America's Best Young Entrepreneurs 2008

Meet tomorrow's moguls today. For this year's roundup of 25-and-unders, we had a record crop of nominations. Here are a few finalists

By Nick Leiber

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Richard Ludlow, 22, turned down a job offer from McKinsey and deferred admission to Harvard Business School to start New York's Academic Earth, an online hub for videos of university lectures and other educational content. Backed by angel funding, he aims both to earn a profit and to improve society—by making academic material widely available online so as to lower the cost of education around the world.

In between homework and basketball practice, high school senior Jasmine Lawrence, 17, landed deals with Wal-Mart (WMT) and Whole Foods (WFMI) to carry her line of natural cosmetics. Lawrence started Eden Body Works in Williamstown, N.J., to offer alternatives to chemical products after a bad experience with a hair relaxer.

Marcellus Alexander III, 23; Brandon Davenport, 24; and Elwood Green III, 25, created text messaging provider Vesta Mobile Solutions after sensing the TV and radio stations two of the team had worked for could use texting to make programming more interactive. Today, the Baltimore company is profitable and has clients that include Hearst Argyle Television (HTV), Comcast (CMCSA), and clothing retail chain Downtown Locker Room.

Running Their Own Show

These are just a few of the finalists in our fourth annual roundup to discover America's most promising young entrepreneurs. As in previous years, we asked BusinessWeek readers to nominate candidates aged 25 and under who are running their own companies that show potential for growth and establish the talent of the founders behind them. Given the current credit crunch and the ailing economy, we were pleased to receive a record number of nominations this year.

After the call for nominations ended in late July, our staff sifted through the nominees to ensure founders and co-founders met the age criteria. Then we asked Richard Branson, BusinessWeek contributor and Duke University executive-in-residence Vivek Wadhwa, and the Kauffman Foundation's Bo Fishback to help us pick the most impressive from among this batch. You can flip through a slide show of the results, then vote for the business you feel holds the most promise. We'll post the five top vote-getters at the end of September.

Like last year's crop, a few of this year's finalists had landed investments from angels or venture capitalists, some were already profitable, and most of the companies were based around the Internet.

Helping the Teacher

"In many cases, young entrepreneurs aren't starting a company right away—they're starting a Web site and seeing if it works," says Fishback, 30. "We've been seeing kids creating businesses for a long time, but most were service businesses that were difficult to scale. The Internet is the great equalizer." That was the case for Artia Moghbel, 21, who built a Web site during his senior year of high school for his English teacher, who wanted to distribute a 70-page reading assignment without having to make photocopies. At the time, Moghbel didn't realize he was laying the groundwork for SchoolRack, an online service intended to make it easy for teachers and students to communicate outside the classroom. He expects the business, which broke even in February, to bring in $1.2 million in revenues in the 2008-09 academic year.