The Founders Arena, born from a partnership between the City of Arlington, Arlington Economic Development Corporation and First Rate, Inc., is an innovative WealthTech Accelerator designed to meet the needs of startup tech entrepreneurs. 

The 10-week intensive gives participants access to networking, funding, training and mentorship. Participating startups have created innovative products that banks and wealth management companies across the world can use to better serve their clients. The Founders Arena, headquartered at the new First Rate, Inc. campus in North Arlington, aims to foster innovation and entrepreneurship while actively engaging the local community through workshops, seminars, hackathons and networking events. 

The inaugural WealthTech Combine took place on Oct. 10-11, 2023. Members of the first Founders Arena cohort spent two days networking with industry experts, honing their business pitches and attending sessions on topics from artificial intelligence to the current state of wealth management and everything in-between. Learn more about each member of the inaugural cohort through the Arlington Economic Development Corporation’s “Founders Arena Spotlight” series.  

Name of Founder and Company
Stephen Kump, Co-Founder & CEO of Charityvest
Atlanta, Georgia

What makes your product unique?
It’s a 401k for charity and the first financial technology-built donor-advised fund. We created custom technology to run donor-advised funds completely automated for a seamless experience. We encourage advisors and clients to have a giving account and a giving experience that’s engaging, beautiful and instantaneous. 

What encouraged you to apply to the Accelerator?
For us, the speed of influence and trust is really everything. When somebody opens an account with us, on average, they put over $10,000 into the account. Anything you put that amount in, you have a lot of trust in that thing. Trust plays a significant role in our growth in relationships and partnerships. The Founders Arena is an opportunity to get in front of a lot more people and form deeper relationships in the wealth advisor space.

What’s the best part about the program?
Relationships. Everyone from my cohort-mates to folks who are running the event to folks in the community who we’ve already met have been really engaging. It’s been very energizing to talk about opportunities. Accelerating partnerships and relationships in the wealth advisor space would have taken a lot longer to do on our own. A lot of that is still in the future and yet to play out, but we’re excited about it.

How has working with the Founders Arena helped you achieve your goals? 
It’s really about growth for us, growth in our mission to help people give purposefully. Fundamentally, that’s what it comes down to – we’re able to form more partnerships, more quickly as a result of the Accelerator.

What’s next?
We’ve got our initial group of advisor partners for our product. Through the Founders Arena and otherwise, we’re looking to increase the number of wealth advisor partners. We’re going to launch a wealth advisor product with these partners after the first of next year.