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Adam Edmunds is a young man in a big hurry. The Salt Lake City native took two years off after high school to serve as a Mormon missionary in Brazil and then earned both undergraduate and master's degrees in accounting from Brigham Young University in three years. In 2003 the then-24-year-old borrowed $50,000 from a buddy's father to start SilentWhistle, a Web service through which employees can send anonymous tips about wrongdoing to top managers or directors.

Two years later, Edmunds met Gary Rhoads, who was almost three decades older and on the lookout for a whiz kid. Rhoads, a professor of marketing at BYU's Marriott School of Management and director of the school's Center for Entrepreneurship, had started Allegiance Technologies in 2000. The South Jordan (Utah) company made software that helps companies collect and analyze surveys and other communications with customers and employees. The two men combined their companies in September, 2005. "Most PhDs [like Rhoads] have great ideas but aren't big on marketing and selling," says Edmunds. "That's what we do very well." Revenues for 60-person Allegiance (Technologies was dropped from the name) have soared from $500,000 in 2005 to $2 million.