How Patience, Grit and Beer Helped This Entrepreneur Finally Find Success Thinking he would be able to find success in a few short years, this founder learned the hard way that entrepreneurs must be in it for the long haul.

Josh Goodman was on "a problem-solving quest." Pushing 30, he had lost his enthusiasm for his career in IT staffing and was looking for business ideas. One night, he met some friends at a crowded bar in Baltimore but couldn't get a beer. It happened again the next time they went out. And again. Goodman thought, There's got to be a better way to get a drink. He envisioned a simple solution: a self-serve beer tap system, where customers could fill up a debit card, pour their own drinks and be charged by the ounce. Like an ATM, but for beer. This was 2007. "I thought I'd be sipping mojitos on an island in the Caribbean by 2013 or '14," he says. And the entrepreneurial gods laughed and laughed.