Interview with Manuela Rios, Early PM at Robinhood

This article is part of a series revealing the stories of early employees from the most successful tech companies of the past few years. You’ll walk away having learned about what these individuals experienced, what they wish they knew, and the advice they’d give to others joining high-growth startups. Key takeaways are at the top and you can find the full interview below. 

This interview is with Manuela Rios. Manuela joined Robinhood as a Product Manager in 2018 and stayed for nearly four years, helping the company grow from 4M users to 22M+ users and from 100 employees to 3,500+ employees. During her time at Robinhood, Manuela worked on the team responsible for building clearing (how financial trades settle) in-house, something that hadn’t been done at another firm in decades. 

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Key Takeaways

• On the mission of Robinhood in 2018 – “The mission at Robinhood was to democratize access to financial markets and give every person control over their financial lives – to do finance differently. As a candidate, you would have the opportunity to truly make finance more accessible for the common person.”
• On unique Robinhood rituals – “Robinhood had a ritual of telling co-workers to “put a cat on it”. It’s a very unique Robinhood thing. It represents the idea we were doing finance differently — we couldn’t just look at the patterns that other apps, banks, or brokerages were using and do the same thing. Instead, whenever you have an idea, just “put a cat on it” – make it a little bit more fun.”
• On first learning about clearing (how financial trades settle) – “For one week of every month during my entire first year at Robinhood, I flew to our Lake Mary office in Florida to spend 12 hours a day learning from operators who had spent their whole careers working in clearing. One day I would learn everything about dividends. The next day I might learn everything about how stock splits work. I did that for every topic until eventually, I became an expert myself.”
• On the product Manuela is most proud to have worked on – “The fact that Robinhood pulled off building clearing is tremendous. No one had done it in decades. [...] It was a huge lift and crazy for a startup to take a risk on a project that took two years to complete. You need a founder who's really set on the vision in order to prioritize something like that. And not only did we build it, but that team now helps generate a ton of revenue for Robinhood.
• On hiring an executive coach to “test” management – “Eventually, I decided to consider management, but first I wanted to learn from an executive coach. That way I could try it out before committing to it as a career. I wanted to walk through different situations with them to understand whether or not I’d be happy in that position. I was lucky enough to get an executive coach from Robinhood and I worked with her for six months. At the end of it, I was finally ready to transition [to being a manager].”
• On advice to her younger self – “I would tell myself to ask for more work. In some ways, it seems obvious. If you’re a founder, you want a team that's both lean and can have tremendous output. If you have an employee asking for more work (and that employee is performing well), then you’re absolutely going to give them more. But from an employee's perspective, sometimes it's not so clear. Maybe you don’t want to take more than you “deserve” or are concerned about stepping on someone’s toes. But you shouldn’t worry about this – just ask for more.”

How did you first hear about Robinhood and what made you want to join?

This is a very “small world” story – even in college, I was obsessed with startups. I went to this conference every year and one year I ended up sitting next to Vlad [Tenev, the CEO of Robinhood]. My friend and I started chatting with him and thought he was super cool – we didn’t know Vlad was the CEO of Robinhood. He just looked like another student. 

Fast forward a few years to 2017 and I was working in Washington D.C. at a startup called FiscalNote. I liked it, FiscalNote was a B2B company and I wanted to try working on a consumer product alongside a team that cared deeply about design and the user experience. 

This happened around the time that I first got into crypto (during the crypto boom of 2017). I often joke that Coinbase was my gateway into Robinhood because I traded Bitcoin before I ever traded a stock. Shortly after, I downloaded Robinhood and was so amazed by the experience that I knew had to work there.

I reconnected with my friend from the conference who ended up being one of the first iOS engineers at Robinhood. After a brief conversation, he asked me if I wanted to move to California to join Robinhood. The interview process moved pretty quickly from there – I did an onsite interview, met the other Product Managers, and got the offer shortly after. 

Imagine we are in 2018 and you are hiring for Robinhood. Pitch me on why I should join. 

Remember what it was like in 2018: there was no such thing as zero commission trading. There was no such thing as being able to trade stocks that would make you think, “Wow, that was easy and delightful.” Instead, you had a lot of old-school providers like TD [Ameritrade] or Schwab. Even the idea that fintech could be innovative and different wasn’t something that was top of mind. This was a totally different world. 

The opportunity you had at Robinhood was to truly disrupt an industry. Finance is full of jargon. It's full of complexity. And that's all done intentionally – it’s not inherently complex, we as a society just decided to build it that way. Finance was built for “smart” Wall Street people to feel exclusive and elite. 

The mission at Robinhood was to democratize access to financial markets and give every person control over their financial lives – to do finance differently. As a candidate, you would have the opportunity to truly make finance more accessible for the common person.

What did you work on first? 

I joined Robinhood because I was delighted by the user experience and the idea that investing in stocks could be easy. But I didn't know anything about finance myself. During my first week, they told me I was going to work on clearing. I thought, “Sweet, sounds great. What does clearing mean?” 

If we were going to build a self-clearing system, we obviously needed to understand the domain so well that we could simplify it for our customers and build it ourselves. So I spent the first week asking tons of questions: what was clearing? Why was Robinhood doing it? Why was this a company priority? 

As I learned, clearing is everything that happens after you buy a stock. It’s the end-to-end process of being able to transfer a stock from the old owner to the new owner. It typically happens over the two days following the agreement to trade. But the process isn’t documented online, and there have only been one or two books ever written about clearing.

To bridge the knowledge gap, I spent a lot of time with subject matter experts. For one week of every month during my entire first year at Robinhood, I flew to our Lake Mary office in Florida to learn 12 hours a day from operators who had spent their whole careers working in clearing. One day I would learn everything about dividends. The next day I might learn everything about how stock splits work. I did that for every topic until eventually, I became an expert myself. 

What’s a unique tradition or ritual that Robinhood followed that had an unexpected impact on your success?

We had our own twist on all the typical meetings (all hands, interviews, etc.) but when you say the word “ritual” what really stands out is a phrase that turned into a company value. 

When I first joined Robinhood, people started pointing out cat murals and figurines. It's not something that I had noticed, but as soon as they pointed it out, I saw it everywhere – every conference room in the office had some sort of cat art. Then I started noticing it in the products too. For example, when you swipe on the cards in the home screen and you get to the very end, you have a cat that winks at you.  

So where did all of these cats come from? Robinhood had a ritual of telling co-workers to “put a cat on it”. It’s a very unique Robinhood thing. It represents the idea we were doing finance differently — we couldn’t just look at the patterns that other apps, banks, or brokerages were using and do the same thing. Instead, whenever you have an idea, just “put a cat on it” – make it a little bit more fun.

How did you launch products at Robinhood?

Robinhood is probably one of the main companies that people think about when they think, “waitlist”. And that was intentional – we thought of the waitlist as its own product. In the initial version of Robinhood, it was just a website that said, "Commission-free trading, stop paying up to $10 per trade," with a form to enter an email. Years later, when we launched the first card waitlist, we made the waitlist it’s own experience: the more you tapped, the faster you moved up. We really focused on it as a product.

The waitlist made it easier to launch products. First, we would roll out a new product to the team working on the new feature. Then, we would roll out to the greater set of Robinhood employees. From there, we would move on to friends and family. Finally, we would slowly take people off that waitlist and get feedback from them. 

We would iterate on the product at each step – close any usability gaps or add more delightful moments (“putting more cats on it”) until finally, we would take all people off the waitlist until it was part of the perpetual release schedule.

How did you decide to transition from being a PM to managing PMs?

I considered two things. First: is this a skill set that I want to develop right now? Second: what do I want my career path to be, and what are the skills that I need for where I want to be? 

On the first one, I had been asked a few times if I wanted to switch to management because my team was growing rapidly and I had the reputation as someone who enjoyed teaching. I repeatedly rejected the idea because to me, nothing was more interesting than building things. The thought of going a day without being deep in it was very scary. Even though I felt that I could learn the skill set, I didn't necessarily want to. 

Eventually, I decided to consider management, but first I wanted to learn from an executive coach. That way I could try it out before committing to it as a career. I wanted to walk through different situations with them to understand whether or not I’d be happy in that position. I was lucky enough to get an executive coach from Robinhood and I worked with her for six months. At the end of it, I was finally ready to transition

On the second point (the career path), I either wanted to be a founder or a VP of Product at a very early startup. Unfortunately, in either of these cases, you end up being a manager. You can't really transition from a Principal PM directly to a VP of Product or CPO. Those come with management responsibilities. 

So I came to the conclusion that it was time to try management.

I’m sure there are many, but who are a few colleagues you worked with at Robinhood that still inspire your work today?

First is a product manager named Chris O’Neil who is still one of my closest friends to this day. What I learned most from him is how much to focus on your craft. Part of the Robinhood culture is that it wasn't just a nine-to-five job. People were so invested in their work that they really wanted to put more time in. Chris set the bar for work ethic and other early product managers looked up to him for that.

The next person was an engineer on my team, Davina Boedijono. The care for the team is what I took away most from working with her. Davina showed kindness in every conversation which allowed her to build trust with everyone she worked with. 

Finally, Sasha Vladimirov (an engineering manager I worked with) taught me the value of being able to explain processes clearly. Every time he explained something, he made it clear why we should be organized, how we should finish one thing before starting the next, and how to give customers more value. He did so in a structured way and is someone I learned the most from at Robinhood.

What are you most proud of to have built while at Robinhood?

The fact that Robinhood pulled off building clearing is tremendous. No one had done it in decades. 

It would’ve been easy to use something off the shelf – there are many partners that focused on clearing and could provide a good solution. But if we wanted to provide the best user experience, we needed to build the full stack. From actually sending your orders to venues to processing your orders at the end of the day, we needed to own it all. 

It was a huge lift for a startup to take a risk on a project that took two years to complete, but Robinhood was tenacious. One of the most important parts was that we had a founder who was really set on that vision and kept investing in it through completion. And not only did we build it, but that team now helps generate a ton of revenue for Robinhood. 

The magical part for me is the transformation of the clearing team. We went from five engineers when I started to now over 30 engineers, multiple PMs, and over 60 people in operations. It’s an entire business inside Robinhood and I had the opportunity to lead that for a few years. 

What advice would you give yourself years ago on how to be a better PM?

I would tell myself to ask for more work. 

In some ways, it seems obvious. If you’re a founder, you want a team that's both lean and can have tremendous output. If you have an employee asking for more work (and that employee is performing well), then you’re absolutely going to give them more. 

But from an employee's perspective, sometimes it's not so clear. Maybe you don’t want to take more than you “deserve” or are concerned about stepping on someone’s toes. But you shouldn’t worry about this – just ask for more. 

Something I noticed when I transitioned into management is that every guy on my team would always ask for more work, but the women on my team didn’t. That's another part of why I would give myself this advice. 

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