From hot dogs in Rhodesia to investment management in L.A.

United Capital founder Joe Duran has trod an unconventional path.

LOS ANGELES — Joe Duran, 49, is the founder and chief executive of United Capital, a wealth management firm that’s trying to become as much a tech company as an investment shop.

The company, based outside Los Angeles, manages money but describes itself as a “financial life management” firm — one that invests clients’ cash and also uses online tools to analyze their goals and habits to develop financial plans. The firm recently started selling those programs to other wealth managers, and Duran expects that to be a big part of his future business.

He founded United Capital a few years after the financial arm of General Electric Co. acquired his previous investment firm. The deal put millions of dollars in his pocket — a huge sum for Duran, who grew up poor in Zimbabwe and started working odd jobs when he was a preteen. But it didn’t make him happy. “I was miserable. I had a complete loss of identity.”

United Capital now has about 175 advisers managing more than $16 billion in assets, with Duran still at the helm. “I could not be happier,” he said.

Unlikely moves: Duran was born in Barcelona to a Spanish mother and American father. The family moved to London, then Johannesburg, then to a suburb of what’s now Harare, Zimbabwe, but at the time — the mid1970s — was Salisbury, Rhodesia. The country, a former British col- ony, was in the middle of a civil war. A Woolworth’s department store in Salisbury was bombed in August 1977, just a few months before Duran’s 10th birthday. “Things were really heating up. I remember we had to take convoys to school,” he said.

Early entrepreneur: When Duran was 10 or 11, he started his first business. His parents had