Penelope is a New York fintech that makes 401(k) retirement plans practical for the businesses that usually get ignored - the corner shop, the two-person startup, the solopreneur. Founded in 2021 by former Wall Street executive Jean Kim Smart and named after her daughter, the company started as a low-cost, self-service platform offering Pooled Employer Plans, traditional 401(k)s and Solo 401(k)s, and has since built a cloud-native, API-first, SECURE 2.0-ready recordkeeping platform that independent recordkeepers and benefit providers can run under their own brand. The pitch is unglamorous but real: automate the paperwork, cut the cost, and let roughly 60 million Americans who work for small employers start saving.
Jean Smart is the founder and CEO of Penelope, a New York fintech rebuilding the retirement recordkeeping layer for the small and micro-businesses Wall Street forgot. After a 20-plus year career as a financial-services executive at Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, Citigroup and UBS, she left a managing-director seat to build affordable, fully-digital 401(k) infrastructure for solopreneurs and mom-and-pop shops. The company, which she named after her daughter, launched in 2022 with a mission to put generational wealth-building within reach of the workers institutions have historically overlooked.
Chapter is an AI-native Medicare advisory platform that helps older Americans choose the right Medicare and retirement healthcare coverage. Instead of acting as a commission-driven marketplace, Chapter reviews plans from every insurance carrier nationwide and pairs that data with licensed, independent advisors to deliver unbiased recommendations. Founded in New York in 2020, the company has supported more than 500,000 enrollees and crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue.
Cobi Blumenfeld-Gantz is the CEO and co-founder of Chapter, an AI-powered Medicare navigation platform he started in 2020 after watching his own parents struggle to enroll. Built with co-founder Vivek Ramaswamy and early backing from J.D. Vance, Chapter crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue and raised a $100 million Series E in April 2026 at a roughly $3 billion valuation. A former Palantir government-team lead with degrees from Wharton and Cambridge, he calls himself one of the most hated people in the Medicare brokerage business precisely because Chapter's advisors are paid to recommend the best plan rather than the most lucrative one.
Kevin Nazemi is the co-founder and CEO of Charlie, a Los Angeles fintech building banking specifically for Americans aged 62 and older. After co-founding the health insurance disruptor Oscar Health and later the retiree health platform Renew Health, he turned to a market almost everyone in fintech ignored: seniors collecting Social Security. Charlie launched nationwide in May 2023 with faster access to Social Security checks, no monthly fees, competitive yields, and fraud safeguards built for a generation that loses an estimated $36 billion a year to financial scams.
Finhabits is a bilingual financial wellness platform built by Latinos, for Latinos, that turns small, automatic deposits into diversified investment portfolios. Founded by MIT-trained engineer Carlos Garcia, the New York fintech pairs low-minimum Roth and Traditional IRAs with Spanish-and-English financial education to close the wealth gap for first-time investors, serving hundreds of thousands of members who often start with as little as a few dollars a week.
Carlos Garcia is the founder and CEO of Finhabits, a bilingual money app built to close the wealth gap for U.S. Latinos. An MIT-trained engineer who spent nearly two decades on Wall Street, he turned the realization that he once had no idea what a 401(k) was into a platform that lets people start investing for as little as $5 a week. Finhabits has grown to more than 800,000 members and earned recognition from Goldman Sachs and Fast Company.
Human Interest is a San Francisco-based fintech company on a mission to make retirement savings accessible to every American worker, regardless of where they work. The company provides affordable, full-service 401(k) and 403(b) plans designed for small and medium-sized businesses — the 99% of employers who have historically been priced out of quality retirement plan options. With a platform that handles recordkeeping, compliance, payroll integration, and investment management all in one place, Human Interest has become one of the fastest-growing retirement plan providers in the U.S., serving nearly 50,000 employers and 2 million+ eligible employees.
Jeff Schneble is the CEO of Human Interest, a San Francisco-based fintech company on a mission to close America's $28 trillion retirement savings gap by making 401(k) and 403(b) plans affordable and accessible for small and medium-sized businesses. A physicist turned venture capitalist turned operator, Schneble brought together a rare trifecta of academic rigor (PhD from Cambridge, MBA from Harvard), investment experience (Partner at Wing Venture Capital), and hands-on operational chops (Silver Lake Partners) before taking the helm at Human Interest in 2019. Under his leadership, the company has grown to serve over 45,000 companies, surpassed $200 million in ARR, raised over $1 billion in total funding at a $3 billion valuation, and is eyeing a public listing.