Ilona Maher is an inspiration to women athletes everywhere. She was on the Olympic Rugby team that won bronze in the 2024 Olympics and participated on Dancing with the Stars. She uses her social media platform, which now has over 7 million followers, to speak about body positivity and issues with being a female athlete. Starting rugby at 17, Maher was found to be talented in that area and won several championships as a collegiate athlete. She juggles not only sport training but graduated with a bachelor’s degree in nursing and a master’s degree in business administration. For the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Maher was selected to play on the rugby team, where she scored three times, helping the team grab a sixth-place win. While she was there, she filmed behind-the-scenes videos on TikTok that soon went viral. Fast forward to the summer of 2024, and Maher was selected again to be on the team. She used her videos to show her fans the stadium, what she did for practice, and more inspiring content.

The strength of Mahers’ fan base, and her determination and readiness to learn really came to light during the television series Dancing with the Stars, where she placed second overall. In August 2024 she posed for the cover of the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated. Maher is an inspiration to everyone around the world, in both her athleticism, her humor, her stubbornness and courage, and it really shows what a beautiful message she is putting out in the world. Women can be big and strong, women can play in contact sports, and they can do all these things while gaining support from other women. Maher has a merch collection titled Beast. Beauty. Brans. This shows Maher’s entrepreneurial mind, as instead of using her following to her advantage, she encourages others to spread love to those around them. To learn more about Ilona Maher and view some of her merch, click the link here!

Zach Yadegari is the perfect example of a GenZ entrepreneur, if there is one. He started off his entrepreneurial journey by teaching coding lessons when he was 10 years old. Once he got three clients at $30 an hour, he was hooked on it and began looking for new ventures that were more scalable. 

His next business was an unblocked website that consolidated computer games. This ended up being a real success because it gave students games to play on their computers while they were in class during the Covid-19 Pandemic. It quickly gained 5 million users, and he sold the company for six figures. 

After he sold his website, he partnered with one of his friends that he met at coding camp to create an app called Grind Clock. Its purpose was to provide motivation in the morning with David-Goggins style wake up calls. It quickly reached 20,000 downloads but then struggled with further growth. 

This is when they shifted and started a new business, Cal AI. Zach was trying to track his calories throughout the day in order to make healthier choices, but he quit after the apps he was using all required manual input and were not very user friendly. That’s where he got the idea for Cal AI, an AI powered app that helps you track the number of calories in a meal just by taking a picture of it. 

This is revolutionizing the health and fitness industry. Within 6 months of launching, he has reached over 1 million downloads, $12 million recurring annual revenue, and has built his team to 17 people. Zach is a great example of a young entrepreneur because he’s building this business while he’s still in high school. He regularly talks with his team during school hours and schedules meetings in the afternoons and evenings. He is hopeful for the future of the app and would like to continue using influencer marketing and more precise technology to scale it. 

At the age of 12, Kenan Pala began his business Kids4Community. Kids4Community is a nonprofit in San Diego that offers voluntary projects where kids are encouraged to help as well. To understand the power of Kenan Pala’s mission. In 1998, Pala’s parents moved from Turkey to the U.S. and founded Confirm BioSciences, a drug-testing kits manufacturer and deliverer. The journey and transition were filled with many hardships; however, this is not what Kenan’s family remembers most. Instead, Kenan’s family remembers the incredible kindness of others shown through both financial and emotional support. “We started with very little means in our journey here, but we got so much help along the way and we’ve always felt very grateful,” said Zeynep Ilgaz, Pala’s mother. “If it wasn’t for the help we got along the way, we would not be here today where we are.” Through their past, Kenan’s parents instilled in him a passion and desire to give back. Kenan explains, “I learned to volunteer as soon as I learned to walk.” Built on these ideals, Kids4Community partners with organizations such as Interfaith Community Services to assemble and distribute care packages. These packages range from toys to hygiene kits. An additional focus of Kids4Community is homelessness. Kenan retells the story of jogging on a beach with his dad where he saw a sickly baby seal and people coming around it to help it. A few hours later, Kenan saw a sickly homeless man who was treated dramatically different from the baby seal. Where people crowded around the baby seal to help, people treated the homeless man as though he was invisible. Through Kids4Community, Kenan hopes to encourage younger kids to get involved in community efforts as well as create hope and love for the homeless. Kenan’s story is inspiring to me because he saw an issue that meant something to him and sought out a way to help people. Using empathy by way of entrepreneurship, Kenan chooses to make a difference.

Peggy Wang is a young entrepreneur who helped in starting Ego. Ego focuses on a sandbox style video game creator experience. Early in its development stages, Ego has worked with AI to help players develop and create sandbox style games into a simulation for prospective players and has raised nearly 7.5 million. Similar styles deal with well-known games such as “The Sims” and “Minecraft.” Ego’s comparative advantage deals with their ability to develop games through AI prompts such as ChatGPT. For many, AI has been seen as a cheat or shortcut in many cases. In the eyes of the entrepreneurial mind though, AI is an ever-growing resource which has opened unlimited possibilities and access to new beginnings.

Peggy Wang and her startup EGO has a main focus on simplifying the production of new simulation type games without the use of code through AI. Wang believes the use of AI promotes unlimited unique possibilities, providing experiences and processes that have yet to be implemented. Wang states “We’re building a game that people can play forever.” In a highly male dominated industry, Wang is bringing forth a new perspective reaching for male and female prospective gamers.

The use of AI has been extremely controversial over the last few years. The creative ability has amazed many through apps such as ChatGPT and OpenAI. Young entrepreneurs such as Peggy Wang are using these new resources to further creativity in areas such as gaming and graphic technology. While many are hesitant to use such resources, EGO believes in capitalizing on them and has been consistent in striving to gain “first mover advantage” and being “first at bat” in the use of AI and its endless knowledge to help others in the development of games and new tech in which a majority of young consumers are most interested in.

The Ultimate 30 Under 30 Forbes List of 2025 – GreekReporter.com

When it comes to making money at a young age reselling is one of the simplest and most efficient ways to do it. At the young age of 16 Benjamin Kapelushnik made the decision to resell sneakers and it changed his life. His company, Benjamin Kickz would grow into something much more than a kid trying to make money. Now in the industry, most people call him, “The Sneaker Don.” If you don’t know, the sneaker reselling industry is a crazy market, and before reading about ben I didn’t know that shoes could be that expensive. Ben’s plan of attack is pretty simple. He buys multiple pairs of the same shoes when they come out, then he sells them at a way higher price than they originally were. I think Ben has shown great signs of entrepreneurship and it should be motivating to all the kids out there to make money. Some of his most famous clients include DJ Khaled and Antonio Brown. I connect with Ben directly because my friends and I run a sports card business. Ben and my team have similar ideas when it comes to reselling. How we do it is we buy packs for around 7 dollars in hopes of pulling cards that we can sell for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. In just one summer of operation, we made over 3,000 dollars from just buying and selling cards. As you can see, one of the easiest ways to make money at a young age is to simply resell.

At just 9 years old, Alina Morse had the idea to create sugar-free lollipops. As a young kid, her parents always warned her to not eat lollipops because they would rot her teeth. Because of those warnings, she started to wonder why there were no lollipops that were actually good for teeth. Between school and extracurricular activities, Alina started to mess with multiple different recipes that would not damage her teeth. At 9 years old she made the recipe that she stuck with and she began to manufacture her lollipops in Michigan. Her business is called Zollipops, which her little sister came up with. Zollipops became available for purchase in 2014. These lollipops are all-natural, gluten-free, sugar-free, and vegan. Alina wanted to make these lollipops so that everyone could enjoy them without having to worry about the potential of damaging their teeth.

As her business continued to develop and as she did more research, Alina found out that tooth decay is a chronic issue for school-aged children so she decided to do something about it. She created the Million Smiles Initiative and started to bring Zollipops into schools so that these children could still enjoy lollipops. As Zollipops continued to grow, Alina started to create a variety of candy. Zolli Candy now includes taffy, hard-drop candies, caramels, and gummies. All of this candy is safe for teeth and made from natural ingredients. Zolli Candy can be found on multiple social media platforms and are also in numerous stores worldwide. Whole Foods, Walmart, and Rite Aid are just a few of the many places where Zolli Candy is available for purchase. Zollipops have become so popular that even celebrities have been seen enjoying these unique lollipops! Alina has loved being an entrepreneur and helping children enjoy sweets. She is not planning on stopping her business anytime soon!

What can you do if you are sick of piracy and love music?

Why, start a 97-billion-dollar company of course!

That was the primary reason for the conception of Spotify, says Daniel Ek, co-founder and current CEO of Spotify. Granted, the company had more humble beginnings than that. In 2006, Spotify was launched as a small start-up in Sweden. Ek said that he realized that you can never legislate away piracy and much like the reasoning behind Apple Music in 2015, the only way to disrupt piracy was to provide a better service for both consumers, artists and labels.

Being first to market in this area gave them a head start that has really paid off in terms of popularity. Even among the Apple fanbase, Spotify often reigns supreme. With 31% of the global market for music streaming, it is just over double that of Apple Music, which is at 15%. Part of this disparity is because of how Spotify lets users create a free trial. Spotify allows users to create a complete account with no limits on time or amount of music to listen to. The catch is that you have to listen to advertisements every so often and you cannot skip too many songs or it locks you from skipping more. This gets people in the gate right away and really just annoys them until they sign up.

However, there is an aspect of business that Spotify has been losing out on and could even lead to potential market loss in the future. One thing that Apple Music, Amazon Music and even YouTube Music to some extent have is products that benefit their respective services. Spotify has had the benefit of being the first mover, but they don’t have anything other then the streaming service itself. That is enough for at least 31% of consumers, but what about the remaining 69%? There is always from for improvement and always a way to curate more innovation.

Josh Feinsilber was in high school when he first had the idea for Gimkit. While brainstorming for a new high school project, he came across the quiz game Kahoot. This sparked an idea in his mind. He realized that the concept behind Kahoot had the potential to be a powerful teaching tool. With much effort and the help of a few other students in his high school, Josh created Gimkit.

Gimkit is a fun quiz learning application that allows teachers to create different “kits” that they can use to help students learn and memorize information. The platform has proven to be an incredibly useful learning tool for many teachers, with the ability to raise student test scores by as much as 14 percent.

Since its creation, Gimkit has grown rapidly and now has about three million users across 100 countries. In 2019, Josh Feinsilber had a projected net worth of $400,000.

Although Josh graduated from high school in 2019, he continues to work as the founder of Gimkit. His passion for helping students learn and teachers teach remains strong, and he continues to dedicate himself to improving the educational experience through Gimkit.

Ever thought about going to Australia? If so, stop by homeboy cafe all the way in North Terrance, Adelaide, South Australia! The owner Tom is 19 years old who kicked started the idea of opening up his own cafe at 18 years old when he was first collaborating with Thiele’s Shop and The PaintBox. They provided Tom with a venue space for him to explore his ideas for him to fulfill his goal of becoming a business owner. After about a year, Tom decided to head into the city where he would open the first ever location of homeboy on the Adelaide University campus.

Tom produced content on multiple platforms like Tik Tok, Instagram, and Facebook, which granted him a lot of attention. While he was putting out videos to promote homeboy, he was bringing his audience on the journey of renovating his space while showcasing his own coffee products. On December 2nd of this year, homeboy was made open to the public.

homeboy co

Kobe Harris was in his freshman year at Loyola university in Chicago when he began developing a all natural skincare brand that would come to be known as Kobee’s. It took him over a year to develop his first formula due to his commitment to environmental stability and sustainability. Kobe also was super invested into the simplicity of his brand. He wanted simple products, simple (and plastic free) packaging, and simple ingredients. Kobe was also methodical, as you can tell from the year it took for the first product. The signature beeswax lip balm took another year to both develop and bring to market. Other products include hand salve, cuticle butter, a lotion stick, neck butter, a lip scrub, and lip overnight masks. I don’t know much about facial care, but it’s apparent that these products have sold well over the past several years. Kobe was brought onto shark tank, which only continued the upward climb of the companies equity growth. All in all, kobees has shown how effective simplicity and methodology can be for an entrepreneur.

If you want to learn more, click here!