Michael Phelps was honored with the inaugural Forbes Under 30 Role Model Award at the summit in Phoenix, Arizona.
Jamel Toppin for Forbes
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“Greatness is a bunch of small things, done well, that stack on top of each other,” Michael Phelps told the crowd at this year’s annual Forbes Under 30 Summit. For the 28-time Olympic medalist, those small things included not missing a single day of swim practice in six years, even on holidays. For NBA hall-of-famer Dwyane Wade, greatness means being the role model that others in his community need. And supermodel, investor and entrepreneur Ashley Graham said she stepped into greatness when she stopped waiting for others to open doors for her.
“I started, on my own, going around to meet the CEOs, the presidents, the people who were at the top of creative and saying ‘I’m going to start a lingerie line, would you like to do that with me?’” she recalls from breaking out of the “model” box that others had put her in. “A lot of times people say keep your goals and your visions to yourself, but I think there has to be some way for other people to understand what you’re doing.”
Like Graham, many of the speakers on this year’s stage spoke about the importance of taking ownership of your career. Legendary investor and Silicon Valley veteran Bill Gurley wrote an entire book about it, called Runnin’ Down a Dream: How to Thrive in a Career You Actually Love, and hosted a signing for it at the summit. He also spoke to the audience about pivoting your career path, how to identify the work that’s most fascinating to you, and using new technology to your advantage. But attendees weren’t shy about asking him hard-hitting questions from his investor days, too—he was, after all, a significant part of deals into Uber, Zillow, Stitch Fix and Snapchat, among others.
His take on what investors look for in founders today? “People broadly misperceive that venture capitalists are solely looking for an ROI outcome,” he said. “They have limited capacity on investments and they really want to fall in love with a project.”
Vic Fontanez has surely fallen in love with his work. He’s the creator behind VicBlends, as well as his podcast DeepCut. A barber by trade, he’s cut everyone’s hair—from kids on the street to Barack Obama—while interviewing them. But alongside his content, some of his proudest achievements come from his philanthropic work. In California, he launched the first-ever licensed barber academy in a prison in 2021. There, inmates can get their credentials to become licensed barbers upon their release. The program, called VicBlends Academy, is preparing for their first graduate this year.
“You’ve only got so much time in your life, you’ve only got so much focus you can put into things,” Fontanez said. So for any project he takes on, “they’ve got to be able to lean into my impact in my community.”
For more on the inspiring conversations from the Under 30 summit, you can read the full live blog here.
See you next week,
Alex and Zoya
Photo by Daniel Ceng/Anadolu via Getty Images
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-Ditching the decks. Arjun Bhatnagar has raised over $400 million for his startup Cloaked, which helps consumers protect their private data like addresses and social security numbers. His advice to the audience was to forget the pitch decks and instead lean into real storytelling, and that goes for selling to customers, or for raising money from investors.
-The concept of “hijacking.” Grammy-nominated artist Audrey Nuna spoke about how creating meaningful change doesn’t always require outright disruption or rebellion, but can come from leveraging existing systems of power—think things like social media or AI—to your own advantage.
-The power of AI agents for the everyday entrepreneur. Airtable founder Howie Liu urged people to get hands-on with AI—experimenting with modern AI agents to see how they can solve problems in minutes that might otherwise take you days. “It’s absolutely a time where all the traditional rules of ‘you’ve got to be patient, be slow, be deliberate’ are getting thrown out the window,” he said.
- “The people who get you to your first million, your first $10 million, your first $30 million are not the same people who are going to get you to your $100 million.” Lindsey Carter, founder of athleisure brand SET Active, emphasized the importance of hiring and firing, and knowing that your team has to evolve alongside your vision.
- “You have to not only be comfortable with failure and taking risk, but you also need to be able to work really hard with an uncertain outcome.” Wonder founder and serial entrepreneur Marc Lore talked about how successful entrepreneurship requires the discipline to put in intense hours—“100 hours a week”—even when the chances of success are low.
-“The whole ‘Don’t take it personally’ thing doesn’t really apply. It is all so personal.” Actress Haley Lu Richardson, who is known for roles in series such as White Lotus and Ponies spoke on how working in a creative, collaborative industry like Hollywood blurs the line between professional and personal, making it important to deeply care about the work you do.
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