Asheesh Advani

I like to think of myself of a bold entrepreneur, but I'm really just a hard-working kid from the suburbs who never gives up. I spend too much time on airplanes, am not very detail-oriented, do not eat healthy foods, and like to read books three or four times rather than pick up new ones.

But I do have a few accomplishments that I'm proud of: I'm married to the same great girl I dated in the first year of university... I started a company when I was 27 that helped spawn a cottage industry of disruptive online lenders... That company, CircleLending, was acquired by the Virgin Group and I got to work for Richard Branson, every entrepreneurs' role model... I helped convince the big credit bureaus to accept non-traditional data from P2P lenders and micro-lenders, and then helped create a non-profit organization called Credit Builders Alliance... Some of my adventures are described and discussed in case studies at HBS and Babson and in a monthly column for Entrepreneur magazine (2004-09)... I'm now building Covestor, a disruptive company that is bringing the private clubby world of money management into the transparent Internet age... and that girl I dated in college and I have somehow managed to raise two adventure-loving, book-loving, and sports-loving sons.