- For Starters
- Posts
- Starting is scary. Do it anyway
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 ➠ Is pizza AI-proof?
Advice ➠ Progress > perfection
Ideas ➠ Love bomb a small biz
Tools ➠ Skills, everywhere
Community ➠ Wins & shoutouts
➠ Get inspired
Credit: @__balay | @dsl__studio
1. It means home. In Milan, twenty-something Ray Ibarra has just swung open the doors to a beautiful little Filipino-inspired wine bar called balay, and if I lived in that city I’d be there every day. Love this writeup from Appear Here, which calls the spot “part restaurant, part gallery, part house party… that brings together Filipino tapas, natural wines, jazz, art, and the kind of atmosphere where every interaction feels personal.” 🍷
2. Oasis (not that one). First-time hoteliers Kate Bellm (a photographer) and Edgar Lopez (an artist) own Hotel Corazón, a dreamy 15-room escape in Mallorca’s Tramuntana mountains, between Deià and Sóller. NOWNESS just released a short film about the hotel’s lush landscape. 🌵 → Watch, and drool over it, here.
3. Pies in the sky. When Lewis Mazza-Carson launched his pie shop Pie Rolla’s in Auckland last year, he sold out of all 50 pies in an hour. Since then, his creations (we’re talking kiwi meat pies, not sweet American ones) have become an absolute phenomenon, an experience he told the NZ Herald is “quite terrifying, but good for business.” 🥧
Selling out of pies is actually a family tradition, he says:
‘My mum handmade pies from my grandmother’s recipes, which quickly gained a loyal following… At that time, handmade pies created with such love and care were hard to find. After my parents moved on to their next café, the beloved pies faded from the spotlight. However, in the past year, I decided to revive the tradition.”
4. Timber land. Magic happens when likeminded people share a physical space together. Here in London, three wood-focused businesses will soon be running workshops, ateliers and showrooms right next to each other, in the refurbished Hartland Road railway arches, just round the corner from Camden Market. 🪵
The new neighbours are…
London School of Furniture, teaching the next-gen of woodworkers cabinet making & other skills. Opens today!
Fallen & Felled, which mills felled local trees into hardwood timber for architects & furniture makers. Great story. Opens tomorrow!
Wilkinson & Rivera, a design studio run by Grant Wilkinson & Teresa Rivera, who make gorgeous furniture. Opens soon!
5. AI-proof. You absolutely have to read this story about how art director Megs Senk & software developer George Korsnick, witnessing how AI is demolishing some (many? all?) creative industries, decided to pivot BIG TIME and open a pizzeria in an 1820s building in coastal Maine. 🍕
Says George:
“It’s hard to explain how different it feels to make something that actually benefits people I see every day. Nearly everyone in town has probably eaten something I made. Totally different from some of the shit I’ve done in tech. I once worked on fractional ownership of skyscrapers—literal micro-shares. That was a real project.”
6. Cotton, reclaimed. Food journalist Stephen Satterfield, who you might remember hosted Netflix's truly excellent food series High on the Hog (he’s also founder of Whetstone magazine), has launched a textile company called COMOCO. They make high quality, undyed cotton shirts, grown by Black farmers in North Carolina, with everything milled, knit, cut, sewn and 100% made in the USA. The mission? “Revive Black-grown cotton in the United States”. 🪡
“For centuries, Black hands cultivated cotton without owning the crop. Streetwear brands have leveraged Black aesthetics to elevate their cultural currency, but the profits rarely flow back to Black communities. COMOCO is breaking this history, disrupting this extractive cycle by reconnecting Black creativity with Black ownership across the entire supply chain.”
7. Lowlife. And in the UK, Margate’s getting a new ‘lo-fi social space and lifestyle store,’ and I can’t handle this identity… 😂🤌
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➠ Starter wisdom
If you’re starting a new biz, uncertainty is the default setting.
You’re making decisions without all the info, you’re second-guessing everything, you’re hoping the wheels don’t fall off.
That’s 100% normal. The trick isn’t to eliminate uncertainty, it’s learning how to live with it.
The below ‘self-talk phrase’ – one of 7 from this Psychology Today article by Dr Alice Boyes, author of the book Stress-Free Productivity – hits hard:
I can choose to make no new mistakes, or I can choose to make progress on my goals – but I can’t choose both.
I started this newsletter exactly 6 months ago. It looked a lot scrappier then. I wasn’t happy with it. But I started.
How about you? If you’re waiting until everything feels perfect before you make a move, you’re gonna be waiting a longgg time.
Just start.
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➠ Good idea!
Cafe → club
2. Love bomb a small biz → In Chicago, Keewa Nurullah runs an initiative called CIRCULATE. More from Block Club Chicago:
“Every month, Nurullah chooses a local store to host a shopping event, setting the vibe with music and family-friendly libations. The events are akin to ‘rent parties’ thrown by Black people in big cities after the Great Migration to help neighbors raise money to pay rent, Nurullah said. The idea is to encourage ‘intentional shopping’ and get neighbors to support local shops, serving as a ‘love bomb for a small business,’ Nurullah said. CIRCULATE events are held at the end of the month, which is also intentional as that is when bills are due, Nurullah said.”
3. ‘Ugly cake’ discourse → First The Cut came for ugly cakes. Then cake fans (and good sense) rallied in defense of them.
4. Customer Capital → When customers give your small biz working capital in return for shopping credit. A financing concept used by NuMarket.
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➠ Toolbox
🛠️ Tools
📚️ Reads
Overtourism in Japan, and How it Hurts Small Businesses. Ridgeline
How Portland’s ‘ghost mall’ became the city’s coolest startup incubator. The Oregonian
Why are we lying to young people about work? Maalvika
Ralph Lauren’s Vintage Man of Mystery. NYT
Open all hours: Celebrating the Bossman. CNT
She quit her job as a Walgreens pharmacist to start a Vietnamese coffee company–today, it brings in over $500,000 a year. CNBC
🧠 Findings
1/5 → The likelihood that a stuffed animal sold in the US last year was bought for an adult 🧸
🙃 Fun
City objects. Don’t think this escaped the concept phase, but can’t wait till it does.
The new edition of Monocle’s annual Entrepreneurs guide is out. Grab a copy — a solid # of For Starters subscribers are either profiled or wrote pieces.
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➠ FS community
In the high desert of southern California, For Starters subscriber Kate Pawlicki Bourne runs lifestyle brand Ghost Town Ranch.
A brand storyteller who runs a digital agency, Kate got inspired to start Ghost Town Ranch after spending time renovating a midcentury house in the foothills of Joshua Tree. Her idea? ‘Elevated essentials for the Modern Pioneer’. Kate launched the brand in 2024 with a unisex body care line and now has a retail outpost at Market Market in Palm Springs.
Kate’s ask: “I’m looking to expand our distribution into the midwest, east coast + abroad, and would love to be connected with hospitality partners + indie boutiques who might be interested in carrying our line.”