Millennial Businesswomen: From Bamboo Bags to Burgers to Billions

5Neha Narkhede

How She Did It: Narkhede is the co-founder of Confluent, a streaming data technology company. She started out at Oracle, the world's largest database management company, before co-creating her own open-source platform called Apache Kafka in 2011. It led her to develop the cloud company Confluent in 2014, a company that went public in 2021 with a value of over $9 billion. She is recognized as one of the Top Innovators Under 35 by the MIT Technology Review, and according to Forbes, her net work is valued at over $900 million.

Success quote: “If you encounter something that looks like a ceiling, assume it's a glass ceiling and try to smash it, but if it turns out to be a stone or concrete one, move on. That's what I do.”

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