About

It’s funny how you can spin such a minor accomplishment into an epic. The Mochi business while consuming my life for a five month period really only amounted to a blip on the Seattle business community radar. A stand at the Seattle center and a couple of grocery stores saw “Mochis” rise and fall. Yet, my business can sound like a big deal when explained as such: “a five month period where I marketed, produced and sold a food product. In this time, I obtained State and City, health department and business licenses. I entered into contracts with a city agency, grocery stores, and hardware producers.”… The fancy cars, the women and the caviar: I’m a mover and shaker, baby.

I’ve explained my business in both plain terms and epic and both yield an excited/ impressed response from the listener. This is because, in America, we value entrepreneurship to a beautiful degree. Nowhere else is there such an understanding of the difficulty and importance of founding businesses.

Successful entrepreneurs often reach celebrity status in our country. They deserve it. For everything to fall into place requires ungodly amounts of skill and luck. In fact, approximately seven in every million business that start ever have an initial public offering. Mochis never had an IPO. Of course I’m disappointed (less so though after knowing the previous statistic), but had it made me millions of dollars I probably wouldn’t be analyzing entrepreneurship. I’d probably analyze pool life or just let my brain rest… How excellent that my failure should breed analysis and, hopefully, insight.