Robinhood Ventures Fund II (RVII) has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement to begin the process to register a public offering of its shares.

The number of shares to be offered and the size of the fund have not yet been determined, Robinhood said in a blog post.

Robinhood is pitching the structure as a way for non-wealthy investors to buy a basket of private startups through a standard brokerage account, sidestepping the usual “accredited investor” limitations tied to wealth and income thresholds, TechCrunch reported.

CEO Vlad Tenev framed the concept at The Wall Street Journal’s Future of Everything conference last week as: “You can think of [Robinhood Ventures] as a publicly traded venture capital firm with daily liquidity. No accreditation requirements and no carry,” describing tradable shares and a model that does not take a cut of investment profits.

Tenev also described a longer-term goal of bringing retail money into the earliest financing rounds, arguing: “The aspiration is, if you’re a company raising a seed round and a Series A round — so, just first capital — retail should be a big chunk of that round, much like it now is in the public markets.”

He added: “And we should let those people in at the ground floor, so that they can actually benefit from this potential appreciation that’s increasingly happening in the private markets.”

Robinhood’s first venture fund, RVI, began trading on the New York Stock Exchange in early March at $21 per share and is at $50.19 as of Tuesday afternoon, more than doubling from its debut price.

In its first raise, Robinhood aimed for $1 billion but ended up several hundred million dollars below that mark. Even so, the company has highlighted strong performance for the initial fund as it prepares the follow-on product.

Photo: Shutterstock