A biochemical engineer with a Harvard MBA, Julka got into auctioneering after two successful biomedical ventures. Paddle8, Crain's says, is gaining buzz quickly and is a site for those interested in works below $100,000. Since its 2011 founding, the company has sold more than $50 million worth of art. It has also attracted more than $17 million in funding from investors including artist Damien Hirst and the backers of Uber and BuzzFeed.

Reshma Saujani, 39, founder of Girls Who Code, a three-year-old nonprofit that teaches computer skills to girls from low-income communities. It just finished its best year with 300 percent enrolment growth, 3,000 students in 24 states and more than $8 million raised.

Reshma Saujani is aiming higher: 10,000 students by the end of 2015, programmes in all 50 states and more success stories, like the two graduates who built their own feminist mobile game, Tampon Run. Democrat Saujani, mother of a newborn boy, has made several unsuccessful bids for elected office-Congress in 2010, public advocate in 2013. But politics continues to beckon.

The last race was hard, she told the magazine, but if another opportunity presents itself, she won't back down. "Reshma," she mused in the third person, "loves infiltration." Nina Tandon, 35, Chief executive of EpiBone. Her startup has successfully grown face bones for pigs and aims to move to human trials in three years.

The company, whose nine employees are spread out among Italy, Kazakhstan and the US, has raised $3.2 million in funding since last summer. For Tandon, an electrical engineer, a PhD and a Fulbright scholar, scaffolding is what the human body is built on.

The living bones EpiBone grows-each one individually designed to fit a particular living being--are what she one day hopes to use to replace damaged bones in humans. "Our product is a platform for your own cells to go in and repair your body," Tandon was quoted as saying.

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