Role Models

We love the baby boomers -- and we have made it very clear on this blog. However, there is much to be said for the younger generation -- Gen X and Gen Y. If you pick up Monday's (Dec. 18th) issue of Red Herring you'll understand why.

The cover story is about 25 young men and women who are CEOs and Founders of their own companies -- and all of them are under 35 years old! The companies are all in different fields--- but they have one things in common--- they would not exist had it not been for today's technology (and of course, these companies are helping to expand the capabilities of this technology).

Take for instance a 19 year old female Stanford student who decided to dropout to start Theranos, a company whose "system includes a handheld device that monitors a patient's blood wirelessly and works by measuring tiny amounts of blood through a biochip to determine if an adverse drug reaction is occurring. " The data is sent electronically to the company's web site (where patients can check the results) and to the physician's PDA.

The great aspect of this… she's only 22 now, leads more than 100 employees, and has obtained over $16M in financing.

Bottom line: Role models come in all ages and all generations.