for your time. So it's certainly a valuable issue. When you're in-house, you're spread a little more thin, and you don't necessarily have time to dig deep on all these different issues. So sometimes it's more about managing the issue rather than being able to jump in. And so, you talked about knowing the latest law on obviousness, or whatever the latest 101 decisions are, or how the PTAB, those are luxuries that you don't always have if you're working in-house.
Khurram Naik: And when you're triaging that way in-house, what are the heuristics you developed over time to prioritize what's important, because it seems like that is essential to your role?
Archit Shah: Yeah. I think any in-house attorney can come up with a list of a thousand different potential issues to research. And in terms of being able to prioritize them, some of it is based on demands from the clients, what are the issues that are top of mind for your internal clients. And then some of that is your judgment on which are the things that have a lot of zeros attached to them, the highest risk, the highest potential for financial or otherwise issues coming up. So ideally, you're not getting bogged down on the details on issues that aren't going to move the needle for the business one way or another.
Khurram Naik: You know, something I'm wondering now, speaking of not getting bogged down on the details, is what comes next for you? I imagine you have a lot of luxury in what you choose to do next. And I'm wondering how you're thinking about that in two ways. One of which, I'm wondering, are you thinking about going for another home run, or thinking about, hey, I want to do some of that zero-to-one or one-to-N, like which of those two are you more thinking about? And I'm also curious, like the leap from doing IP litigation to being in-house at a fintech company was a huge leap. Is there something else you want to do to make another leap into? And I'm wondering, I guess another way of exploring all this is, why aren't you working on colonizing Mars or something like that?
Archit Shah: Yeah. You know, I think I'm personally still very interested in staying involved in fintech. It's a fascinating conglomerate of issues. Given how technologically sophisticated the financial system is at this point, you need some understanding of how computers work, how computerized systems work. And then the legal underpinnings are critical to understanding why things are structured. And then the operational realities are the other piece of that, the financial and operational realities. And obviously the GameStop saga over the last month has been a better example of that than I could have ever imagined. I mean, certainly I don't think many people would have predicted that T+2 clearing was going to be front-page news in 2021. So yeah, I mean, I think from a personal perspective, I want to stay involved in fintech. And I don't think you can sit around and say, I'm swinging for home runs, that kind of thing, that's not how I would think about it. I think it's more about finding an idea, a mission, a team that you believe in and want to join. And, as I said, if I had the ideas on my own, I'd be out there trying to start a company.
Khurram Naik: How much of you, with the whole GameStop saga, how much of you is like, thank God that's not on my plate right now, and how much of you is like, hey, you know what, maybe this reminds me of how valuable I am and these are all the kinds of things that I take care of?
Archit Shah: Neither of those. For me, I think, as a litigator, there is an adrenaline-junkie aspect to your personality, and obviously this is the highest-adrenaline situation in a while. So certainly missing out on being on the front lines of something. But on the other hand, from my perspective as an outsider now, Robinhood has handled the situation fantastically well. And I think we've seen great explanations of T+2 clearing and other issues, and a very mature way of handling difficult regulatory circumstances, difficult financial and regulatory operational circumstances. Yeah, I mean, I think it has a public benefit in raising a lot of issues for people to discuss, understanding how order flow works, how short selling works, and T+2. And I think there are a lot of benefits, that we're doing something to educate the general public a little more on these issues.
Khurram Naik: My girlfriend's grandmother, I asked her, hey, have you heard about this Robinhood GameStop thing? And she is a very nice woman in the Midwest, in Wisconsin, and she said, yes, all I know is there's this app where you can just take money from the rich. So to me, it's just a genuinely fascinating thing that America thinks, in America, that's something that can exist. But don't worry, I had a longer conversation with her about that. But here's something I'm wondering about you. Are you enjoying yourself? I know you're a gentleman of leisure right now. Are you enjoying it, not being in the thick of things right now? Like, is this a time in life where you can take stock and say, you've worked really hard, you've accomplished some really great things. Are you enjoying yourself right now, just taking stock of it all?
Archit Shah: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, I have two small kids, a seven-year-old and an almost two-year-old. So having the freedom to spend more time and jump in and needle my seven-year-old on homework, and get the two-year-old to try to play the piano, those are fun things to do. So I get to do that, get to do a little more jogging and get outside, those are some good, I'm trying to hit my 12,000 steps every day, so the fitness is working. All of that is true, but I think I am sort of thinking and reflecting and trying to see what's next, and find another interesting journey to embark on.
Khurram Naik: Well, I'm looking forward to seeing that happen.
Archit Shah: Yeah, thanks. Let's do it.
Khurram Naik: All right, man, thanks. Thanks for taking the time to talk. We'll do this.
Archit Shah: Okay, great. Thank you, Khurram.