Cool, Determined & Under 30
Published October 2008
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COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLEWhy She's One to Watch: Kim mixes an elegant aesthetic and top-notch branding skills. A Stanford M.B.A., she began her career at Faith Popcorn's trend-forecasting company, where Kim developed youth-marketing campaigns for Tylenol and Campbell's Soup. She enjoyed the work but felt a bit like a sellout. "I thought, Wouldn't it be great to have a business that actually came out of the culture, as opposed to helping a big company see what young people want and spin it back at them?"
Employees: Six
On Being a Young CEO "I think the key is energy management. Passion comes quickly to the inexperienced, but having a lasting commitment is a different story."
Rob Kalin
Current Venture: Etsy, a vast website that helps artisans sell handmade clothing and crafts. The Brooklyn, New York, business processes 20,000 orders a day, at an average sale of $15. The site charges a listing fee and takes a small commission on each transaction.
Why He's One to Watch: In just three years, Etsy has attracted 200,000 sellers, a million registered users, and more than $27 million in funding.
The Backstory: The son of a Boston furniture maker, Kalin flunked out of high school, briefly enrolled in an art school, and then faked an MIT student ID so he could take classes on the sly. He so impressed the professors there that they helped him get into NYU, where he learned how to build a website. In 2005, he launched Etsy with two classmates.
Employees: 65
After Hours: Kalin is learning to sew.
What's Next: Kalin, 28, stepped down as CEO in July, though he remains actively involved as Etsy's chairman and chief creative officer. "A lot of companies are started and prepped for an acquisition," he says. "But I hope this will be an independent company for hundreds of years."
Brendan Ciecko
Current Venture: Ten Minute Media, a Holyoke, Massachusetts, company that creates websites for music industry clients, including Mick Jagger, Katy Perry, and the reunited New Kids on the Block. The business is on track to do $450,000 this year.
Why He's One to Watch: Ciecko's break came in 2001, when he won a fan contest to create a Flash webpage for the website of the punk band Slick Shoes. Sony BMG, Warner, and Universal saw Ciecko's work and hired the then-13-year-old to build sites for their artists. Given the music industry's travails, he is moving into the corporate market with clients such as MassMutual (NYSE:MCI) and Clear Channel (NYSE:CCO) in the pursuit, he says, of "major scalability."
Employees: None; he works with 20 freelancers, many of them in Eastern Europe.
What's Next: Ciecko recently bought a large building in Holyoke, the mill town in which he grew up. He plans to develop the space into an art gallery, a music venue, and a business incubator.
On Being a Young CEO "When all my friends were getting ready to go back to school, I met with Mick Jagger to talk about his website. And I just had to laugh."
Gerard Craft
Current Venture: Niche, a St. Louis restaurant that will gross $2.6 million this year
Why He's One to Watch: Craft's penchant for experimentation can be seen in the menu, which features fried pig's head and lamb with white chocolate hummus. "He's a pioneer in terms of both food and location," says Dana Cowin, editor of Food & Wine magazine. "Niche has a minimal, modern feel, which might have been a risk in a historic St. Louis neighborhood. Its success is a tribute to how good the food is."
The Backstory: Craft dropped out of culinary school ("I never did well in the classroom -- I got bored") to work at a car wash and a pool hall. He eventually returned to the kitchen, first working a series of restaurant jobs and then raising Niche's seed money from his brother and parents.
Employees: 36
What's Next: Craft, 29, recently opened Veruca, a café and bakeshop, as a creative outlet for his pastry chef. He hopes to expand the business further: "I would love to see a brand of Niche with talented chefs that put out good food and make fine dining more approachable."
A Confession: "I'm dying to be on Iron Chef."
David Karp
Current Venture: Tumblr, based in New York City, has built an online community around a blogging tool that lets users post short entries, Web links, and music and video clips. The site's 400,000 members have a knack for generating buzz. Dating columnist Julia Allison parlayed her Tumblr posts into a deal to do a pilot reality show for NBC, for example.
