Illustration: Lauren Tamaki After she was laid off from her first job out of college when the company went bankrupt, Kim Perell decided to start her own. At 22 years old and from her kitchen table, she hung out her own shingle using a $10,000 loan from her grandmother. That company grew to over $100 million in annual revenue by the time she was 30. Her next, the global marketing-technology company Amobee, was sold to Singapore Telecommunications for $235 million.
You just need to be 70 percent confident, and you’ll figure it out along the way and have the competence to know you will figure it out.No. 1 is having the courage to start. When I started, no one would make a bet on me because my track record of bankruptcy and failed internet companies wasn’t exactly bankable. So I went to someone that believed in me, and my grandma made a bet on me. She didn’t even know what the internet was.