Our mission
Rocket Dollar was founded in 2018 with the belief that retirement is changing. We believe that people should not be limited in their investment options as they work towards the retirement they envision for themselves. We're here to make it safe, simple, and fast for people to take control of their retirement savings.
Where we’re from
Who we are
Our team brings together over 100 years of combined experience in the retirement industry. We knew that there was a better way for folks to prepare for retirement, and not only invest in the things they want, but to be able to do so safely, securely, and quickly.
Executive Team
Henry Yoshida, CFP®
Co-founder & CEO
Prior to Rocket Dollar, Yoshida was the co-founder of Honest Dollar, a robo-advisor retirement platform that was acquired by Goldman Sachs, as well as a founder of MY Group LLC, a $2.5-billion assets under management investment firm.
He is a NextGen Venture and Central Texas Angel Network Partner, as well as a Techstars and Capital Factory mentor. In addition, Yoshida is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ and a former Merrill Lynch Vice President. He was a two-time finalist for PLANSPONSOR’s Retirement Plan Advisor of the Year and a 401(k) Leadership finalist for the American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries.
Yoshida graduated from The University of Texas at Austin and holds an MBA from both the Johnson School of Management at Cornell University and Queen’s University in Canada. He resides in Austin with his wife and two daughters.
Rick Dude
Co-founder & CTO
Rick Dude is technologist, financial professional, and serial entrepreneur. He holds a Series 65 and founded QuantAdvisor, an Internet Registered Investment Advisor, in 2011. As a technology consultant, he has planned and implemented large data infrastructure projects for the banking, pharmaceutical, government, retail and manufacturing industries. His marquee clients include Bank of America, the Transportation Security Administration, the State of Texas, and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Prior to Rocket Dollar, he has founded or been an early key employee at five different startups, three of which found funding and two of which were acquired.
Dude lives in East Austin with his wife and three children, and is manager of the Austin Huns Rugby Club, a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting the sport and giving back to the community. He is from Tuscaloosa, Alabama and attended American Intercontinental University.
Brooke Borden
VP Finance & Strategy
Brooke Borden is a seasoned corporate finance and private equity professional. He has been an M&A advisor, worked on Wall Street underwriting IPOs, a senior member of management for a Bahrain-based commercial and investment bank, managed hundreds of millions of private equity investments for Bahrain and Geneva, Switzerland based institutions, as well as served on the Board of Directors, Advisory Board and Investment Committee for a $100 million Singapore venture capital fund.
He earned a Bachelor's in Economics and MBA in Finance from San Diego State University.
Originally from Texas, Brooke and his wife returned to Austin two years ago after living in the Middle East and Europe for a decade.
Chris Palmisano
COO & CRO
Chris Palmisano is Chief Operating Officer/Chief Revenue Officer and Board Member at Rocket Dollar. He has held leadership roles in sales, marketing, business development, and operations at Khorus Software, SolarWinds, and Google.
He is a mentor at startup accelerators, a guest lecturer at business schools, an angel investor, Founding Venture Partner at NextGen Venture Partners, and an advisor to CEOs.
Chris is a former Marine Corps officer and lives in Austin, Texas. He holds an MBA, Beta Gamma Sigma, from the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, an MS from Boston University, a BS from Rochester Institute of Technology, and a US patent in mobile computing.
Team Members
Thomas Young
Co-founder & VP Marketing
Thomas Young is a marketing professional with years of experience in the start-up community. He started his career at AngelSpan, Inc., before founding a marketing agency catering to financial professionals. His experiences with clients led him to the self-directed space, where he quickly realized that people are yearning for more control and that there was a need for a company to make it safe, secure, and fast for people to invest their retirement savings in the assets of their choice.
Young's close contact with many self-directed investors led him to identify a strong need for a platform combining the best attributes of a self-directed account while leveraging the best technology of the day to make it easy to operate these accounts.
Young currently lives in Austin and enjoys running around town lake when he’s not thinking of ways to share the Rocket Dollar story. He is from Mexico City and attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he pursued a degree in Economics.
Joe Won
Director of Customer Success
Joe began his financial services career with Merrill Lynch in 2007 after a successful career co-managing an import/manufacturing garment family business in New York. He has been a Financial Advisor at Merrill Lynch and Wells Fargo Advisors and held an operational position with Merrill Lynch. Joe graduated from New York University with a bachelor’s degree in sociology, earned a law degree at Brooklyn Law School and admittance to the New York State Bar. He is originally from Garden City on Long Island, moved back to Texas in 2018, and loves calling Texas home again, previously having lived in Dallas from 2006 through 2010.
Tiva Feltman
Fulfillment & Customer Success
Brendan Walsh
Business & Sales Operations Manager
Brendan Walsh is a fintech entrepreneur and Wisconsin-Madison graduate, coming from the financial advising and the retirement industry in Chicago. Before joining Rocket Dollar, He consulted various fintech, crypto, and blockchain startups growing throughout his home city. He is also the first to relocate from outside Austin to join the growing Rocket Dollar home office.
He specializes in sales and customer service automation, operations, and partnership management. Brendan has a talent for recognizing opportunities in new markets and creating efficiencies to accelerate the speed of a fintech organization. Using his experience as a financial planner and a 401(k) advisor, Brendan also manages the ever-expanding customer knowledge base for Rocket Dollar.
Brendan can usually be found enjoying the live music scene of Austin, local tech events, biking outdoors, as well as sailing on Lake Travis and around the world.
Bryan Nguyen
Product Manager
Bryan is a product manager at Rocket Dollar with a background in business analysis and project management. He and the team build products using a Scrum framework under Agile & Lean methodologies. Bryan focuses on optimizing the user experience and delivering new features for our customers.
Prior to joining Rocket Dollar, Bryan led various teams at different Austin-based startups in the home and construction industries. He holds a BBA in Finance and a BS in Communication Studies from the University of Texas.
Bryan lives in Austin, Texas. Outside of work, you can find him spending time outdoors with his dogs. He also enjoys playing sports, improving his culinary skills, and exploring new topics in personal finance.
Ryan Martinez
Lead Software Engineer
Ryan Martinez is an experienced software engineer who has worked on the startup scene since the inception of his career. He specializes in building out full stack platforms, and has developed a significant number of startups before joining the Rocket Dollar team. He is licensed in several languages, including C#, PHP and Javascript.
Martinez lives in Austin and spends his time exploring the social and biological ecosystems of the city when he’s not at work building Rocket Dollar software.
Colton Lowry
Colton Lowry is a Quality Assurance Engineer at Rocket Dollar. He is experienced at testing software products to ensure the integrity of customer facing and internal software. Most of his engineering experience is in JavaScript and Python. He also provides support to the operations team by automating business processes and aiding in account fulfillment when time permits. Colton has been working in Austin-based start-ups since 2015 when he joined Henry Yoshida to Honest Dollar. Before his transition to start-ups he worked at Apple while attending college at The University of Texas at Austin.
Colton lives in south Austin and enjoys spending time outdoors, specifically Zilker Park and Lady Bird Lake Trail. On the weekends he often travels to his hometown of Corpus Christi where he spends most of his time in Baffin Bay fishing and helping out with his family's fishing charter business.
Rodney Martinez
UX Designer/Developer
Rodney is an experienced designer and front end engineer at Rocket Dollar. He is a well rounded creative with technical and product development experience. Rodney is a former Techstars Associate and the former Head of Account Management at BlueCheck, Inc., an Identity Verification platform for online transactions.
Martinez currently lives in Austin and enjoys cooking gourmet meals, enjoying the great outdoors, and practicing yoga when he’s not busy building assets for Rocket Dollar. He graduated from The University of Colorado at Denver with a BFA in Film Production.
In the press
“When it comes to possible investments, ‘the sky’s the limit’ for those who board the Rocket Dollar...rocket.”

“One of the more interesting startups that I learned about and that launched during SXSW is an Austin-based company called Rocket Dollar...”

“Austin’s Rocket Dollar is Shaking up the way Individuals Invest Their Retirement Dollars.”
