“I’ve never seen someone work just for a salary,” says Amoruso. Entrepreneurial drive runs deep in her Greek-American family. Her grandfathers owned a motel and a piano shop. Her father sold mortgage loans, while her mother sold houses.
Sophia’s interest in business began early. At age nine, she was buying books about startups and soon became “president” of her street’s lemonade-and-abalone craft stand in Sacramento in the mid-1990s.
Her comfortable suburban life changed when she was ten. Both parents lost their jobs. She remembers watching them cut up credit cards and drop the pieces into a jar already filled with others at a credit office. Soon after, they pulled her out of Catholic school to save on tuition.