From £80k accounting job to TikTok ice cream empire: Little Moons founder's path

Vivien Wong was 28 when she handed in her resignation from an accounting position paying £80,000 a year. She and her brother began making ice cream together, filling delicate mochi balls—doughy rice wrapped around frozen cream—in what would become Little Moons. The decision wasn't impulsive. She had grown up watching her parents run a bakery, absorbing the rhythms of business ownership. But it took her father's cancer diagnosis to push her from dreaming into doing.

What looks like overnight success on social media often obscures years of invisible work. Little Moons spent its first five years selling mochi to restaurants and cinemas, slowly accumulating the capital to rebrand and push into supermarket shelves. The TikTok explosion that made the company a household name came a full decade into operation. By then, Wong and her brother had already built the manufacturing capacity, trained the staff, and established the supply chains that would allow them to survive—and thrive—when demand suddenly multiplied.

Wong's first principle for anyone considering entrepreneurship is to abandon the pursuit of perfection. She calls it the 80-20 rule: get your product 80 percent of the way there, launch it, and refine it in the market rather than waiting for an imaginary moment when everything aligns. That extra 20 percent of polish can consume months or years while competitors move ahead and opportunities close. She learned this through necessity. Little Moons couldn't afford to be perfect; it could only afford to be good enough, then better, then better still.

The personal cost of building a business is rarely discussed in founder mythology. Wong moved in with her brother to reduce expenses and funnel every pound back into the company. She left behind the structured world of accounting—the hierarchy, the specialists you could call when problems arose—for a reality where almost every problem landed on her desk. She taught herself IT despite having no background in it. She learned about machinery, product development, and payroll. On Sundays, instead of resting, she did the company accounts herself because hiring a bookkeeper felt like a luxury the business couldn't yet afford. The sacrifice wasn't temporary; it was the baseline condition of those early years.

Working with family introduced a different kind of pressure. Wong and her brother had to consciously shift from sibling dynamics to professional ones. When the company considered expanding from a 5,000-square-foot factory to a 30,000-square-foot facility—a move that would increase annual rent from roughly £40,000 to £500,000—they disagreed. Wong saw the risk as necessary; her brother approached it with caution. Neither was wrong. Their different instincts forced them to think harder, to balance each other's blind spots. Wong's advice to anyone partnering with family is blunt: treat them as colleagues, not siblings. Set boundaries. Respect the professional relationship even when you share a childhood.

Knowing your brand means knowing what to say no to. Wong emphasizes this repeatedly because the temptation to chase every trend, every partnership, every opportunity is constant. But saying yes to everything dilutes what you actually stand for. If you understand your brand's values, you can apply them selectively to emerging trends while confidently ignoring others that don't fit. She also warns against treating expert advice as gospel. Consultants and mentors offer wisdom shaped by their own experiences, which may not map onto your specific circumstances. Wong and her brother learned to listen, discuss, and decide for themselves—a practice that built their confidence over time.

The infrastructure that made Little Moons' viral moment survivable took years to assemble. Manufacturing at scale, training reliable staff, navigating export regulations, supplying major retailers—these are the unglamorous, repetitive tasks that no one films for social media. But they are everything. Without them, the sudden surge in demand during the pandemic might have broken the company instead of launching it. Wong's final lesson is perhaps the most important: business is not a series of dramatic breakthroughs. It is many small, boring steps taken consistently. The viral moment is the visible peak of an iceberg. Everyone sees the moment; almost no one sees the decade of preparation beneath it.