wealth-building
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Abdul Al-Asaad
He grew up in a refugee camp and learned finance at Goldman Sachs. Now Abdul Al-Asaad wants to hand ordinary savers the borrowing power that has always belonged to the wealthy.
Stake
Stake is a Dubai-based digital real estate investment platform that lets people buy fractions of income-generating property from as little as AED 500. Investors earn passive rental income and capital appreciation while Stake handles sourcing, acquisition, management and exit. Regulated by the DFSA in the UAE and the CMA in Saudi Arabia, the platform serves more than two million users across 181 countries and has expanded from Dubai into Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and US industrial real estate.
Basic Capital
Basic Capital is a New York fintech building a modernized 401(k) and IRA platform that lets everyday workers finance their retirement investments rather than only contribute out of pocket. For every dollar a saver puts in, the company supplies supplemental capital - roughly four additional dollars - so contributions are deployed into diversified portfolios of ETFs, bonds, and access to alternatives like private credit. Founded by former Goldman Sachs banker Abdul Al-Asaad, it positions itself as the first platform to bring financing and alternative assets into tax-advantaged retirement accounts, and raised a $25M Series A in August 2025 led by Forerunner and Lux Capital.
Equitybee
Equitybee is a financial technology marketplace that connects startup employees who can't afford to exercise their vested stock options with accredited investors willing to fund the exercise in exchange for a share of the future upside. Founded in 2017 by three childhood friends and headquartered in Palo Alto, the platform lets employees convert paper equity into real ownership - or cash - without waiting for an IPO, while giving investors a rare way to buy into pre-IPO companies they otherwise couldn't reach.
Penelope
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.
Tirios
Tirios is an Austin-based proptech platform that lets everyday investors buy fractional shares of single-family rental homes for as little as $100. It uses AI to source and underwrite properties, records ownership on blockchain via tokenization, and manages the homes end-to-end - collecting rent, paying expenses, and distributing quarterly dividends. Founded in 2021 by former Icahn Enterprises executive Sachin Latawa, Tirios is SEC-qualified under Regulation A+ and pitches itself as a vertically integrated, low-fee way to make real estate investing accessible to millennials and first-time investors.
Rebecka Zavaleta
Rebecka Zavaleta is the co-founder and CEO of Paismo, an HR-tech and people-automation platform built for small and mid-sized businesses in emerging markets and pitched as 'made in Pakistan, for the world.' Before Paismo she spent more than a decade as a product and design leader whose work touched Google, TikTok and Meta, and she founded First Milli, a first-generation wealth-building education platform recognized by NextAdvisor in partnership with Time. A University of Pennsylvania political-science graduate who has traveled to dozens of countries and works across several languages, she blends product craft, financial literacy and a builder's stubbornness about fixing systems that 'do not exist or are not streamlined.'
Graham Stephan
Graham Stephan is an American personal finance YouTuber, real estate investor, and entrepreneur who turned a real estate license at age 18 into a multimillion-dollar media brand. Known for his signature 20-cent home-brewed coffee philosophy, he has amassed over 5 million YouTube subscribers by making money talk approachable, transparent, and relentlessly actionable. He also co-hosts The Iced Coffee Hour podcast, founded Bankroll Coffee, and built a rental property portfolio in the Los Angeles area before relocating to Las Vegas.
Niles Lichtenstein
Niles Lichtenstein is the CEO and Co-Founder of Nestment, a San Francisco-based platform helping first-time homebuyers purchase property through co-buying and expert coaching. Shaped by watching his immigrant mother rent rooms in their Berkeley home to stay afloat after his father's death, Lichtenstein spent a decade quietly co-buying properties with friends and family before formalizing the model into Nestment in 2021. The company has since raised $3.5M in pre-seed funding and facilitated over $200M in real estate transactions, with 74% of buyers being first-timers and 62% identifying as BIPOC or immigrants. Before Nestment, he founded The History Project (later Enwoven), a digital storytelling platform backed by The New York Times Company that powered Ambassador Richard Holbrooke's history into an HBO documentary.