Entrepreneur: Jason Baptiste, 25

Funding: $1 million from investors, including Spark Capital, Betaworks, SV Angel, and ENIAC Ventures

Chief Executive Officer Jason Baptiste co-founded New York-based OnSwipe in 2010 to make it easier for publishers to put content on smartphones and tablets. OnSwipe eliminates the need to build multiple applications for different devices. Baptiste, a blogger, also co-founded Cloudomatic, a Web-based software store acquired earlier this year by Zferral, which manages online-sales referrals.

Wisest funding decision: Finding investors who understand how media and technology work together. "We clicked with Spark," Baptiste says. "They truly get the intersection of media and the Internet and software and what that looks like—and that's the whole thesis of our company."

(Corrects the age of Jason Baptiste)