With each passing year, social media and digital marketing have grown to encompass a larger share of the advertising market. Today it is easier than ever to access the internet, with an ever-increasing consumer base that uses it regularly. Some have claimed this has made breaking into business harder than ever, with the sheer quantity of entrepreneurs and online-only business owners. Certain entrepreneurs have separated themselves from the pack, representing the best in their respective businesses even amid fierce competition. These 15 represent the top entrepreneurs of 2020, making use of every resource possible to turn a profit in the digital age. They make their mark on fields as diverse as education, fashion, athletic equipment, virtual reality, social media management, music, e-commerce, and more. So who are they?
1—Anthony Shnayderman
Date of Birth: July 27, 1986
Social Media:
Instagram — @anthonydocnyc, @maceyapp, @themiaexperience, @aimhospitalitygroup, @notorietygroup
Anthony Shnayderman is an event organization and promotion entrepreneur. A New York native, Anthony attended college at SUNY Albany where he earned his Bachelor’s degree in Rhetoric and Communications. Throughout college he did promotional work, and upon graduating realized his degree was hardly as valuable to him as his experience in the promotional field. Rather than taking the easy route and accepting a low-pay starting job, he decided to take it upon himself to create many of the niche services that were missing from the promotional market and become an entrepreneur. Since then Anthony has become one of the largest high-end concierges, handling all entertainment needs from a night out to planning a whole vacation to even managing recurring events on a weekly basis. Always looking ahead, Anthony is now looking to revolutionize the luxury rental market for villas, yachts, and exotic cars. Due to a lack of control or set pricing, renting a luxury item can be an arduous and frustrating task. Through his app Macey (currently available on the app store), Anthony has fundamentally changed the broker-driven business of luxury rentals by ensuring consistent pricing, cutting out the middle men through direct owner-to-client rentals, and centralizing rental options in one coherent place.
2—Moe Ghani
Date of Birth: January 2, 1996
Social Media:
Instagram @beastpreneur, Facebook — @beastpreneur, LinkedIn — moeghani
Moe Ghani is a financial executive and technology entrepreneur. In 2016 while studying pre-med in college, Moe recognized the need for a radical change in the financial industry that would fundamentally change the way investments were made and managed. It was then that he decided to drop out and focus full-time on Affinity Beyond Capital, a venture capital firm that operates faster and more efficiently than almost any other business loan provider. His high school experience as a professional eSports player (during which he played for one of the top teams in all of North America) honed his competitive drive, and he uses it to continue growing his firm in the finance industry. A technology expert, Moe applies his skills in developing a novel syndication platform that gives investors, clients and representatives exclusive access to their investments while maximizing their potential to yield a high return. He and his firm are also developing a broker platform that focuses on the actual sale as opposed to converting cold data (allowing brokers to focus on their clients and individualized needs), incorporating blockchain technology into the alternative finance industry (giving increased security and productivity for both partnered lenders and clients), and developing marketing programs for his clients that will be more cost efficient and hands-on than other business development programs.
3—Brandon Mimms
Date of Birth: September 11, 1993
Social Media: Instagram — @brandonmimms, @USA, @NiagaraFalls, @SantaClaus
Brandon Mimms is a social media management and digital marketing entrepreneur. 9 years ago, Brandon was experimenting with Twitter when he began to recognize patterns in its content promotion algorithm. Soon he became proficient in getting his content to go viral, quickly growing his page to over 500,000 followers. As his page became bigger, he earned more advertising opportunities, built his network, and built a business around social media marketing. Brandon quickly became known as the go-to guy who could scale social media pages. After 4 years of success, Brandon transitioned to using Instagram, becoming an equally recognizable name on the platform for his ability to grow pages.
Today he has built his network into over 6 million total followers across 20 highly sought-after pages on multiple platforms. He owns pages like @USA, @SantaClaus, @NiagaraFalls and many more. Brandons pages have become cash cows, generating consistent daily revenues, part of which he reinvests into growing his business. Brandon has partnered with transnational firms including: PUBG, Runescape, and E11Gaming, he has also built and sold over 20 other pages to various college football teams across North America. As a Niagara Falls, Ontario native, Brandon hopes to build on his success and start a digital marketing agency in the region while continuing to expand his social media presence on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat.
4—Max Solman
Date of Birth: February 4, 2000
Social Media:
Instagram — @Max.Solman, @GrownToons Linkedin — Max Solman
Max Solman is a well-decorated social media entrepreneur, leading the innovative youth and capitalizing on opportunities on all frontiers. At the age of 13, Max began doing graphic design work for athletes and posted his artwork on the Instagram page @moderngraffix. As he started to build a following, Max discovered the world of social media influencing and marketing. Max quickly grew several Instagram and Snapchat pages which revolved around comedy and sports. At the same time he developed several mobile apps which he marketed through Vine influencers, amassing over 15,000 downloads on one such game called Don’t Fall Ball. Max became adept at growing and selling social media accounts, selling over 10 themed Snapchat pages. Some notable successes of his include selling @sportshouse and @sportsculture, as well as selling @comedyplug and @comedyavenue to other influencers while the pages were getting over 200,000 story views daily. In 2014, Max sold the Instagram account @sportsviness with 400,000 followers. He currently runs @growntoons on Instagram, as well as running a seasonal e-commerce store (@Lovershop.co) and running accounts for various media, sports, and culture companies. Max plans to continue growing his accounts while pursuing his passion of working in sports all while pursuing a degree in Business from the University of Texas at Austin.
5—Adam Nessim
Date of Birth: April 29, 1995
Social Media:
Instagram — @adam_nessim
Adam Nessim is a medical mentorship entrepreneur and current medical school student. After graduating from Cornell University and enrolling in the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Adam recognized the lack of accurate, relevant advising for pre-med students. The industry standard is a 2-month MCAT program, which is all the help most students ever get on their path to medical school. Adam founded his company to provide advising and mentorship throughout students’ entire journey, with the goal being to work with students as early as possible to help transform their careers and give them the best chance for success as a medical school applicant. Pre-med advisors at undergraduate institutions are notorious for giving bad advice to students or flat-out telling them they can’t make it to medical school. Some of Adam’s biggest success stories include helping students who thought they had no chance of getting into medical school actually achieve that dream. Through his methods, C students have become A students in a matter of months. Adam is confident that if a student is coachable, patient, and willing to put in the work to achieve their goals, they can achieve almost any goal. Adam’s willingness to learn from others is what he attributes his success to, and encourages all entrepreneurs to follow suit.
6—Matt Shumer
Date of Birth: January 2, 2000
Social Media:
Twitter — @mattshumer, LinkedIn — @mattshumer , Email: matt@visosvr.com
Matt Shumer is a 20-year-old technology entrepreneur, currently working in the virtual reality industry. Shumer started his first business -an online sneaker store- at just 12 years old. He then expanded into the software space, providing software to help sneaker sellers procure inventory, and eventually started a marketplace to allow sneaker buyers and sellers to transact. This marketplace grew exponentially and at its height, had a following of tens of thousands of people.
At age 15, Shumer began his next venture. Recognizing that tennis racquets were grossly overpriced by manufacturers, leaving many potential consumers unable to afford to play tennis, Shumer went to work designing a racquet that could be produced for minimal cost while providing top-tier, pro-level quality. Since then, the business has grown significantly, with a full-time team in place in New York City.
By his senior year of high school, Shumer founded Visos, a company specializing in designing virtual reality headsets and software. Visos is building technological systems that allow hospitals and other healthcare facilities to quickly and easily adopt VR-based medical treatments, enabling millions of people around the world to access this groundbreaking form of medical care. In just two years, Shumer and Visos have established partnerships with some of the largest companies in the world, and put together a world-class team and advisory board comprised of healthcare veterans and virtual reality pioneers. Last summer, Shumer was featured in Newsweek Magazine, and in January, he was invited to speak on-stage about medical VR at CES 2020, making him one of the youngest people in history to do so.
7—Apollo Fresh & 18 GHOST
Date of Birth: June 16, 1997 (Both)
Social Media:
Apollo Fresh: Instagram — @apollo_fresh, TikTok — @apollofresh
18 GHOST: Instagram — @18ghost.beats
Apollo Fresh is a rap artist and songwriter while 18 GHOST is a music producer. Together the two apply their business skill to promoting their music careers, and collaborate to release chart-topping hits. Both attended FGCU where they studied Entrepreneurship while making music. Apollo Fresh began his career with his first rap song in the Summer of 2013, while 18 GHOST began producing in 2017. While most rap music became a mix of the same sounds, they value individuality and became inspired to form their own unique style and leave their mark on the music scene. Apollo Fresh’s single JoJo Pose received widespread acclaim, reaching over 2 billion views on TikTok and 7 million streams on Spotify. With Apollo Fresh’s songwriting & performing and 18 GHOST’s producing & beatmaking, their sound is unlike any other group in rap today, and their album 2020 Vision epitomizes this. The album showcases their unique style of music with Apollo Fresh’s unique from-the-heart rap and 18 GHOST’s refreshing new beats that are unlike anything else out there. 2020 Vision serves as a building block for what 18 GHOST wants to do with music in the future, eventually creating an entire subgenre of rap in his unique way. Meanwhile, Apollo Fresh continues to work on new heartfelt music and expanding his audience so more can experience it.
8—Makis Savvidis
Date of Birth: September 9, 2005
Social Media:
Instagram — @makissv
Makis Savvidis is a social media and digital marketing entrepreneur. Makis got his start in the web retail and digital marketing business by selling products online. While he had a great storefront and quality products, he found it hard to reach a broader audience and effectively market them. To help with this, he began learning social media management, starting a few Instagram profiles and slowly working to grow them. His pages blew up, earning him 10,000 new followers each day. Though he had started by using social media to sell products, he realized that growing social media pages was an even more profitable endeavor. Makis now focuses on growing social media pages and selling them off, while offering promos to companies looking to advertise to his audience. He is best known for his ability to grow pages over 500,000 followers in just two months, many of which are still growing today. Makis advises young entrepreneurs that working hard is the only way to be successful, and to always respect yourself along the way. He hopes to continue making good use of his talent to reach a bigger following and offer his services to big companies.
9—Ahmad Harb
Date of Birth: October 5, 1998
Social Media:
Instagram — @itsahmadharb
Ahmad Harb is a social media marketing consultant and entrepreneur. Like many great entrepreneurs, Ahmad got his start with two things he loved: basketball and sneakers. From just 12 years old Ahmad began making YouTube videos on the topic, and quickly became noticed by some of the biggest brands in the business. This pushed him to grow his channel and start other social media accounts, using his connections and experience to build a following. Shortly thereafter he learned to make money from these, attracting brand deals while also marketing his own products. After over 10 years of mastering social media marketing and working with media companies, Ahmad founded his own marketing agency that specializes in consulting medical professionals and business owners on how to bring more patients into their practices using social media marketing and other forms of modern advertising. Building off Ahmad’s immense skill and experience, his agency has quickly risen to prominence in the digital marketing industry. Alongside this, Ahmad manages a sneaker, basketball, and fashion platform on Instagram with over 1.2 million followers (@kicks) and is working to launch a revolutionary new sneaker resale platform.
10—Mike Kanevsky
Social Media:
Instagram — @MikeKanevsky, @PluggedUniversity
Mike Kanevsky is an event promotion and marketing entrepreneur. After graduating from Pennsylvania State University with a degree in Finance & Business Law, Mike had no shortage of job prospects, eventually taking a very respectable position at Merrill Lynch. On the side he began promoting nightclubs, slowly growing it into a larger business where he would run marketing for nightclubs and bars in addition to organizing his own events and concerts. As Mike became more skilled and gained more connections, he realized the potential for the business, and began devoting himself to it even more. Now, Mike serves as a partner at AIM Hospitality Group, which does $5 million in revenue yearly running events in NYC, Hamptons and Miami. Leveraging his years of experience and talent Mike also launched Plugged University, the largest college events company (including spring break events) which serves as an opportunity for brands and companies to have access to college students across the country and market to them directly through events and brand ambassadors. Mike encourages anyone interested to DM @PluggedUniversity to become a college brand ambassador, offering real world marketing, event planning, and brand PR experience. Mike always implores young entrepreneurs to do what they love, as then they’ll never work a day in their lives.
11—Klein Linton
Date of Birth: July 31, 2001
Social Media:
Instagram — @dizzy
Klein Linton is a social media management, digital marketing, and e-commerce entrepreneur. At the age of 14, Klein dedicated himself to studying the Instagram content algorithm, mastering it through trial and error. After months of practice Klein became among the best in the business, growing accounts from scratch to over 100,000 followers before selling them. In just under 2 years, Klein grew an account to over 2 million followers and used his newfound influence to enter even more competitive fields. He became known for developing complex face-filters for popular Instagram influencers, including Logan Paul and Caylus. As an influencer-marketing specialist, Klein manages everything from Instagram posts to YouTuber brand merchandising, and is among today’s most successful social media marketers. Klein also works on viral marketing campaigns while running 2 Shopify stores and managing Facebook ads for them. He maintains that the secret to success in business is finding something that nobody else wants to do, figuring out how to do it really well, and offering to do it for people who are already successful. There is no doubt that among Instagram influencers, none do it better than Klein Linton.
12—Sam Lister
Date of Birth: October 3, 1999
Social Media:
Instagram — @samxlister, TikTok — samxlister, LinkedIn — samxlister
Sam Lister is a video production agency entrepreneur. Since his senior year of high school, Sam knew he wanted to pursue business— he just wasn’t sure which of his many talents to turn into his full-time job. Sam started making videos in his senior year of highschool, documenting his story which then led into him starting BLNK Slate Media, a content agency specializing in high level personal brands creating content for platforms like Instagram, Tiktok and LinkedIn. Through his extensive social media experience, Sam and his agency quickly rose to prominence, landing deals with local businesses all over Wisconsin. The content space is filled with so many directors and agencies that it can seem hard to get started. Sam always ensures that all one needs is to set bigger goals and don’t listen to anyone trying to put you in a box. By viewing the world as a blank slate, Sam and his business partner Tyler Wrightsman (the man behind the scenes whom he credits with much of his success) have taken over the video content market and made a name for themselves when few people could have imagined him doing so only a few years ago.
13—Sammy Cavallaro
Date of Birth: August 18, 2000
Social Media:
Instagram — @sammycavallaro, @sickhighlights, @sickmediaagency, @thesickpodcasts, @sickattireofficial
Sammy Cavallaro is a social media management and brand marketing specialist. He was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy at 9 months old, which is a rare genetic disorder that weakens muscles due to the loss of motor neurons. He was told he would not live past his second birthday. He is now 19 and is striving to create an empire. Since 2013 Sammy has had a love for sports, and began posting sports content to Instagram as a way of sharing his favorite moments from games. Seven years later, Sick Highlights has grown to over 2.2 million followers, and expanded further and faster than almost any of its rivals. While he could have relaxed and relied on its profits once the account began earning traction, Sammy took it even further. Applying the knowledge he gained by growing the account, Sammy founded Sick Attire— a clothing line based on the Sick brand he pioneered. Leveraging the millions who follow his highlights page, he created Sick Media Agency, an influencer marketing firm with a combined network of over 1 billion followers. He also started The Sick Podcast, a podcast focusing on sports news and events. Through his love for sports and ambitious vision, Sammy has continued to push the envelope by building upon his previous successes and never settling for what he already has. He maintains that staying positive and believing in oneself is the key to success, and his record of business successes are a testament to that.
14—Jeffrey Radimiri (AKA Jeffrey Gold)
Date of Birth: September 14, 1991
Social Media:
Instagram — @jeffreygoldvine, @smashcakesmtl, @montreal_only, @no.idea.comedy, @toronto_only
Jeffrey Radimiri (better known by his handle Jeffrey Gold) is a social media entertainer turned media company executive and the founder of a highly successful cake venture. Jeffrey began his career on Vine in 2013, making comedy videos and attracting an immense following. It was there that he learned the power of e-commerce, making upwards of $2500 per post in brand deals. When Vine shut down, he pivoted to Instagram and reinvested his earnings to found Only Media, a company that manages a collective of Instagram pages for over 20 cities. Beginning with his hometown with the page Montreal Only, Jeffrey quickly rebuilt and far surpassed his audience on Vine. Though he assures his followers this is only the beginning, Jeffrey has already built an impressive media portfolio including branching out into the dessert market. Using his skills in creating and promoting a brand, Jeffrey has grown Smash Cakes MTL into one of the premier dessert companies in Montreal, supplying customers some even being celebrities with a unique chocolate cake that smashes open to reveal candy inside. After only six months in the business, Jeffrey has already made contract deals with major hotels, restaurants, and nightclubs all over the city. He manages all of his accounts and businesses while continuing to write and film comedic content for his YouTube channel No Idea.
15—Brandon Levy
Date of Birth: June 27, 2001
Social Media:
Instagram — @humanjusticeproject, @brandon_levy33, LinkedIn — Brandon Levy
Brandon Levy is a social activism and social media entrepreneur. Growing up, Brandon’s family always stressed business acumen is a critical life skill. Their dinner conversations would consist of conversations regarding the stock market and economy, pulling him into the business world and helping him hone his business knowledge. Brandon began branching out into the study of finance and the stock market, quickly becoming an expert in both. However it was shortly after this that he found his true calling: social activism. Applying his business and finance skill, Brandon founded the Human Justice Project, an organization that conducts interviews in the hope of cultivating youth to encourage reform and to fight apathy. The organization highlights the usefulness and reach of social media to spread its platform goals, publishing podcasts which host many influencers and influential names in an attempt to spread word to common folk and help educate them against social inaction. Brandon is motivated by his motto that we are all humans, no matter our sex, race, religion, creed, sexual orientation, or occupation. He maintains that with enough effort, we can make the world a better place, one step at a time. Brandon hopes to create positive social change by having people sign petitions, donate, vote, or simply spread the word through social media to raise awareness.
