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- What if you reinvented yourself?
For Starters is a weekly briefing for the next-generation of small biz owners. It’s curated by Danny Giacopelli, formerly of Monocle and Courier magazines.
Hey starter! Read on for…
Inspiration ➠ Finance or shoes?
Advice ➠ Shopkeeping as politics
Ideas ➠ The invite-only restaurants
Tools ➠ How to think about the future
Community ➠ FS wins & shoutouts
➠ Get inspired
Perfectly formed
1. Feels like fall. I recently saw a 10th-anniversary screening of the classic indie film Mistress America, in which Greta Gerwig’s manically side-hustling, go-getting character dreams of opening the most perfect New York City restaurant, the sort of place where “it will always feel like fall inside” and where “everything happens.” This week, on a trip to NYC, I finally made the pilgrimage to Ha’s Snack Bar, the newish, 24-seat, Vietnamese-French spot on the Lower East Side, run by married couple Anthony Ha and Sadie Mae Burns-Ha, and I couldn’t help but think it fits the brief perfectly. The hype, for once, is real. 🍁
2. Go forth and prosper. Lauren Bruno is the founder of Prosper XO, an Austin startup that's bringing an artist-centric model to music streaming. It will do it, in part, by connecting musicians to sponsors. 🎶 🤝
3. Sweet success. In New Zealand, Simon Lewis Wards is leaning on his years working trade jobs – plumber, builder, drainlayer – to power his new career as an artist creating sculptures inspired by iconic candy. Talk about a career change. Just look at this enormous candy necklace. → An interview with him here. 🍭
4. A bespoke path. And it’s true, sometimes (almost all of the time?) your career doesn’t go down the road you think it will. Take Tor Cheng Yao. In 2012, Tor left Singapore to study economics at University College London. A stable, conventional work-life lay ahead. Yet, instead of investment banking or consulting, Tor soon become enamoured by the world of bespoke shoemaking – and then everything changed. After a decade studying his craft in London and Japan under master shoemakers, earlier this year Tor returned to Singapore to launch his own label, Fumu. → Read more about his journey 👞
5. Local bosses. Meanwhile, New Yorkers have their iconic bodegas, but Londoners have their corner shops. (And as a New Yorker in London for 15 years, I appreciate the nuances of them both.) Photographer Serena Brown has been visiting and shooting portraits of corner shop owners – check out her lovely series. 📸
6. Get crafty. And in Manchester, biomedical science student Rosalind Ying Lu (and her dog Dudu) have opened up Oopstay, an art cafe and shop which she built as a place to ‘unwind from her studies’. Watch this video on Rosalind via the always excellent Manchester’s Finest. 🎨 ☕️
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➠ Starter wisdom
Opening a store has become a political statement. It's a way of keeping our city centers from dying, of preserving human interactions and social bonds, of protecting the beauty of our cities and reclaiming our power from the internet giants.
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➠ Good idea!
Jump into the deep end together
1. Retreats & residencies → Don’t know about you, but I’ve seen more and more people in my network hosting and/or attending creative retreats. This is very good. A change of scenery unlocks magic. ✨
Related: Adults are increasingly going to sleep-away camps to meet friends.
Sorta related: 0fr., the cult-famous Parisian bookshop, turned an abandoned house in a small French village into an art residency in 2012 (“Artists we publish and exhibit in Paris are invited all year long to this little house to do whatever they want”) and they recently they bought the nearby abandoned school. You can just do things.
2. Pen to paper → Kickstarter founder Yancey Strickler says to start your next project with a giant 60-foot long scroll of butcher paper:
Start your next project with a giant scroll of paper
I learned this from my friend Rob Kalin, founder of Etsy. When he starts a project, he gets out a giant piece of butcher paper — like three feet by sixty feet.
When you start the project, you put your first ideas down in the
— Yancey Strickler (@ystrickler)
3:59 PM • Aug 16, 2025
3. “Greenhushing” → Big businesses once were loud about their sustainability and climate efforts. Now, in this weird new era when up is down and down is up, they’re actively keeping quiet about it… but they’re still plugging away.
4. Grocery store tourism → Skift reports on an increasingly popular travel activity:
“A bag of shrimp chips, a perfectly wrapped onigiri, a tin of Portuguese sardines. They’re just snacks, but for many travelers, these small purchases are becoming cultural souvenirs in their own right.”
5. “Quiet cracking” → It's different than burnout and 54% of employees experience it.
6. The invite-only izakaya → On New York’s 14-seat Japanese restaurant Hori, which can only be accessed via a warm introduction — or, more specifically, the Japanese system of ichigensan okotowari:
“…first-time diners must be guests of a regular. Once someone has dined and adhered to the strict “no social media” rule, they can register themselves and unlock access to the otherwise invisible reservations.”
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➠ Toolbox
🛠️ Resources
Email newsletter service Rumicat looks really fun.
📚️ Reads
You’re Probably Thinking About the Future All Wrong. Dealbook
A conversation with Anna Sulan Masing. Apartamento
Aliveness (what machines can't make). The Craftsman
They left Syria as refugees. They’re returning to build its tech industry. Rest of World
They’re here. They’re queer. They’re farming. Chicago Tribune [$]
How roasters can stay profitable while still being relevant to their community. Perfect Daily Grind
At 23, she set out to modernize the spice trade. Now she’s navigating Trump’s tariffs. Guardian
How a VC and a tech founder used AI to launch a brick-and-mortar business in their spare time. Lenny’s Newsletter
Nike’s ‘walking encyclopedia’ of company culture to retire after 52 years. The Oregonian [$]
🧠 Findings
$$$ → The average rich person isn’t a hedge fund master of the universe… they’re owners of boring businesses: “Among the top 1% of earners ($550k+ per year), 34.9% of income comes from business ownership. It’s even more among the top 0.1% ($2.3M per year), at 43.1%.”
70% → In 2024, Americans aged 15 to 24 spent 70% less time attending or hosting parties than in 2003. And in 2023, only 4.1% of Americans said they attended or hosted a party on a typical weekend. More here on ‘the death of partying in the USA’.
🙃 Fun
Wildlife camera Behold looks cool 🦊
Slippers with changeable straps 👟
A USB-C flash drive shaped like a macOS folder 💾
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➠ Our community
In the south of The Netherlands, For Starters subscriber Jonne van Veggel publishes a weekly newsletter and is also working on VOW, a life insurance startup “that’s not about fear, but about love and responsibility.” Jonne:
“We’re building a community of people who keep their promises, even after they’re gone. Not a financial product, more a statement of character. We’re planning to go live in the last quarter of this year in The Netherlands.”