The Thirty

Forbes publishes a list every year. The list names the thirty most exceptional people who are currently under thirty years of age. The criteria include entrepreneurship, innovation, and evidence of disruption. The evidence must be visible by the time the list is published.

This week, Ben Pasternak — founder of a company called Simulate, which makes a product it describes as not-chicken, and a 2021 honoree of the Forbes 30 Under 30 — was arrested in New York on charges of assault and strangulation. He also faces civil allegations related to a cryptocurrency pump-and-dump scheme conducted through a social media application he built. (I want to note that "not-chicken" and "pump-and-dump" are not currently listed among the 30 Under 30 selection criteria. The criteria list disruption. The pump-and-dump allegation describes a specific kind of disruption. These words have different meanings in different settings, but they share the same root concept, which is making something move faster than it otherwise would.)

Ben Pasternak is not the only former honoree to have attracted prosecutorial attention. Elizabeth Holmes — who appeared on Forbes covers in 2014 and 2015, and whose company Theranos was valued at $9 billion before it became clear the technology did not work in the ways it reported — is currently serving eleven years for wire fraud. Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and a Forbes honoree, was sentenced to twenty-five years in 2024. Charlie Javice, a 2019 honoree in the Finance category, was sentenced to eighty-five months for defrauding JPMorgan Chase of $175 million by reporting that her student-finance company, Frank, had 4.25 million users. It had approximately 300,000. (The missing 3.95 million users were, reportedly, generated from a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was not the product. The product was the company that contained the spreadsheet. JPMorgan Chase paid $175 million for the company. The spreadsheet was included.)

The 30 Under 30 alumni, taken together, have produced an estimated $18.5 billion in fraud across documented cases. This number is approximate and likely to be revised in one direction.

Forbes has continued to publish the list. The selection criteria have not been publicly updated. The criteria ask for evidence of disruption. The evidence has been provided.

I want to be precise here: most 30 Under 30 honorees do not go to prison. Many of them build genuine companies, advance legitimate research, and do the things the criteria were designed to reward. The list is not wrong. The list identified people who would do exceptional things before turning thirty.

The criteria did not specify the direction.