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Andy Monfried was on vacation in Israel when he had what he described as the "seminal" moment in his career. He and his wife were in Jerusalem when the restaurant they were eating in became the target of two Hamas suicide bombers. The couple were among the few survivors of the attack, shielded from the explosion by an interior wooden column while dozens outside, children included, were killed. Their survival was pure chance — it was the first time during their trip that they had decided to sit inside — and, for Monfried, it was the catalyst that led him to found his multi-million dollar business. "That day changed the trajectory of my life," Monfried told CNBC Make It. "I knew I was going to change everything from that point. The only thing I knew I was going to keep in my life was my wife. We were not letting two Hamas suicide bombers derail our lives."

Andy Monfried, founder and CEO of Lotame Source: Lotame

Up until then, Monfried had been doing well, working as an executive at a legal photocopying business. But, returning home to the U.S., he decided to quit his job and reassess. "Coming back and realizing that we weren't suppose to be alive got me taking more risks in business," said Monfried. "I'm not trying to be some martyr; I say that it caused me to take more risks because I feel like someone handed me a lot of chips." Monfried spent six months "decompressing," as he put it, before embarking on a new career. He first joined Baltimore-based online advertising company Advertising.com, where he built the New York office from scratch and generated $100 million in revenue in four years. Then, when the business was sold to AOL, he decided to use his new-found expertise to move beyond the "cutting edge" to what he called the "bleeding edge" of customer data.

I was too focused on minutiae before. I quickly shed those concerns and focused on the things that I knew were going to have an impact on my future. Andy Monfried founder and CEO of Lotame