2 Billion Under 20: How Millennials Are Breaking Down Age Barriers and Changing the World

by Blake Masters (Foreword), Stacey Ferreira, Jared Kleinert

Welcome to the future!

2 Billion Under 20 is a book, online community, and movement inspired by the 2 billion people in the world currently at or under the age of twenty. We stand for Millennials, Gen Z'ers, and those who want to better understand them and their unique potential. This book shows how we can all act on our passions and make a difference at any age.

Young entrepreneurs Stacey Ferreira and Jared Kleinert have brought together seventy-five stories from ambitious young people like Paige McKenzie, who started her own YouTube channel at sixteen that now has more than 55 million views; Sam Mikulak, who's represented Team USA in the Olympics and is a seven-time NCAA champion in Men's Gymnastics; Jack Andraka, who developed an early detection test for pancreatic cancer at fifteen; Tallia Storm, a Scottish singer who was discovered by and opened a concert for Elton John, on her way to signing a record deal with Virgin Records; Dau Jok, who escaped civil war in South Sudan to become captain of the University of Pennsylvania's Division 1 basketball team and founder of a nonprofit to help youth in his native country, and many other accomplished and inspiring Millennials from all walks of life.

All of these young people-members of the 2BillionUnder20.com community-have joined forces to show the world how Millennials are taking care of business. Join the movement and change the world!

Genres: Business, Nonfiction

352 pages, Hardcover

First published May 5, 2015

About the author

Blake Masters was a student at Stanford Law School in 2012 when his detailed notes on Peter Thiel's class "Computer Science 183: Startup" became an internet sensation. Before writing Zero to One with Peter, Blake co-founded Judicata, a legal research technology startup, and worked at Box and Founders Fund. He went to Stanford and Stanford Law School, and lives in San Francisco with his wife and baby boy.

Reviews

[Mai M Ibrahim · Rating 1 out of 5]

الكتاب ممل .. كذا حاجه معجبتنيش
إن كل مقالة عن حد ناجح مفيش صورة معاه نشوف مين الشخص ده + الورق اصفر والكتابة مملة مش لايقه مع محتوى الكتاب من وجهة نظري
كمان معظم الأشخاص دول اشتغلوا ف مجال التكنولوجيا اللي مش من اهتماماتي اصلا
كمان بيتكلموا بشكل عام كأننا هنسرق أفكارهم مثلا ف مش مشجع ع النجاح ولا الثراء
مقدرتش اكمله

[Matteo O · Rating 4 out of 5]

“2 Billion Under 20” is an excellent book of compiled stories of inspirational millennials. Although the book doesn't present a story it still gives you a sense of wanting to keep turning the page, which I have never gotten with a non-chronological book before. The book starts off with a memorable line along the lines of “Most people say millennials are screwed,” and then presents you with 300 rich pages of the opposite. The book is great, when you read it, it makes you fight to decide whether to stand up and start making a difference, or stay sitting and keep reading the book. I have never learned so much from a book before, not even my school textbooks. This is one of the only books that I have read that I enjoyed because it taught me so much, I felt like a better person after reading and most importantly inspired. I rated this book 4 out of five and would surely recommend it to most people that I know.

[Susan Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has 75 stories of young people. These young people have made tremendous accomplishments. I think this is a good read for all readers but teenagers would benefit from seeing others accomplishments.

[Timeo Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book detailing millenials aged 20 and below who are changing the world as we know it. The main themes of the book: Don't lose your childlike idealism or your passions, but instead chase after it, take action, learn under mentors and give.

Take action.

And lastly, be resilient. Fail. And fail afterwords. Then fail again. Get used to failure. But never let that failure stop you, instead bounce back up again, let it change you and harden you, as you grow into the best version of yourself.

I highly recommend this book to anyone questioning whether or not it is possible to make even a small impact on this world.

Because it truly is possible, and we live in the best of time to do it: Now.

[Diko Raditya · Rating 1 out of 5]

too many people being included in the books, it made the section for each person is very little, one of the section even only has 2 pages which is kinda impactless. It should be better if there are less person in the book, and even better if it can connect one story to another since some people has success in same area. The cover is also deceiving because it only put 16 pictures, but it tells story of 50+ person

[Brooke Grimes · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was definitely an inspirational book. It is amazing to see the work being done by young people across the world. The stories became a little redundant after the first 100 pages or so.

[Alyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an inspirational look at millennials that started making contributions to our world before the age of twenty. It’s a great reminder to the young that they can make a difference.

[Mariah Akinbi · Rating 5 out of 5]

lots of variety in the stories. Good read for teens/young adults.

[Stephen Yoder · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did not expect to be inspired by this book and yet I was. One gap in this book was the repeated discussions of how "Oh, school isn't for me," but then other essays would mention how important the skill of writing was. Of course, one does not need to go to school to learn writing, necessarily, but I suppose the bigger point to me is that this set of hard-driving young people shows me the need for proper gifted & talented educational tracks at all sorts of age levels. I went to FaceBook to look up a number of these people and they are all real individuals. I'm even separated by only 2 degrees from one of them! I'd love to hear what these young people accomplish in the next 10 years. I hope that none of them have peaked too early. At the onset of the book I was worried that all of the young people would be portrayed as superheroes, invincible to the foibles of mortal men. . . but that is not how these essays were written. So many of these youngsters admit their mortal flaws in honest ways and discuss their painful paths forward. Those essays about overcoming adversity (both external and internal) were more valuable to me than many of the stories about how so-and-so was a CEO of a one-person company. I wish all of them success. A great book for educators and for exceptional people who wish for inspiration.

[Winyen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping for more of a book of wisdom from young people, or at the very least, some interesting biographies. Some of the stories were well-written, most were "meh". A great majority of the stories were what the authors wanted to say and not actually what I wanted to read from them. Like, I don't want to ask an 18 year old for advice, I want him/her to tell me about the things he/she went through; I'll find the advice in between the lines. And some of the stories weren't very special or unique, they could have been written by anybody to tell you to take risks/follow your dreams/etc. etc., so even as a college admissions essay, the person would be an absolutely vanilla, forgettable applicant.

[Rin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is OK. Just a bunch of essays from people a few years younger than me with semi-ambitious goals. None of these guys are Outliers to me, maybe I just know awesome people. But I dunno. Nothing that was said here was amazing or super inspiring. However, I'm not under 20 (I'm 26). I'd recommend this to my seven year old nephew.

I'll definitely look for The Earth Is Flat though.

[Connie · Rating 3 out of 5]

FTC Disclosure: I received this book free from Goodreads hoping I would review it.

[Giorgos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Probably interesting for readers aged <30.
Not for me though -apparently, I am not in that age group :-)