For Starters is a weekly newsletter for the next-gen of small business owners. It’s written by Danny Giacopelli, former editor of Courier mag and host of Monocle’s The Entrepreneurs podcast.

Hey starter! Read on for…

• Inspiration ➠ Cobblers & coffee

• Advice ➠ Just buy your dream biz

• Ideas ➠ Surf Blocks 🏄️ 

• Tools ➠ Business marketplaces

• Community ➠ FS wins & shoutouts

➠ Get inspired

1. A DIY shop for friends. In Richmond, Virginia, 20 year-old Grant Dickersheid has just thrown open the doors to Letter Store, a brick and mortar selling awesome stuff from the next-gen of local creatives — think clothes, zines, objects, etc. Grant, who ran a screenprinted clothing company in high school, says you won’t find any big brands on his shelves, just things from “people that make stuff out of garages, basements, and backyards.” Perfect. 🤘 Read more

2. It’s never too early. And in NYC, up in Harlem, 17 year-old Nyla Reese runs a vegan bakery, a business she started when she was… thirteen. 🍪 

→ Seriously, the next generation are built differently…

3. Shoes & shots. Fueled by burnout, Brooklyn-based Sung Roh quit her career as the VP of a shoe design company to go back to the basics of the craft: she became a cobbler. Mentored by her brother, a cobbler in South Korea, Sung now runs a biz called Cobbler Bushwick Roaster, which restores shoes, hosts cobbling workshops, and serves up espresso & cold brew. 👟☕️

4. New starts. Alexander Widener always dreamed of quitting his corporate career and opening an interiors shop. In particular, a quaint store called Marston House Antiques in Wiscasset – i.e. the “prettiest village in Maine” – had always inspired him and his husband. They’d visit the shop and stay at its guest cottage whenever they visited the town. Then, one day, the glorious gods of serendipity and starters came calling.

This is what dreams are made of:

5. A bookshop by the sea. Speaking of new starts… The town of Lyme Regis in Dorset, on England’s Jurassic Coast, is host to a magical little secondhand bookstore called The Sanctuary – 10 rooms, 4 floors, a B&B (you can rent a room filled with books), and a direct view of the sea. It’s run by Bob and Mariko Speer, and now it’s apparently for sale. This might be your best shot at inhabiting the main character energy of one of those ‘stressed big city slicker buys small town shop’ Netflix rom-coms? 📚️ 

→ Related: bookshop pet mascots (chinchillas, cats, pigeons, turtles) are now a thing, so choose wisely.

6. Burrito dreams. And meet Maria Sanchez, the LA-based Honduran home cook who’s gone TikTok famous for selling mouthwatering $5 burritos to construction workers out of the back of her Hyundai Sonata 🌯 

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➠ Starter wisdom

Here’s a wild number for ya: 52.3%

That’s the percentage of US employer-businesses that are owned by people at or near retirement age.

I repeat: more than HALF of businesses in the US that employ people – making up roughly 3 million businesses – are owned by people who are retiring soon.

So what will happen to these businesses?

• Tons will be passed to lucky relatives. Maybe you’re one of them?

• Others will be sold to strangers. That can definitely be you.

• And some retiring owners still have no clue what they’ll do.

This wave of near-future ownership transfer is being called, affectionately, the ‘silver tsunami’ 🌊 🌊 👴 👵 

The big lesson: starters like you don’t have to literally start from scratch.

Sometimes (oftentimes!) it’s smarter to use savings, borrow money from relatives, or take out a bank loan to buy an existing business with stable revenue, loyal customers, brand recognition, and a well-defined supply chain.

You might not be able to put ‘founder’ on your LinkedIn. But who cares?

You’re still a starter. And that’s way cooler anyway.

→ Scroll down to Resources to find out where to start…

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➠ Here’s an idea!

1. Surf Blocks → A company in Hawaii called Surf Block Maui takes waste from local surfboard manufacturing and turns it into lightweight and very strong building materials calls Surf Blocks. Clever, locally-grounded, sustainable, a proper business. Hell yeah 🏄‍♂️ —

2. Urban country clubs → City spaces where “mom can do pilates, the kids can take an art class, and everyone can meet for pizza afterwards.” 🐴 —

3. Prison stores → It all started with IKEA and now it’s everywhere…⛓️ 

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➠ Toolbox

🛠️ Resources

So you wanna buy a dream biz? Here’s where to start:

• BizBuySell — the largest business marketplace (US-focused)

• Acquire.com — for mostly online businesses

• Buy Sell Startups — for ‘micro-startups’, run by FS subscriber Jaisal Rathee

• HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business — get this book first

📚️ Reads

Think Work-Life Balance Is Overrated? You’re Hired! WSJ

Inside Pacific Town Club, The Outdoor Social Club for People of Color. Field Mag

How Hard Could It Be to Open a Cute Little General Store? Grub Street

The Customer Isn’t Always Right. Eater

Extra! Extra! Read All About Last Newspaper Hawker in Paris. NYT

The Flavour of Mechanisation. Aeon

Design studios should start organising running clubs. Dezeen

🧠 Findings 

36% → The percentage of biz owners in the US last month who had job openings they couldn’t fill. 86% said few to none of the applicants were qualified. 🤷 

🙃 Fun

Look at this gorgeous, retro e-bike 🥵

Door numbers inspired by inflatable dancers in front of car dealerships 🔢

Here’s a dreamy, light-filled flat on sale in the Marais that comes with a street level shop 👀 🇫🇷

Tiffin, gone viral 😋

Intrigued by this 2-room hotel in Oxford in an underground Victorian public toilet. It’s (much) nicer than it sounds 🚽

Drooling over this new ‘TikTok influencers in Positano’ LEGO set 🇮🇹 

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➠ Our community

1. In Berlin, FS subscriber Jens Draser-Schieb, founder of Berliner Süden, has teamed up with London-based designer David Tanguy, founder of Praline, to create a cool new app called DearClient.

Here’s how DearClient works:

• Creatives uploads their final files

• Their clients pay securely

• Only then can the clients download their work

2. Also in Berlin, subscriber Julia Kozlovskaia works by day as revenue operations lead at a startup, but on the side is working on fun side projects:

• She’s thinking of launching her own kombucha brand: “I quit drinking alcohol half a year ago and quickly noticed a market gap for people who don’t want to replace wine with sugar loaded soft drinks.”

• And she’s building fun games like Clu3, a modern version of the traditional game Codenames, where humans team up with AI in a game of associations: “I built this game because I was curious if AI can understand humans’ abstractions and if we humans, in turn, can understand AI reasoning.”

Started a business? Launched on a cool project? Have an opportunity for the For Starters community? Get in touch: [email protected]

See you next Friday 😎

🙏 “This newsletter slaps! So much in each one, so much of value.” —Benoît Grogan-Avignon

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