For years, venture investors have scouted potential investments in the graduating classes of Y Combinator in the hope of backing the next Stripe, Airbnb and DoorDash. Robinhood is now pitching this playbook to individual investors, with a new fund to invest in early-stage startups that participate in the accelerator. On Thursday, Robinhood’s closed-end fund, which trades under the ticker RVII, went public on the New York Stock Exchange after raising $225.5 million. It’s the second startup-backing fund that the financial app has launched this year—and it won’t be the last of its kind. These funds’ performance will shed light on whether efforts to give individual investors access to private companies will succeed where others stumbled.
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