No-fee stock and cryptocurrency trading app Robinhood has recently announced the acquisition of a media company called MarketSnacks. The move is accompanied by the launch of a ‘digestible’ financial newsletter taken from the firm.
We have news for you. Literally. We’re excited to share that we’ve acquired MarketSnacks, a top rated financial newsletter and podcast, and will be re-launching it as @RobinhoodSnacks, to help you get more informed on market news.https://t.co/68lSriRnct pic.twitter.com/6W5EhKzeqc
— Robinhood (@RobinhoodApp) March 25, 2019
The newsletter has been rebranded to “Robinhood Snacks,” and will focus on giving the company’s millennial audience financial news in a humorous way, making it easier to digest. This was notably the $5 billion firm’s first-ever acquisition, and analysts believe it’ll help it remain a one-stop shop for young investors.
The company’s VP of product, Josh Elman, wrote in a blog post:
We improved market news coverage on our platform, added discovery tools on mobile, and revamped our Help Center to better answer your questions. Robinhood Snacks is a major step towards building out these resources and helping you get more informed on market news.
MarketSnacks was a company launched by Nick Martell and Jack Kramer, who will now join Robinhood as the managing editors of news, to keep on producing the newsletter, which usually features a photo and humorous analysis of three to four headlines.
Robinhood hasn’t revealed the terms of the deal, nor the newsletters’ growth metrics. Per Fortune, MarketSnacks has “tens of thousands of subscribers” two years ago. The company was founded in 2012, and saw its founders create the newsletter after the markets closed, as they still had full-time jobs on Wall Street.
According to the publication Martell noted that although the newsletter is going to be integrated into Robinhood’s offering, it will keep on being independent from the rest of the company. He stated:
A core element here is that ‘Robinhood Snacks’ will have editorial independence from the rest of Robinhood. We are committed to a set of editorial principles, just like any committed news organization.
The rebranded newsletter, Robinhood Snacks, won’t need users to subscribe to any other Robinhood products. Along with it, the firm has scooped up the MarketSnacks podcast, in which the analysts go into a few top stories each day.
Robinhood, as CryptoGlobe covered, doesn’t just let users trade stocks without paying fees, but has added cryptocurrencies to its platform in the last few months. It has, however, been criticized for amount of money it has been making off of customers’ data. The company is reportedly looking to go public through an initial public offering (IPO