Ellevest's Investing Platform Knows How to Speak to Women Founded by Sallie Krawcheck, a Wall Street vet, the platform understands women's way of investing their money is different than how men do it.

Who runs the investing world? Not women. A staggering number of financial advisers -- 86 percent, in fact -- are male, most of them older than 50. "If we set out to build a business perfectly targeted toward men, we would build the investment industry as it exists today," says Sallie Krawcheck, a Wall Street vet and founder and CEO of Ellevest, a female-focused digital investment platform.

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To target women, Ellevest operates rather differently. It uses simple information about a woman's life, career and assets to produce a custom investment plan, and addresses the unique concerns facing women. On a practical level, women live longer, so their nest egg -- which is already smaller thanks to the wage gap -- has to stretch further. Traditional models target a return of 75 to 80 percent of one's pre-retirement earnings, but Ellevest aims for 90. "Better to
have a badass retirement -- or if she lives even longer than expected, a cushion," Krawcheck says.