From Top Fintech Founders to Top Wall Street Traders: 30 Under 30 Finance 2023

In a year of heavy losses in the financial markets, these entrepreneurs, traders and investors are deftly navigating choppy waters and making an outsized impact.

_{By Jeff Kauflin, Maneet Ahuja, Nina Bambysheva, and Michael de Castillo}

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Bback in 2010, Serunjogi Ham saw the problems his father faced trying to transfer money through Africa’s ossified banking system. Then just 16, Serunjogi had been part of the Ugandan Youth Olympic team and had to pay his swimming coach, but his father couldn’t make a simple bank transfer – he had to fly to India. South Africa with an envelope full of money. Two years later, at Grinnell University, Serunjogi met Maijid Moujaled, a Ghanaian computer science student who had started a popular student coding group. Almost immediately, the two started talking about developing a money transfer app in Africa, which they later called Cash shredderlaunching it in 2018.

Today, more than five million customers use Chipper Cash to transfer money in seven countries, including Uganda, South Africa, Nigeria, UK and USA. Customers can pay bills, as well as trade shares and cryptos. In 2021, San Francisco-based Chipper recorded over $75 million in revenue, mostly from foreign exchange fees, and in the first half of 2022, it brought in over $100 million. The pair raised $300 million in funding, reaching a valuation of $2.2 billion in November 2021.

Serunjogi, 28, is just one of the winners of the List of 30 under 30s in finance for 2023, which covers traditional financial services, fintech, crypto and blockchain. The makers of the list were chosen from more than a thousand nominations and were evaluated by a panel of renowned judges, including David Velezco-founder and CEO of Sao Paulo-based digital bank Nubank; Alex Atallahco-founder of non-fungible token marketplace OpenSea; Christine Moy, Partner and Head of Digital Asset Strategy at Apollo Global Management; and just jennyco-founder and managing partner of investment firm Peak6 Investments.

Despite the sharp decline in cryptocurrency prices over the past year, digital asset entrepreneurs continue to gain traction and have a broad impact, and they did well on this year’s list. An example is Hayden Adams, 28, who pursued an idea created by Ethereum inventor Vitalik Buterin for a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange that uses code-controlled automated market makers instead of people. Uniswap was launched in 2018 and has become one of the most popular crypto apps, with millions of users and over $1 trillion in lifetime trading volume.

Kevin Sekniqi, 29, is a co-founder of Avalanche, a high-speed blockchain with over three million users. In September, private equity giant KKR announced that it would use Avalanche to tokenize part of a healthcare-focused private equity fund, allowing investors to access private equity with a fraction of the capital generally required.

Many list builders also come from fintech. David Dindi, 29, Marco Alban Hidalgo28, and Emma Marriott, 28, are co-founders of Atomic Invest, a white label product that allows companies to offer investment services in their apps. Atomic has 30 customers ranging from regional banks and credit unions to fintech startups, and it expects to hit $2 million in annualized revenue this year.

Megan Harris, 27, worked as a product manager at a title insurance startup and auto insurer Root before founding Empora Title in 2020. The Columbus, Ohio startup aims to speed up and increase transparency in the research process of often opaque title that is required for every real estate transaction in America. Valued earlier this year at $95 million according to PitchBook, they have completed 1,000 trades and the title fees they collect typically range from $1,000 to $2,000+.

Leaders in traditional financial services made up the final third of our list. In less than five years, Kate Dunbar, 27, rose through the ranks to lead the macroeconomic research team at Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund with $150 billion in assets under management. As the youngest person ever appointed to the firm’s investment committee, she conducted research into the Covid crisis and the subsequent economic shock during the pandemic.

After enrolling at the University of Washington at age 16 with a triple major in computer science, math, and economics, Eric Lei completed his doctorate. in machine learning from Carnegie Mellon at the age of 25, conducting research in physics and medicine. Now, as a portfolio manager at WorldQuant, a $7 billion quantitative hedge fund spun off from $58 billion Millennium Management, Lei, 28, trades securities using artificial intelligence, machine learning and statistics to take advantage of market inefficiencies.

This year’s list was edited by Jeff Kauflin, Maneet Ahuja, Nina Bambysheva and Michael de Castillo. For a link to our complete list of finances, Click hereand for full coverage 30 Under 30, Click here.

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