Speculation about a potential recession has plagued much of 2022, and is now seen as all but inevitable in 2023. However, there is still a lot of expansion and growth that will happen this year. In fact, entrepreneurs know that a recession is the perfect time to focus on growth. While it may be tempting to batten down the hatches and wait for the storm to pass, this is the time when successful entrepreneurs can really set themselves apart from their competition by taking risks, learning new things and expanding their horizons.
The USA Reporter is pleased to announce The Top 30 Entrepreneurs to follow in 2023. These individuals are driving economic growth across the country. They stimulate new employment opportunities in nearly every industry. They are helping people develop their full potential.
Some of the greatest entrepreneurs created companies that today are household names across the world and remain some of the most influential entrepreneurs of all time, but with the advancement of technology and with the ever-changing world, this list is evolving.
Many of this year’s top entrepreneurs are also drivers of social change, economic growth, community development and income generation for individuals across the world. It is our honor to recognize such an accomplished group of innovative and devoted entrepreneurs. Please join us in celebrating the achievements of The Top 30 Entrepreneurs To Follow in 2023.
Chris Groves
Instagram: ceogrovescapital
Christoffer Groves is a successful serial entrepreneur, who is leading the way in the lending industry. He is also a motivational speaker, his tour is called The 110% Movement helping others achieve their goals through a successful road map and a positive mindset. Always having a passion for entrepreneurship, even starting businesses from the young age of 16, it’s no surprise that Chris started his own business and a successful one. After working as a real estate agent, appraiser, and broker he learned the ins and outs of the industry. There were aspects he didn’t like, but he took the liberty upon himself to make a solution. This is when he and his wife started Groves Capital Inc., a family owned mortgage company, with the lowest rates in the industry. His greatest accomplishments have been growing from 2 people to 575 over 5 billion in loan production in less than 3 years on his own, creating a family feel where everyone works together to help others become successful, and much more. This year Chris plans to provide the best platform he can for each of his partners to help them grow and thrive, all while keeping his company standards to 5 stars.
In 2023 he added commercial lending to all 50 states’ platforms partnering with private billion dollar funds and launched a new solar division in 27 states in the changing markets he has pivoted to capture the market’s attention. Chris has changed the lending model through software Innovation and system developments that are new age at every level.
Grant Cardone
Instagram: @grantcardone
Grant Cardone is the bestselling author of The 10X Rule and has been buying real estate for over 30 years. Over those three decades, he has bought over two billion dollars worth of real estate in eight states. Grant currently manages 7,068 units with his private equity firm Cardone Capital. He is such a good real estate investor because of his extreme discipline, specific formulas, and good instinct to know when to exit the property. Throughout his career, Grant has been giving small investors a chance to start small and go big.
Adam Jablin
Instagram: @adamjablin
Adam Jablin is a bestselling author, certified recovery mentor, life coach and keynote speaker who has recently been featured on ESPN, Fox, CNBC, TNT, BET, CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS News. Adam’s mission and purpose is to break people free —to ignite their hero within. That is why he created THE HERO PROJECT, a high-level coaching program that has helped thousands of people break free from addictions, faulty dependencies, fears, doubt, and anxiety. Adam’s work focuses on empowering individuals to take control of their lives, cultivate a positive mindset, and take action towards achieving their goals. Through a range of strategies and techniques, he helps individuals develop the tools and resources they need to succeed in all areas of life. But Adam not only created the transformative program, he also went through his own fight with alcoholism and addictions – and has been clean and sober since 2006. Incorporating his life experience into THE HERO PROJECT, Adam is working with celebrities, professional athletes, influencers, entrepreneurs, entertainers and politicians to wake up and recover who they really are. This year, Adam is preparing for the first HERO EVENT to take place in Miami on June 2 and 3, which will focus on mind, body, spirit, emotions and finances. He is also working on a new book with his mentor and spiritual father— Rock n Roll Hall of Fame legend Dion DiMucci. Also he is preparing to launch The Hero Project Podcast and The Angel and The Addict Podcast with his girlfriend, Emily— The Angel Coach. This last year Adam spoke with Los Angeles Lakers, LA Rams and is honing his craft under the teachings and guidance of the one and only Tony Robbins!
Brandon Ivan
Instagram:@soybrandonivan
Brandon Ivan Peña is an incredible Entrepreneur, Business Consultant and motivational speaker. He believes that work and dedication is the tool to motivation.
Now, Brandon is a well known and influential Business consultant, Founder of 787 Coffee, Hacienda Iluminada and a spanish motivational brand called ‘brandON’. Some of his greatest accomplishments include being one of the first latinos to be invited to a Facebook Conference and to be named a Facebook Star’ , he is growing one of the world’s fastest growing coffees companies, attending and speaking in some of the best conferences in the world:Digital Shanghai, Social Media Week, SXSW, and VIP Mastermind.
Brandon always knew he wanted to be a business owner, being able to build his own business, hear customers feedback, and be innovative. In 2023, Brandon wants to continue to impact customers, and switch over his coffee production into the United States. He also wants to keep his purpose the same, focusing on the wellbeing of his team. He knows that if his farmers, baristas, crews, editors, and office staff are well, his customers will be welcomed and appreciated.
787 Coffee has 30 coffee shops in NYC, Puerto Rico and now in New Jersey. In addition, they just opened The Lab by 787 Coffee, where people can enjoy single origin specialty coffees and unique brewing methods, a new coffee roaster in New Jersey and 2 WORK it spaces, which are creative work spaces designed around coffee for humans looking to get work done outside of their home.
The company was named one of the fastest growing companies by the Financial Times and Inc. Magazine. Brandon is also one of Forbes Top 100 most successful Entrepreneurs.
Aldo Lopez
Instagram: @aldolopezt
Aldo Lopez is a successful businessman born in Panama of Galician origin, who is dedicated to traditional businesses and has over 15 years of experience in the Multilevel Industry. In 2021 he decided to found BNEFIT GLOBAL CORP, which has the slogan “People Helping People”, and with the promise of being the First Multi-Company of the Multilevel. The company has now 3 Independent Business Verticals and aspires to end with 6 Verticals becoming the First Multi-Company, Education, Investments, Travel, Health, Artificial Intelligence and a high-consumption surprise. Without a doubt, Aldo consolidates as one of the CEOs to watch in 2023.
Paul Carassone
Instagram: @the_propertyboss
Paul Carassone is a real estate investor and property manager who is known as The Property Boss. He is also a court appointed property manager and fiduciary who mentors people on how to make money and keep it through real estate investing and property management. In the last decades, Paul has grown the Carassone Property Management company in the Tri-State area of the United States, serving clients in New Jersey, Connecticut and New York.
Albert Shakhnazarov
Instagram: @younghustlervx3
Albert Shakhnazarov is the creator and CEO of Axe Elite, a company that is empowering people to create a culture where limitations are non-existent. His mission is to build a powerful and elite sales organization where 1,000 people are making a minimum of 100,000 thousand dollars.
Albert was born in the refugee camp located in Moscow Russia. Due to unfortunate circumstances in the country, his family fled political persecution in Azerbaijan and found themselves living in refugee camps, motels, and other difficult living conditions.
After years of suffering and abuse Albert’s family got an opportunity of sponsorship by the Catholic Church to come to the United States of America. Once here, everywhere he worked he got paid the same as others even though he worked the hardest.
That is why he decided to start Axe Elite with four of his inner circle members inside an attic in Hartford, Connecticut. Today, Axe Elite has dozens of agents and fully renovated headquarters, and is ranked as one of the top producing companies for big whale multi-billion-dollar telecommunication companies.
Manuel Molinos
Instagram: @realtormanuelmolinos
Manuel Molinos is a real estate agent who is committed to helping and serving clients with the utmost care and consideration in their buying, selling and investing needs. Manuel was born in Venezuela and studied at Saint Leo University, where he obtained a degree in Business Administration with a specialization in Marketing and Management. Today, he is known for his work as a realtor helping home sellers and buyers in Ocala, The Villages, Summerfield, Belleview and Dunnellon.
Sheree Wright
Instagram:@shereedevona
Sheree Wright is the founder of IBF Law Group, a professional and passionate firm of immigration lawyers. She graduated from DePaul University in 2013 with a B.A. in Political Science. Practice areas in which Sheree excels include immigration, business strategies, family law, employment law, sports law, and entertainment law. Her previous experience includes working as an investigator at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in downtown Chicago. At that time she investigated cases involving employment discrimination on the basis of age, race, sex, gender, or disability in Fortune 500 companies.
Elena Cardone
Instagram: @elenacardone
Bestselling author of the book “Build An Empire” and in-demand speaker, Elena has traveled the globe sharing her insight and experiences building an empire with her husband Grant Cardone whilst creating an extraordinary life for her family.
Tim Hwang
Instagram: @timhwang_official
Tim Hwang began his professional career over 13 years ago. Today, he is the Founder and CEO of FiscalNote. FiscalNote is a privately-held company that uses artificial intelligence and big data to deliver immediate predictive analytics of governmental action to pinpoint impact. FiscalNote’s flagship platform provides real-time legislative predictive capabilities as well as enterprise collaboration and visualization tools for data on campaign finance, demographics, news, and open data to government relations professionals to help them make faster decisions.
Colin Walsh
Colin Walsh is the Founder and CEO of Varo Bank. He founded the company in 2015. Walsh is a fintech visionary, who saw the opportunity for new technology and a better business model to transform banking and boost financial inclusion for millions of consumers. He designed the company from the ground up to put innovation, impact and trust at the core. Walsh intentionally integrated Varo’s social impact mission and customer-first ethos throughout the company. This embedded culture is what drives the Varo team to design, build and launch innovative financial products that address key pain points around the modern banking experience. Products like Varo Advance, a line of credit that provides customers a short term, small dollar advance within seconds – right from the Varo App; and Varo Believe, a credit building credit card that’s designed to build or repair credit safely without the risk of runaway debt. With Walsh’s trailblazing leadership, Varo became the first consumer fintech to obtain its own banking charter in 2020.
Dan Rodrigues
Dan Rodrigues is the Co-Founder and CEO of Tebra, a digital healthcare technology company formed in 2021 with the merger of Kareo and PatientPop. Tebra combines leading technologies from both companies to deliver an all-in-one, cloud-based software platform purpose-built to drive the success of independent practices and modernize every step of the patient journey. Throughout his career, Rodrigues has consistently demonstrated this unique ability to recognize significant gaps in important markets and create technology products to fill them. He founded Kareo in 2004 to address the specific requirements and demands faced by the independent practices – improving operations efficiency and effectiveness, profitability and revenue collection, and enhancing patient care.
Candice Lu
Candice has worked in the media and entertainment industry for nearly 20 years, 15 of which have been dedicated to management and IT consulting. She most recently led a strategy and operations consulting practice, focusing on building effective processes and organizations across Media & Entertainment. She is extremely passionate about surrounding herself with creative, intelligent, and sarcastic people, her husband and two children included. She has a B.A. in Economics from UCLA, and an MBA from USC in Strategy and Entertainment.
Joanna Riley
Instagram: @joanna.riley
Joanna Riley the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Censia. Censia’s mission is to create a more just and efficient global economy, liberating the global talent pool from unconscious bias and privilege by enabling data-driven talent decisions. Their AI-powered talent intelligence technology allows companies to instantly find, evaluate, and hire passive talent. Their solution can be used directly in the cloud and can be quickly integrated into most applicant tracking systems. Riley is a seasoned tech entrepreneur, thought leader on the future of work, and a strong supporter of women in technology and female-led startups. Her mission at Censia is to unlock the full potential of the global workforce by giving companies access to sophisticated and ethical system intelligence and the most comprehensive and actionable people data available.
Todd Marks
Instagram: @toddamarks
Todd Marks is the Founder, President and CEO of Mindgrub Technologies. Mindgrub, a member of the Inc. 5000 for eight years running, is a technical agency and creative consultancy that specializes in award-winning mobile, web, and marketing solutions. Marks founded Mindgrub in 2002 and has since overseen projects for clients such as Exelon, Wendy’s, DELL, Under Armour, Yamaha, Crayola, Geico, The Economist, University of Maryland, and NASA.
Chris Winfield
Instagram: @chriswinfield
Known worldwide as the “Super Connector”, Chris has built his brand on teaching thousands of people how to build genuine relationships. He’s used this principle to sell a company for $1.7 billion and become editor at Thrive Global.
Trevor Houston
Instagram: @trevorhouston77
Trevor Houston is CEO of ClearPath Wealth Strategies. He specializes in handling 401k rollovers, as well as, helping job seekers get noticed to create opportunities & regain their main source of income. Trevor Houston has built his legacy on helping hungry job-seekers make successful career transitions through intentional financial planning and strategic visibility.
Dan Fleyshman
Instagram: @danfleyshman
As the youngest ever founder of a publicly-traded company, Dan Fleyshman has been navigating the waters of entrepreneurship since the age of 23. Selling more than 15 million dollars worth of clothing to department store chains across the nation, Mr. Fleyshman has parlayed his success into the “Who’s Your Daddy” energy drink, landing in 55,000 retail stores.
Now an avid angel investor with a financial stake in more than 36 companies, Fleyshman can be found on the cutting edge of innovation and boundary-breaking efforts. Fleyshman has contributed to many industries throughout his career, including helping to launch one of the top 5 online poker sites on the planet. A diverse approach to investing and a nose for opportunity has turned Fleyshman into one of the most prominent young angel investors in the tech and mobile arenas.
Naveen Jain
Instagram: @naveenjainceo
Naveen Jain is an intensely curious entrepreneur focused on audacious ideas that will push humanity forward. He is the author of the award-winning book “Moonshots: Creating a World of Abundance.” His current moonshot adventures are Viome and Moon Express. A serial entrepreneur, he previously founded InfoSpace, Intelius and TalentWise.
Viome’s singular mission is to “make illness optional.” Viome has built an AI-driven platform that analyzes the interaction between food, our microbiome and our human cells in order to develop precision nutrition to prevent and reverse chronic diseases.
Rob Moore
Instagram: @robmooreprogressive
At the age of 25, Rob Moore was buried under more than $66k in consumer debt. But within five years, Moore would pull himself free from debt while becoming a self-made multi-millionaire.
Moore has staked his claim to fame and financial prosperity through the founding of Progressive Property and Progressive Success. Now a leading investment and education training company, Progressive empowers investors and entrepreneurs through innovative training in one of the largest and fastest-growing spaces in the United Kingdom.
Understanding that diversity is the spice of life and key to entrepreneurial success, Moore has spent the past 15 years blending entertainment, education and investment. Moore is a 2x world record holder for public speaking, author of 18 books, including “Money,” and host of the business podcast “Disruptive Entrepreneur.”
Richard Branson
Instagram: @richardbranson
Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (popularly known as Richard Branson) is best known as the founder of Virgin Group which comprises more than 400 companies worldwide. He is also the first and only person to cross the Atlantic in the largest hot air balloon. He, later on, broke his own record by crossing the Pacific in a Virgin hot air balloon. Richard Branson enjoys his work and he parties hard. Believe it or not, he owns 2 private islands. He rents out one of them, and the other island, which is known as nectar island, is where he parties along with celebrities including Mariah Carey, Kate Winslet, Oprah, David Beckham, and so on. He’s known for taking risks and he really enjoys what he does.
Steve Ballmer
Instagram: @steveballmer_us
Steven Anthony Ballmer is an American billionaire, entrepreneur, and investor who worked as the CEO of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. Steve Ballmer is one of the most famous entrepreneurs today. He graduated from Harvard University in 1977 and is currently the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He’s also one of the richest people in the world, having a net worth of over $91 billion dollars.
Mukesh Ambani
Instagram: @mukeshambanii5
Mukesh Ambani is an Indian business mogul and billionaire entrepreneur who has a net worth of over $104 billion dollars. During the pandemic Covid-19, Mukesh Ambani raised more than $20 billion by selling 1/3rd of Jio to investors including Facebook and Google.
He’s the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, which is a Fortune Global 500 company. His company, Reliance Industries deals in various sectors including petrochemicals, oil and gas, telecom, and retail. Reliance was initially founded by his late father Dhirubhai Ambani in 1966.
Sara Blakely
Instagram: @sarablakely
Sara Blakely is an American inventor and entrepreneur who created Spanx, a brand of body-slimming women’s undergarments, and in 2012 became the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire.he ultimately found a hosiery factory willing to produce her footless hose, wrote her own patent application, and chose a playfully endearing product name, “Spanx,” and logo, a young blonde woman modeled on herself. Rather than invest in advertising, Blakely traveled across the United States, meeting and modeling for the boards of stores such as Neiman Marcus.
Robert Pera
Instagram: @_rjp_
Pera is the founder of Ubiquiti Networks, Inc. a global communications technology company that Pera took public in 2011. In October 2012, Pera also became the owner of the Memphis Grizzlies of the National Basketball Association. He founded Ubiquiti Networks in March 2005 using $30,000 of personal savings and credit card debt. Ubiquiti’s early products utilized existing Wi-Fi technology to wirelessly deliver the Internet to underserved areas (e.g., rural areas and emerging markets) lacking the infrastructure to access the Internet through traditional avenues such as phone lines and cable lines. The company has since successfully branched out into other product lines such as wireless access points, security cameras and traditional networking equipment.
Garrett Camp
Camp is a native Canadian entrepreneur who is famous for his ground-breaking technology ventures. His best-known companies include Uber and StumbleUpon (now Mix), both of which he co-founded. Camp is currently chairman of Mix and a founding partner of business incubator Expa, through which he funds start-ups. One of his latest projects is Eco, originally intended to be a cryptocurrency but now a personal finance/investment app. He has launched several companies, but he’s best-known as the co-founder of Uber. In 2008, he and friend Travis Kalanick were attending a conference in Paris and trying, one winter night, to find a taxi. “What if you could request a ride from your phone?” the two chilled entrepreneurs asked each other. From there, the pair developed a smartphone app that let people tap a button and get a ride from a fleet of circulating cars. The first Uber ride took place in San Francisco in 2010.
Nick Molnar
Instagram: @molnarnick
Afterpay Co-Founder and CEO Nick Molnar has raised the profile of ‘FinTech’ immensely over the last 12 months and at the tender age of only 27, he is one to watch for years to come. With his retail experience and out of the box thinking, Nick brings a refreshing addition to the retail space; an industry that is still tied to traditional financial models and practices.
Arianna Simpson
Arianna Simpson is a San Francisco-based investor with a focus on cryptocurrencies. She holds a bachelor’s in International Politics and Spanish from the University of Pennsylvania Schreyer Honors College. She worked as an advisor and board member and became a partner at Andreessen Horowitz in 2020. Prior to joining Andreessen Horowitz, Arianna founded Autonomous Partners, an investment fund focused on cryptocurrencies and digital assets. She also helped launch Crystal Towers Capital, an early-stage fund investing primarily in YC companies, in 2015. Arianna previously spent time working in sales and product roles at Facebook and BitGo, an enterprise security company for bitcoin and other digital currencies. She grew up in Milan, Italy.
Barbara Corcoran
Instagram: @barbaracorcoran
Barbara Corcoran, Founder of The Corcoran Group & Shark and Executive Producer on ABC’s “Shark Tank”Barbara Corcoran’s credits include straight D’s in high school and college and 20 jobs by the time she turned 23. It was her next job that would make her one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the country: She borrowed $1,000 and quit her job as a waitress to start a tiny real estate company in New York City. The Corcoran Group, the largest and best-known brand in the brokerage business, building the largest and best-known brand in the business.
