There’s a kind of hubris that besets the aspiring entrepreneur, a veil of supposed omniscience that clouds the perception of one’s own stupidity.
(Or maybe it’s just me?)
But I think it’s a general phenomenon. Necessary, even. The more I think about starting up Moniker, the more essential a willingness to act on pure optimism seems to be. The information I want isn’t available. I have no experience in the ventures I’m contemplating. If I were to sit down with a psychologist and really pick apart the roots of whatever confidence I feel in one idea or the other (an appealing mental picture here, a wisp of logic there), I’d probably voluntarily commit myself. And yet, I’m willing to stake my livelihood on the possibility of commercial succ—I was going to say success, but maybe that’s too far out. I’m willing to stake my livelihood on the possibility that I won’t lose my shirt in the attempt.
So I tell myself that I can do it – that somehow, in the black box of reality behind my rosy spreadsheets, it’ll all work out somehow.
It’s not a bad starting point, blind faith. But along the path from ‘hey, that’s a neat idea’ to ‘what’s our share price doing today?’ I think there comes a moment when reality pierces that ego-sized bubble – when the entrepreneur realizes, “Shit, I have no idea what I’m doing.”
I’m there. Now.
I call it ‘the vicuna moment’.
Here’s how it happened for me: I flew down to Shanghai to meet with two men, business partners who since the day China joined the WTO have been working to establish a global luxury menswear production chain to serve up-market independent menswear shops (how I met them is a long story – I’ll get around to telling it someday). I’ve got an inkling of an idea (let’s call it a ‘squib’ – more on that later) to find a reliable, high quality tailoring source and do something over the web.
I met them for lunch at Malone’s, a Shanghainese sports bar that the New York Times rates “hit or miss. If the waitstaff has any experience, they're careful not to show it.” (ouch)
Lunch was pleasant, if a bit vague. I’m prowling in general terms, and I don’t really know how to get into specifics on my idea. Anyway, we get the bill, fight over it in the customary Chinese way – they won – and pack up our conversation. On the way out, one of the business partners asks me, “We’re going to stop by the fabric market. Do you want to come along?”
Sure. Anything to build a potentially useful relationship.
And that’s how I found myself browsing through stall after stall, bolt after bolt, with two of Shanghai’s most experienced and enthusiastic menswear fashionistas. The more time I spent with these two guys – here, in the innermost sanctum of their specialty, a fabric market – the more I came to know how little I know about their art.
“Look at the lines on this lapel. It’s really quite good.” One would say, peering over a display suit.
“Would you like to make a suit?” the shop-keeper asks, fishing for a sale, not realizing his could-be-customer amasses a fortune daily in the menswear industry.
We walked into a shop upstairs that sells velvet. I didn’t ask them to put words to the expression on both their faces, but if I had they’d probably have told me “This is better than sex.”
“Check out this fabric,” one says to the other, fingering a bolt of cloth.
He does. “Yeah. Yeah, this is cool. If you’re not buying it, I am.”
“No way I’m letting you hog it all.”
“Okay, we share.”
“Yeah, okay.”
I wander over to the object of their fuss – honestly, I thought that was a color you’d use only for drapery. Or maybe to re-upholster a Louis XIV chaise.
I finger it, struggling to gain their appreciation for it. “What is this color? I guess you’d say it’s…gold.”
They both frowned, brows furrowed, discerning. “No…no…I’d say it’s—” and then, with eerie timing, they together solved the riddle simultaneously:
“Vicuna.”
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