“I’VE NEVER SEEN someone work for a salary,” says Amoruso. Entrepreneurial blood courses through her Greek-American family. Her grandfathers ran a motel and a piano shop. Her father sold mortgage loans; her mother sold houses. Sophia started buying books on startups at age 9 and was “president” of her street’s lemonade-and-abalone craft stand in Sacramento in the mid-1990s. But her charmed suburban life took a hit when Amoruso was 10 and both her parents lost their jobs. She remembers their cutting up credit cards to fill a nearly full jar of others at a credit office. Then they pulled her out of Catholic school to save money.