Top takeaways from the 2025 Forbes Under 30 Summit

After hosting the past two summits in Cleveland and Cincinnati, Forbes brought their Under 30 Summit to the heart of the “heart of it all” — Columbus. 

This three-year run comes as part of an agreement between JobsOhio and Forbes. 

From Sept. 28 to Oct. 1, rising founders, CEOs and creators, all of whom share the same drive and ambition for success, gathered for the 2025 Forbes Under 30 Summit, hearing from those who have done it all. 

Kicking off the event was a music festival with performances by indie EDM duo Forester, award-winning-musician Alex Warren and a DJ set by the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire Lucy Guo. The following day, guests funneled back into the Greater Columbus Convention Center to attend panels and network with other attendees. 

Prominent content creators, Hollywood actresses, CEOs and founders of multi-million — in some cases, billion — dollar companies took to the stage to answer the question the crowd came to hear: how did they do it? 

Throughout the disciplines, their answers varied, yet many of them shared the same principles. Though the stage would see plenty of panels and foster advice from prominent activists in climate change, governmental leaders — such as Vivek Ramaswamy, candidate for governor of Ohio — and investors, a bulk of the summit’s content centered around these five takeaways.

• AI is changing the world.

Founders of AI companies such as Alta, an AI personal stylist app created by Jenny Wang, Soyoung Lee, co-founder of AI video understanding and comprehension app TwelveLabs and Rowan Cheung, founder of the largest daily AI newspaper The Rundown AI, all came to the stage to talk about how artificial intelligence is shaping the world. 

Cheung talked about AI intuition and how to draw the line between what work to use AI for and what work to leave to humans. 

“We hired expert journalists and expert educators who actually live and breathe this stuff,” Cheung said. “We still used AI for fact checking, research, structure and a whole host of other things, but never for the human heart, and readers can feel the difference. We became the largest AI news in the world because we understood when not to use AI — that’s AI intuition.” 

Many of the speakers raised the point that AI’s integration into society will happen whether someone agrees with it or not. Hemant Taneja, a venture capitalist and author, referred to AI as a “second species.” 

“Think about the relationship we’re developing with this technology, you know, it’s going from giving us information to helping us do our work and, at some point as it gets smarter, to it doing the work from outside us,” Taneja said in his panel with Steven Bertoni, vice president of Forbes. “That’s going to diffuse in society in many, many ways … you will have to get used to this idea that you will have this potent force that lives alongside us.” 

In the “Hollywood Redefined” panel with Alexandra York, a Forbes 30 Under 30 editor, actress Marissa Bode, who stars as Nessarose in the “Wicked” movie, expressed concerns regarding the rapid surge of the technology.

“I do think it’s scary when acting is a craft that has quite literally been worked on for centuries, and when you take something like AI — which is, should we remember, artificial intelligence, thus taking away jobs from real people and real actors — I think it’s scary,” Bode said.

• Authenticity is the key to success.

When it comes to creating content and building an audience, pitching an idea to investors or curating a brand deal between creator and product, authenticity was cited as one of the most important attributes to success. 

“I feel like it’s such a tired saying, but you really just need to stay authentically who you are, you know, no one’s going to come to you to see you be someone else,” said Jake Shane, the social media influencer who hosts comedy podcast “Therapuss with Jake Shane.” 

At the “How to Break the Internet” panel, Bertoni asked content creators and “BFFs” podcast hosts Josh Richards and Brianna LaPaglia what the must-know thing is right now in the creative economy; their answer was live streaming, because of the authenticity of the platform. 

“[The viewer] wants to feel more and more involved with what the creator is doing, getting to know more about them,” Richards said. “You’re not able to edit anything, you’re not able to go back and shoot again or take another take at it — whatever you’re seeing then is happening in the moment.” 

• Build your brand through content creation and networking

Poppi founder Allison Ellsworth found overnight success after promoting her soda on TikTok. In May 2020, her company was sold to PepsiCo for nearly $2 billion — success she attributes to the business’ digital marketing. 

“We were one of the first brands to [lean into putting ourselves out there],” Ellsworth said. “I remember people being like, ‘Just kids are dancing on there, don’t get on there,’ but for me, it was a free place to get on and talk to our community.” 

TikTok is also the platform that launched Stanley 1913 back into the public eye, well over a century after its foundation. Kate Ridley, chief brand officer at Stanley, said a tragic accident shared by a user on the platform highlighted the quality of the product, driving their sales and critical acclaim.

“A young woman, very unfortunately, her car caught on fire and … when the fire was finished, her Stanley was still inside the car with the ice still intact,” Ridley said. “That video went viral on TikTok … that really brought the quality of Stanley products to life through social media and just skyrocketed the popularity.” 

Ridley said the company did provide a new car for the woman affected. 

Another important step to success is building strong connections in college and networking with those around you, something Guo says is especially important for aspiring youth entrepreneurs. 

“There is no other time in your entire life where you’re going to be in such a dense network of intelligent people,” Guo said.  

• Trust your gut; take the risk, don’t wait for the “right moment.” 

For aspiring entrepreneurs, it’s all about taking the leap.

In the “How to Make Millions Reviving Beloved Products” panel moderated by Maneet Ahuja, Forbes’ editor-at-large, Jeni Britton — founder of Columbus-based brand Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream and Floura, a fiber bar brand — said these opportunities are everywhere. 

“In many ways, it’s about seeing opportunity in every room to reinvent something,,” Britton said. “That’s kind of a lens that we all come to see the world through anyway … there’s always opportunities to make it more relevant to people now.” 

Lili Reinhart, an actress best-known for her role as Betty in “Riverdale” and now the founder of skincare brand Personal Day, said she saw the opportunity in an overcrowded market and took it, despite never having plans to launch her own business. 

“I was like, ‘I don’t want to just add products to an already overcrowded market, that doesn’t make sense to me,” Reinhart said. “This pocket that we found in the market where we created a skincare line that from top to bottom doesn’t have any acne triggering ingredients … I could make an actual difference and not just throw something out there that doesn’t need to exist, that’s where it made sense and that’s where I pursued it.”

Claudia Sulewski, a YouTuber and actress who founded the sustainable body care brand Cyklar, said it’s important to allow your business to grow and adapt to change. 

“So much of it is following your gut and your instinct, but at the end of the day, I think it’s also incredibly important to take in feedback and be able to pivot and adjust when needed to,” Sulewski said. “You can’t be too precious about what you’ve been, what you’ve created, because you might make little tweaks and adjustments along the way. Staying agile and staying flexible only betters your brand because you’re able to just craft it and shape it.” 

• “Stupidity is killing us.”

Atleast that’s what Khalil Greene, best-known as the “Gen Z Historian” across platforms, said in his panel. He went on to discuss anti-intellectualism, which he cited as the leading cause of death among children in the U.S. — he said this anti-intellectualism leads to gun deaths, thoughts and prayers rather than action and second amendment rights over lives.  

Greene went on to announce his partnership with March for Our Lives and Change the Ref, two gun violence activist and awareness organizations, along with other youth organizations. Together, they created their own version of the 30 Under 30 — 30 victims of gun violence under 30. They distributed copies of the magazine throughout the aisles, which were then promptly confiscated by security. One officer stated it was a “mishap,” then kicked Greene out of the event, according to his Instagram. 

Forbes apologized and reinstated Greene’s admission the following day, according to his Instagram. Copies of the magazines were handed out outside of the venue on Sept. 30. The magazine is available to view online for free.