Anthony Zhang

Anthony Zhang was born in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry to Chinese immigrant parents; his father’s work moved the family to international finance hubs including Hong Kong and Frankfurt, Germany. In a 2023 interview published by Hampton he likewise said that he was born in the US but lived in Hong Kong and Frankfurt because his father worked in finance.⁠[1][2]

In high school he founded a social enterprise that recycled used SAT and ACT study materials for students who could not afford them; he ran it alone, describing it as “just me and my laptop.” The enterprise closed when he left for college; he said that starting it was easier than he had expected. In its 2021 episode notes, Alt Goes Mainstream called EnvoyNow his second company, while the founder biography on Vinovest’s website calls EnvoyNow his first company.⁠[1][3][4]

He entered the University of Southern California (USC) at 18 and did not graduate; ABC7 wrote that he was a USC freshman at 18. Fortune wrote that he was a fraternity member at USC who ran a business out of his dorm room; he said that while taking advanced finance and reading case studies he realized, “What I’m doing right now is the most valuable case study of all.”⁠[1][5][6]

In the Hampton interview he said that his interest in wine began in college after a trip to Bordeaux (“I took a trip to Bordeaux and was hooked.”); in his early twenties he tried various wine investing platforms before deciding to build his own.⁠[2]

EnvoyNow grew out of food runs he made for fellow students as a freshman. Fortune wrote that he and four USC friends set out to solve a common student problem: food deliveries could not easily reach campus buildings that only staff and students could enter; he put up flyers offering ordering by text message, payment through Venmo and delivery to the exact location, and he alone was making upwards of $50 a night delivering ChipotleChipotle Mexican GrillChipotle Mexican Grill is a fast-casual restaurant company headquartered in Newport Beach, California, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange (ticker CMG). It operates Chipotle restaurants serving mainly Mexican-style food; as of June 30, 2026, it had more than 4,200 restaurants in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the Middle East, and nearly 140,000 employees.Open the full entry and Chick-fil-AChick-fil-AChick-fil-A is a privately held, family-owned restaurant chain headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, known for chicken sandwiches, local operators and closing on Sundays. Its origins lie in the Dwarf Grill opened by S. Truett Cathy and his brother in 1946; the first Chick-fil-A restaurant opened in 1967. Andrew Cathy has served as CEO since 2021.Open the full entry. The Los Angeles Business Journal wrote that the campus locked down at 9 p.m., making late-night delivery impossible; when friends asked for food he delivered it himself using his student ID, then posted flyers and was “swarmed with orders” his first weekend; when friends wanted to make deliveries too, orders were at first taken by text until a computer science student offered to build a mobile app. ABC7 wrote that the idea came when friends complained of being hungry and he offered to fetch them burritos, saying, “I’ll do it for $10 if you pay me.”⁠[6][1][5]

Fortune wrote that this was in 2014, and that over the course of that year the founders got serious about building the texting service into a full-fledged business: they launched a web platform and hired student “envoys” to fulfil orders; users paid a flat $2.99 delivery fee and the company took a 20 to 25% cut of each order from the restaurant; in its first semester the startup took in $22,000 in revenue.⁠[6]

A Daily Trojan article described him, then a sophomore majoring in business administration, as a co-founder of Envoy; the founding team, all sophomores, also included co-founder Chad Massura (business administration), chief operating officer Gabriel Quintela (public relations) and chief financial officer Nick Wang (business administration). The service began as a Facebook page and released an iOS app in late September, with an Android version planned for the next semester; it then had 1,300 users and 45 employees on two campuses, USC and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.⁠[7]

The article wrote that each order cost $3 plus an optional tip; envoys were independent contractors paid by commission, up to $8 per order; deliveries covered a radius of about 1.2 miles around campus, and at USC only people with a USC email account could order or deliver; partner restaurants included Chipotle, Pizza Studio and Chick-fil-A. With a friend’s help he brought the service to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, teaming up with Ethan Claes, a student there; the team also planned to expand to Indiana University and UCLA.⁠[7]

In an article of October 13, 2015, 500 Startups wrote that in the previous year, when Mark CubanMark CubanMark Cuban is an American entrepreneur and investor whose early work in computer systems and internet audio and video expanded into sports, film, venture investment and pharmaceuticals. He was the Dallas Mavericks’ controlling owner and a longstanding investor on Shark Tank, and co-founded Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company.Open the full entry spoke to students at the USC Marshall School of Business, he jumped onstage with his team to pitch EnvoyNow. ABC7 wrote that he shared the stage with Mark Cuban and Mark Burnett at a campus event; he recalled that it was his sophomore year and that at the end of the pitch Burnett asked what his ask was; he had not rehearsed and did not know how much to ask for, so he “pulled the first two numbers that popped into my head”—$100,000 for 10 percent—and Burnett replied, “OK, I’ll do the deal,” an offer that valued the company at $1 million. The Daily Trojan wrote that Shark Tank executive producer Mark Burnett made a deal with him of $100,000 for 10 percent of the company, valuing it at $1 million. The Los Angeles Business Journal wrote instead that he skipped class to attend a presentation by Mark Cuban and Mark Burnett; he said that at the end of the evening the hosts asked whether the two wanted to do a college version of Shark Tank and “I got picked,” and the two investors offered $100,000 for a 10% stake; in the Hampton interview he also said that Mark Cuban and Mark Burnett offered $100,000 for 10%. Fortune wrote that he pitched Mark Cuban at an impromptu Shark Tank event on campus.⁠[8][5][9][1][2][6]

Fortune wrote that Envoy was recognized by Inc. magazine as one of the coolest college startups, and that later that year Envoy was accepted into the 500 Startups accelerator program in Mountain View, CaliforniaCaliforniaCalifornia is a U.S. state on the Pacific coast; its capital is Sacramento and its largest city is Los Angeles. California was admitted to the Union on September 9, 1850, as the 31st state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 39,538,223, the largest of any state.Open the full entry. A 2021 FOX NewsFOX NewsFOX News is a U.S. television and digital news media brand centered on FOX News Channel and owned by Fox Corporation, with operations spanning news reporting, political commentary and digital content.Open the full entry Radio episode page wrote that while in college he pitched and sold a stake in the business to Mark Cuban.⁠[6][10]

Fortune wrote that by 2015 EnvoyNow had expanded to the University of Wisconsin and Indiana University. ABC7 wrote that the company grew from three campuses to seven in its first fall semester and to 22 the following spring; the Los Angeles Business Journal and the founder biography on Vinovest’s website likewise state that EnvoyNow reached 22 college campuses at its peak.⁠[6][5][1][4]

Fortune wrote that by 2016 he had dropped out of USC to begin fundraising for Envoy’s seed round and, before the Las Vegas trip, had just secured $1.5 million in venture capital; the founder biography on Vinovest’s website likewise states that EnvoyNow raised $1.5 million. The Los Angeles Business Journal wrote that just two months after the pitch to Mark Cuban and Mark Burnett he received a phone call from the Thiel Foundation offering him an additional $100,000 to drop out of school (the paper calls it a $100,000 fellowship from billionaire Peter ThielPeter ThielPeter Thiel is an American entrepreneur and investor, a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies, and the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a partner at the venture capital firm Founders Fund and founded the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young people to leave college and build new things; his public skepticism of higher education, his support for Trump in 2016, and his funding of litigation against Gawker Media have drawn controversy.Open the full entry); he said that he felt “I wouldn’t get taken seriously by investors if I was a student,” so he accepted and left USC.⁠[6][4][1]

Fortune wrote that in April 2016 he went to his fraternity’s spring formal at a hotel in Las Vegas and broke his neck diving into a pool; his girlfriend, McKenna Weinstein, was there; a lawyer for the hotel declined to comment. He said, “I wasn’t drunk, I was just having fun.” He later moved to Craig Hospital, a rehabilitation facility in Denver. He said, “This business had come to define me. … It wasn’t my priority anymore.”⁠[6]

The Daily Trojan wrote that he and Weinstein, then a USC senior majoring in business administration, attended a pool party in Las Vegas, where he misjudged the depth when diving in; he said, “Honestly, it was just an accident.” He said that he had been “a swimmer my whole life” and that he could not recall the next three or four days. He later moved to Craig Hospital, which specializes in spinal cord injuries; Weinstein took a year off from USC to stay with him. He said of his time there, “It was nine hours of therapy a day — the full nine hours.”⁠[9]

ABC7 wrote that a friend pulled him from the water and that Weinstein dropped out of USC to be with him during his therapy at Craig Hospital; he said, “It was really scary.” The Los Angeles Business Journal wrote that he was 21 and had dived headfirst into shallow water; in the article he said, “I was in the (intensive care unit) for five weeks, on a ventilator for three months.” In the Hampton interview he said that he is a quadriplegic after fracturing his C5 vertebrae in an accident.⁠[5][1][2]

On June 21, 2016, the Thiel Foundation announced its 2016 class of 29 Thiel Fellows, chosen from more than 6,000 applications from around the world, and he was among them. The announcement lists him under “Local Delivery,” from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and Mountain View, California, as CEO and co-founder of EnvoyNow; it describes EnvoyNow as a last-mile food delivery service focusing on colleges and universities that uses students who live on campus to deliver food directly to dorm rooms, lecture halls and study areas, which it says is faster and more precise than delivery services that rely on mapping software. The announcement states that the Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry gives $100,000 to young people who learn by doing rather than by following conventional paths such as college.⁠[11]

Fortune wrote that he was selected for the Thiel Fellowship, a two-year program that gives $100,000 to young entrepreneurs who drop out of school. The founder biography on Vinovest’s website, the episode title of The Vampire Squid podcast and the CFA Society New York speaker biography likewise call him a Thiel Fellow; the FOX News Radio episode page wrote that he took an offer from the billionaire Peter Thiel to drop out of college and become a full-time entrepreneur.⁠[6][4][12][13][10]

Fortune wrote that by August 2016 he had moved in with Weinstein and her family in Newport Beach, California.⁠[6]

Fortune wrote that he had been the point person for investors and that in his absence his co-founders struggled; he said that there was a lack of direction and a change in the vibe and culture, and that his two remaining co-founders wanted to shut the company down (they declined to comment). He said that coming back to find everyone “really dejected” was a big hit to him, but that it was the first time in a while that he felt energy or motivation for the company because it was now “in crisis mode.” Facing a choice between shutting down and selling, he chose to sell, appointed Envoy staffers Akshay Aggarwal and Grant Shuler as interim CTO and interim COO, and set up a competition among campuses for the most orders per week; the service expanded to a total of 16 schools with more than 1,500 student employees nationwide.⁠[6]

The Daily Trojan wrote that months after the accident colleagues wanted to leave EnvoyNow; he said that “people I trusted were pretty much giving up on our dream”; chief operating officer Shuler, then a senior at the University of South Carolina, helped the remaining team form a “core team” that kept the business running through that fall, and the company also expanded to campuses including the University of MichiganUniversity of MichiganThe University of Michigan is a university founded in Detroit in 1817 that moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1837; it is governed by a statewide-elected Board of Regents and also has campuses in Dearborn and Flint.Open the full entry. ABC7 wrote that halfway through his rehabilitation his co-founders wanted out and the company was on the brink of collapse; he recalled saying to them, “I really want to come back as CEO, but I’m doing rehab five hours a day,” and he persuaded them to stay, with him taking on a strategy and vision role until he completed therapy, after which the company posted 12 straight weeks of double-digit growth. The Los Angeles Business Journal wrote that six months into his recovery he learned that the other co-founders wanted to quit; he recalled replying, “I don’t want to quit. If you guys want to leave you can leave,” then called all of the investors and the members of the executive team who did not want to leave to tell them that the business was still valuable and could still be acquired; he worked remotely from the hospital for the next six months.⁠[9][5][1]

The Daily Trojan wrote that several investment groups showed interest in acquiring EnvoyNow and that in January JoyRun, another delivery platform, acquired it; Shuler said, “JoyRun’s purely college-focused, so it was an easy transition.” The Los Angeles Business Journal wrote that the deal came in early 2017 and that under the sale agreement he stayed at JoyRun for a year.⁠[9][1]

On March 30, 2017, Fortune wrote that he had announced the sale of Envoy’s operations, including its customer base, campus marketing teams and logo, to the food-delivery startup JoyRun for an undisclosed amount, and that he, Shuler and former head of sales Jason Bartlett would lead growth at JoyRun. Blake Masters, president of the Thiel Foundation, advised him on the sale and described their post-accident conversations as “startlingly positive.” Weinstein called the sale “a dream come true for him under very different circumstances.” ABC7 wrote that he did not disclose the financial terms but called the offer good.⁠[6][5]

The Los Angeles Business Journal, Vinovest’s website and the CFA Society New York speaker biography all state that JoyRun later became part of Walmart; the Los Angeles Business Journal wrote that WalmartWalmartWalmart is an American retailer founded by Sam Walton in 1962, with businesses spanning physical retail, membership warehouse clubs, e-commerce and related services. Its businesses include Walmart and Sam’s Club, and it has expanded into other markets through international investments; its shares trade on Nasdaq under the ticker WMT.Open the full entry had acquired JoyRun in the month before its article of December 20, 2020.⁠[1][4][13]

Fortune wrote in March 2017 that, a year after the accident, the 22-year-old was confident that he would be able to stand and walk again. He said that small everyday matters, such as whether there would be steps at a venue or not being able to look at people at eye level, still caught him off guard; he said, “I feel like mentally, I’m 100%, but it’s still hard to see a life outside of just being in a wheelchair.” He saw some processes in the health care system as “wildly inefficient” and wanted to address them, said, “I’ve got a notebook full of ideas,” and did not hesitate to answer when asked whether he planned to start another company someday.⁠[6]

On April 30, 2017, The Vampire Squid podcast released Part II of its interview with him; the episode description says that it covers how he managed EnvoyNow while undergoing intense physical therapy and got the company acquired, how to overcome setbacks, whether an accident or a career challenge, how to harness resilience, and his future startup ideas.⁠[12]

On October 17, 2017, ABC7 wrote that the 22-year-old had launched Know Your VC, a platform where founders can share vetted reviews of venture capitalists and angel investors, anonymously or publicly, which he described as “kind of like a YelpYelpYelp is a local business review and information platform founded in San Francisco in 2004. Listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker YELP, it is led by co-founder and chief executive Jeremy Stoppelman. The platform offers reviews, photos and local business information and lets users request service quotes and book restaurant tables.Open the full entry for the venture capital world.” He said that he was still doing eight hours of physical therapy a week and that “Hopefully in two years, five years or 10 years, I can be up walking again.”⁠[5]

The Daily Trojan wrote that Know Your VC was broader than EnvoyNow and open to anyone researching investors; it was inspired by the sexual harassment allegations against Silicon Valley investors that summer and designed as an anonymous outlet; of a platform “where people can share these experiences,” he said, “I feel like that is something worthy of building.” He planned to grow Know Your VC and keep pursuing entrepreneurship, and urged people not to hesitate: “You don’t know when something might just completely change your life.” He also said, “People have great ideas [for a company], but they are too afraid to do it.”⁠[9]

Vinovest’s website states that Know Your VC, a GlassdoorGlassdoorGlassdoor is a US platform for employer reviews, salary information, workplace communities and job matching. Founded in 2007 by Robert Hohman, Rich Barton and Tim Besse, it launched publicly in 2008. Recruit Holdings acquired the company in 2018; Indeed operates its services following the 2026 merger of Glassdoor LLC and Indeed, Inc. Its job-seeker products combine employee experiences with job data, while employers use its branding and recruitment-related products.Open the full entry-style platform for venture capitalists, reached more than 200,000 unique searches a month before it was sold to RateMyInvestor; the CFA Society New York speaker biography states that he remains a board member of RateMyInvestor. The author biography on Vinovest’s blog states that he previously founded and sold two startups, EnvoyNow and Know Your VC.⁠[4][13][14]

The Los Angeles Business Journal wrote that after JoyRun he did consulting and then worked at Blockfolio, a cryptocurrency investment platform in Santa Monica, California, which sparked his interest in alternative investments. Vinovest’s website states that he was head of marketing at Blockfolio, which grew from 1 million to more than 8 million users in two years before being acquired for $150 million; the CFA Society New York speaker biography states instead that he led marketing and business development at Blockfolio, helping it grow past 10 million users before FTXFTXFTX was a cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2019 by Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang that operated FTX.com, moved its headquarters from Hong Kong to the Bahamas in 2021 and was valued at $32 billion in January 2022. In November 2022 it filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection amid a liquidity crisis, and Bankman-Fried was later convicted of fraud and related charges. Its reorganization plan took effect in January 2025, after which the FTX Recovery Trust began paying creditors in stages.Open the full entry acquired it. The Hustle wrote that while working at a cryptocurrency company he noticed that many successful crypto investors were passionate about wine and whiskey and viewed them as alternative assets.⁠[1][4][13][15]

The author biography on Vinovest’s blog states that he started Vinovest, a platform for investing in fine wine and whiskey, with Brent Akamine in 2019; FinanceAsia wrote that he first conceived of Vinovest in 2019 before teaming up with Akamine to co-found the firm and launch its app; The Hustle likewise wrote that the two founded the company in 2019. Vinovest’s website states that Akamine was on the founding team of Flipagram and later served as design director at Blockfolio, where the two worked together and bonded over their mutual love of wine.⁠[14][16][15][4]

The Los Angeles Business Journal wrote that after reading about its historical performance he chose fine wine instead of crypto; he and Akamine began investing in wine, saw that the sector was hard for ordinary people to access, and founded Vinovest Inc., a platform for investing in fine wine like a stock and bond portfolio that offers recommendations and handles sourcing, authentication, insurance and storage. He said that his online-to-offline operating experience at EnvoyNow helped. Hershel Mehta of the multifamily office Mehta Ventures, an investor in Vinovest, said that he sees fine wine as an emerging asset class comparable to sneakers or crypto.⁠[1]

In the Hampton interview he said that the idea came from a BloombergBloomberg L.P.Bloomberg L.P. is a global financial technology, data and media company founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981. It began by providing terminal services that deliver data, analytics and news to financial professionals, and launched Bloomberg News in 1990. Michael Bloomberg has pledged the vast majority of the company’s profits to his philanthropic organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies.Open the full entry article about exotic asset classes outperforming the stock market, pointing to fine whiskey up 303% since 2014 and fine wine up 338% since 2004; he said that in late 2019 he and Brent “turned $500 into $300,000 almost overnight”: in a few hours they set up an Unbounce page for a wine investing company, with hosting at about $50 and the domain at $12, and within days had more than $300,000 in commitments, enough for both to commit to Vinovest full time. He said that Vinovest opened its digital doors in late 2019.⁠[2]

In the Hampton interview he said that months after Vinovest launched, COVID-19 caused the S&P 500S&P 500The S&P 500 is a U.S. large-cap equity index compiled by S&P Dow Jones Indices. It includes 500 leading companies, covers about 80% of available market capitalization and is described by S&P DJI as “widely regarded as the best single gauge of large-cap U.S. equities.”Open the full entry to drop nearly 20% in a few weeks, while fine wine stayed resilient. On December 20, 2020, the Los Angeles Business Journal wrote that the 25-year-old had built three businesses and sold two; Vinovest had launched earlier in 2020 and had several thousand active users, a wine-trading feature was planned for 2021, and he said that the platform might later include other alternative investments.⁠[2][1]

The Los Angeles Business Journal included him in its 2021 “20 in Their 20s” special report, describing the 26-year-old as chief executive of Vinovest Inc.; the profile states that Vinovest was founded in 2020, is based in Culver City and has 20 employees, about 5,000 clients worldwide and “tens of millions” of dollars in wine assets on the platform. He said that the idea came “upon reading an article in Bloomberg on fine wine investing” and that the pandemic had “actually accelerated our business growth significantly.” He said that the company had secured seed funding from investors including Tribe Capital, Elizabeth Yin, general partner of Hustle Fund Management, Diageo and LVMH; the company partners with One Tree Planted, and “for every 10 cases of wine purchased through our platform, we plant one tree.” The CFA Society New York speaker biography likewise states that he was named to the list.⁠[17][13]

On February 24, 2021, FOX News Radio published an episode page on his interview on “Everyone Talks to Liz Claman,” hosted by Liz Claman, in which he discusses a few moments that changed the trajectory of his life and how he overcame a tragic accident to continue pursuing his passion for business; the page calls him the founder of EnvoyNow and Know Your VC.⁠[10]

On July 30, 2021, the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast released episode 16 (40 minutes), an interview with him as founder and CEO of Vinovest; the episode notes say that he had “recently turned 26,” had built and sold two companies and secured funding from Mark Cuban, had received a Thiel Fellowship grant before starting Vinovest, his third company, and describe Vinovest as “the Robinhood of wine investing.”⁠[3]

The Vinovest Bottle & Barrel 1 offering page on Republic shows that the project was founded in October 2021 and offered membership units of a limited liability company at $1 per unit under Regulation Crowdfunding as a “Crowd IPA,” with investments from $500 to $500,000, a minimum funding goal of $25,000 and a maximum of $5 million; the page lists him as CEO, co-founder and manager of Bottle and Barrel I LLC, and its risk factors also name him as CEO and founder of Vinovest Capital Management, LLC and Vinovest, Inc. The page shows that the campaign was withdrawn and all investments were refunded.⁠[18]

The Hustle wrote that Vinovest’s whiskey arm launched in 2022 in response to user demand and that the company planned to expand eventually into other spirits such as tequila or rum.⁠[15]

On April 11, 2023, FinanceAsia published an interview with Anthony Zhang as CEO and co-founder of Vinovest about the opportunity that fine wine presents to Asian investors.⁠[16]

On August 30, 2023, Hampton, a private, vetted network for high-growth founders and CEOs, published a question-and-answer interview with its member Anthony Zhang by Ethan Brooks. In it he called Vinovest the largest fine wine and whiskey investing platform in the United States, with more than $100 million in assets under management, more than 150,000 registered users and clients in more than 40 countries; investors own the cases and casks outright and can have them shipped to them. He said that revenue comes from a margin on each sale (often working directly with wineries and négociants) and from recurring fees for storage, insurance and management; he compared wine and whiskey to homes and cars rather than stocks and wanted to discourage short-term trading rather than become “the Robinhood of wine and whiskey.”⁠[2]

He said that growth came mainly from search engine optimization and affiliate partnerships, along with investor education through the blog, webinars, office hours and community events, and that Vinovest partners with SOMM-TV; the company had focused on retail investors and had not yet entered institutional investing, and he saw large international potential, noting that China could become the biggest luxury wine market. He listed the company’s tools, including SlackSlackSlack is a team communication and collaboration platform developed from an internal tool at Tiny Speck. It organizes work through channels, direct messages, searchable history and integrations, with features including Huddles, Clips, Canvas and AI assistance. Its paid service launched in February 2014, and Salesforce completed its acquisition in July 2021.Open the full entry, Notion, Google Suite, Customer.io, SendGridSendGridSendGrid is an email delivery service for developers and businesses that was founded in 2009 out of the Techstars accelerator, listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2017, was acquired by Twilio in 2019 and now operates as Twilio SendGrid.Open the full entry, Contentful, Strapi, Figma, SalesforceSalesforceSalesforce is a U.S. enterprise software company headquartered in San Francisco, providing cloud applications, data platforms and AI agent tools centered on customer relationship management (CRM).Open the full entry, SendSonar, Linear and Rippling. He said that Vinovest has five values: “Default to action,” “Default to transparency,” “Grow through feedback,” “Empathy, no ego” and “Don’t be a robot, built the robot”; the team was 25 people across eight countries and 100% remote. The books he recommended include Atomic Habits by James Clear, Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Multipliers by Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown.⁠[2]

On April 5, 2024, The Hustle wrote that Vinovest had more than 150,000 investors and $100 million under management; investors complete an online questionnaire on how much they want to invest and how quickly they want returns, and the company builds a custom portfolio in two to three weeks, with four investment tiers starting at around $1,000; investors can hold bottles long term, sell them on Vinovest’s open marketplace or have them shipped to drink, and Vinovest handles storage and insurance; bottles are selected with quantitative investment models and an in-house team of sommeliers who consider annual supply, the performance of winemaking regions and historical data on comparable wines. The company says that a portfolio with 20% allocated to wine and whiskey historically earned a 6.7% average annual return, compared with 5.5% for a traditional portfolio. The Hustle also wrote that the founders wanted to build an interface for all types of investors, much as apps had made stock investing easier.⁠[15]

In the article he said that the biggest barrier to entry for wine and whiskey is access to information; that over the last 20 years wine has averaged about 11% returns and whiskey about 15%; that “Supply and demand and consumption are the key factors driving the price”; that wine prices depend on what people are drinking, which is “usually very separate from what the economy is doing”; and that “Everybody who drinks a bottle of wine is making those remaining bottles more, more valuable and more rare.”⁠[15]

On March 24, 2026, Vinovest’s blog published an announcement under Anthony Zhang’s byline, datelined Burbank, California: StartEngine, a private investing platform, had acquired Vinovest, with the terms undisclosed, and Vinovest would continue as a wholly owned subsidiary under its existing brand. The announcement states that StartEngine has more than 2.1 million users and $1.5 billion invested to date (including its earlier asset acquisition of SeedInvest) and that Vinovest has secured approximately $140 million in wine and whisky for clients (the “About Vinovest” note at the end gives more than $150 million invested); it quotes Howard Marks, co-founder and CEO of StartEngine, and Akamine, co-founder and CEO of Vinovest. A Vinovest help-center page states that the acquisition took effect as of March 2026, that the platform is continuing and that the current team is staying.⁠[19][20]

As of November 2026, the company page of Vinovest’s website lists him as co-founder and CEO and states that Vinovest has been acquired by StartEngine; the author biography on Vinovest’s blog calls him a co-founder of Vinovest.⁠[4][14]

Fortune wrote in March 2017 that McKenna Weinstein, his girlfriend of two years, had been there when he launched his business. The Los Angeles Business Journal wrote in December 2020 that he was based in Los Angeles, and the CFA Society New York speaker biography likewise states that he lives in Los Angeles.⁠[6][1][13]

The CFA Society New York speaker biography states that he received the Interact Fellowship and that he is a mentor at WineUnify, a nonprofit supporting underrepresented minorities in the wine industry. The author biography on Vinovest’s blog states that he is a ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry 30 Under 30 Finance (2025) honoree.⁠[13][14]

Vinovest: Official website: https://vinovest.co/ (opens in a new window).⁠[4]

Thiel Fellowship: Official website: https://thielfellowship.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[21]

X: Public account: https://x.com/anthony_j_zhang (opens in a new window).⁠[14]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-zhang-988a2375 (opens in a new window).⁠[14]