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The 80-Year-Old Appliance Shop That Never Tried to Be the Cheapest
For three generations the Formisano family has sold refrigerators in the Hudson Valley on a stubborn premise: be the most helpful store, not the cheapest one. Here is how that bet held up over 80 years.
Zain Qayyum
Zain Qayyum is the co-founder and co-CEO of Medsender, a New York based healthcare automation company that uses AI to turn faxes, emails and phone calls into structured data that flows straight into patient records. A pre-med student who walked away from medicine after watching hospitals shuttle paper and CDs between systems, he built a platform now used by thousands of practices across all 50 states. In early 2025 Medsender raised a $5M Series A led by Ballast Point Ventures while already cash-positive, and the company debuted on the 2025 Inc. 5000 at #550.
Castle
Castle is a New York-based fintech building payments infrastructure for the roughly $3 trillion Americans spend on their homes each year. Its consumer app turns the chaotic paperwork of homeownership - utility bills, property and school taxes, insurance, renovations and maintenance - into a single digital filing cabinet with automated bill pay, transaction monitoring that surfaces tax credits, rebates and overcharges, and fraud protection. Founded by Madeline Hung after a gut-renovation of a historic Hudson Valley photo studio revealed how little data homeowners have on their biggest asset, Castle says its average customer saves over $10,000.
Madeline Hung
Madeline Hung is the co-founder and CEO of Castle, a Hudson, New York fintech building payments infrastructure for the home - software that helps homeowners automate, consolidate, and reduce the cost of their biggest asset. She arrived at the idea the hard way, converting a derelict Hudson Valley photography studio into a livable house during the pandemic and discovering that tracking home spend felt like writing paper checks into a black hole. Before Castle she co-founded The Good Country with nation-branding strategist Simon Anholt and worked across human-rights research and citizen-engagement ventures, a path that runs from Oxfam and Health Leads to a seed-funded home finance app.