Live From The 2024 Forbes Under 30 Summit
Reported by Zoya Hasan, Matt Craig & Alex York
DAY 1
The Under 30 Music Festival
Grammy nominated producer and DJ Metro Boomin and singer-songwriter Shaboozey are both having massive years.
Shaboozey’s record-breaking “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” has topped the Billboard Hot 100, brought him to his first VMA’s, and sent him on a tour to major cities across North America. And last night, he made a stop at none other than the 2024 Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit in Cincinnati, Ohio.
He took the stage to give a set of some of his biggest hits, including “Drink Don’t Need No Mix” and “Tall Boy,” to a crowd of thousands of young entrepreneurs, innovators and business leaders joining Forbes for a four-day event of networking opportunities, business panels and more.
Shaboozey followed a DJ set by Cincinnati-hometowner and social media star Xandra. And he was followed by a set by Metro Boomin covering songs from his Heroes and Villans album along with some from the soundtrack he curated for the film Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. He played his popular work to the beat of blasts of smoke, fire and confetti flying through the air.
DAY 2
Welcome To Day 2 Of The 30 Under 30 Summit
JP Nauseef, President and CEO of JobsOhio, kicked off Monday’s programming by introducing attendees to what he calls “the most entrepreneurial state in the Midwest,” before bringing to the stage Ohio Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted.
Husted made his pitch for why attendees should consider moving their business to Ohio, which he says 60 companies have done in the past five years, representing tens of billions of dollars of business.
Next to the stage was Randall Lane, the Forbes Chief Content Officer and founder of the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, who told the audience about his own young entrepreneurial experience and his desire to have peers to talk to who were his own age. He encouraged attendees to meet as many people as possible, because they’ll never know where those connections could go.
“This is a room full of allies,” Lane says. “You’ll meet future business partners, future customers, future employees. So get out there.”
Pro Playbook: How To Become A Master Storyteller In An Ever-Changing World
Just a few hours before his Monday Night Football broadcast between the Bengals and Commanders, Joe Buck acknowledged that the only thing the two fanbases can agree on is their thoughts on the longtime broadcaster himself.
“It’s either Joe Buck sucks, or Joe Buck yourself,” Buck told Forbes Chief Content Officer Randall Lane.
Buck acknowledges that he got his career jumpstart due to nepotism (his father is legendary baseball broadcaster Jack Buck). He called his first NFL game at the tender age of 25, and the criticism has been loud and consistent ever since, but over the years Buck has developed methods to block out the noise — namely, turning off his social media and finding three or four friends whose feedback he can trust.
More importantly, the 55-year-old Buck says he’s working hard (ironically) to relax.
“You need to be able to laugh at yourself,” Buck says. “I think it’s the greatest trait that anybody can have.”
Brewing Up A New Billion Dollar Industry
Athletic Brewing solidified its place atop the booming non-alcoholic beer category in July, when it closed on a new $50 million investment that valued the company around $800 million, up more than 60% since 2022. Cofounder and CEO Bill Shufelt said when he founded the company with John Walker in 2017, there wasn’t much competition. Now, there’s over 100 brands in the category.
Shufelt said what sets a brand apart is its product, telling the story of one of Athletic’s first batches of beer that didn’t meet quality standards and had to be destroyed just as it was preparing to be sent out, forcing Shufelt to empty his 401k to cover the expenses. Months later, they put a much better product into the marketplace.
“It was one of the best decisions we ever made,” Shufelt told Forbes assistant managing editor Steve Bertoni, “Ever since then, my cofounder John and I have been able to sleep well at night.”
Similarly, Nowadays cofounder and CEO Justin Tidwell — who had zero food and beverage experience — said the process of creating a cannabis-infused beverage required a lot of trial error to get to a place where you didn’t want to throw up when you drink it.
To test the progress of the beverage, Tidwell relied on social media feedback.
“The good thing is if you launch a bad product, you’re going to hear about it, if you launch a good product, you’re going to hear about it,” said Tidwell. “Don’t focus on perfection, don’t focus on getting millions of dollars, work on the product and then figure out what you have”
Sweet Success: How To Build And Sell A Hundred-Million Dollar Start-Up
Beatrice Doxon said that the idea for her company The Honey Pot came to her in a dream, when her grandmother showed her a list of ingredients and told her to memorize them. She did, made the product the next day and said that it immediately cleared up her BV (bacterial vaginosis).
Over a decade later, at the start of this year, Dixon sold a majority stake in the company to Compass Diversified Holdings for $380 million, one of the largest acquisitions by a Black female founder in history.
She told Forbes Women senior editor Maggie McGrath that she actually left money on the table in order to maintain a significant control of the company, with the plan to sell that stake again down the road at a higher value.
She hopes her success will be an example to Black female entrepreneurs in the future.
“If you see me, and you see that it’s something I can do,” she says, “then I believe it’s something you can do.”
Bilt To Grow: From The Under 30 To Billionaire List
In January, Bilt Rewards raised $200 million from venture capital investors, who valued the company at $3.1 billion, minting its 34-year-old founder and CEO Ankur Jain a billionaire just nine years after he first appeared on the 30 Under 30 list in the consumer technology category.
Jain sat with Forbes CEO Mike Federle to break down his serial entrepreneur career from Kairos and Humin to Tinder, where he was VP of product before starting Bilt in 2019.
He said the key to starting a successful company is to identify a problem that will still be a problem years from now. With Bilt, that problem was paying rent, which in most cases is people’s biggest expense. He preached patience in raising VC money, which allowed him the leeway to lobby in Washington D.C. for 18 months, eventually changing the law to allow renters to work their way toward a mortgage down payment using rewards.
“There is a certain type of crazy person who tries to do what we all do,” Jain said, addressing the young entrepreneurs in the room. “But somehow we all wake up and we’re all delusional enough to take on these huge problems in the world.”
Developing A Brand That Gen Z Will Love
Every brand wants to leverage the power of social media, but many still feel confused on how best to reach the young consumers that are found there. To explain, Forbes associate editor Alex York gathered three experts in the field.
“Most brands don’t get influencer marketing right, and the brands that do get it right don’t know why,” says Jenk Oz, the 19-year-old founder and CEO of Thred Media, a media and consulting company aimed at Gen Z. “Gen-Z is going to be the most influential economic generation. Just listen to us.”
Jordan Bentley, the founder and CEO of Hypland, said young audiences are able to see through a company who is just coming in to sell, so companies must demonstrate that they authentically care about the same things as their audience.
“Companies are too dollar focused,” said Bentley. “Be experiemental, just try things. Gen-Z wants to see that.”
Jenny Lei said her company Freja New York was a blog before it ever became a product, launching a luxury handbags business in 2020 and now counting celebrity customers like Hailey Bieber and Katie Holmes. “The brand was finally at a stage where it was ready for PR,” she says. Now when she walks around in New York, she sees people wearing her bags, and sneaks a picture for her “Freja bags in the wild” photo folder.
Lessons From Two Business Legends
Ken Chenault, the former chairman and CEO of American Express, and Ken Frazier, the former chairman and CEO of Merck, focused their discussion with Forbes assistant managing editor Steve Bertoni on leadership.
“If you’re serving simply to say ‘I want to make a lot of money,’ you’re not an enduring leader,” said Frazier. “You need to make a choice of the type of leader you want to be.”
Chenault and Frazier talked about navigating crisis, from 9/11 to the Covid pandemic, by taking a long term perspective and making tough choices even if it upsets stakeholders in the short term.
Chenault and Frazier, who now work together at venture capital firm General Catalyst, have turned their attention recently to politics. They helped push much of corporate America to oppose restrictive voting rights bills proposed in dozens of states.
“Democracy cannot exist without capitalism, and capitalism cannot exist without Democracy,” Chenault said.
From Musician To Mogul: A Boomin’ Empire
After a near hour-long set that wooed the crowd and kicked off the Under 30 Sunmit last night, Metro Boomin took the stage on Monday to give the audience an inside look into the creative genius that’s led him to become the Grammy-nominated, diamond-certified producer, DJ and artist he is today.
His greatest skill when it comes to artistry? Patience, he says. “I love locking in on things,” the star told Forbes’ Matt Craig. “When I’m massaging a song or an album, it’s like a rubix cube. You just keep going until it comes together.”
Metro bought his first drum machine in middle school. Today, he’s got 52 Billboard Hot 100 hits as a lead artist, including hits like “Jumpman” by Drake and Future and 14x Platinum “Congratulations” [feat. Quavo] by Post Malone. (He’s also tied with Kanye West fot having the most BMI Producer of the Year awards.)
His most pivotal years, he told the crowd, were his 20s, warning them to not waste too much time partying and instead investing in themselves. “Stay down, stay patient,” he said to the 20-somethings. “Look at it like you’re a piggy bank. If you keep depositing in it, you’ll be able to see something.”
And, take it from Boomin, surrounding yourself with like-minded people will only drive you further: “Steel sharpens steel.”
Creator Cash: Turning Millions Of Followers Into Millions In Sales
Amber Venz Box is making influencers rich. Her platform, LTK, is where you might be redirected when creators like Nara Smith post links to the clothes or sunglasses they’re wearing. Box says the platform has over 40 million monthly shoppers buying from creators, helping 30 different creators become millionaires and leading LTK itself to be valued at some $2 billion.
Those stats come as no surprise: The creator economy itself could reportedly be worth half-a-trillion dollars by 2027.
“Why are the brands investing in it? Why are they taking money out from linear television, search marketing and rotating that into creators? It’s because when they get someone like Dani wearing their dress on stage and she has a community that has trust, they’re actually achieving their goals of selling more things to more people more efficiently,” Box said of the creator economy, pointing to her fellow panelist and LTK user Dani Austin.
Forbes Top Creator Austin started her career on YouTube posting fashion content at age 19 in 2021. Her now 3 million followers saw her go through an intense hair loss journey, which eventually led her to launch her ownhair care company, Divi.
Austin said thanks to that community, Divi could be doing some $100 million in revenue by next year. Her advice to other social media creators trying to go down the entrepreneurship path? “It’s really not about you at the end of the day,” she said in the panel moderated by Forbes editor-at-large Maneet Ahuja. “It’s about your audience and building that community.”
Game On: How To Drive Massive Growth And Customer Loyalty
Forbes Under 30 alum Andrew Powell has figured out how to gamify employee onboarding. With his company Learn To Win, organizations like Chick-fil-A, NFL’s Carolina Panthers and the athletic department of the University of Michigan can onboard and train their new members with customized materials that feel more like a game than work.
Joining Powell on stage is Judy Thelen, who’s gamifying the Yelps of the world: Her app Beli lets people rank different restaurants and share it with their friends and family—as opposed to everyone, everywhere. “Talking about restaurants, taste is personal,” Thelen said to Forbes’ Jabari Young. “Everyone eats.”
Although the gamification market is only just starting to grow, both Powell and Thelen are thinking about how to integrate AI to take their platforms to the next level.
“[Learn to Win] is basically Duolingo for what you need to know for your job. So if you’re a football player, learning the playbook, if you’re a fighter pilot, learning air combat tactics,” Powell said. “Where we want to go, though, is to create a kind of AI tutor in your pocket. So anything you need to know to make you better at your job, you’ve got almost an expert coach.”
Loud And Clear: Using Your Voice To Build A Brand And Movement
Drew Afualo counts more 9 million followers on social media—and the Forbes Top Creator brought in an estimated $2.9 in earnings from them last year. But it wasn’t an easy feat, she told Maggie McGrath on stage Monday.
Afualo started creating content when the Covid pandemic hit, two weeks after she was fired from her job (ironically because of her lack of ability to create a platform). Within 10 months, she had a million followers, but still no earnings from social media.
“I always say to not quit your job until you have, at least, a year’s worth [of money] saved,” she said to any aspiring creators in the crowd. “One of the earliest mistakes people make is, if you get 100,000 followers and then you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m going to quit my job.’ That number, unfortunately, doesn’t really mean a lot anymore.”
Afualo’s impressive numbers today are thanks to her being unapologetically herself on social media: The creator first joined TikTok to share “red flags” in dating men, which got a lot of backlash from said men. Then Afualo would post her unfiltered reactions. “My anger was the tool I used the most because that’s the one men listen to,” she said on stage. “They don’t listen to kindness, they don’t listen to graciousness, they don’t listen to patience.”
It hasn’t resulted in many of those commenters being sorry for their actions, she said, but what it has led to is a New York Times best-selling book called Loud, a Spotify exclusive podcast,“The Comment Section,” and numerous brand partnerships with companies like Warner Bros. and Fabletics.
“All of the people that I have worked with, and ones that have come back and I’ve worked with multiple times, they really do love my personality. That’s why they came to me,” she said.
Pitch Perfect: Raising Cash In Today’s Economy
Falon Donahue, an investor and partner at venture capital firm Narya, knows the power of businesses in the heartland of the U.S. Based in Columbus, Ohio, herself, it’s her mission to support founders across the state and neighboring states that might not be considered innovation hubs.
“I love the energy entrepreneurs bring,” Donahue said on stage with moderator Alex York. “The ripple effect from entrepreneurship has done more for the Columbus community than anything that state government can do.”
While Donahue focuses on “anything that isn’t SaaS,” her on-stage cohort has their own niche: Seth Corder, partner at High Alpha focuses on early-stage investments and has helped launch 35 companies in-house since the firm was founded in 2015. Kevin Vilkin, cofounder at Emergent Strategic Partners, is more focused on late-stage capital, mostly Series B and up.
They agree that AI is a hot topic in the market today, but for them the perfect pitch is about having a North Star—a strong origin story that shows that a founder is going after a problem they’re uniquely qualified to solve.
“It’s high social status to be a founder of a company. It’s ‘cool’ to start a company,” Corder said. “You can find out pretty quickly when you drill into a pitch and see how much homework they’ve done. Have they done 100 plus validation calls where they understand a problem innately, where they have almost an unhealthy obsession to go solve this problem?”
Vilkin also advises founders to just “go for it” when they have an idea they’re passionate about. Recalling a personal, rather risky, investment he made in his 20s into a company worth $750 million today, he said “make sure you put yourselves in rooms where you can be seen and be loud about it.”
Playing To Win: Life Lessons From The Boardroom To The Owner’s Box
To close off the day, Wall Street icon Josh Harris joined Forbes’ Maneet Ahuja to talk about the career that made him a billionaire, with a net worth estimated at $9.6 billion per Forbes real-time tracker.
Harris, who told the crowd he grew up upper middle class, said he never imagined achieving such financial success in the wildest of his dreams.
cofounded alternative investment firm Apollo Global Management in 1990 with fellow billionaires Leon Black and Marc Rowan, which he says felt like quite the risk at the time. “If you’re at that point in your career where you want to take a calculated risk, you should do it, but you got to wait,” Harris told the crowd. “You got to look at your life like an investment and make sure that you’re calculating the downside too. Because for every great story like mine, there’s probably a bunch of stories you haven’t heard about.”
After Apollo went public, Harris said he thought of the time when “as a freshman at Penn, the Sixers won the title with and it was amazing.” At this point the Philadelphia 76ers had lost their way, he recalls, so he decided to be the one to bring the team back to life.
In 2011, Harris bought a stake in the Philadelphia 76ers, which has more since than quadrupled in value. He also has stakes in the New Jersey Devils, the Washington Commanders and Crystal Palace Football Club. “What was more of a passionate thing became an investment,” he told the crowd. (He also said he’s satisfied with those for now, so won’t be buying any more sports teams for the time being.)
Since he left Apollo after a 30-year stint, Harris has been running 26North, a firm that invests across different asset classes depending on what makes sense for a company. It reportedly manages some $22 billion in assets.