“Something that you might have thought was stupid or trivial is actually really game changing,” Shad said. “A little goes a long way.”

“I just remember my senior year, you know, obviously once we were all 21, I was able to get my bartending license and make cocktails for my girlfriends,” Fitzpatrick, BC ’17, said. “I thought, you know, it would be so great if I could just can this or bottle this and sell it but, but alas, you know, school got in the way.”

“I grew up working in my family business of nursing homes really since the seventh grade,” Wooley, BC ’17, said. “Senior care was not cool back then. Every family dinner conversation has been around senior care since I can remember.”

“Marketing is about storytelling,” he said. “It’s about connecting with people. And mastering those fundamentals like empathy, insights, what motivates people, how to connect with people through story and words—that is the craft.”

“Everyday there were and still are tough challenges, whether that’s product market fit, fundraising, building the team, or programming,” McDermott said. “There were multiple times when we wondered if it would even work or be able to stay alive. Some of our highest highs and lowest lows have happened in the span of the same day. It’s very much how a startup works.”

“We’re constantly producing chocolate,” Addison said. “We’re roasting, we’re grinding the beans, we’re molding chocolate or packaging. So every day is a little bit different. Depending on the order, sometimes we’re doing chocolate tasting events.”

Homer’s Iliad tells the story of mythic Greek soldiers like Achilles and Odysseus sieging the city of Troy in search of kleos—Greek for “renown” or “glory.” Homer’s exact birthplace is of scholarly debate, but some place it on the island of Chios. Now, roughly 29 centuries later, this same island is a key site in…