“I just quit my 9-5. Now what?”

Welcome to Issue #10 👋 

Danny here. It’s been a gloriously (i.e. rare) sunny week in London and I’ve been busy meeting tons of starters building cool things. If you’re in my neck of the woods and cooking up something good, shoot me a message – I’d love to say hi.

In this week’s issue…

• INSPO ↣ 8-figure shrooms

• TIPS ↣  SURI’s co-founder

• IDEAS ↣ Passion vs purpose

• TOOLS ↣ Trend trackers

• TOWN HALL ↣ Leaving a 9-5

Ten issues of For Starters out the door! What are you finding valuable? What will help you build your dream biz? Tell me everything → [email protected]

DG

↣ Check out this beautiful cargo e-bike: designed in Switzerland, made in the French Pyrenees, and perfect for all you starters out there looking to do local deliveries of fresh croissants, fresh flowers or, maybe, freshly groomed dogs. 🐶

↣ This week, US Air Force veteran Evan Fay soft-launched Roar Brewing Co, which is, incredibly, Detroit's first ever Black-owned brewery (although sadly not surprising: Black-owned breweries make up <1% of all breweries in the US). 🍺

↣ Over in New York, everyone’s talking about Ha’s Snack Bar, a tiny Vietnamese-French-ish joint on the Lower East Side from married starters Anthony Ha and Sadie Mae Burns-Ha, who previously ran the pop-up Ha’s Đặc Biệt. The NYT is calling it the city’s most exciting new spot – the New Yorker is a fan too. 🗽

↣ Anyone been to Merci 2 yet? It’s the second act of the Paris shop that basically helped define the modern lifestyle concept store. 🛍️

↣ Elsewhere in Paris, Tehran-born Farimah Fattahi is "bringing a touch of Iran to Paris's café culture” with her coffee shop Harvest. ☕️

↣ I really enjoyed reading this story about the origin of very famous Californian pottery brand Heath Ceramics, founded by Cathy Bailey and Robin Petravic – and how they’ve quietly reimagined a seaside retreat on gorgeous Tomales Bay. They call it Fisherman’s Camp. 🎣

↣ Also in California: Check out Slightly Choppy, a great custom flag maker in Newport Beach run by painter, collector, designer and surfer Scott Richards. Might have to get some For Starters flags made up… 🎏

↣ Mignon Francois, founder of Nashville’s The Cupcake Collection, “was a stay at home mom drowning in debt and stuck in a house with no electricity when she had the idea to start a cupcake business. After spending her last $5 on cupcake ingredients, she began to multiply her profits to $10 million.” 🧁

↣ Portland, Maine-based Matthew McInnis is growing (sorry…) a really impressive mushroom business called North Spore. It started in 2014 with him and some buddies and they quickly cracked the code of how to sell mushroom spawn (i.e. seeds) via e-commerce. Today, it's an 8-figure company. 🍄

↣ In Chicago, industrial designer Joyce Lai has created a 3D-printed hanger for bras called Bras Up that extends the bra's lifespan (and, thus, reduces waste). Smart. 👙

↣ And Elliot Wolf, son of Law & Order creator Dick Wolf, is developing a new company which uses AI to create daily murder mystery games: They’re hoping to work with IP holders to adapt TV shows. Here’s hoping they create a game in which [SPOILER] a certain character in White Lotus season 2 has a less tragic ending… 👀

For Starters is a weekly briefing for starting the business of your dreams. It’s written by Danny Giacopelli, editorial director of Mailchimp, ex-editor of Courier magazine, and former host of Monocle’s podcast The Entrepreneurs.

Alright, let’s get a juicy tip or two. Mark Rushmore and Gyve Safavi once worked in the advertising world, before researching the electric toothbrush market and discovering pretty huge customer pain points: most electric toothbrushes are clunky, overcomplicated and pretty unsustainable. Their solution? The now very fast-growing brand SURI.

Below, Mark shares a lesson that’s guided him on the journey…

﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏

Here’s something I learned from other entrepreneurs early on. It’s been one of the core factors of SURI’s success – and I think about it everyday:

Take the rent on SURI’s office. It’s very, very low. That’s because we’re in a building that was going to be demolished in a year’s time. We’re also on a 3-month lease, so there’s very low risk to the company – if something were to happen, we could leave the lease pretty quickly. Yet, it’s in a central London location and there’s a fantastic community around us.

In other words: We’re minimizing our downside (we’ve got affordable, flexible rent) but we’re maximizing our upside (it’s in a great environment).

Another example can be found vis-a-vis suppliers. Always ask for good payment terms from the beginning. People often don’t think to ask these things, but you absolutely should.

There’s a company called True Classic which bootstrapped to $400 million in 4 years selling t-shirts. Probably one of the fastest growing companies in that category of all time. And they famously bootstrapped it by going to their manufacturers and negotiating really long payment terms, then selling t-shirts in between, then buying more inventory, and essentially using the payment terms to cleverly fund their growth.

Minimize your downside, maximize your upside. Apply this philosophy to everything.

Passion vs purpose. Which one’s a better motivator for new biz owners? Passion might not last forever – and you risk extinguishing the fire if you turn your fun passion into a series of spreadsheets. So purpose-based it is? (i.e when you try to serve a loftier mission.) In reality, you need a bit of both: “Passion gets you started, and purpose keeps you going.”

Vibecoding. Because everything needs a zeitgeisty phrase. This one means the act (feeling?) of using AI tools like Cursor, Replit, Bolt and Lovable, to quickly hack together a product, almost for free. → When the NYT covers it, you know it’s Officially A Thing.

Happiness. The 2025 World Happiness Report is out, and as my fellow newsletter writer Meg Hovious points out, “for the first time since the rankings began, the US has dropped out of the world’s top 20 happiest countries… But here’s the part that stands out: young Americans — people under 30 — are now significantly less happy than older generations.” Dig into what this means for young business owners here – and subscribe to Meg’s mental health-focused newsletter here.

Pre-loved. As of this week, Rimowa is (re)selling your old beaten-up suitcases on their site. Haven’t travelled to Bhutan? No problem: the sticker on your luggage now says you have! (I get the aesthetic appeal, but I also think it’s sorta cheating – the travel version of the military’s stolen valor. You gotta earn all those dents and scratches the hard and fun way!) In all seriousness, tons of brands are launching resale platforms these days – taking their old products, refurbishing them, and selling them alongside their new merchandise – and this is only a good thing.

Resources 🛠️

↣ Arcade. I’ve been keeping my eye on this platform. It allows you to use generative AI to design jewelry (and starting this week, rugs) and then pairs you with a manufacturer or ‘skilled artisan’ to create the actual product. → Like all gen AI tools, I’m trying to think about who wins and loses from such a platform/ecosystem. What do you think?

↣ Trend trackers. You might be a Google Trends devotee – if not, you really should, as you can keep tabs on what people are searching for on Google in real-time. But have you ever used Yelp Trend Tracker? If you’re building a local small biz, it might be just as valuable. → Don’t chase fleeting trends; instead, use these insights as intelligence to see where the wind is blowing and position your biz for the long term.

Reads 📚️

↣ “Raised in a Civil War, He Makes Games to Bring People Together — Josef Fares, whose family fled Lebanon for Sweden in the 1980s, began his career as a filmmaker before pouring his creative energy into cooperative video games.” / NYT

↣ “Running stores get a stylish upgrade — When a customer is spending £70 or more on a pair of shorts, the environment needs to be equally as aspirational” / FT

↣ “Meet the Invisible Force Shaping the Modern Backbar — For decades, one studio has quietly been defining the look of the most iconic spirits on the market.” / Punch

↣ “The Towns That Invent Their Own Money — In a practice that dates back centuries, communities are creating their own currencies to keep local economies strong and resilient.” / RTBC

↣ “Where Are the Black Yoga Studio Owners? — Black yoga teachers are creating communities. Just not where you'd expect.” / Outside

↣ “This Brand Wants to Make You Sporty, Rich—and Now, Sexy — Emily Oberg’s brand Sporty & Rich has won over customers with products that emphasize health and hotness. Now it’s getting into sexual wellness with Sensual Sport.” / WSJ

↣ “Making time — Many top horologists train not in Switzerland but at a Finnish school that keeps the industry ticking.” / Monocle

↣ “DIY Apps Are the New Myspace — Forget social media. We’re building social software.” / Every

Findings 🧠 

↣ 37% of Americans under 60 have purchased something on TikTok Shop, averaging 12 purchases across last year and spending ~$59 per purchase. Huh? I repeat: the average American shopper spent $708 on TikTok Shop last year. This doesn’t pass the sniff test… but what do I know?

↣ 78% of hospitality business owners in the UK felt burned out in 2024.

↣ 1.5 = the number of days that Brits want to go to the office each week, one of the lowest in the world (tied with Spain at #2). Filipino workers take the top spot (#1) of the world's least office-inclined – most want to do less than 1 day in the office per week. Greeks, meanwhile, have managed to find a magical balance: workers want to be in the office 3.5 days… and that’s exactly what they’re doing (#goals).

↣ “92% of Gen Z recognize the value of neurodiversity in entrepreneurship, 75% want to launch their own business careers, and more than half of Gen Z identify as ‘definitely’ (22%) or ‘somewhat’ (31%) neurodiverse,” according to a new survey.

Fun 🙃

↣ "Internationally recognized as the world’s leading maze designer, Adrian Fisher has created over 700 mazes around the globe. The Briton prides himself on his inescapable creations, designing mazes spanning castle grounds, city centers, farms, wildlife parks, and more.” / 60 Second Docs

📩 Share your juicy links: [email protected]

Last week in Town Hall we heard a $5000 biz idea from FS subscriber Aaina Sharma, who recently quit her 9-5 tech job to launch her lifestyle shop Feels Like July. I asked her to share a bit more about what she’s up to…

Q: Aaina, how did you know when to quit your day job?

A: The idea of quitting my day job (I was leading Core UX Design at Grammarly) to start something of my own had been top of mind for a couple of years, but always felt like a distant dream. Early last year, I felt burnt out and was craving a complete reset from the fast-paced tech startup life I’d been a part of for 15+ years. As I started documenting what inspires me and curating my life and space more intentionally, it slowly became obvious that I needed to work on something that made me excited about getting out of bed everyday. I feel like it’s never the right time to make a decision like this because there are always reasons not to, but in December I took a leap of faith and decided to quit my job, focus on myself, and go back to what I truly feel passionate about.

Q: What's been the biggest challenge so far?

A: Deciding what to prioritize as a P0 in the early days and which tasks can move to the P1 and P2 piles [DG: an explanation]. As great as having complete ownership of my time has been, it has definitely forced me to think strategically about how and where I spend my time. It’s easy to get distracted and start chasing shiny objects when you’re working with an open canvas, but I have to often remind myself that what I choose to focus on right now can make or break how I execute and bring this new venture to life.

Q: What do you anticipate to be the biggest challenge?

A: Gaining (potential) customers’ trust. Being able to tell the story that I’m trying to tell with Feels Like July is going to take some work. I'm still in the process of testing different versions of messaging that will resonate with my audience. I believe trust is built with a brand that is either aspirational or matches customers' own values. Gaining this level of trust takes time, but I believe that with consistency and grit, I can get there.

Inventory management is also a new world for me. Being able to predict demand, stay on top of trends, and take advantage of patterns that I’m seeing as we sell products is going to be a challenge in the near term. I'm always up for a good challenge, though!

Q: What knowledge gaps are you looking to fill?

A: Since I'm a team of one, I'm wearing multiple hats and learning a bit of everything that goes into creating and running an ecommerce business. I’d like to get better at identifying the key performance indicators for an ecommerce business like mine. I've spent my entire career working in SaaS, so I understand that world pretty well. The ecommerce/retail industry is quite a bit different. I'm looking forward to diving into the KPIs so I know exactly how to measure success going forward.

Q: Do you want to connect with anyone in particular?

A: I'm always interested in connecting with other business owners! Having a community of like-minded folks who are working on their ideas and dreams is also such a big energy boost for me. More specifically, I’m also interested in connecting with inventory managers to understand that side of the business better. I would also love to connect with social media managers to talk shop and understand how organic growth works within the various social media channels.

📩 Share your news & updates: [email protected]

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