The Young and the Restless

Entrepreneurship keeps getting cooler, and the entrepreneurs keep getting younger. Meet five of our favorites.

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Youth, we've been told, is wasted on the young. But not on this group. A generation ago, when many of these entrepreneurial whiz kids were still in diapers, starting your own business was considered akin to drifting, occupational flailing. It was the kind of thing your parents would frown upon, and then encourage you to find work in, say, plastics. And then a funny thing happened. The Michael Dells and Richard Bransons of the world--very young people with very big ideas--started to make entrepreneurship cool (not to mention finding fame and millions in the process). In the early 1980s, there were just 270 entrepreneurship courses offered at colleges and universities across the nation. Today, there are roughly 5,000. Some 200,000 students are now enrolled in some type of entrepreneurship class--and that's not even counting those who bypass college altogether. On the following pages, you'll meet five standouts. To meet 25 of their peers, log on to www.inc.com/30under30.

Mark Zuckerberg, 22

Facebook

Two years ago, as a junior at Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg developed software to help fellow students trade photos and jokes, rant on any topic they pleased, or just say hi--thereby creating a searchable database of personal profiles exclusively for the college set. It caught on. Facebook, the company he co-founded in 2004 and ultimately left school to run full-time, is now the seventh most-trafficked website in the U.S., according to comScore Media Metrix. The site connects seven million (and counting) registered users at colleges and high schools across the globe, two-thirds of the U.S. four-year college undergraduate population. Facebook's reach has attracted big media players--including a rumored offer from Viacom for $750 million in April and speculation that the site was holding out for $2 billion. "The numbers people were throwing around back then were big, and we're flattered by that," Zuckerberg says, adding that the company, which runs on advertising revenue and has 100 employees, was never looking for a buyer. --Angus Loten

Ryan DeLuca, 28

Bodybuilding.com

Back in high school, Ryan DeLuca developed passions for bodybuilding and business. It wasn't long before he decided to merge the two. DeLuca's company, founded in 1999 and based in Boise, Idaho, has benefited from a savvy domain-name purchase, and in a crowded marketplace that includes GNC and the Vitamin Shoppe, Bodybuilding.com keeps customers coming back with the online community it has built. Today the site has more than 200,000 members and generates a million page views a day. And while visitors are there, many of them place orders for vitamins, supplements, etc.--helping propel Bodybuilding.com to annual revenue of $46.5 million and No. 230 on last year's Inc. 500 list. --Kevin Ohannessian

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