It has been said that the entrepreneurial spirit knows no age. Historically, countless young individuals have proven that success need not wait for gray hair. Before most of our Young Influencers (YIs) were enrolled in high school, the dot-com era of the late 1990s was ripe with eager, young execs making it big. Fast-forward to 2025, and there’s a 13-year age gap between our 2025 YIs: the oldest is 37, and the youngest is 24 (see below).
At the age of 28, one of the youngest sales veeps in the storied history of giant, North American printing firm RR Donnelley earned so much money in commissions that the company chairman decided to set the “high potential” go-getter on the management track. Twelve years later, 40-year-old John Walter ascended to the company’s presidency and became its CEO at 41.
Fred Smith was 29 when he launched FedEx in 1973. (Eight years earlier, an economics professor at Yale University allegedly cast doubt on Smith’s hub-and-spokes business model, which the then-student had outlined in a term paper.) There are, of course, even younger examples. A quick online search reveals these famous five:
- Stanford electrical engineering graduates Bill Hewlett and David Packard were in their mid-20s when they started HP in a California garage in 1939.
- Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft at the tender age of 20 in 1975.
- The late Steve Jobs, a college dropout, co-created Apple in 1976 when he was only 21.
- Also at 21, Evan Spiegel joined the ranks of the youngest entrepreneurs to break into the social media scene by co-founding Snapchat in 2011.
Another more recent tech story is that of Vitalik Buterin, a computer programmer who started conceptualizing Ethereum at 19. This paved the crypto path for decentralized finance, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and countless blockchain-based apps.
Back in the print space, I am personally acquainted with Ethan Baehrend, the 24-year-old CEO of Creative 3D Technologies. Baehrend forewent the university path and left home in the Chicago area to found his Austin, Texas-based startup company at 18.
The dealer-partner channel possesses a wealth of young, bright-eyed talent, too. This year, our seven youthful influencers are not teenagers, but each is under 38. Who are they? Listed below in alphabetical order, four represent dealerships (one is a 33-year-young president), two work for OEMs, and one is on the finance/leasing side of the business:
Kevin Brophy, 37 – Fujifilm, Graphic Systems Division
Jessica Johnson, 35 – U.S. Bank
Mike Maccabe, 36 – Toshiba America Business Solutions
Noah Maphis, 29 – Cobb Technologies (Glen Allen, Virginia)
Ben Philpot, 24, and Korey Philpot, 27 (brothers) – PDS Copiers/Precision Duplicating Solutions (London, Kentucky)
Justin Rebhun, 33 – Flex Technology Group/FTG Texas (Houston)
We hope you enjoy learning more about them and their career journeys.
