30 Under 30: The Most Influential Young People In Tech - RANKED

Age: 29

Occupation: Founder/CEO of Walker & Company

Why: Walker left Foursquare to launch his own startup and has already snagged $2.4 million of backing. Walker & Company sells razors and shaving cream for black people online and is currently run by two employees.

Age: 29

Occupation: Co-founder of Asana

Why: If cofounding Facebook wasn't enough to convince you, Dustin hasn't slowed down, working on Asana (an app to foster teamwork without email), Good Ventures (a philanthropic foundation), and Vicarious Systems (which is developing machine learning software based on how the human brain works, starting with a visual perception system). Asana grabbed $38.2 million in funding and employs 80 people; Good Ventures has secured at least $55 million in funding; and Vicarious Systems has secured $60 million in funding and employs six people.

Age: 29

Occupation: Co-founder of Causes

Why: Green has raised more than $40 million for nonprofits and is also known as Mark Zuckerberg's wingman. He lived with Zuckerberg at Harvard but turned down his offer to join Facebook. Causes tries to incorporate social media into philanthropy, most famously through a Facebook app. It has secured $16.4 million in funding and employs 77 people.

Age: 29

Occupation: Former Executive Director of Girls Who Code, currently a consultant

Why: She is working hard to change the gender break-down of the tech world. Girls Who Code works to educate young girls and inspire them to get involved in computing fields to level out the gender inequality in the industry. More recently she struck out on her own as principal at Kristen Titus Consulting, "advising nonprofit and for-profit clients alike in the areas of strategic planning, management, fundraising, and communications."

Age: 29

Occupation: Founder/CEO of Quora

Why: The Q&A company he started is valued at $900 million, employs 90 people, and has secured $141 million in funding. And if that wasn't enough, he also was one of the early guys at Facebook.

Age: 29

Occupation: Co-founder/President of Lyft

Why: This guy is trying to give Uber a run for its money and has raised $332.5 million in funding for the app-based car service. Lyft currently has 596 employees.

Age: 28

Occupation: CEO/Co-founder of Box

Why: Levie's online file sharing and cloud service is expected to go public soon, raising $250 million, on $124 million in annual revenues. Box previously received $414.1 million in funding and employs 1,183 people.

Age: 28

Occupation: Co-founder of Instagram

Why: Mike, also known as the "soul" of Instagram, is responsible for muploads being a lot prettier. Along with Kevin Systrom, 30, Krieger founded the social platform in 2010, after working together on a location-based sharing application called Burbn.

Age: 28

Occupation: Co-founder of Revel Systems

Why: Lisa is giving Square a run for its money with an iPad point-of-sale system used by chains like Popeyes. Revel has secured $13.8 million in funding and employs 134 people.

Age: 28

Occupation: Founder of Thrive Capital and Oscar

Why: Kushner has poached engineers from Google and a CTO from Tumblr, while raising $70 million in funding. Oscar, which now has 52 employees, is intended to be a health insurance company that makes billing easy for customers.

Age: 28

Occupation: Director of product at Yahoo

Why: The former Googler created Stamped which was purchased by Yahoo. Stamped was an app that let you find and share recommendations with friends. It had secured $3 million before being acquired.

Age: 28

Occupation: President of Y Combinator/Cofounder of Loopt

Why: He's one of the guys who decides which startups get money. This is after he gave his own startup, Loopt, a try with a location-based social networking app. Before being acquired by Green Dot Corporation, Loopt had secured $39.1 million of funding.

Age: 28

Occupation: Co-founder/CTO of Dropbox

Why: Along with his co-founder Drew Houston, 31, Arash is changing the way we share and save files with more than a million files saved on Dropbox every five minutes. Dropbox has secured $1.1 billion in funding and has 694 employees.

Age: 27

Occupation: Founder of Pebble

Why: Migicovsky's smartwatch is now probably the most-watched wearable tech brand, after starting as a kickstarter project a few years ago. Pebble has raised $25.7 million in funding and has 35 employees.

Age: 27

Occupation: Android engineer at Secret

Why: Haider worked at Google and Twitter before coming to the anonymous gossip app Secret. She is responsible for Secret expanding from iOS to Android. Secret has received $10 million in funding.

Age: 27

Occupation: Founder/CEO of Tumblr

Why: Karp made blogging truly social by making the user dashboard more interesting than the content being published. Tumblr was acquired by Yahoo in 2013 for $1.1 billion. Karp has a personal net worth of more than $200 million.

Age: 26

Occupation: Founder/CEO of Kik Messenger

Why: Ted's messaging app is gaining popularity, especially among teenagers. Kik has around 125 million users these days and has secured $27.5 million in funding. The company currently employs 50 people.

Age: 26

Occupation: Software engineer at Pinterest

Why: As one of the most senior software engineers at Pinterest, Chou was a key catch after interning at both Facebook and Google and working at Quora. She also turned down an offer at Facebook. Chou's also working on a side project called "Where are the numbers?" to track the number of women actively working in the tech industry.

Age: 25

Occupation: Founder of SCVNGR; "Chief Ninja" of LevelUp

Why: Seth went to Princeton for less than a year before he started his location-based mobile gaming platform that now has 38 employees and powers mobile experiences in 46 states and three countries. The game rewards users for going to real-life locations. More importantly though, he has created a strong competitor in the mobile payments sphere, LevelUp. And SCVNGR has secured $40.8 million in funding thus far.

Age: 25, 23

Occupation: Co-founders of Snapchat

Why: These guys turned down facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's $3 billion offer to acquire them. Snapchat has about 56 employees. The company has received $123 million in funding and is valued at $2 billion.

Age: 25, 23

Occupation: Co-founders of Stripe

Why: These brothers process billions of dollars a year with their online payments company. Stripe is currently valued at $1.75 billion and has received $120 million in funding for its 83-employee team.

Age: 23

Occupation: Founder of Greplin/Cue

Why: Gross's personal assistant app (first named Greplin then Cue) was acquired by Apple for $50 million last year. This was after it had received $4.7 million in funding.

Age: 23

Occupation: Co-founder/CEO of Kiip

Why: After graduating college at the age of 17, this guy decided to create a new way for brands to reach a mobile audience by creating a system where consumers are rewarded for interacting with ads. Kiip has secured $15.3 million in funding and employs 60 people.

Age: 23

Occupation: Founder/CEO of Poptip

Why: Kelsey's social media polling has been used by CNN, the NFL, Budweiser, and most recently the Academy Awards. Poptip now has 11 employees and has secured $2.4 million in funding.

Age: 22

Occupation: Co-founder/CEO of Clinkle

Why: Despite making some hiring mistakes, this youngster has raised the largest seed round in Silicon Valley history, $25 million. The payment startup has yet to reveal an actual product, but it has garnered a lot of buzz and some notoriety, including a round of layoffs. There are currently 17 employees at Clinkle, and it has bumped up its total funding to $30.5 million.

Age: 22

Occupation: Cofounder of Branch

Why: This Princeton dropout created Branch, a place for people to talk about whatever's on their mind with Twitter and email contacts, which was recently acquired by Facebook for $15 million. The startup had eight employees. While Miller is currently working for Zuckerberg, he definitely did not hold back his thoughts on the company before being hired, often posting negative blogs posts on the social network.

Age: 21

Occupation: Founder of Oculus VR

Why: Palmer redefined virtual reality with its gaming headest. Oculus VR has secured $93.4 million in funding and currently has 81 employees — and was acquired by Facebook for $2 billion.

Age: 21

Occupation: Founder of Gumroad

Why: Pinterest wasn't doing it for this guy, so he left to create the web tool Gumroad, making it super easy to sell digital goods like an mp3 directly to consumers. Since 2011, Gumroad has secured $8.1 million and currently has 16 employees.

Age: 18

Occupation: Founder of Summly; Developer of Yahoo! News Digest

Why: This teenager's redefinition of how we get our news was so impressive that Yahoo decided to buy it and hire him. Before acquisition, Summly had secured $1.5 million in funding to provide algorithmically-generated summaries from thousands of news sources.

The 30 Most Important Women Under 30 In Tech >