By Caroline Howard and Michael Noer
18 hours ago
Presenting our third
annual 30 Under 30, a tally of the brightest stars in 15 different
fields under the age of 30. This is an exhilarating time to be young and
ambitious. Never before has youth been such an advantage. These
founders and funders, brand builders and do-gooders aren’t waiting
around for a proper career bump up the establishment ladder. Their
ambitions are way bigger -- and perfectly suited to the dynamic,
entrepreneurial, and impatient digital world they grew up in.
Some are household names like Lena Dunham, LeBron James, Tumblr's David Karp, and Maria Sharapova.
Others like Lucas Duplan, Meg Gill, and Divya Nag are superstars in
their own realms. Clinkle founder Duplan, 22, has shocked Silicon Valley
with his ability to raise $30 million from the likes of Richard Branson, Peter Thiel
and Andreessen Horowitz for an unreleased secret product. Gill, 28, is
cofounder of Golden Road Brewing, one of the fastest growing breweries
in the U.S.: it produced 15,000 barrels last year and expects to double
output this year. Nag, 22, a Stanford University dropout, is working with a $20 million grant to create heart cells in a petri dish to test new cardiac drugs.
How
good are we at picking tomorrow’s superstars? Pretty solid. Evan
Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, cofounders of Snapchat, our 2014 cover
profile, raised $50 million at a near $2 billion valuation in December
and is reported to have turned down a $3 billion acquisition offer from
Facebook. Karp, 27, 2013’s cover, sold his company to Yahoo! for $1.1
billion in May. Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom, now 30, on 2012's
list in social media, netted $1 billion after a sale to Facebook in
April 2011. Power producer Megan Ellison, 27, developed a blockbuster
portfolio of 2013 films, including
American Hustle and
Her,
both Academy Award favorites this year. These two films box officed
some $83 million to date, in addition to over $130 million for her 2012
Oscar-nominated
Zero Dark Thirty.
A walk through of the
process: There are 15 categories of 30. The categories are Art &
Style, Education, Energy & Industry (new this year), Finance, Food
& Drink, Hollywood & Entertainment, Law & Policy, Marketing
& Advertising, Media, Music, Science & Health Care, Social
Entrepreneurs, Sports and Tech. Each list was vetted by a panel of three
expert judges in the field. Accel Partners' Jim Breyer, Harvard
Professor George Church, ex-Disney CEO Michael Eisner, Flickr cofounder
Caterina Fake, and Chef Alice Waters are among the many notables that
assisted FORBES reporters in determining the final 30 for each category
out of field of nominations that in some cases hit triple digits.
The class of 2014 of 30 Under 30s is in, too. Bruno Mars' exclusive playlist on Peter Asbill and Elliott Breece's Songza
is a perfect example of this. As is much sought-after marketing
animator Khoa Phan, who created a special Vine video. Two-time 30 Under
30 alumnus Ronan Farrow returned as a judge for this year's class in law
and policy.
In each category,
there are short bios of each of the 30, along with links to Twitter,
Facebook and LinkedIn for those who want to share. Also check out the
videos: We interviewed 15 of some of the most fascinating members of the
list and walk readers through the selection process.
30 Under 30: Finance
Lucas Duplan, 22Just
over a year after receiving his undergrad computer science degree from
Stanford, Duplan is running one of the most hyped and controversial
startups in the nation, Clinkle, which seeks to disrupt the way
financial transactions are done—with a digital wallet used on mobile
phones. He has shocked Silicon Valley with his ability to raise $30
million from the likes of Richard Branson, Peter Thiel and Andreessen
Horowitz for an unreleased secret product and attract talent like former
Netflix CFO Barry McCarthy, who is now Clinkle's COO. At the same time
Duplan has been slammed by tech bloggers, who have pointed to the large
number of departing employees—one of whom anonymously posted a harsh
criticism of Duplan—and made fun of some of his decisions, like the
over-the-top video ad Clinkle produced. "At the end of the day only one
thing will matter: Do people like and use our product?" says Duplan.
"Our focus is not on the press or who is backing it. Our focus is on
product."
30 Under 30: Hollywood & Entertainment
Olivia Wilde, 29Actress, social entrepreneurFundraising
is the bane of every philanthropy's existence. Do-gooders go back to
the same rich donors over and over trying to convince them to keep
giving. Actress Olivia Wilde thinks there's a better way. That's why
she's co-founded Conscious Commerce. The company pairs brands with
causes to help corporations become better global citizens. So profits
from a best-selling dress at Anthropolgie go to a girls' school in
India. A limited edition bag at Alternative Apparel helps fund a school
in Haiti. "I've always been a huge proponent of voting with your
dollars," says Wilde. "I'm inspired by the movement of entrepreneurs
from my generation who are encouraging people to think about where their
dollars are going." This year Conscious Commerce raised $100,000 for
New Light, a community-development project serving the women and
children of a red-light district in Kolkata, India. Conscious Commerce
now shares time with Wilde's acting, but she's getting raves for her
recent performance in the movie "Drinking Buddies."
30 Under 30: Technology
Evan Spiegel, 23Cofounder, SnapchatRuns
Snapchat, mobile app used to send 450 million disappearing photos each
day. Company raised $60 million at an $800 million valuation in June and
is reported to have turned down a $3 billion acquisition offer from
Facebook.
30 Under 30: Social Entrepreneurs
Shiza Shahid, 24Cofounder, Malala FundWhen
Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani activist daring to advocate for
girls' education, was shot by the Taliban in 2012, Shiza Shahid, who had
met Malala in 2009 at an Islamabad retreat focused on female education,
got on a plane. She helped oversee Malala's medical care in London and
protect the family from the media circus. "While I was there by her
side, she woke up and said 'I want to continue my campaign.' It was
clear that she could now help the world in a way that she hadn't been
able to before," says Shadid. A Stanford grad and McKinsey consultant
became the 16-year-old's chief strategist on-the-spot. "How do we think
about leveraging her voice in a way that's effective, that brings focus
to the issues that matter, and creates a platform that drives all this
energy around Malala into meaningful action?" A big part of the answer
is the Malala Fund which she cofounded with the teen in 2012 to turn
their vision for girls' education into reality. Grants to date:
$400,000, half from the World Bank and half from Angelina Jolie and Brad
Pitt. A documentary on Malala's work by Academy Award winner Davis
Guggenheim is expected for release in 2014.
30 Under 30: Music
Bruno Mars, 28MusicianWhen
halftime rolls around at Super Bowl XLVIII, it's safe to say Bruno Mars
won't be worried about the score. "Hawaii doesn't have a team, so I
bounce around," says the Honolulu native. "I go for the underdog." That
term hardly describes Mars, who will play the halftime show in the
tradition of Paul McCartney, U2, Michael Jackson and other music
legends. Mars is the first artist in ten years to headline before
turning 30, but he's already got two platinum albums and 14 past Grammy
nominations (including one win), with 4 new ones this year. His best
preparation for the upcoming performance at MetLife Stadium may have
been hosting Saturday Night Live in 2012, despite having about as much
experience with sketch comedy as Hawaii has with snow. Says Mars: "You
gotta be fearless, man. ... If I'm ever gonna sing in a blizzard, it may
as well be at the Super Bowl."
30 Under 30: Sports
Maria Sharapova, 26Tennis player, WTAThis
winter the world's fourth-ranked tennis player heads back to her
hometown, the resort of Sochi, Russia, to serve as an NBC correspondent
for the 2014 Winter Olympics. There's a reason the network wants her
face on the games: Sharapova sells. She was the world's highest-paid
female athlete last year, earning $29 million, of which $23 million came
from deals off the court. A four-time grand-slam winner, she's piled up
endorsements over the years from, among others, Porsche, Motorola,
Tiffany and Nike, which created a Maria Sharapova apparel line. Last
year she launched her first independent business, a candy line called
Sugarpova, with 12 flavors of premium candies (not to mention jewelry
and accessories featuring the Sugarpova lips logo) and estimated
revenues of $6 million. "Business has always been a passion of mine,"
she says. "And I have always had a sweet tooth. ... A tennis career is
such a small part of life."
30 Under 30: Games
Palmer Luckey, 21CEO, Oculus VRVirtual
reality for the masses is no longer just science fiction, thanks to
this 21-year-old video game fan. Engineering prodigy Palmer Luckey
started developing his own head-mounted VR displays when he was still in
high school, and was in college when he created the first prototype of a
consumer-priced VR headset called the Oculus Rift. "You put it on,"
says Luckey, "and you feel like you're inside of the game, rather than
looking at it on a screen." Endorsements from game industry icons
including Valve's Gabe Newell and id Software's John Carmack helped
Luckey raise $2.4 million in a 2012 Kickstarter campaign. (Carmack was
so impressed, he even left id to work for Luckey as his CTO). The
year-old company has raised over $91 million from venture capitalists,
employs 50 people, and has released an early version of the device to
software developers, who are already showing off some innovative VR
games and applications. Consumers should be able to buy their own
headsets – which initially will work only with PC and mobile games – for
a goal price of $300 sometime later this year.
30 Under 30: Science & Healthcare
Divya Nag, 22Cofounder of Stem Cell Theranostics and StartX MedDivya
Nag is attacking one of medicine's biggest problems: the fact that most
types of human cells—like those in the heart or liver—die when you keep
them in a petri dish. This makes testing new drugs a risky, costly and
time-consuming business: 90% of medicines that start clinical trials
turn out to be too unsafe or ineffective to market. But a new
technology, the induced pluripotent stem cell, may help. Nag's company,
Stem Cell Theranostics, was created from technology funded by a $20
million grant from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine and
is closing a venture round. It turns cells—usually from a piece of
skin—into embryonic-like stem cells, then uses them to create heart
cells. These cells can live in petri dishes and be used to test new
drugs. Someday they might even replace heart tissue that dies during a
heart attack. Three large pharmaceutical companies are customers, though
revenues are small. Nag, who was already publishing in prestigious
scientific journals when she was an undergraduate, dropped out of
Stanford to pursue her dream. No regrets: "Our technology was so
promising and I was so passionate about it that nothing else made sense
to me," she says. "It was very clear this was what I wanted to do."
30 Under 30: Education
Nic Borg, 27Cofounder, EdmodoIn
the white-hot world of online educational startups, Nic Borg's Edmodo
is among the hottest, raising $25 million in 2012 to total $57 million
since it was founded in 2008. Edmodo, a.k.a. "Facebook for the
classroom," targets K-12 kids, parents and teachers and has nearly 30
million users—over a million of them teachers—in more than 210,000
schools, including public schools in Chicago and Denver. Edmodo doesn't
create "content" but rather is a free, privacy-protected platform where
teachers, students and administrators can compare and share lesson
plans, homework and tests. It is also a showcase for app developers, and
Edmodo currently offers over 600 apps, from which it takes a revenue
share. Says Borg, "While the ed tech industry has evolved rapidly over
the past few years, we have only seen the tip of the iceberg. We'll
start to better understand how technology can be used to improve student
learning outcomes at scale.
30 Under 30: Law & Policy
Nate Levine, 22Founder, OpenGovAs
a Stanford sophomore, Nate Levine saw opportunity where governments
have historically been flat-footed. "Governments struggle to access
[their own] data, because there aren't good tools out there," Levine
says. With that in mind, he cofounded OpenGov in 2012 at age of 20.
OpenGov's software platform helps governments make intelligent,
data-driven decisions and communicate financial information with their
constituents. The startup has raised over $7 million—$4 million in 2013
alone—and works with more than 50 municipalities, school districts and
other local government organizations, involving over 7 million people
nationwide. As OpenGov expands—possibly into the for-profit
sector—Levine is focused on building new tools to revolutionize how
cities share data with one another and how they approach the budgeting
process. Says Levine, "Better access to information allows officials to
focus on the hard problems of governing. It's especially important now
that governments are being asked to do more with less."
30 Under 30: Media
Trip Adler, 29Cofounder, ScribdAn
avid surfer and sometime street-busking saxophonist with a Harvard
degee in biophysics, Adler is a man of many interests. He thinks readers
ought to be able to indulge their own diverse curiosities as well—and
be able to "think about what to read, not what to buy," as he says.
Scribd, the digital content-sharing platform he cofounded in 2007, is
betting big on subscriptions: $8.99 a month for unlimited e-book
downloads. It has already partnered with more than 100 publishers for a
catalog of more than 100,000 titles and has ambitions that extend well
beyond books. "We want to be the world's digital library," he says.
Profitable, with revenues in the "tens of millions" and a user base of
80 million, Scribd no longer has to rely on VC funding. "Our challenge
now is how to take our profits and reinvest them to continue to grow our
revenue," he says.
30 Under 30: Marketing & Advertising
Brian Wong, 22Cofounder, KiipImagine
you just posted a 5-mile run to the RunKeeper app when an ad on your
iPhone pops up offering you a free liter of Propel Water. Or you just
finished a particularly fiendish level of Candy Crush and you are
offered free Sour Patch Kids as a reward. These "moments of achievement"
and "serendipitous rewards" are a big part of the future of
advertising, at least according to Wong, who cofounded Kiip in 2010, a
year after graduating from the University of British Columbia at age 17.
"We track almost half a billion of these achievement moments every
month," he says. "These are moments that brands can be a part of and
own." In three years Kiip has raised $15.4 million and is now used by
more than 500 major brands to reach 70 million users through 1,500 games
and apps. Procter & Gamble, Pepsi and Disney are clients. He
expects to be profitable next year.
30 Under 30: Art & Style
Carter Cleveland, 27Founder, ArtsyWhen
Carter Cleveland was a Princeton computer science student back in 2008,
he went online searching for a picture to decorate his dorm room. "I
assumed there would be a website with all the world's art on it," he
recalls. There wasn't. So he set out to build one, with a Pandora-like
feature that recommends artists to users. His company, Artsy, displays
more than 85,000 pieces of art from 400 foundations and museums
(including the National Gallery of Art and the Getty) and 1,400
galleries. Though his first impulse was simply to create a repository of
images, he quickly realized the site could make a lot of money from
commissions (60% of the art on the site is for sale). Investors
including Twitter's Jack Dorsey, Google's Eric Schmidt and mega-art
dealer Larry Gagosian have pumped $14.5 million into the company.
Cleveland says Jeff Bezos is his inspiration: "We're going to become
Amazon for the art world."
30 Under 30: Energy & Industry
Jamail Larkins, 29Founder, Ascension Air ManagementHe
started flying at the age of 12 and was immediately hooked. While still
a teen he sold instructional aviation manuals and equipment and also
performed in air shows. In 2006 he formed a joint venture with an
established broker to sell general aviation aircraft. His Ascension Air
now sees $8 million in annual revenue and is a leading regional
distributor for Cirrus Aircraft, the top manufacturer of piston-driven
planes. But the most popular propeller-driven craft costs $850,000, and
most pilots fly only four or five days a month, so Larkins is focusing
on selling fractional ownership. "I want to become the NetJets of
piston-driven aircraft."
30 Under 30: Food & Drink
Meg Gill, 28Cofounder, Golden Road BrewingBeer,
it's clear, isn't just for dudes. Women are drinking more of it. And as
Meg Gill proves, they're making more of it, too. Amid America's craft
beer explosion—more than 2,000 at last count—FORBES reckons that Gill,
28, is the youngest female brewery owner in the country. And her Los
Angeles-based Golden Road Brewing is one of the fastest-growing; it
produced 15,000 barrels last year and expects to double that output this
year. "It's all about finding those relationships to help support the
story behind the beer, the beer itself and all the love that goes into
getting the beer into the right vessel," says Gill, who spent her time
at Yale in the decidedly beer-unfriendly realms of classics study and
varsity swimming. Yet she credits the former with her unique outlook on
suds: "Latin is about putting pieces of the puzzle together, and the
same thing is true of getting beer on the shelf." Gill, who sold beer
from an R.V. before cofounding Golden Road with an industry veteran,
Mohawk Bend owner Tony Yanow, reaches those shelves by putting her
high-end brews—$7.99 for a 16 oz. four-pack—inside aluminum cans.
Revenues exceeded $10 million in 2013, and Gill plans to expand her
dozen-plus offerings outside her southern California base in 2014.