Retail investors can now buy into seed-stage startups that used to be locked behind venture capital walls. Robinhood opened orders Monday for its second venture fund, letting customers grab shares at $25 each starting through August 12. The fund targets companies from Y Combinator's ecosystem, the accelerator that backed Airbnb, Dropbox, and thousands of other early-stage bets.

This is the risky end of venture capital. Most seed-stage startups fail. But Robinhood is packaging them into an exchange-traded product with zero investment minimums or accreditation requirements, meaning anyone with a brokerage account can participate. The fund will list on the NYSE under ticker RVII on August 13 with 80 private companies already in the portfolio.

The raise totals about $200 million at the expected price, split across 8 million shares. Goldman Sachs leads the underwriting syndicate alongside Citigroup, J.P. Morgan, UBS, and Wells Fargo. It's Robinhood's second such vehicle this year. The first fund, which launched in March, raised $658.4 million and invested in later-stage names like OpenAI and Stripe.

Y Combinator itself has funded over 5,000 companies since 2005 with a combined value above $1.3 trillion, including more than 100 unicorns. But the accelerator doesn't sponsor or endorse Robinhood's fund, the disclosures make clear. Rich Aberman, the portfolio manager, framed the bet differently. "Our mission is for it to become the norm that retail is represented in your seed or Series A cap table," he said. Sarah Pinto, head of Robinhood Ventures, added that retail investors "no longer have to wait until a company's IPO to be part of an early growth journey."

The structure is a business development company, a closed-end fund regulated by the SEC. Investors can request shares through the Robinhood app until August 12, with the fund expecting to debut on the exchange the next day.

This material is informational only and should not be construed as investment advice. Seed-stage investments carry substantial risk, including potential total loss of capital.