These days more than ever, young people can do almost anything.
Business Insider ranked the most powerful people under 30 across all industries based on four criteria: how many people they formally command; how much they're worth; how much they have shaped the world; and how much they are likely to shape the world in the future.
It may be subjective, but power is always subjective. And everyone on this list, from celebrities to tech moguls, has it in spades.
At the top of our first annual list is 24-year-old Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel. Although his company has only a few dozen employees, this guy has created an incredibly popular and extremely disruptive social media platform, and the sky's the limit for his company, as seen by its soaring valuation. Spiegel himself is supposedly worth near $2 billion.
28. Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin, cofounders of The Skimm
Keeping up with the hordes of news stories that break every day can be overwhelming, especially for the young professional on the go. Enter The Skimm, a daily email newsletter that brings easy-to-digest summaries of the day's biggest news stories straight to your inbox. And with more than a million subscribers — including Oprah — it's proven pretty effective.
Founders Weisberg and Zakin, both 28, started the service in 2012 as a way to keep busy young women informed, and it's caught on. They've recieved over $7.8 million in funding, and they plan to continue expanding the subscriber base as wide as possible.
27. Alex Banayan, venture capitalist
During his first semester at USC, Banayan became obsessed with the careers of successful people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. He set out to write a book on success and a year later came across Ernestine Fu — then Silicon Valley's youngest-ever venture capitalist — and sent her a cold email. Fu agreed to meet with him and set up an interview for him at Alsop Louie Partners where she worked. A few weeks later, Banayan joined Alsop Louie, becoming the youngest VC of all time at just 19 years old.
As a VC, Banayan, now 22, travels the country making pitches, attending conferences, and hosting events. He's also advised on projects for Lady Gaga and Zappos founder Tony Hsieh, according to Forbes. Banayan has written for both Tech Crunch and The Washington Post and is still working on his book about career success.
26. Veronica Roth, author
During her senior year of college, Roth, 26, a creative writing major at Northwestern, spent hours holed up in her room writing a novel instead of doing her homework. But her dedication paid off, and her book, "Divergent," a dystopian teen novel, became the first of a best-selling trilogy.
"Divergent" — along with subsequent sequels "Insurgent" and "Allegiant" — quickly became a national phenomenon, selling a combined 6.7 million copies in 2013 and nearly another 4 million in 2014, as well as spurring a series of films starring Kate Winslet and Shailene Woodley. The first film performed well at the box office, raking in $288 million worldwide, and the second is set to release this spring.
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