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Brett Bernstein’s long bet on independence
He left Merrill Lynch without taking the usual check, built XML Financial Group from his own pocket, and learned that scaling a wealth firm is less about collecting offices than keeping people.
Pauline Roteta
Pauline Roteta is the co-founder and CEO of Pasito, a New York based startup building AI agents for the insurance and employee benefits industry. A former Senior Investor and Portfolio Manager at BlackRock, Fulbright Scholar, CFA and CFP, she launched Pasito in 2021 to attack the roughly $200 billion Americans waste each year on poor benefits decisions. Pasito went through Y Combinator's Summer 2022 batch and in February 2026 raised a $21 million Series A led by Insight Partners, bringing total funding to about $24.4 million.
Uprise - Embedded Tax and Advisory
Uprise is a San Francisco fintech that embeds full-service tax filing and financial advisory into the SaaS platforms small business owners already use. Its model pairs AI-generated first drafts with review from Certified Financial Planners and tax professionals held to a fiduciary standard, letting partners like Rippling, Carry, Heard and HoneyBook launch white-labeled, premium tax-and-advisory services in weeks rather than years.