Kim Perell - Serial Entrepreneur & Author | From Bankruptcy to $235 Million Exit Against All Odds
Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Success Story Media
4.6 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 23 July 2025
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Kim Perell is a powerhouse serial entrepreneur, angel investor, author, and keynote speaker who has founded and exited multiple tech companies, including turning Frontline Direct into a $100 million business and selling Adconion/Amobee for $235 million. A magna cum laude graduate from Pepperdine University, Kim has written two bestselling business books—The Execution Factor and Jump—and invested in over 100 startups, driving more than 10 successful exits. Recognized with awards like Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year and AdAge Marketing Technology Trailblazer, she now leads the AI-powered brand incubator 100.co from Miami, balancing her high-impact career with life as a mother of two sets of twins.
➡️ Show Links
https://www.instagram.com/kimperell/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimperell/
➡️ Podcast Sponsors
Hubspot - https://hubspot.com/
Cornbread Hemp - https://cornbreadhemp.com/success (Code: Success)
iDigress Podcast - https://idigress.show
NetSuite — https://netsuite.com/scottclary/
Indeed - https://indeed.com/clary
➡️ Talking Points
00:00 – Intro
01:27 – Mistakes Fuel Success
04:32 – Starting with Confidence
07:52 – No Support? Start Anyway
09:00 – #1 Trait for Entrepreneurs
10:06 – Can Anyone Be an Entrepreneur?
12:15 – Hard Lessons, Real Growth
14:34 – Best Hiring Advice
15:14 – Sponsor Break
17:22 – The Mistake No One Talks About
19:24 – The Power of Asking for Help
20:46 – What to Solve vs What to Ask For
23:37 – Business Is Personal
26:48 – What Drives Founders?
27:38 – Kim’s Personal ‘Why’
29:11 – Her 3R Mistake Framework
33:59 – Learning to Pivot
36:24 – Sponsor Break
38:02 – How Kim Builds Differently Now
39:16 – Which Problems Are Worth It?
41:31 – Stories That Excite Investors
42:26 – Mistakes That Kill Startups
45:17 – Top Takeaway from Her Book
45:41 – The Right Startup Motivation
46:11 – Entrepreneurship Misconceptions
48:00 – The Personal Cost of Success
50:54 – Advice for Her Kids
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | HubSpot is a success story partner. Now, if you're an entrepreneur, listen up because HubSpot |
| 0:06.1 | makes impossible growth, impossibly easy for their customers. If you are building a business, |
| 0:12.1 | you need to get HubSpot. Why? Here's the perfect example. Morehouse College needed to reach |
| 0:17.0 | new students with fresh engaging content, a problem that every single business in the world |
| 0:21.6 | has. But with a 900 page website, even the tiniest update took 30 minutes to publish. Now, Breeze, |
| 0:30.0 | which is HubSpot's collection of AI tools, helped them write and optimize their content |
| 0:35.1 | in a fraction of the time. And the results, 30% more page |
| 0:39.1 | views and visitors now spend 27% more time on their site. If you are ready for impossible growth |
| 0:45.9 | like this, visit HubSpot.com. I have a twin sister. He would say you're not the smart one. |
| 0:51.4 | Honestly, my first mistake was believing that. The mistake continued to just |
| 0:55.2 | put a label like I didn't need to have. And so dropping that label was huge freedom. This is Kim |
| 1:01.2 | Perel from getting fired to selling her first company for over $100 million. She was told she didn't |
| 1:07.0 | belong in tech. She proved them wrong again and again. I'd just been fired for my job, |
| 1:11.7 | had no cash. At that point, the dot-com bubble had burst and everyone was like this internet, |
| 1:16.6 | it's not going anywhere. But having just one person believe in you, that belief is insane how |
| 1:22.4 | much that can carry through. Your confidence has to be greater than anyone else's doubt in you. |
| 1:27.0 | A single mother, a self-made success, a CEO who now invests in hundreds of other founders because she remembers exactly what it felt like to be underestimated. Her story isn't just about building wealth. It's about timing and trusting yourself before anyone else does. Do you think that everyone could be an entrepreneur? I think you can learn to be an entrepreneur. |
| 1:44.7 | I've learned more from my failures than my successes. |
| 1:46.9 | That's why I wrote the book. |
| 1:47.7 | I want to share that mistakes are not the end. |
| 1:51.1 | They're just part of the journey. |
| 1:52.5 | I think that the faster you get over yourself |
... |
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