The Young and the Restless

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Jacquelyn Tran, 29

Perfume Bay

For Jacquelyn Tran, getting into the family perfume business meant bringing a new approach to selling fragrances and beauty products. After seeing the selling potential of the Web and leaving college in 1999, Tran used a $50,000 start-up loan from her parents to launch Perfume Bay, an online store that sells more than 800 brands of perfume, cologne, and beauty products. With revenue topping $9 million in 2005, Tran says Perfume Bay--where fragrances are described with sommelierlike specificity-- has found success by translating the knowledge and customer service of a department-store makeup counter to the Web. --Ryan McCarthy

Elizabeth Holmes, 22

Theranos

An estimated 100,000 people die each year from adverse drug reactions. At the age of 19, Elizabeth Holmes designed a device that could prevent many of those deaths. With the Theranos 1.0, patients prick their finger and place a small drop of blood on a disposable cartridge, which is then inserted into a reader that analyzes the medicine in the blood. The device sends the data wirelessly to a secure database, which is available online to physicians. As Holmes describes it, "Theranos 1.0 is an external point-of-care BlackBerry." Holmes, who left Stanford to found the company in 2003, received a bridge loan from a VC firm and private equity funding totaling $6 million. The company recently raised another $10 million. --Jasmine D. Adkins

Jared Issacman, 23

United Bank Card

When e-commerce was coming of age, so was Jared Isaacman. In 1999, while the other kids in Far Hills, New Jersey, were shooting hoops after school, the then-16-year-old was working full-time in the IT department of a nearby credit card processing firm. There, he discovered a critical industry secret: "They were 20 years behind in technology and had to outsource almost everything they did," says Isaacman. Soon, United Bank Card, the company he bypassed college to found in 2000, was attracting upward of 300 new clients a month and processing credit card transactions for restaurants, liquor stores, and other brick-and-mortar merchants. Today, United has some 45,000 clients--including Burger King and Ferrari--and annual revenue of $53.5 million. It processes more than $4 billion in transactions every year, earned a spot at No. 19 on the 2005 Inc. 500, and recently moved into ATMs. --Angus Loten

Profiles, videos, and a slide show of our coolest entrepreneurs under 30 at www.inc.com/30under30.

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