Does Robinhood owe too much to its rich backers?

Does Robinhood owe too much to its rich backers?

Robinhood is the amateurs' share trading platform at the heart of the attempt by an army of small investors to outsmart Wall Street by buying shares in companies such as GameStop, costing hedge funds billions in the process.The company has upset the applecart of US stock investing by waiving the commission that traditional brokers charge customers to play the markets. That, plus its user-friendly app, has made trading much cheaper and easier for ordinary people, regardless of their experience, enticing more than 13 million users at the last count.Its name is a nod to the idea of helping the “poor” gatecrash the glamorous domain of rich traders, and it likes to style itself as drawing on the ethos of the Occupy Wall Street movement. In the words of its official rubric, Robinhood is “democratizing finance for all”.But this romanticised vision sits rather uncomfortably beside the reality of its origins and ownership.The app was founded in 2013 by Stanford University graduates and financial technology whiz-kids Baiju Bhatt and Vladimir Tenev. In a few short years, they have become paper billionaires, building the business into a steamroller success worth $8.6bn (£6.9bn), according to a recent funding round.Given that Robinhood doesn't charge commission