Courtesy of Abe Chong
I was 36 when I changed industries entirely. For the first 13 years of my career, I worked as a copywriter at agencies and on in-house marketing teams in Los Angeles.
My last few years in copywriting were spent in complete misery, despite a decent salary of $120,000. I was over everything about the job.
I hit rock bottom in 2018 after getting fired by a manager I didn't agree with.
Now, I'm a senior recruiter at Airbnb, making over double my old copywriting salary.
I applied for unemployment, and then I asked myself a sincere question: Do you hate your job or hate your career?
You might hate your job because of a micromanager or a brutal commute. Finding a new job can fix that. Hating your career? No new job can help.
I knew the title I badly wanted of creative director would never happen. I didn't have what it took to get or succeed in the job. I always fell short, and my self-confidence fell even further.
It's tough to admit you aren't good enough, especially after 13 years of trying.
I could stay the course and make a decent living, but picturing myself as a 55-year-old copywriter arguing with a much younger social media manager over punctuation on an Instagram post was downright depressing. I had to change careers.
To start, I identified what was important in my next step:
I set my sights on becoming a tech recruiter. No courses were required for entry-level positions, and I'd be judged by hires, not by somebody randomly liking one of the dozens of taglines I wrote for a product I didn't care about.
I considered program management and corporate learning and development. Most of my options centered on my strengths as a people person who enjoys guiding others. Ultimately, I felt it was only fitting to become a recruiter: I could help others in their careers after agonizing over my own.
People contemplating career changes often ask me, "What do you think I could do if I'm a (insert job)? Or they'll send a résumé and say, "I'm open to anything you think I'd be a fit for."
That's not an efficient approach — not knowing where you want to go can lead to wandering. As I was closing in on my 40s, I didn't have time to try out different things.
I tailored my résumé to highlight the professional achievements I felt would be valuable as a recruiter: pitching and managing clients and working under tight deadlines.
Additionally, I searched LinkedIn to find recruiters at companies I admired and noted the responsibilities they listed on their profiles. I then filled out my résumé with similar responsibilities I had as a copywriter.
I contacted recruiters who had found me work as a freelance copywriter and asked if they were looking for trainees. I applied to agencies accepting entry-level applicants. I cold-emailed recruiting managers at companies I liked to see if they took interns. I wrote cover letters for the first time in a decade.
Many people who want to change careers are unwilling to take significant pay cuts, or they only target dream companies. It's fair to have standards, but starting over takes sacrifice.
I was fortunate enough to have a working partner support me and some severance from my last job — I recognize these are luxuries many don't have.
After a few months of searching, I landed an associate role at a tech recruiting agency called Binc for $60,000, half of my previous income.
I put a lot of pressure on myself to succeed, but I quickly learned age and experience can be huge advantages.
Many of my peers I trained with were 10 to 15 years younger than me. They were all awesome recruiters, but I had an extra decade-plus of experience managing projects and relationships.
I was comfortable working with client engineering managers as I had been dealing with demanding advertising clients for years — being around their age helped build and maintain the relationship.
I was excited about work and learning new skills daily for the first time in years. Despite my pay cut, I couldn't have been happier.
Luck was also on my side: I pivoted right before tech growth went parabolic, and my very first agency provided top-notch training while letting me gain experience at startups like Affirm and Robinhood.
After just two years at Binc, I was making $100,000. I couldn't believe I was making almost as much as I was as a copywriter with nearly 15 years of experience.
In another stroke of luck, Binc was acquired by Robinhood in 2021, and I became an employee of one of the hottest tech companies in the Bay Area. Since the pandemic was still fresh, Robinhood was remote, and nobody was required to relocate.
I got restricted stock units for the first time, and my compensation approached $200,000. I even got to experience Robinhood's IPO and the infamous Gamestop short squeeze from the inside.
In 2022, I landed a new role at my dream company, Airbnb, where I'm now a senior recruiter. It's been nearly eight years since I started this journey, and my total compensation is over $250,000 a year.
The alternate version of my life — the one where I turned into a 55-year-old copywriter writing Gen Z slang posts for a much younger social media manager — will never manifest. I made sure of it.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not represent Airbnb.
JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
Robinhood said on Wednesday that it is launching an online banking platform for its premium members in the fall, which will include home cash deliveries.
In an announcement, the California-headquartered financial technology company outlined a number of incentives that will be offered to Robinhood Banking users, including cash delivery.
"Your cash is delivered on-demand right to your doorstep," it said. "No need to search for an ATM."
The service offers a 4% annual interest rate and deposit insurance of up to $2.5 million via the FDIC. It will offer international transfers to over 100 currencies and whole-family accounts for partners and children.
"Robinhood Banking is thoughtfully designed to be as easy to use as possible, while still delivering cutting-edge features historically reserved for the ultra-wealthy," Deepak Rao, vice president and general manager of Robinhood Money, said.
"We're pushing the boundaries of what you should expect from your bank."
The fintech firm's gold membership costs $5 monthly or $50 annually and gives users access to Robinhood's premium features. Perks include IRA matches and the option of margin trading.
Gold members who opt for the banking services, which Washington-based Coastal Community Bank will provide, would also have access to perks including the chance to get tickets to events like the Met Gala, the Oscars, F1's Monaco Grand Prix, and Coachella.
Robinhood said customers would also have access to private plane travel, personal chauffeurs, luxury helicopter rides, and luxury hotel experiences.
It did not elaborate on how these perks would work for members.
Robinhood also said it would be launching a wealth management platform. Robinhood Strategies would allow investments into a mix of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and individual stocks.
The management fee for those who use the service is 0.25% of the assets under management a year. Robinhood Gold member will pay management fees on $100,000 of assets in their accounts.
Robinhood said it would introduce an AI investment tool called Cortex for its premium subscribers.
"Over time, Robinhood Cortex will completely transform the Robinhood experience as we strive to bridge that gap and put a premium research assistant right in your pocket," Abhishek Fatehpuria, vice president of brokerage product, said.
Robinhood on Monday said that the SEC has closed its investigation into Robinhood’s crypto unit and will not pursue action. This follows Coinbase saying on Friday that the SEC has dropped its lawsuit against it. The SEC, under former chair and crypto hawk Gary Gensler, was looking into a number of crypto exchanges over how […]
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Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said his company is going all in on prediction markets, saying they're the "future."
Tenev discussed prediction markets and his financial services company during Friday's episode of "Hard Fork," a podcast produced by The New York Times. Tenev — who's worth over $3 billion — shared his opinion about how the prediction market differs from sports betting.
"I think that mechanically there's some similarities, but they're different things," Tenev said.
"First of all, I think prediction markets are the future of not just trading, but also information," he said. "I've been a big believer in the power of prediction markets for a long time — kind of a student of them — and I think prediction markets should be live for everything."
Prediction markets are essentially bets on the outcome of future events. Traders place bets based on what they believe will happen. If enough people participate, the collective input could be a strong indicator of what might actually happen.
Tenev compared prediction markets to traditional news models like newspapers and broadcast news.
Steve Granitz/FilmMagic
"People pay for broadcast news, too, indirectly in the form of advertising. So, what prediction markets are is the news faster, right?" Tenev said. "In some cases, you get it even before it happens. So, the economic value of that as a product and service should be at least as high, and I would argue strictly greater, than the news after it happens."
Robinhood had some success with its prediction market for the 2024 presidential election, which largely predicted Donald Trump would win though Kamala Harris made a late surge after an influential Iowa poll wrongly predicted the state would land in the Democrat's column. Prediction markets on various betting platforms — normally a realm for sports — exploded in popularity during the election.
Robinhood also launched Super Bowl event contracts earlier this month but stopped the rollout after a request from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
"At the end of the day, I think what you'll see is prediction markets are here to stay," he said. "I think some of the details around what types of prediction markets are classified in what category I think will be worked out, but Robinhood will play a leading role in that because I think this is like incredibly important technology."
Tenev talked about the potential prediction markets have for Robinhood's business during its 2024 fourth-quarter earnings call this month.
"So we were one of the few platforms that offered the ability to trade the election and that was very successful for us," Tenev said. "We had over half a billion contracts traded in right around a week leading up to the election, and so what you should expect from us is a comprehensive events platform that will give access to prediction markets across a wide variety of contracts later this year."
Social media changed everything, from news consumption to shopping. Now, Dub thinks it can do the same for investing through an influencer-driven marketplace where users can follow the trades of top investors with a few taps. Think of it as TikTok meets Wall Street. Founded by 23-year-old Steven Wang — a Harvard dropout who began […]
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Illustration by Piotr Swat/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Sherwood, the media arm of the financial tech giant Robinhood, has laid off staff.
Sherwood joins several other publishers that have cut staff this year, including NBC News, CNN, TechCrunch, and Vox.
"Over the past 18 months, Sherwood has hired dozens of journalists, launched new products, and acquired the newsletter brand Chartr," a Robinhood spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement. "As we built out our 2025 strategy, we made the decision to streamline team structure."
The spokesperson declined to say how many employees were impacted but said it was a small percentage of Sherwood's staff.
"Moving forward, Sherwood is focused on expanding its operations around timely, breaking markets news as we build through 2025," the spokesperson added.
Robinhood unveiled its media arm in 2023 under the Sherwood branding. It was set up as an independent subsidiary led by the journalist and entrepreneur Joshua Topolsky, who serves as its editor-in-chief and president.
Axios reported that when the Sherwood News website launched in April 2024, the outlet had roughly three dozen employees, including two dozen veteran journalists from Bloomberg, The New York Times, Axios, and Gawker.
Sherwood's editorial focus includes markets, tech, and "the culture of money."
The website features a section dedicated to Snacks, the popular newsletter Robinhood acquired in 2019. Robinhood also purchased Chartr, a data-driven newsletter publisher focused on visual storytelling, in 2023.
Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re looking at the latest with embattled fintech Bench, Robinhood’s $45 million settlement, a couple of M&A deals, some cool fundraises, and more. To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to your inbox every Tuesday at 8:00 a.m. PT, subscribe here. The big […]
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Robinhood has agreed to fork out $45 million to settle an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission over several alleged violations, reported the Wall Street Journal on Monday. The settlement is being made via two of Robinhood’s brokerage units. One of the violations relates to Robinhood’s November 2021 confirmation that it was hacked “with […]
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Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has a lot to celebrate this holiday season. After a bumpy few years following Robinhood’s 2021 IPO — a period during which shares of the commission-free trading app plummeted by more than 90% after it abruptly restricted trading in some meme stocks — the 12-year-old company was just declared Yahoo Finance’s […]
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iStock; Rebecca Zisser/BI
If it feels like everybody's betting nowadays, it's because a whole lot of people are. 2024 was the year companies from sportsbooks to prediction markets to trading apps asked, "Wanna bet?" And Americans responded with a resounding yes.
The ground has shifted on gambling in the US in recent years as it's become easier than ever to try your luck at, well, a lot of things. In a survey conducted in July and August for the American Gaming Association, 55% of surveyed adults said they had participated in some sort of gambling over the past year, up from 49% in 2023. Americans are expected to wager some $150 billion on sports this year, up from about $120 billion in 2023. People bet tens of millions of dollars on the 2024 election, with companies such as Polymarket and Kalshi raking in big bucks. The trading platform Robinhood got into presidential-election betting, and it says it's looking into sports gambling now, too.
It's not just explicit betting, either. A lot of "investing" looks very much like gambling nowadays. There's an increasing acknowledgment that the point of bitcoin is really "number go up" (and down), that it's a speculative investment without much of a use case. Small-time investors doing options trading on platforms such as Robinhood aren't banking on a stock's underlying value; they're just guessing at where it's headed over the next little while. And the meme coins are just complete casinolike chaos, full of pump and dumps and rug pulls and meteoric rises and falls.
Even if you're not putting money on the line, it's almost impossible to escape the proliferation of gambling. There are unceasing commercials during sports games and a deluge of ads on our phones. Culturally, the broader acceptance of gambling is on the upswing — betting's positioned as cool and exciting and fun. There's not so much focus on the downsides yet. Betting is in its Marlboro Man era, and a lot of people are dealt in.
"There's definitely a younger cohort that is trying to — I don't want to say get rich fast, but they're looking for ways to get around the system," Chad Beynon, an equity analyst at Macquarie, said.
That can take a lot of formats — betting on a football game or piling into a meme coin because some guy on X said it was the next big thing. It sounds more appealing, though not more realistic, than a traditional 9-to-5 job. That's especially pertinent in an economy where people don't feel particularly optimistic about their prospects. Instead of a "vibecession," maybe what's happening is a "vibe-screw-it."
The most novel — and notable — gambling story in the US remains the explosion of sports betting. Since the Supreme Court in 2018 struck down a federal law prohibiting it, 38 states plus Washington, DC, have legalized wagering on games. The past few years have been a land grab of sorts, with companies such as DraftKings, FanDuel, Caesars, MGM, and even Disney (via ESPN) trying to get a piece of what they hope will be a very lucrative pie.
"That's the one that opened the floodgates in terms of creating a large addressable market and throwing a spotlight on the scale of the US online-gambling opportunity," Chris Grove, a sports-gambling-industry investor at Acies Investments, said.
The top two operators — DraftKings and FanDuel — have managed to amass a lot of market share and start to venture into other arenas, such as lotteries and iGaming, the industry term for online blackjack, roulette, and slot machines, which is thus far legal in only a handful of states. Adjacent products around daily fantasy sports, such as PrizePicks, have taken hold as well. It "just shows that consumers are clamoring for something," Grove said.
The takeoff of sports gambling has many businesses looking around and wondering just what else people are willing to bet on.
There's still room for growth in sports betting, though it's increasingly limited. There are some big holdout markets, such as Texas and California, and only about one-fifth of the population has bet on a sport in the past year, according to the AGA. But the holdout states are holding out for a reason, and at least some aren't likely to change course. Companies sort of have to look elsewhere to get people to open their wallets.
"For the business model to work, you probably need to cross-sell to other areas," Beynon said.
The takeoff of sports gambling has many businesses looking around and wondering just what else people are willing to bet on — and, in many cases, guessing correctly that the list of possibilities is long. Maybe sports betting isn't for you. That's fine, but what about an online lottery? Or sweepstakes casinos? Or a slot machine on your phone? Or the next Treasury secretary of the United States?
"The minute that you got widespread regulated online gambling in the US, it was inevitable that nontraditional stakeholders were going to look at getting in on the action," Grove said. "Robinhood is one example of that, and prediction markets are one of the most likely vectors for that expansion, but they're far from the only brand or the only vector that we're going to see explore online gambling in years ahead."
Beyond sports betting, 2024 was a monumental year for prediction markets and crypto. People spent millions of dollars betting on the election, despite the legal gray area around political gambling. On Polymarket, players — though not Americans — can bet whether the US will confirm aliens exist or if Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare's CEO, will plead guilty. In Cryptoland, bitcoin surpassed the $100,000 mark, and despite constant scams, the meme-coin market is as alive as ever. These are not legitimate investments; they're bets people are making that they can get out before everyone else. (Sometimes, in the pump and dump, you think you're the dumper when you're really the dumpee.) Given Donald Trump's election, it doesn't look like tough regulation is coming for the crypto space anytime soon, so hold on to your hats.
Broadly, gambling has been normalized across American culture. Sports leagues used to be anxious about sports betting and worry it would turn off fans. Now they've seen the dollar signs and embraced it. The vibe around elections betting is that it's kind of cool and smart, a wisdom-of-the-crowds way to prove your political chops. With crypto, the hope is everybody's going to get their bag sooner or later, or if not, at least they think they're in on the joke.
"Every consumer has different motivations for why they're doing it," said Steve Ruddock, a gambling-industry analyst and consultant and the author of Straight to the Point, a newsletter about gambling. "Some are doing it purely for entertainment. Some are doing it as a time sink. Some small percentage are doing it because they're addicted."
It's easy — and responsible — to worry about the harms of gambling culture. There's evidence to suggest sports betting in the US is getting people into trouble with debt collectors, leading to missed car payments, and may even cause a spike in bankruptcies. When people are betting on a baseball game, they're not putting money into long-term investments, and households that are already under financial strain are harder hit. And whatever negative impacts occur aren't limited to gamblers themselves.
"The harms radiate out into families, into the economy, into many sectors of social and cultural life," said Rachel Volberg, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who researches gambling. Most research suggests about 1% of adults develop a gambling disorder. But just because you don't meet the clinical criteria for a disorder doesn't mean all is fine and dandy, Volberg said. "To only talk about the tip of the iceberg means you miss 90% of the impacts," she told me.
Gambling companies have mechanisms in place to ensure responsible gambling. (Not to mention that some companies offering crypto and high-flying stock trading say this is not gambling at all.) Reasonable minds can question how effective those are. In the US, there's a lot of impetus placed on individual gamblers to police themselves and set their own limits, and even if you do reach your limit, you can move on to another app.
The harms radiate out into families, into the economy, into many sectors of social and cultural life.
The sudden boom has pushed public health experts in the US and worldwide to sound the alarm on gambling. A recent report from The Lancet Public Health commission on gambling found that nearly 450 million people around the globe have experienced at least one behavioral symptom or negative consequence from gambling.
"The answer, globally, that the commission puts forth is, 'Come on, guys, wake up,'" said Malcolm Sparrow, a professor of the practice of public management at Harvard and one of the members of the commission. "We are in a very rapid growth period. The assumption is that legalization, which is already running a pace, is going to just continue until it's ubiquitous. And we are not paying enough attention to gambling-related harms."
Here is the thing, though: Gambling is fun. Generally, people do have a right to use their money how they please, and most can gamble responsibly. Exactly how to regulate and where to draw lines is complicated, whether you're talking about an in-game bet or an obscure penny stock or a meme coin that makes zero sense. But public health experts say it's important to figure out where to draw it.
"On many other public health issues, we are, to a degree, paternalistic," Sparrow said. "You must wear a seatbelt. We don't sell alcohol to kids."
Perhaps the weird thing about the current moment is once you start to notice the prevalence of gambling in a few places, you start to see it everywhere — I see it in my own life. I was at a New York Rangers game the other weekend, and not one but two betting apps were advertising on the ice. On a recent trip to New Jersey, I took advantage of an online casino, which is legal in the state. I lost $10 on blackjack in a matter of minutes. Beyond sports, many of my friends and family are at least dabbling in crypto and have taken note of prediction markets. One group I know is talking about organizing a party-bus trip to Atlantic City, New Jersey, just because.
It's hard not to wonder what's going on in culture now that gambling has gone from a no-no to out in the open and even hip. What's getting its claws in us, and why is it working right now in particular?
Natasha Schüll, a cultural anthropologist at New York University and the author of "Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas," told me she'd identified four shared criteria of products that hook and hold us, from betting apps to dating apps, which are a little bit like gambling. They're antisocial and solitary, so you can get lost in your own flow. They offer continuous, fast feedback, which serves as reinforcement. They're unpredictable, so you can't be exactly sure when a reward will come. And they never come to a close or resolve — you just keep going. The result is that people get pulled into what she describes as a gambling "machine zone," where the world sort of falls away, and people fall into a rhythm of go, then again, then again.
"There certainly is a cultural story to tell here too, where we're living in a context of uncertainty in the world, whether politically or environmental or economic uncertainty," Schüll said. When you gamble, you're diving into uncertainty and chance, but also in an ordered, calm, digital environment that's cordoned off from the outside world. "It might start being about thrill and suspense and imagining a big win or imagining that you're having an encounter with chance," she said. "But once you put yourself in the seat, so to speak, and start having the interaction, the formatting of it and the flow of it gives you this other thing. It gives you this way to modulate your affect and go into a zone that allows you to avoid life."
It could be the case that in 10 years, we'll look back at the current moment and realize this was all fine — it was OK that people were gambling a bunch, that even major athletes were getting caught up in it. Hey, maybe even the meme-coin stuff will work out. The likelier scenario is that we wonder what we were even doing. Or we realize we probably should've done things a little differently.
Volberg, from UMass Amherst, has been studying gambling for 40 years and has seen this story play out before in other countries. Some form of gambling gets the go-ahead, it takes off, and there's a lag in realizing the consequences and getting guardrails in place appropriately.
"It's a pattern I've seen over and over again where it's after the fact," she said. "And if you don't start monitoring impacts before the actual new form of gambling is being used, you really have no idea what the baseline looked like."
The argument many companies will make is that people will gamble anyway — on sports, on elections, on whatever — and that making it legal brings that activity into the light, gets it some oversight, and generates tax revenue for the states. That's true, but also, once the government greenlights it, people who otherwise wouldn't gamble start. It's impossible to argue everyone on FanDuel right now was betting on sports on some offshore account 10 years ago. If it were that easy, sportsbooks wouldn't be investing so much in advertising to draw people in. On the meme coins, I mean, if you got bamboozled by the "Hawk Tuah" girl's crypto shenanigans, that's at least a little bit on you. But also, you probably deserve some protection next time. (But seriously, next time, maybe think that one over a bit more.)
In the meantime, may the odds be ever in your favor, because we're not getting out of gambling-palooza anytime soon.
Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.
