As a sophomore mathematics major at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, she and her roommate started a laundry service to earn pocket money. They would pick up students' dirty laundry, wash, dry and fold it, and return it to their dorm rooms 24 hours later. Ultimately, the service â€" a practical new solution to college students' age-old laundry problem â€" became so popular that Carmeli and her roommate netted several thousand dollars a month, a not-too-shabby paycheck for a pair of second-year college students in the early 1980s.

In the years since, Carmeli's career has led her to marketing positions at companies such as Netscape-AOL, Healtheon-WebMD and Silicon Graphics, but that early experience shuttling college students' laundry between dorm rooms and the laundromat solidified the basic skills that any entrepreneur needs to have: How to identify a market niche, manage a team and negotiate deals with other companies.

As the co-founder, president and CEO of Metreo, a year-old Palo Alto, Calif., company whose software helps manufacturers and distributors maximize profits by monitoring their orders more efficiently, Carmeli has taken a similarly pragmatic approach. "It's not a crazy time right now â€" it's sobering," she says. For a business venture to be successful these days, it must be a "painkiller," not a "vitamin," she says, but the dollars exist for business ideas that offer a real solution. Therefore, her company focuses on just that â€" helping companies improve their profit margins by becoming more efficient.

Carmeli and her team have raised more than $12 million in funding in the last year â€" a major accomplishment in the current timid financial climate. Carmeli is repeatedly asked how she managed to raise that sum of money, she says, and she always retorts: "This is a meat-and-potatoes proposition. We're targeting old manufactures and protecting, maintaining and improving their production." But it wasn't the business idea alone that got the cash â€" personal connections paid off as well. A number of executives on Metreo's management team were colleagues of Carmeli's from Netscape-AOL, Healtheon-WebMD and Silicon Graphics. Other personal contacts helped attract Metreo's first round of seed funding from Sequoia Capital, which ultimately has provided 70 to 80 percent of the company's funding.

As the daughter of a Wall Street executive and a systems engineer, Carmeli and her older sister were encouraged to develop personal motivation and self-discipline. She started playing piano at age 5 and later won competitions that led to a performance at Carnegie Hall. By age 12, she was trading her first stocks. "Business and technology were always in my house," she recalls. "My parents' goals were to help me develop a skill, become independent and self-sufficient."

Today, Carmeli, who lives in Palo Alto, Calif, says her parents now wish she'd spend more time at home with her children, ages 6 and 8. With sleep being a necessary sacrifice, she manages quality time with her family when not nurturing the growth of Metreo and feels it's for a worthy cause. After all, she's come a long way since her days of shuttling laundry for college students: "I'm the happiest I've been in my entire career." o