Dave Thornton

Dave Thornton is the co-founder, CEO, and chief investment officer of Vested, a Miami-based fintech that funds startup employees to exercise their stock options before the 90-day post-departure window erases them. A serial entrepreneur who studied computer science, economics, and law, Thornton built Vested around a simple, painful truth he saw firsthand: roughly half of all employee stock options go abandoned, leaving an estimated $600 billion of value unclaimed. His pitch is to turn venture capital into something closer to an index fund - broad, diversified exposure to hundreds of startups - while giving everyday employees the cash and the clarity to actually keep the equity they earned.