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My First Pivot 12 years ago

My name is Tommy Nicholas, and I am an entrepreneur.

While it’s impossible to say exactly when I became an entrepreneurs, my father likes to explain it by telling a story of the day my friend Pete and I went missing. We were five years and I was visiting him in Fairfax, Virginia during the holidays, when his mother decided to take a nap while watching us. She woke up to find out we were gone. For the next two hours they searched everywhere looking for us, only to receive a call from Pete’s Aunt Elenie, saying she had found us in the nearby strip mall parking lot.

His mother, of course, rushed over to pick us up, only to find us sitting on the ground with a pitcher of lemonade and a sign that said “lemonade: $1” (Pete was a remarkable speller for his age). When she asked us what we were doing, we said “we wanted to sell lemonade, but people just kept taking pictures of us, so we started charging $1 to take our picture. We made $11!”

It was my first company and my first successful pivot.

Follow me on Twitter @istommydrunk