The First One Hundred Seconds Video (And the Mole That Started It All)

One morning, I woke up with a question:

Could you tell the story of a person, their process, and their company’s ethos - all in 100 seconds?

If the answer was yes, I knew I’d have a proof of concept. I’d know that this little idea I woke up with wasn’t just a daydream, but that it could actually work.

I wasn’t trying to make a recipe video. I wanted to distill a 12-hour process (in this case, mole) into a compact, powerful story. I wanted to include not just the how but the why. Could you meet the founder, the hands behind the work, the heart of the brand… all in under two minutes?

I needed to find out.

Oswaldo and I go way back. We worked together in the early ’90s here in Portland, and reconnected years later in New York when he was nominated for a James Beard Award. We crossed paths again when I moved back to Portland in 2011, and I asked him if I could film him making mole and share a bit of his story.

He said yes.

So we spent the day together - him cooking, me filming, and both of us reconnecting over our shared love of food, eating many tacos along the way. And maybe having a cervesa or two.

And… it worked.

That video, just 100 seconds long, told the story of Oswaldo, of mole, of heritage and passion and hard work. It captured something real. Something human. It was exactly what I hoped it could be.

That video became the foundation of everything that followed.

For most of my life, I thought I’d own a restaurant. I went to culinary school, spent ten years working in kitchens, and another ten years working the front of house - serving, managing, running a wine program, eventually overseeing restaurant operations for a small restaurant group.

But after I moved back to Portland in 2011, something in me had shifted. I had a nice résumé. But I didn’t really want to go back into restaurants. The long hours, the never-ending stress, the margin-thin business model. And the idea of opening my own place? That dream had cooled. The investment, the tracking of a million moving parts, the feeling that it might own me more than I owned it. I couldn’t do it.

Instead, I took out a $5,000 loan. I bought a camera, a lens, a microphone, and a tripod.

And I started One Hundred Seconds.

But before I spent that money — before I made anything official — I made the video with Oswaldo. That was my test. My gut check. My leap.

Looking back, it’s clear that that first video wasn’t just about Oswaldo or mole. It was about whether this idea had legs. Whether it was possible to capture something meaningful in a tiny window of time. Not a full documentary, not a feature, but a short, sharp, authentic slice of something real.

The video wasn’t perfect. But it had heart. And that’s what mattered.

That one shoot gave me the confidence to move forward. To build a business. To tell stories for nonprofits, B Corps, small businesses, food makers, clean energy innovators, educators, and everyone in between.

Today, One Hundred Seconds has produced hundreds of short films, always rooted in the same belief: a short story, well told, can move people.

And it all started with Oswaldo and a pot of mole.