Michael Kovac/Getty Images
Evan Spiegel's app Snapchat is in the hands of nearly every youngster with a smartphone.
Business Insider ranked the most powerful people under 30 across all industries based on four criteria: how many people they formally command; how much they're worth; how much they have shaped the world; and how much they are likely to shape the world in the future.
It may be subjective, but power is always subjective. And everyone on this list, from celebrities to tech moguls, has it in spades.
At the top of our first annual list is 24-year-old Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel. Although his company has only a few dozen employees, this guy has created an incredibly popular and extremely disruptive social media platform, and the sky's the limit for his company, as seen by its soaring valuation. Spiegel himself is supposedly worth near $2 billion.