Daniel Eun: 40 Under 40 2022

“Everything we’ve built has been incredibly selfish and for ourselves,” Eun admits. But this privilege of being able to be selfish about his myriad entrepreneurial pursuits comes from years and years of showing up, day after day, and doing the work.

“One night, the barback [at Please Don’t Tell in New York] no-called, no-showed, so the manager put me to work,” Eun recalls. “That turned into a weekly shift, then I slowly started taking over and earning more shifts just by always volunteering to cover. Eventually, Jim Meehan looked at me one night while signing a copy of his first Mr Boston: Official Bartender’s Guide and gave me the ultimate blessing: ‘I guess you’ve been our de-facto head bartender. Let’s make it official.’”

The grind doesn’t stop — and hasn’t stopped since. Eun continued working at beloved bars like the now-closed PKNY in New York, then The Varnish, The Normandie Club and The Walker Inn in Los Angeles. In between, he’d swerve back into Big Law, open his own law firm and, five years ago, arrive in the swelter of Hong Kong as an almost spontaneous response to his now-business partner Jon Chan’s question: “Hey, you wanna open something in Hong Kong?” Eun did.

“In elementary school, my teacher asked us what we wanted to be when we were 40,” he remembers. “I said: ‘Retired.’ Still the goal.” But in the meantime, Eun cites Jay-Z: “Granted, nine to five is how you survive, I ain’t tryna survive / I’m tryna live it to the limit, and love it a lot.” The marathon continues.

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