By Alexandra York, Leonard Schoenberger and Dean Sterling Jones
Some 300 million startups are created every year. With a constant wave of new competition flooding shelves—and social media—understanding your consumers’ needs and habits has never been more crucial.
Charlie Butler, 27, and Ronàn Dowling-Cullen, 28, are the cofounders of Bounce Insights, an AI-powered platform that helps companies get the scoop on their customers—whether that’s 500 tequila drinkers in Germany or 100 software engineers in Mexico. They ask questions ranging from consumer pain points and purchasing patterns to which of two packaging options shoppers liked better. All the data helps their clients design and sell their products.
Sebastian Nevols for Forbes
“Market research at its core is just a greater understanding of the consumer,” said Butler. “So the same way that you try to predict an election with a statistically significant sample size, we bring that kind of research to brands.”
But while market research is no new concept, the speed at which Bounce Insights moves is—and that’s thanks to AI. While it typically takes market research firms four to eight weeks to gather necessary feedback, Bounce Insights can do it in 24 to 48 hours, they said. They use a proprietary AI and software platform to find communities of respondents (which goes beyond just gender, age, and income demographics), generate relevant questions, and turn that data into answers for their clients.
“Speed is almost like the Trojan horse. Speed gets us in the door with brands,” Butler said. But what keeps customers coming back is the quality of insight Bounce provides: “That’s not just the quality of the consumers who are giving their opinion, it’s actually the understanding of the original problem, and then tying that to the insight at the end.”
They have 100 million survey respondents across the western world and $6.5 million in funding to fuel the process. And along with Tesco and Diageo, clients now include Coca-Cola, Mondelez, and Marks & Spencer, just to name a few.
Bounce Insights is just one company on the 2025 Media & Marketing list that’s using new technologies to change the legacy industries. All of the finalists, which range from founders, authors, creators, journalists, and more, must have been 29 or younger as of April 8, 2025, and never before named to a Europe, North America or Asia 30 Under 30 list.
To select the 2025 honorees, Forbes collected nominations from Under 30 alumni and the public, conducted our own research and tapped the expertise of independent judges: Author and Under 30 alum, Reni Eddo-Lodge; Spotify’s Head of Podcast for Central Europe, Saruul Krause-Jentsch; Chief Brand Officer at Ganni, Priya Matadeen; and Head of Global VIP, Media Relations, and Influence at LVMH’s Moynat and Under 30 alum, Aydha Mehnaz. Of those named to the final list, 26% identify as people of color, 54% are women or non-binary folks, and 87% are founders or building their own brands.
Much of this year’s class is redefining how brands connect with audiences. Take Britt Messing, 27, and Tess Scholten, 27, who run For You Agency. Launched in 2020, their platform is a Netherlands-based leader in Gen Z marketing, particularly through TikTok where they educate the market about emerging digital trends. And Phoebe Cleary Rudd, 29, has grown online hospitality magazine The Sauce to 600,000 monthly readers and is expanding into Club Sauce, an influencer marketing platform.
But while the digital ecosystem is growing rapidly, books also show up in a big way on this year’s list. At the forefront is Jack Edwards, 26, the “internet’s resident librarian.” The Gen Z tastemaker counts more than 3 million YouTube followers across YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. Plus, he helped judge the TikTok Book Awards, where Talia Hibbert, 29, (a novelist on this year’s list) took home the “BookTok Breakthrough Author” prize. Now a New York Times bestseller, Hibbert’s work has been optioned for TV and film, and her upcoming fantasy-romance The Last Thorn sparked a 15-publisher bidding war before landing a mid-six-figure deal.
“Romantasy is blowing up because political and social upheaval gives vulnerable people—people like my readers—more to fear,” Hibbert tells Forbes. “Women need an escape, and I’m here to provide it.”
Meanwhile, Tam Kaur, 24, has taken a modern approach to building her media brand. Since growing on social media, she’s turned her 71 million YouTube views into written self-help guides and a six-figure journal business.
“The second I realised that your thoughts hold the power to create your reality, my life changed,” Kaur told Forbes. “There is no such thing as a realistic or normal standard to follow. You create the standard.”
This year’s list was edited by Alexandra York, Dean Sterling Jones and Leo Schoenberger. For a link to our complete 2025 Under 30 Europe Media & Marketing list, click here, and for full 2025 30 Under 30 Europe coverage, click here.
