The Fourth Mouse!

Recently, at a dinner party with close friends, I had the opportunity to explain an interesting analogy for startups. It was the wise old tale that tells of three mice trying to overcome hunger and their human conditions:

The first mouse wasn't hungry, it saw the cheese on the trap and made a pass at it. It was caught by the trap and killed. Its spine broken and its blood drains and soaks the cheese

The second mouse was a little hungry, and saw the cheese, so it ate the cheese despite the blood. Because the trap was tripped by the first mouse, the second mouse did not get hurt.

The third mouse came and was very hungry. But the cheese has already been eaten by the second mouse, so it wondered away. Third mouse wasn't hurt, but probably dies of hunger eventually...

The fourth mouse came and is famished. It ate the first mouse.

(Sorry... on several occasions in my teenage years, I had seen perfectly fine animals that I saw the day before eat each other the next day (well, I saw a fat one and a missing one), I'm sure that has something to do with my telling of this story)

But it made sense--everybody nodded, half in disgust, half lost in thought. Despite the merry buzz that our grogs have given us, reality quite rudely, and quite suddenly came into focus, even for me, and that we all understood the perilous nature of the journey on which we were all about to embark.