Think back twelve months. Could you have imagined all that was to happen in 2024?
The solar eclipse had cities around the country staring at the sky in unison. The Summer Olympics took place in Paris—and the village went viral for its cardboard beds. Brat Summer (inspired by U30 alum Charli XCX) took over TikTok… and politics. Sean “Diddy” Combs was indicted. Donald Trump was shot, he survived, and was reelected president. And the CEO of UnitedHealthcare was shot and killed—igniting controversy and conversation that will no doubt continue into 2025.
Of course in the Forbes 30 Under 30 world, we had some news, too: We launched the 2024 30 Under 30 Europe list. We covered YouTube star Emma Chamberlain's $20 million coffee company and her return to the video platform. 2018 Education lister Katie Fang landed a massive $80 million investment deal. Podcaster and U30 alum Alex Cooper made the cover of Forbes, accompanied by a story on her now $125 million-worth empire. And Shaboozey took the stage at our annual 30 Under 30 Summit in Cincinnati, Ohio (and sat down with us for a chat about how he's shaking up the music industry).
All that being said, and with the understanding that it's impossible to predict what might happen next, this year's Under 30 honorees (see the full list here) gave us some predictions about what the future might hold.
Alexander Isaacson—cofounder of electric vehicle charging company Xeal and the face of the Under 30 2025 Transportation & Mobility category—has big plans for the next few years: "Unlimited possibility is how I see electric vehicles," he says. But it's not just the on-the-road benefits like using less gas and self-driving capabilities.
He says EVs could be the future of energy across all industries. "Electric vehicles [will] not be a strain on the grid or utilities, but they'll actually be an asset," Isaacson says. "If you're plugging in overnight and you already have the full tank, [you'll be able to] discharge that back to the grid or other vehicles. And you build this kind of distributed marketplace where we're actually able to do more without adding physical, larger resources, but just optimizing the system entirely."
Retail & Ecommerce’s Sonia Yang, cofounder of Treet, has similarly ambitious and sustainability-focused plans. Her software startup helps facilitate second-hand and resale offerings for clothing brands and their shoppers. She believes that in the next 10 years, all fashion companies will have a “circularity program.”
"It'll be the norm for consumers to go to a brand's website and think, 'Can I resell my clothes with them?' And when you shop in person, there will be a resale or a pre-owned section," she says. "We're already seeing it in all of the top retailers. So we have no doubt that everyone will follow suit."
On another hand, Maya Kuppermann is building Temelio, a Social Impact startup that manages millions of grant dollars for foundations—making it a more seamless and faster process from first contact to investment. She says that seeing VC numbers go down over the last few years has led many businesses to seek out grants and other forms of investment, which might actually benefit them: "[VC can have] a lot of negative downstream impacts in the way that it causes startups to try and grow at all costs. That's not always the best choice for the customer or the team. So in a weird way, I actually think this environment is one of the best ones to be building in," she says.
That's why she expects her work in grant-making to become even more critical: "Foundations have the power to do what the government can't do because they can move so much faster and deploy capital so much faster," she says. "They’re going to have an enormous impact on how we think about and tackle climate change, homelessness in the country. We're going to be leaning on them a lot more in the coming years than we have in the past, which is nerve wracking, but it’s also really exciting."
And we'd be remiss to not mention AI. "What I do is try to keep a pulse on where the most talented people are building and follow that constantly," says Molly Mielke, our Venture Capital callout and the sole partner at her fund, Moth Fund. "In the last year or two, so many of the most talented people that I know have been building in AI, and so that's where I spent quite a significant amount of time. I think I’m going to continue doing that no matter where it leads me."
But as expected, the AI conversation has split reactions across the Under 30 cohort. While creatives like Shaboozey say AI can be a great tool in creative processes (like determining what a song might sound like in your voice), Social Media creator Drew Afualo says it's something she's steering clear of.
"I don't utilize AI or see myself utilizing it for any personal business gain. I think technology development is cool in a lot of ways, but I also think it cannibalizes art. AI can never replace the human experience and human thought and cognitive ability," she says, adding an Afualo-style joke: "But I don't want to piss off AI though, they might come get me."
See you next year!
Alex and Zoya | 
