In 2016, a 22-year-old Filipino named Leandro Leviste stood on stage at the Forbes Under 30 Summit Asia, delivering an "Inspiration and Drive" presentation about his company Solar Philippines. He was young, charismatic, and telling a compelling story about bringing solar power to a nation struggling with high electricity costs. Forbes had just named him to the inaugural 30 Under 30 Asia list, topping the Manufacturing and Energy category. The magazine hailed him as a visionary who had spent $100 million in bank loans and personal savings to build solar farms. He was exactly the kind of world-changing young entrepreneur the list was designed to celebrate.
A decade later, Leviste is now a congressman in the Philippines—and the subject of plunder and graft complaints over what the Ombudsman calls "ghost electricity". Investigators allege that he and his mother, Senator Loren Legarda, conspired to secure exclusive government solar contracts worth billions, only to abandon the projects while pocketing the proceeds. The terminated contracts resulted in more than ₱10.44 billion in unpaid obligations to the government—with the actual damage to the Filipino people estimated in the "hundreds of billions". The Ombudsman put it bluntly: "All indicators point to the fact that they had no intention to fulfill contracts that they had garnered".
Leviste is not an isolated case. He is the latest exhibit in a growing scandal that has come to define the Forbes 30 Under 30 franchise: a "curse" that seems to transform celebrated young entrepreneurs into accused fraudsters with alarming regularity. The list that once promised to identify the next generation of business titans has become, in the words of one observer, a "Forbes-to-Fraud Pipeline". And the damage extends far beyond the reputation of a magazine—it reveals something deeply broken about how we celebrate, fund, and evaluate young entrepreneurs.
A Hall of Shame
Forbes itself has acknowledged the problem. In 2023, the publication unveiled a "Hall of Shame" featuring former winners who have faced serious criminal charges—a list the magazine described as "30 Under 30 picks we wish we could take back". The roll call reads like a who's-who of corporate fraud: Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto king whose $40 billion FTX empire collapsed in fraud; Martin Shkreli, the "Pharma Bro" who hiked HIV drug prices by 4,000% before being sentenced to seven years in prison; Charlie Javice, who sold her startup Frank to JPMorgan for $175 million after allegedly inflating user numbers; Caroline Ellison, who pleaded guilty to fraud in the FTX conspiracy; and Nate Paul, the real estate investor charged with wire fraud.
The latest addition is Gökçe Güven, a 26-year-old fintech founder who made the 2025 list and was almost immediately charged with securities fraud, wire fraud, visa fraud, and aggravated identity theft. Federal prosecutors allege she defrauded investors out of millions by misrepresenting her startup's revenue and client base. US Attorney Jay Clayton's warning could serve as an epitaph for the entire enterprise: "Beware of fraud masquerading as entrepreneurship".
The numbers are staggering. One analysis found that alumni of the 30 Under 30 list have been arrested for frauds and scams worth over $18.5 billion. Tech entrepreneur Chris Bakke calculated the odds: "2% likelihood you become a billionaire, 35% likelihood your company fails, 63% likelihood you end up in white collar prison". Another X user observed, "Someone needs to write about what it says about contemporary capitalism that SO MANY of the Forbes 30 under 30 list are frauds!"
The Hype Machine
What explains this phenomenon? The answer lies not in some supernatural curse but in the perverse incentives that the 30 Under 30 list creates—and the venture capital ecosystem that feeds on it.
The list operates on a simple premise: identify young founders with compelling narratives, celebrate them as world-changers, and watch the funding roll in. But as Dr. Spinder Dhaliwal, a reader in entrepreneurship at Westminster Business School, told The Observer, "Figures are exaggerated in the hope of getting on the list and raising your profile. If success is measured by how compelling a story sounds, rather than the soundness of the business, misrepresentation is inevitable".
This is the core problem. The 30 Under 30 is not a rigorous assessment of business fundamentals—it is a storytelling contest. And in a venture capital ecosystem that increasingly rewards narrative over substance, the incentives to exaggerate, fabricate, and outright lie are overwhelming. Founders know that a Forbes badge can unlock funding, partnerships, and credibility that would otherwise take years to build. So they stretch the truth, inflate their metrics, and present themselves as revolutionaries—because that is what the system demands.
The consequences are not just reputational. When a 22-year-old with a compelling story and a Forbes endorsement secures government contracts worth billions, as Leviste did, the damage can be catastrophic. The Philippines is now left with unbuilt solar projects, higher electricity costs, and a public that has been robbed of billions in potential benefits. The Ombudsman noted that the failure to develop the contracted renewable energy projects "deprived the country of additional power generation capacity and contributed to higher electricity costs ultimately borne by Filipino consumers".
The Age Discrimination Problem
There is another, less discussed dimension to this crisis: age discrimination. The 30 Under 30 list is built on the premise that youth is a proxy for innovation, that being under 30 somehow makes you more capable of changing the world. This is not just nonsense—it is actively harmful.
The list induces companies to elevate young CEOs over more experienced leaders, creating a culture where being under 30 is treated as a credential in itself. This is age discrimination, plain and simple. It tells older workers that their experience is less valuable than a founder's youth. It tells investors that they should back the 22-year-old with a slick pitch over the 45-year-old with decades of industry knowledge. And it tells young entrepreneurs that they need to achieve everything by 30 or risk being written off as failures.
The irony is that many of the most successful entrepreneurs in history built their greatest companies well past 30. But the 30 Under 30 industrial complex has created a distorted timeline that pressures young founders to scale before they are ready, to take shortcuts, and to present themselves as finished products when they are still learning. Soma Pirityi, a 2022 honoree, put it well: "I don't think the issue is the accolade itself; it's that some entrepreneurs believe there's a magic bullet that leads to overnight success".
There is no magic bullet. There is only hard work, experience, and the slow accumulation of wisdom—none of which the 30 Under 30 list particularly values.
The Leviste Case: A Cautionary Tale
Leandro Leviste's trajectory illustrates all of these dynamics perfectly. He founded Solar Philippines in 2013 at age 20, dropped out of Yale, and quickly became the face of renewable energy in the Philippines. Forbes crowned him a visionary. The media celebrated him as a wunderkind. And he used that platform to secure more than 30 exclusive government service contracts, creating what the Ombudsman called a "virtual monopoly of solar energy projects".
But the projects never materialized. The Ombudsman found that many of the contracts were transferred to "affiliated corporations that only exist on paper". The company sold the franchise and made money, but "they didn't actually do the work". If they built anything at all, it was "a mere pittance—far from what they had promised to do".
The allegations against Leviste go beyond mere business failure. He is accused of plunder—a non-bailable offense in the Philippines—and graft, with investigators alleging that his mother used her position as chair of the Senate finance committee to help her son obtain exclusive contracts. The Ombudsman was blunt: "The 21 year-old Leandro could not have obtained the exclusive contracts without the help of her mother".
Leviste and his mother deny the allegations, calling them "utterly false and baseless". But the case is now in the preliminary investigation stage, one step away from formal charges. Regardless of the outcome, the damage is done. A young man who was celebrated as a world-changer now faces the possibility of spending decades in prison. And the Filipino people are left with billions in unpaid obligations and a renewable energy sector that was set back years.
The Need for Reform
The Forbes 30 Under 30 list is not going away. It is too profitable, too embedded in the culture of entrepreneurship, and too useful as a marketing tool for the magazine. But it can change—and it must.
First, Forbes needs to dramatically improve its vetting process. The current system, which seems to rely heavily on nominations and self-reporting, is clearly inadequate. The magazine should conduct independent financial audits of all nominees, verify their claims with third-party sources, and require a track record of actual business performance—not just a compelling story.
Second, the venture capital industry needs to stop treating the 30 Under 30 list as a due diligence shortcut. A Forbes badge is not a substitute for proper financial analysis, background checks, and operational scrutiny. Investors who rely on the list to identify promising founders are not doing their jobs—and they are putting their limited partners' money at risk.
Third, we as a culture need to stop fetishizing youth in business. The obsession with under-30 founders is not just ageist—it is counterproductive. It pressures young entrepreneurs to overpromise and underdeliver, and it ignores the vast pool of talented, experienced founders over 30 who are building sustainable businesses without the hype.
Finally, the entrepreneurs themselves need to resist the temptation to chase the badge at all costs. The 30 Under 30 list is not a measure of success—it is a marketing exercise. Building a real business takes time, and the pressure to achieve by 30 can lead to shortcuts that destroy careers and harm stakeholders. As Pirityi noted, there is no magic bullet.
Conclusion
Leandro Leviste was once introduced at a Forbes summit as a young man who would change the world. Today, he is fighting plunder charges over "ghost electricity" that never materialized. He is not alone. He joins a growing "Hall of Shame" of former 30 Under 30 honorees who swapped their spots on the "rich list" for seats in a courtroom.
The Forbes 30 Under 30 curse is not supernatural—it is systemic. It is the predictable outcome of a system that rewards narrative over substance, youth over experience, and hype over fundamentals. It is a system that tells young founders they need to change the world by 30—and then punishes them when they inevitably fall short.
The solution is not to abandon the list entirely. It is to fundamentally rethink what we celebrate and how we celebrate it. We need to value sustainability over speed, integrity over hype, and experience over youth. We need to stop treating a magazine list as a proxy for business legitimacy. And we need to remember that building something real takes time—and that the most important entrepreneurs are often the ones who are still building long after their 30th birthday.
Until then, the Forbes 30 Under 30 will remain what it has become: not a predictor of success, but a warning sign. As one X user sarcastically put it: "They should make a 30 under 30 where the people are doing legal stuff". It is a joke—but it is also a damning indictment of a system that has lost its way.
Comments
Post a Comment