24kGoldn Talks Finance Career Aspirations, Music, Investing With Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev

American rap artist Golden Landis Von Jones, known professionally as 24kGoldn, spoke with Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev on Robinhood's "Under The Hood" Podcast.

From Golden To 24kGoldn: He originally used his first name as his rap name but felt he needed to come up with something more unique in order to stand out on search engines and the like. He decided to use the purest form of gold to represent the purest form of himself: 24k (karat), Goldn said. 

Growing up, Goldn said he was interested in buying and selling things for profit. The rapper had aspirations of becoming a hedge fund manager, although he admitted to Tenev all he knew about the profession was hedge fund managers managed money.

After getting his ears pierced, Goldn was advised that if he wanted to go into finance, he should consider removing his earrings, he said, adding he took the advice and decided to do so.

The next day he woke up and thought "why the f**k would I want to spend the rest of my life working a job where I can't be who I want to be," Goldn emphasized.

He turned to music and began focusing on digital marketing in order to better promote his music online. Goldn received a full-ride scholarship to the University of Southern California (USC) for business, but began exploring musical avenues when he arrived on campus, he told Tenev. 

Goldn met a producer at the school, who introduced him to Barry Weiss, a music executive with RECORDS. One day after class, Weiss called Goldn and offered him a deal. Goldn signed with the music label and released his song "Valentino," which became his first hit.

RECORDS is a joint venture between Weiss and Sony Music Entertainment, a division of Sony Group Corp SONY.

Goldn promotes his music now through Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, TikTok and Twitch, mentioning that to be the biggest, "you have to be everywhere."

24kGoldn On Investing: Goldn became interested in investing after acting in a commercial when he was in fifth grade. Goldn received $15,000 for his acting efforts and his father recommended he invest the money. After investing in stocks such as Apple Inc AAPL and McDonald's Corp MCD and seeing his investments grow, Goldn said he became hooked.

Goldn first learned about cryptocurrencies in 2010 when a family member talked about it at a family reunion, he told Tenev. At the time he didn't invest, but when he reached high school and heard chatter about popular cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin BTC/USD, Ethereum ETH/USD and Litecoin LTC/USD and got involved. 

For those who are young and interested in improving financial literacy, Goldn recommends focusing on budgeting. You need to have money to make money, he noted.

RECORDS