Introduction
What sparks international investor interest in a company that’s almost entirely US-based?
Today’s guest, Jack Riehemann, has a front-row seat to one of the fastest-growing stories in global investor engagement. As Head of International Investor Relations at Robinhood, Jack has watched demand from overseas investors multiply. But what’s driving that wave of attention? Is it Robinhood’s relentless product launches, its mission to democratize finance, or the way it’s expanded into new regions like Europe, Asia, and Canada?
Jack doesn’t just lead global relationships—he’s also the bridge between Robinhood’s management and the outside world, guiding everything from quarterly earnings calls to the disclosures that help investors understand what’s really happening behind the scenes. He’s built his career in finance, spent years studying international business, and now finds himself navigating cultural nuances from London to Singapore.
You’ll hear stories about the patience it takes to win over sovereign wealth funds and pensions, the competitive landscape in places like Brazil and Indonesia, and the real-world tactics that turn initial interest into lasting relationships.
Your company’s story can resonate across borders, and some of the world’s best capital might just be waiting for you outside the US.
Let’s get into it.
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Robinhood’s global appeal
[00:00:00] Mark Fasken: Jack, when preparing for this episode, you described Robinhood's international investor interest as unlike anything you've seen before. I'm curious, what do you think is driving that demand, despite the company being almost entirely US-based from a revenue perspective?
[00:00:15] Jack Riehemann: It's been really awesome to see. The demand is truly incredible. The biggest thing it comes back to is the great work the Robinhood team has been doing. We've been relentlessly shipping products, winning market share, diversifying the business, and staying disciplined on costs.
[00:00:29] Jack Riehemann: No matter what region you're in, the market will notice that, ultimately. That's a really important piece, but if we get into some of the specifics, there's a few things I'd call out.
Key factors driving international interest
[00:00:39] Jack Riehemann: First, our mission. Our mission is very much a global mission, and that is to democratize finance for all.
[00:00:46] Jack Riehemann: Look at what's happened in the US over the past 10 years. Household participation in capital markets has increased dramatically, and we believe Robinhood is a key reason for that.
[00:00:57] Jack Riehemann: The second point is our product offering evolving. Our [00:01:00] product is naturally a compelling global offering, and we're expanding it to different regions over time. You're right that the majority of our revenues are US-based, but you're seeing a number of nascent products move into different jurisdictions. Whether that's in Europe, in Asia, we've announced an acquisition in Canada as well.
[00:01:18] Jack Riehemann: Brand recognition is a big piece, right? As we go into new jurisdictions, there's often a Robinhood of X, Y, Z country. There's a lot of startups that are trying to do what Robinhood has done in the US, and we think that's a great opportunity for us to come in and say we're the real Robinhood. What can we do to differentiate and win the customer base?
[00:01:41] Jack Riehemann: We IPO'ed in 2021. We pretty quickly pulled back to much lower levels, and in 2022, we focused on delivering for our customers, making the right investments, rightsizing the team, and changing the management structure.
[00:01:57] Jack Riehemann: Since then, product velocity has really [00:02:00] accelerated. We started to win market share. Our revenues and profits really grew, and we hit key milestones like GAAP profitability in 2023 and then joining the S&P 500 in 2025. These are all things that international investors are paying attention to and put a lot of emphasis on.
[00:02:18] Jack Riehemann: And finally, disclosure is a really important piece that we think about. Making sure that an investor, whether they're in Europe, Asia, the US, South America, wherever they are, they can understand what the business is doing.
[00:02:30] Mark Fasken: When you talk about investors in different regions and making materials digestible, are you translating them into different languages? Or is everything that you put out in English? Or are you creating different packages for key markets?
[00:02:44] Jack Riehemann: That's a good question. We are not translating anything. But, if you're looking at a non-GAAP measure, or the drivers of your business, it needs to be clear what you're doing. A lot of what we do is around trading activity. So, how do we disclose the exact drivers of trading activity so an [00:03:00] investor can follow that clearly? We don't want someone to pick up our materials and say, I don't understand this business, and give them an excuse not to research it further.
Strategies for Engaging International Investors
[00:03:08] Mark Fasken: You're being very humble because you haven't talked about how one of the drivers of international interest is the fact that your title is Head of International Investor Relations at Robinhood. That's a relatively recent change. When did you start to see interest from international investors? And how much of that is coming inbound and you?
[00:03:25] Jack Riehemann: It started very small. In 2023, when we hit GAAP profitability, that's when we started to get initial interest. For us, it was about grabbing that interest and not letting go. International is something that I've always had interest in. I studied it in college, international business, and I've always really found the markets globally interesting. So, when we started to see that, I pushed forward and said this is a piece that I think I can add value and lead, but the broader team saw the importance in it.
[00:03:54] Jack Riehemann: Like I mentioned, it started small. We were very intentional about making sure that those international [00:04:00] investors didn't go anywhere. With the great business growth we were seeing, and in 2024 it accelerated, and then in 2025 it accelerated even faster. If I take a step back, I think there's a few things to really think about when you're building that interest.
[00:04:15] Jack Riehemann: Overall, what we've seen, and I think what's common in the market, is global investors tend to have a longer time horizon.
[00:04:21] Jack Riehemann: Pensions and sovereign wealth funds, those are much more prominent outside of the US. In many cases, that type of investor will hold for 10, 20 years. We knew it was important as soon as we got a glimpse of interest to grab them and start engaging with them early.
[00:04:37] Jack Riehemann: It's a longer sales cycle, naturally. If they're going to invest for that long, they're not going to make a snap decision.
[00:04:42] Jack Riehemann: I talked about sovereign wealth funds, pensions. That's kind of the long-only scheme. Versus a shorter-term investor, that's your hedge fund typically. US money tends to be the fastest. In our case, we saw the US engage first. European was next, and then Asia [00:05:00] really aimed more recently, and that's what's really driven a lot of the growth in 2025.
[00:05:06] Jack Riehemann: Longer-term money is generally going to have a stricter mandate on sustained profitability. While conversely, a hedge fund may be trying to take advantage of that initial flip from unprofitable to profitable.
[00:05:20] Jack Riehemann: I think it really is about engaging with them early and engaging with them often and on a recurring basis.
[00:05:27] Mark Fasken: You talked about growth in international interest. You mentioned that you've seen a 4x year-over-year growth in international investor engagements over the last couple years. What does that look like in practice? How much of that activity is driven by your outreach versus inbound interest today?
[00:05:42] Jack Riehemann: We're fortunate that today a lot of it is organic. That's really what we use as a leading indicator when we're looking at where to target. There's obviously a ton of available capital in the US. So, early targeting initiatives are really around that US investor base, which is still a big focus for my broader [00:06:00] team.
[00:06:00] Jack Riehemann: What I'm focusing on, as you know, is International. Going back to 2023, once we started seeing interest, we really started to lean in on European targeting. Which would be us proactively seeking out those European investors. When we did that, in many cases these investors are running in small circles. It's similar to what you see in the US. Maybe you're talking to some fund based in London. They start to talk to their friends, and you get more outreach or intros that way. It's very much like networking, it just starts to snowball.
[00:06:31] Jack Riehemann: The other really important thing here, and this is true for any IR officer, is leveraging sell-side relationships. These big banks covering our stock, they have deep ties to a different region, and they may not be really forthright with this. They may not be saying, hey, I've got all this international interest, but if you go to them, they'll be happy to help you. And I think what's interesting is once you take that trip to Europe, or you take that trip to Asia, a lot of these investors [00:07:00] don't have the opportunity to meet with IR teams or management in person. And in a lot of cultures, that's really highly valued. So I do think taking that step, getting on a plane and showing up for that investor makes them build that relationship with you and understand that you think they're important and they have a seat at the table.
[00:07:20] Jack Riehemann: Today, we have enough demand to keep us busy organically. The only proactive outreach is around top global targets. We track engagements with top 25 US institutions, as well as top 25 global institutions, on a quarterly basis. We're doing this based on what's their orientation, what do the peer holdings look like, what's the size of the institution? And of course, to give you guys a shout out, all of that's available through Irwin, particularly with FactSet now.
[00:07:50] Jack Riehemann: It really is a data-driven approach to say, where can we have the greatest ROI and get the most value out of this meeting? And potentially traveling to see [00:08:00] that investor.
Challenges and best practices in global investor relations
[00:08:02] Mark Fasken: Where are you seeing the most traction today? Where are you getting the most interest, the most traction, and is there anything unique about that region and how you've built those relationships?
[00:08:12] Jack Riehemann: If we look at who are the largest shareholders outside the US today, those sit in Europe, and actually led by the UK.
[00:08:21] Jack Riehemann: But if we look at who we're engaging with the most right now, Asia has been the strongest growth of year-over-year international IR activity. Our Asia investor engagement is 5x from last year, and Europe is roughly 3x. A lot is driven by profitability, financial performance, product, and a global mission.
[00:08:44] Jack Riehemann: We're working on our expansion to Asia, initially with two markets, Singapore and Indonesia. If you think about the largest funds in Asia, they tend to be banks, sovereign wealth funds, and life insurers. Naturally, when you enter a market from a product [00:09:00] perspective, we're working with regulators and big financial institutions. Word starts to get out. We may get interest from investors through those product progress pieces, and that's where we can step in. You have to understand the regulatory and local competitive landscape. Once you do that, you can differentiate.
[00:09:19] Mark Fasken: Jack, give us a quick breakdown of what does the IR team at Robinhood look like? Some people might be listening to this like, wait, how is Jack handling all of the US investor interest and Asia. Do you sleep?
[00:09:29] Jack Riehemann: I keep a very strange schedule. I'm based in New York, but I'm moving to London in a few months to fully dedicate myself to international IR. We have three others on the team, two of which are really focused on US IR, so there's still a major focus on US. Then the fourth is pretty dynamic, supporting whatever's needed. We run very lean. And we spend a lot of time internally prioritizing how we can divide and conquer across different investors. What that has evolved into [00:10:00] is me leading the international piece of this. Yes, I'm involved in certain things in the US: the earnings process, the disclosure processes. But when it comes to investor relationships, 95% plus of what I'm doing is outside of the US today.
[00:10:15] Mark Fasken: So you are taking a focused approach though, regionally, as you think about how the team is structured. Which I think makes a lot of sense. You see a lot of IR teams where everybody is doing international investor relations, and people get pulled into spending a lot of time with their North American investors, their largest investors, and they just don't have the time or prioritize that investor outreach.
[00:10:34] Mark Fasken: You've talked about how you've been doing a lot of travel. You're focused on Europe, you've been to Dubai, Singapore, London. Then you're back to the US. You talked about a day where you could have a call with a Brazilian investor and then Australian and Japan, throughout all different hours of the day, all with different expectations. How do you prepare for those meetings? How do you prepare for those roadshows? How do you [00:11:00] think about getting that regional and cultural nuance right?
[00:11:05] Jack Riehemann: It is tricky, right? It's really important to understand these investors, and it involves a lot of research. I did mention that I studied international business, so I did have a nice foundation for this, particularly from a cultural perspective. When preparing, I look at three things.
[00:11:20] Jack Riehemann: The culture of doing business in that jurisdiction. The regulatory landscape. And the competitive environment.
[00:11:26] Jack Riehemann: One example is in many parts of Asia, there is a formal way to politely accept a business card. Business cards are really important. If you walk into a meeting with an Asian investor and you don't know that, it's immediately awkward.
[00:11:39] Jack Riehemann: The big complexity that I've seen is understanding tone and how tone differs across regions. Many jurisdictions are going to be really direct. Almost to the point where they feel cynical. But that doesn't necessarily mean they're bearish on your business.
[00:11:57] Jack Riehemann: It's just the way they [00:12:00] communicate. On the flip side, there may be areas that are always friendly, they're always polite, but you may not know that they really aren't very constructive on your business.
[00:12:09] Mark Fasken: Is that Canada you're speaking about? I'm in Canada. We never say anything mean, but we also don't say what we actually think. It can be a problem.
[00:12:17] Jack Riehemann: Yeah, it's very much something I have to think about. I can shape my approach, go into the meeting and understand they might be really tough, but they could come out being really excited about the business, or vice versa.
[00:12:26] Jack Riehemann: The second thing I mentioned is regulatory landscape. For Robinhood in particular, we operate in a highly regulated environment. A lot of times, differences in regulation can impact the perception of your product. One of the big ones right now is crypto. Different parts of the world think about crypto very differently. If I just approach every meeting with some blanket way to think about crypto, it can go over not as well in certain jurisdictions. I have to really think about how to customize that. Even beyond crypto, there's different [00:13:00] regulatory schemes for each of our products, whether it's derivatives, trading, advisory, long-term investing, banking.
[00:13:07] Jack Riehemann: These are all things I have to think about. I don't necessarily have to be an expert on them, but I have to understand at a high level how things differ from the US and how to tweak my approach as I go into it.
[00:13:19] Jack Riehemann: The last one, the competitive landscape. I think that's arguably the most important thing. Pretty much every meeting, I'm going to get a question about one of my competitors and how we differ from them. That competitor changes depending on the country that investor is from. If I just start comparing everything to US competitors, well, what if that country has never heard of them? That's not going to be as effective as if I can say, here's the local leader in our space, and here's how we differentiate.
[00:13:47] Jack Riehemann: I really think about global competitors. I benchmark them. I leverage a lot of our internal teams to understand them. I think that really helps the investor understand where we fit. The [00:14:00] overarching theme? Understand the market. Understand who you're talking to and how they think.
[00:14:04] Mark Fasken: Do you have regional decks? Do you have an APAC deck and a US deck that you're using? Are you going to that level of detail?
[00:14:14] Jack Riehemann: I have internal materials I reference. If I look at Brazil, digital banking has been growing rapidly. What is Robinhood doing? We're rolling out a digital banking product. I go into that meeting prepared to answer questions on digital banking and how we think about competitors in South America, what they're doing, how that differs for what we're doing in the US. And often, that works. I have big understandings of key themes and key demographic differences. That's how I think about it.
Tooling and timing
[00:14:44] Mark Fasken: I just want to move on to tooling. Appreciate the shout-out to Irwin, thank you. You also talked about using your sell-side partners, especially internationally. What other tools or support networks are you using to help scale the IR [00:15:00] team at Robinhood?
[00:15:02] Jack Riehemann: I have to double down on sell-side here. We're fortunate to have a great set of sell-side research analysts that have broad global reach. I mentioned earlier when we were first starting to think about international marketing from an IR perspective, it wasn't because they were pushing it at us really hard. We were just starting to see demand, and we went to them. We lean on them heavily. Internally, it's taking a data-driven approach. Again, using a lot of the capabilities that Irwin and FactSet give us. Help us understand where is the capital in this region? How much are they looking at our sector or our peers? Does their orientation and style fit? We're looking at the largest, long-only firms that hold a lot of our peers. And once you've started, it builds on itself. The investors become more proactive, talking to their peers, and then you have this snowball effect that can really expand your international presence.
[00:15:59] Mark Fasken: There's a couple [00:16:00] things that jump out to me from this episode already. You hear stories about companies who try to go international, and I think sometimes they do it too early. Robinhood was at a size and a scale where that made sense and had the financial fundamentals to make that successful.
[00:16:12] Mark Fasken: But then you also waited until you started to see some of that inbound interest before really starting to focus on international. And you have the resources internally to help you ensure that you have all the right information and you can make that successful. You had all the pieces to go out and execute on an international strategy successfully. Rather than, we're doing well in the US, there's been no interest internationally, nobody knows who we are. Yet, we're going to go and bang our head against the wall. I think that can be the challenge. It's too early. It's not to say it won't be successful, just maybe not the right time.
[00:16:49] Mark Fasken: For teams starting to explore global investor engagement, what is essential to get right early and what do you think more IROs need to understand or mistakes that people might [00:17:00] make?
[00:17:01] Jack Riehemann: I think you hit on important points. I don't think global investor engagement can be forced. You're not going to just show up in London and pull people into meetings and think it's going to be successful. You have to be very targeted in your approach, at least initially.
[00:17:15] Jack Riehemann: For a lot of companies, you can be really successful with just the US investor base. There's a ton of capital in the US. If you have a US-based strategy and don't fit into regional nuances, you don't need to go global. If your company fits to where global can be successful, it can become such an important piece of your investor strategy.
[00:17:40] Jack Riehemann: I truly believe some of the best capital is in international markets that will hold your stock for decades. As soon as you get that interest, don't let it go. Engage with them. Be patient in the sales cycle. Show up for them. Once you give them a seat at the table and keep them engaged, they can [00:18:00] be a powerful force over time.
[00:18:02] Jack Riehemann: A lot of this is patience. Then once you have the right moment, strike. Continue to build a winning strategy from there.
[00:18:10] Mark Fasken: Well, Jack, this has been great. Appreciate the time. You guys have built an amazing team and amazing strategy. I'm sure there's a lot of helpful tidbits in here for everybody listening. Thank you.
[00:18:21] Jack Riehemann: Thanks, Mark.
