Truth. Clarity. Insight.
Vivien Wong left an £80,000-a-year accounting job at 28 to build Little Moons, the mochi ice cream company she founded with her brother Howard. The brand eventually became a viral sensation, but its success was built over more than a decade. Wong says entrepreneurs should launch before everything is perfect, understand their brand, accept sacrifices, set boundaries with family, and remember that overnight success usually takes years of preparation.
At 28, Vivien Wong made a decision that many people would find difficult to understand.
She walked away from an £80,000-a-year accounting career and joined her brother Howard to build an ice cream business.
Today, their company, Little Moons, is widely recognised for its bite-sized mochi ice cream products. The brand became particularly popular on TikTok during the pandemic, creating the impression of a sudden business success.
But Wong says the reality was very different.
The viral attention came after more than a decade of work, experimentation, sacrifice, and gradual growth.
Her journey offers several lessons for anyone considering leaving a secure job to start a business.
Wong grew up around her family's bakery and had always imagined herself eventually running a business.
However, she initially pursued a more conventional career and became an accountant.
The turning point came when her father was diagnosed with cancer.
The experience encouraged Wong to reconsider what she wanted to do with her career and pushed her to take the risk of starting a company.
At 28, she left her well-paid job and began working with her brother on what would eventually become Little Moons.
The decision meant exchanging financial security and a structured professional environment for the uncertainty of entrepreneurship.
One of Wong's strongest pieces of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs is simple: start before everything is perfect.
She follows what she describes as an "80-20 rule".
Instead of spending excessive amounts of time trying to make a product perfect before releasing it, entrepreneurs should aim to get it to a strong initial level, launch it, and improve it based on real-world experience.
For Wong, this approach was central to Little Moons' development.
Early-stage businesses rarely have unlimited resources.
Spending too much time perfecting a product can delay the moment when customers actually get to experience it.
Wong believes entrepreneurs should launch when their product is ready enough to provide value and then continue improving it.
This strategy can also help founders understand what customers actually want rather than relying entirely on assumptions.
The popularity of Little Moons on TikTok created the impression that the company had suddenly become successful.
Wong disagrees with that interpretation.
Before social media attention transformed the brand's visibility, Little Moons had already spent around a decade developing its business.
For its first five years, the company focused on selling mochi products to restaurants and cinemas.
Only later did it have enough financial resources to invest in branding and expand into supermarkets.
By the time Little Moons became popular online, the company already had experience with manufacturing, employees, exporting, and supplying major retailers.
That preparation became extremely important when demand increased rapidly.
A business may receive millions of views online, but attention alone does not guarantee that it can fulfil orders.
Little Moons had already developed the infrastructure required to take advantage of its sudden popularity.
Leaving an £80,000 salary meant Wong had to change her lifestyle.
She moved in with her brother so they could reduce expenses and put more money back into the business.
The founders also had to perform tasks far outside their original expertise.
Wong describes the transition from a corporate environment to entrepreneurship as a major adjustment.
In a large company, employees can normally rely on different departments and specialists.
As a founder, however, responsibility ultimately comes back to you.
Wong had to learn about areas including:
She even handled the company's accounts herself on Sundays rather than spend money on a bookkeeper.
For an early-stage business, every expense mattered.
The founders prioritised reinvesting available money into growing the company rather than immediately creating a more comfortable lifestyle for themselves.
Wong believes entrepreneurs need a clear understanding of their brand.
Knowing what a business represents makes it easier to decide which opportunities are worth pursuing and which should be rejected.
Businesses are constantly presented with new trends, partnerships, and marketing opportunities.
Saying yes to everything can quickly dilute a brand's identity.
Wong's advice is particularly relevant in the age of social media.
A trend may generate millions of views, but that does not necessarily mean it is appropriate for every company.
A strong brand should be able to identify trends that fit its values while ignoring those that do not.
For entrepreneurs, this means asking an important question before pursuing an opportunity:
Does this help strengthen what my brand stands for?
If the answer is no, walking away may be the smarter business decision.
Another important lesson from Wong's experience is that business advice is not always universal.
Entrepreneurs regularly receive recommendations from consultants, experts, investors, and other business owners.
Some advice can be extremely valuable.
But Wong believes founders should consider whether a recommendation actually applies to their specific circumstances.
An approach that worked for one company may fail for another because of differences in market, customers, finances, team structure or timing.
Wong and her brother would discuss the advice they received and sometimes follow it while rejecting it at other times.
Over time, making those decisions helped them become more confident entrepreneurs.
The lesson is not to ignore expert knowledge.
Instead, founders should listen carefully, understand the reasoning behind the advice, and then make their own informed decision.
Building a company with a sibling can provide enormous advantages, but it can also create challenges.
Wong says she and her brother had plenty of arguments during the development of Little Moons.
One of the most important lessons they learned was to separate their professional relationship from their personal relationship.
At work, they needed to treat each other as colleagues rather than simply as brother and sister.
The siblings did not always agree on major decisions.
When Little Moons considered moving from a 5,000-square-foot factory to a 30,000-square-foot facility, Wong was more willing to take the risk.
Her brother was more cautious.
Although their different approaches created disagreements, Wong believes those differences ultimately helped the business.
Their contrasting perspectives allowed them to challenge one another and evaluate decisions from different angles.
That balance can be valuable in a family business.
The founders' willingness to control expenses played an important role in Little Moons' early development.
Rather than spending heavily on unnecessary costs, Wong and her brother reinvested profits into the business.
This included putting money toward branding and eventually expanding into larger-scale retail.
For entrepreneurs, financial discipline can be just as important as having a great product.
A business can have strong sales and still struggle if expenses grow faster than revenue.
The pandemic dramatically changed Little Moons' visibility.
Its mochi ice cream products gained widespread attention on TikTok, introducing the brand to a much larger audience.
The social media success helped create the perception that the company had suddenly appeared.
But the viral moment was actually built on years of preparation.
This is an important lesson for businesses investing in social media marketing.
A viral post can generate awareness, but businesses need the infrastructure to convert attention into sustainable growth.
Little Moons already had experience with production, distribution, and retail relationships before its social media breakthrough.
Without that foundation, the sudden increase in demand could have overwhelmed the company.
The lesson is clear: build the business before you chase the viral moment.
Wong describes Little Moons as an "overnight success" that took roughly 12 years to build.
That phrase captures a common misunderstanding about entrepreneurship.
People usually see the visible breakthrough but not the years of work that came before it.
They see:
What they often don't see are the years of testing, financial pressure, mistakes, operational problems, and gradual growth.
Wong's experience demonstrates that successful companies are often built through hundreds or thousands of small decisions.
Some decisions are exciting.
Many are not.
Entrepreneurship includes repetitive tasks such as managing accounts, solving operational problems, negotiating with suppliers, hiring employees, and improving products.
Those less glamorous activities can ultimately determine whether a company survives.
Wong's story offers several practical lessons for people considering entrepreneurship.
Don't spend years trying to eliminate every weakness before launching. Build something valuable, release it, and improve it.
Know what your company represents so you can make better decisions about trends, partnerships, and marketing.
Starting a business often requires financial, personal, and professional sacrifices, particularly during the early stages.
Listen to experts, but evaluate whether their advice fits your business.
If you work with family members, establish clear professional boundaries.
If your product becomes popular, you need systems and infrastructure capable of handling increased demand.
Social media often shows the final stage of a business journey rather than the years that came before it.
Vivien Wong's story is not simply about leaving an £80,000 job to make ice cream.
It is about understanding the difference between risk and preparation.
Walking away from a secure career was undoubtedly a major risk, but Wong and her brother spent years building their company before its biggest breakthrough.
Their success suggests that entrepreneurship is rarely about one perfect idea or one viral moment.
It is more often about persistence, disciplined spending, continuous learning, strong branding, and the ability to keep moving forward when progress is slow.
Little Moons may have become famous through social media, but its foundation was built long before the cameras and viral videos arrived.
Little Moons was founded by siblings Vivien Wong and Howard Wong.
Wong left her accounting career at the age of 28 to pursue entrepreneurship with her brother. She had grown up around her family's bakery and says her father's cancer diagnosis encouraged her to leap into business.
Little Moons is a food brand known for its mochi ice cream products, which combine a soft rice-dough exterior with an ice cream filling.
No. Although Little Moons became widely known after gaining viral attention on TikTok, the business had already been operating for around a decade.
Wong encourages entrepreneurs not to wait for a product to become perfect. Her approach is to get a product around 80% ready, launch it, and continue improving it based on experience and feedback.
Key lessons include launching without waiting for perfection, understanding your brand, controlling costs, accepting sacrifices, learning new skills, and preparing operationally for growth.
The company's mochi ice cream products gained significant attention on TikTok during the pandemic, exposing the brand to a much larger audience.
One of the biggest lessons is that apparent overnight success is usually built on years of preparation. The viral moment is often only the most visible part of a much longer entrepreneurial journey.
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