brandon.arbini

The next two days are two of the most important days of my professional life. We have been working feverishly for the last few months building our product and will be pitching it to hundreds of the top investors in the world. I'm still awake and thinking about the events of the last few years and how I ended up in this place.

It's no secret that I have a pretty intense entrepreneurial drive. I think that a lot of that drive was both inherited from and encouraged by my grandpa. My grandpa used to own and operate a small print shop. I still remember seeing the old letterpress in the garage of their house. I may even still have some of the letterhead he made for me when I was a kid. Eventually, Kinko's put them out of business. Years later, after retiring, he started refinishing antiques. He ended up purchasing an antique shop, selling his antiques and renting out space in the shop to other sellers.

As a kid, I wanted to have a lemonade stand like everyone else. Things started small, just a table and some Kool-Aid in front of my grandparents' house. But first, let me back up and set the stage a little better. My grandparents lived across the street from an elementary school. I went to a different school, and I was out for the summer over a month before the kids at that elementary school. And I would spend the summers at my grandparents' house, so the opportunity was golden.

As I said, things started out small, but they just kept escalating...I had ideas! First, I probably found a few extra things to sell from my grandparents' kitchen. Next, I convinced someone to take me to Costco to buy some more things to sell. The stand was getting more and more popular and I remember having my grandpa mixing up Kool-Aid in the house and brining out new batches as fast as he could make them. I was selling all kinds of things now: Blow Pops, ring pops, Jolly Ranchers, candy bars, etc. The ring pops were a big hit.

My dad worked next to an Icee Company warehouse and was able to procure some very interesting plastic souvenir cups. I, of course, ended up with three different sized drinks: small, medium, and large w/ souvenir cup. This was quite the operation now and may people would have said that it was just too much. But my grandpa was there encouraging me, helping out, teaching me how to make business decisions, and fostering my entrepreneurial spirit.

What happened to my little general store? One of the parents was not very happy that their child was being sold candy after school without their knowledge. Instead of simply telling their child not to buy the candy, they did the next most logical thing and threatened to report me to the authorities for selling food without a permit, thus ending my short career.

Now, many years later I'm still at it. My grandpa was so excited for me to be here and working on new and exciting things, and I know that he's proud of me.