Attendees expected across three days at Invest Fest 2026
Six years ago, Invest Fest did not exist. This weekend it took over the Georgia World Congress Center, with organizers expecting more than 40,000 people across three days for keynotes, panels, live podcast tapings, a pitch competition, a vendor floor, and a deal room. The bill mixed money and culture the way only this event does: Serena Williams, Steve Harvey, Nick Cannon, T.I., and Jermaine Dupri sharing the same weekend as investors, operators, and first-time founders.
The engine behind it is Earn Your Leisure, the media brand built by Rashad Bilal and Troy Millings. They started by explaining money on a podcast. They turned that audience into a movement, and the movement into a festival that now functions as an annual gathering point for Black wealth-building in America.
"This is what happens when financial literacy stops being a lecture and becomes a festival."
What makes Invest Fest matter is not the celebrity wattage, it is the room's default assumption. The whole weekend is organized around a single premise: you are here to own, not just to consume. To buy the asset, start the business, negotiate the deal, read the term sheet. For a lot of young people, that assumption is the entire unlock. You cannot build toward something you have never seen 40,000 people take seriously at once.
There is a real conversation happening about whether the event stays in Atlanta long term, a sign of exactly how big it has gotten. Cities are starting to understand that a festival like this is not just a weekend of ticket sales, it is a magnet for talent, capital, and attention.
Which is the part Detroit should sit with. Our city has the founders, the culture, and the story. What Invest Fest proves is that when you give that energy a room big enough, tens of thousands of people will travel to be in it. The near future is built in rooms like that. Detroit deserves one of its own.
