<p><img src="https://static3.businessinsider.com/image/5ffccdaebde805001980c47d-2400/robinhood gamification trading app 2x1.png" border="0" alt="robinhood gamification trading app 2x1" data-mce-source="Robinhood; Samantha Lee/Insider"></p><p></p><bi-shortcode id="summary-shortcode" data-type="summary-shortcode" class="mceNonEditable" contenteditable="false">Summary List Placement</bi-shortcode><p>They cut their teeth building Robinhood into one of the most important fintech startups of the decade, with a valuation around $11 billion before it took in <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/robinhood-raises-additional-24-billion-reddit-daytrader-gamestop-amc-frenzy-2021-2-1030029079">emergency funding</a> on the back of a recent trading mania.</p><p>Now, some of its alumni are striking out to start their own businesses, and investors are clamoring to back them.</p><p>For this list, we rounded up the coolest companies founded by former Robinhood employees. Some were started years ago by Robinhood's earliest staff, while others are so new, they're still in stealth mode. </p><p><em><strong>Read more:</strong> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/robinhood-payment-for-order-flow-gamestop-regulation-revenue-2021-2">Robinhood makes hundreds of millions from selling customer orders. That business model is about to come into focus.</a></em></p><p>The companies that are furthest along are Parafin and Flannel, fintechs with multiple founders who worked together at Robinhood and regrouped to do their own thing. Both startups raised capital from Robinhood's founders.</p><p>Parafin and Flannel are also the only companies on this list that overlap with Robinhood's domain. Former employees are building everything from enterprise software businesses to a social gaming startup to sporting goods.</p><p>Daniel Zou, a software engineer turned founder, said Robinhood's founders have been extremely supportive, describing them to Insider as "exceptional people." </p><h2>Now, meet the Robinhood mafia.</h2><p><strong>SEE ALSO: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/robinhood-lawyers-lawsuit-legal-sec-regulations-fintech-claims-trading-app-2021-1" >Robinhood has been beefing up its legal firepower with these 11 lawyers including SEC veterans and a Goldman Sachs in-house counsel</a></strong></p><h3>Steijn Pelle was the first product manager focused on user growth at Robinhood.</h3><img src="https://static1.businessinsider.com/image/6019fe95ee136f00183a9f3a-400-300/steijn-pelle-was-the-first-product-manager-focused-on-user-growth-at-robinhood.jpg" alt="" /><p><p><strong>Company:</strong> Stealth</p><p><strong>What it is:</strong> We don't know much about the new venture, other than it launches later this year. Pelle's been working on the business out of startup incubator On Deck since January 2020.</p><p><strong>Who is the founder:</strong> Pelle joined Robinhood as a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/steijn/">product manager</a> in 2018. He led efforts to grow the user base by increasing referrals and improving the onboarding experience. Pelle also started <a href="https://learn.robinhood.com/">Robinhood Learn</a>, a wiki filled with articles about investing basics and options trading.</p><p>Pelle is building his new business alongside another product wizard, Frédéric Renken, the first product hire at <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/superhuman-review-fast-email-app-versus-gmail-2020-4">Superhuman</a>, the email app of choice for many tech founders and investors.</p></p><br/><br/><h3>Arpan Shah and Hongxia Zhong were two of the most veteran employees at Robinhood.</h3><img src="https://static3.businessinsider.com/image/6019e25b01504a00197fb491-400-300/arpan-shah-and-hongxia-zhong-were-two-of-the-most-veteran-employees-at-robinhood.jpg" alt="" /><p><p><strong>Company:</strong> <a href="https://tryflannel.com/">Flannel</a></p><p><strong>What is it: </strong>Flannel is building developer tools for businesses to embed "faster payments" in their software. We don't know much else about the company, which is still in beta.</p><p>The startup's founders caught the attention of two early investors in Robinhood — Index Ventures and Susa Ventures — who participated in a funding round with Accel. Leaders from Robinhood, Stripe, Visa, and Acorns also joined the round, according to <a href="https://tryflannel.com/#get-notified">Flannel's website</a>.</p><p>The total raised was not disclosed.</p><p><strong>Who are the founders:</strong> Before they joined forces at Flannel, Shah and Zhong started at Robinhood the same month in 2015. The early engineers had their hands on building the backend that powers trading, creating the data infrastructure from scratch, and bringing the <a href="https://robinhood.engineering/under-the-hood-of-clearing-by-robinhood-3ed7ab09d60'gi=fa3041a790c0">clearing system</a> in-house, which allowed Robinhood to <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/10/robinhood-clearing/">cut trading fees</a> and grow profits.</p></p><br/><br/><h3>Dean Yim joined Robinhood pre-launch and became head of brokerage operations.</h3><img src="https://static6.businessinsider.com/image/601a0138ee136f00183a9f45-400-300/dean-yim-joined-robinhood-pre-launch-and-became-head-of-brokerage-operations.jpg" alt="" /><p><p><strong>Company:</strong> <a href="https://www.loopsupport.com/">Loop Support</a></p><p><strong>What it is: </strong>Loop Support builds customer support teams that automatically scale up and down, in response to demand. Founded in 2016, the startup went through Y Combinator in 2017. They've since handled over a million customer support inquiries.</p><p><strong>Who is the founder:</strong> Dean Yim, a very early employee of Robinhood, was the director of brokerage operations from 2014 through 2015. He built the customer support function and led development of a feature that let users access their funds faster.</p><p>"Working at Robinhood was the greatest learning experience of my life. I learned so much there- including how to do customer support at a rapidly-growing startup," Yim told Insider.<br /><br /></p></p><br/><br/><h3>Daniel Zou is a software engineer with a crypto background.</h3><img src="https://static4.businessinsider.com/image/6019ff0101504a00197fb4d2-400-300/daniel-zou-is-a-software-engineer-with-a-crypto-background.jpg" alt="" /><p><p><strong>Company:</strong> Stealth</p><p><strong>What it is:</strong> Zou is building a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dzou/">social-gaming company</a> out of startup incubator On Deck, but he's keeping the details under wraps for now.</p><p><strong>Who is the founder:</strong> Zou finished his bachelor's degree early and started his career in tech at Jump Trading, a brokerage firm for buying and selling cryptocurrencies. It also <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-29/robinhood-s-free-crypto-trades-powered-by-chicago-s-jump-trading">provides the infrastructure</a> for crypto-trading on Robinhood.</p><p>He moved over to Robinhood in 2018, where he worked as an engineer focused on user growth.</p></p><br/><br/><h3>Matthew Pearson is a user experience savant.</h3><img src="https://static1.businessinsider.com/image/6019e3e3ee136f00183a9eef-400-300/matthew-pearson-is-a-user-experience-savant.jpg" alt="" /><p><p><strong>Company:</strong> Moon Fabrications</p><p><strong>What it is:</strong> Founded in 2018, the company makes a portable vehicle awning so car-campers and van-dwellers can relax under the shade. In general, companies that make it easier to enjoy the outdoors are enjoying a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hipcamp-traffic-doubled-generating-revenue-farmers">surge in profit and activity</a> during the ongoing lockdowns.</p><p><strong>Who is the founder:</strong> Pearson has spent the better part of a decade as a user researcher. At Airbnb, he helped make the experience more magical for hosts and guests, leveraging his training in behavioral economics to remove pain points for users. In 2016, he joined Robinhood, where he led a small team of researchers charged with "concepting, designing, refining, and evaluating product changes," according to Pearson's <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewcpearson/">LinkedIn profile</a>.</p></p><br/><br/><h3>Vineet Goel, Ralph Furmaniak, Sahill Poddar were Robinhood's data all-stars.</h3><img src="https://static5.businessinsider.com/image/6019fe0b01504a00197fb4ce-400-300/vineet-goel-ralph-furmaniak-sahill-poddar-were-robinhoods-data-all-stars.jpg" alt="" /><p><p><strong>Company:</strong> <a href="https://www.parafin.com/">Parafin</a></p><p><strong>What it is:</strong> Parafin advances cash to marketplaces for spreading around to the small businesses that sell goods on those marketplaces. It's offering "capital as a service."</p><p>The company says its goal is to "democratize access to growth capital," taking a cue from Robinhood's <a href="https://robinhood.com/us/en/support/articles/our-mission/#:~:text=Robinhood's%20mission%20is%20to%20democratize,for%20newcomers%20and%20experts%20alike.">mission statement</a>: "democratize finance for all."</p><p><strong>Who are the founders:</strong> The company brings together three of the most influential data scientists at Robinhood, who joined the company between 2015 and 2016.</p><p>Goel built the risk and fraud team, tasked with preventing payments and identity fraud. Furman used data to help the support team respond to requests faster and created a recommendation system for buying similar stocks. And Poddar, who was a data scientist at Facebook before he joined Robinhood, was head of machine learning engineering.</p><p>They regrouped to start Parafin in August.</p><p>The company has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Robinhood investors Index Ventures, Ribbit Capital, and SV Angel, as well as an elite group of fintech founders including the heads of Robinhood, DoorDash, Carta, and Chime, according to Parafin's website.</p></p><br/><br/><h3>Jaspal Bainiwal started his career in tech at Robinhood.</h3><img src="https://static5.businessinsider.com/image/6019e294ee136f00183a9eea-400-300/jaspal-bainiwal-started-his-career-in-tech-at-robinhood.jpg" alt="" /><p><p><strong>Company:</strong> <a href="https://tokra.co/">Tokra</a></p><p><strong>What it is:</strong> Tokra is a grocery delivery business that lets people buy food direct from farmers. The company is still in beta, but anyone can sign up for the waitlist on <a href="https://tokra.co/">Tokra's website</a>.</p><p><strong>Who is the founder:</strong> Bainiwal took a job out of college as a business operations associate at Robinhood in 2015. The next year, he went back to school to get his computer science degree.</p><p>For Bainiwal, Tokra may just be a side project. His profile on LinkedIn says he's looking for software engineering work. Bainiwal did not respond to Insider's request for comment.</p></p><br/><br/><h3>Santiago Buenahora jumped from fintech to e-commerce after a year at Robinhood.</h3><img src="https://static1.businessinsider.com/image/601c37c13018c400198933c7-400-300/santiago-buenahora-jumped-from-fintech-to-e-commerce-after-a-year-at-robinhood.jpg" alt="" /><p><p><strong>Company: </strong><a href="https://shop.marcopolo.st/">MarcoPolo</a></p><p><strong>What it is:</strong> MarcoPolo aims to be the Alibaba of Latin America by connecting US sellers with Latin American manufacturers. Instead of waiting for products to cross the Pacific Ocean and navigate crowded ports, sellers can truck goods through Mexico. The startup is working with about 30 suppliers, including one of Colombia's biggest textile manufacturers. </p><p><strong>Who is the founder: </strong>Founder Santiago Buenahora spent just over a year as a software engineer for Robinhood's risk and fraud team, working under Parafin's cofounders. He left in December 2020 and moved to Colombia, where he's assembled a team of seven people.</p><p>The University of Pennsylvania graduate is leaning on pre-Robinhood experience advising Colombian startup Treble.ai, a 2019 Y Combinator company, and his family's Colombian background as he spins up a new venture that's a departure from Robinhood's domain. </p><p>"I personally found fintech space a little crowded. With entrepreneurship, you don't want to do what everyone else is doing," Buenahora told Insider. </p></p><br/><br/>
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