- For Starters
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- Side gigs that become main gigs
For Starters is the essential weekly briefing for the next generation of small business owners. Inspiration and ideas, every Friday – for free. It’s curated by Danny Giacopelli, formerly of Monocle and Courier magazines. Enjoy!
Hey starter! Read on for…
Inspiration ➠ Artisan, at scale
Advice ➠ Q&A with CATCH 📸
Ideas ➠ Cook for your customers
Tools ➠ A creative cheat-sheet
Town Hall ➠ Subscriber shoutouts
➠ Get inspired
Artisanal
1. Make it happen. There are tons of ways to make a product. Spandana Gopal, founder of design studio Tiipoi and Bangalore store General Items, is offering a new way. It’s a B2B service called x Tiipoi.
Here’s how it works…
Tiipoi, which sells artisan-made homeware, has over the years built a network of quality, craft-centric, family-run workshops across India.
There’s untapped value in that network, so Spandana’s now opening it up to other brands that want to manufacture artisanal objects at scale. Use x Tiipoi as an end-to-end production partner, from prototyping to delivery. Smart.
Spandana tells us…
“We set up X Tiipoi for starters who care about production with provenance; those who want to bring to life objects that are more accessible than one-off luxury pieces, and more soulful than mass produced items.”
2. Sharpening the dream → Some chefs live for the heat of the line. Eytan Zias? He fell in love with sharpening knives. A former busboy who rose through the ranks of kitchens as a chef in NYC and Arizona, Eytan ditched service for steel and launched Knife House, which has locations in Phoenix and Portland. He also runs his own brand, Steelport Knife Co., making carbon steel knives in Portland with gorgeous Oregon maple burl handles. 🔪
→ While we’re in Portland, here’s more on its cutting-edge knife shops.
3. Do Re Mi, fa so indie → And in London, Sam Voulters and Anna Watanabe are starting a new indie publishing house for children’s books called Do Re Mi. Launching early 2026, Do Re Mi’s approach takes cues from Japanese children’s books. “This is a great time to be launching an independent children’s publisher,” Sam, who spent 12 years at Penguin, told The Bookseller. (Consider this your sign to start one, too...) 📚
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➠ Starter wisdom
Two months ago, Londoner Ali Burton was working as a management consultant. Today, the For Starters subscriber has left his 9-to-5 to go all-in on CATCH, the film-based, point-and-shoot camera company he quietly built on nights and weekends. 📸
Below, Ali explains:
the ups and downs of going it alone
why partnerships are so important for growth
and a BIG job opportunity for the right person… 👀
Hey Ali, where are you dialing in from today?
I’m in London, in my old office. I’m still borrowing it for a few months!
At your former job?
Exactly, yeah. I worked in management consulting with Gate One for years. Our firm got bought by Havas, the big media creative group, so I’m currently in the office. I transitioned to CATCH full-time six weeks ago. As part of that exit, I asked if I could still use the office for six months, because it’s a wicked space! All the guys here are doing such fun, creative stuff. Being with them in a space like this is gold dust.
Bold of you. And awesome.
I’ve spent the last few years helping other people do what I’m doing now. Part of my job was running our in-house incubator. I got to the point where I just needed to do my own version. Honestly, leaving that world took some time and was terrifying. A stable salary, career path, reputation… I walked away from it for something fragile and handmade. But if I didn’t bet on myself, I knew I’d regret it for the rest of my life.
Why a camera company?
It came from remembering the experience of patience – from having a disposable camera, sending it away, and having to wait for the photos to come back. Those memories were so much richer and the photos were so much more precious. I wanted to share that feeling with other people.
This was just after Covid. It was still a time of isolation and I wasn’t happy about the way we were all doom-scrolling. You looked in restaurants and social spaces and people are literally all on their phone, distracted, not present. My personal screen-time was out of control – nine plus hours a day, like 30 years of my life. Staggering.
I saw a stat that says if you look at a notification, it takes like 35 minutes to reconnect and refocus. Surely this isn't how we’ve evolved to spend our time?
So you thought an analogue camera would do the trick.
Yeah, and I didn’t want to make an overly technical camera. I wanted to make the easiest possible film camera, one that anyone can pick up. I didn’t like how unsustainable and wasteful disposables were, so I started playing around with a few prototype models for a new camera. I wanted it to be portable, to have the feel of a disposable that you could throw around at a party, something not too fiddly. I landed on a design and started taking it everywhere.
But the brand vision grew beyond just the camera, right?
I’d learned from so many other entrepreneurs that you’ve got to keep it really simple and narrow at the start, but I got carried away and thought… let’s do film as well! And let's also do the development! I launched with that proposition: “This is your end-to-end film camera experience.” You buy the camera, you’re on a subscription for the film, and we’ll also do the development for you. Which was kinda crazy.
That’s, like, ten times more logistically challenging.
Yeah, ten times operationally heavy. But I was obsessed with a brand experience where we slowed things down for you, making you wait for the photos and turning it into an experience via storytelling.
That’s why most people buy our cameras. They throw them in their bag for a holiday, a trip with friends, a weekend away. It’s the moments when they want to disconnect, when they don’t want to be tethered to notifications. The camera becomes a little ritual that says I’m present.
How has CATCH grown since you started it?
I had a few months of it going quite well. Then in 2023 I had a terrible personal experience. I lost my best friend, so I stopped. There are loads of lessons from that phase of my life. Losing Ed stripped everything back. It made me question what actually matters. That’s why CATCH feels bigger than a company... it’s about memory. The people and the moments you don’t want to forget.
Things didn’t move for a while after that. I eventually picked it up again the following year and spent 12 months growing it aggressively alongside my full-time job, to the point where I could fundraise earlier this year, go full-time, and recruit a team.
The dream is bigger than cameras. I want CATCH to become shorthand for connection. If a brand wants to show up as human and real, they should think, ‘Let’s do something with CATCH.’
Partnerships are a big part of your strategy. Tell us more.
The core of CATCH is getting people off their phone and into film. Partnerships have been a big part of that growth. We’ve worked with Evian, Nike, Canada Goose, lots of music festivals. We did a takeover at DC10 in Ibiza. That was a no-phones event.
We don’t have the capacity at the moment to put on our own events, but an important part of our brand and mission is IRL, so we’re borrowing physical space and awareness from other brands, and they’re borrowing our brand for a night in an intentional, creative, analogue way.
Weddings in particular are interesting. Our camera has got a 28 mm lens: very intimate, up close, and a fast shooter. It works best with the flash on. So rather than having disposables on your wedding tables, we’ve got more of an end-to-end solution.
It’s clever positioning. What else is on your roadmap?
It’s been a real journey. It takes at least 10 years to do anything good in life, I think. So I’m excited for what’s next. Recruiting a team is very important.
For partners, we’re not just another supplier. We’re giving them a cultural signal, saying to their audience: “This brand cares enough about the moment to take the phone out of your hand.” I’m confident we’ll attract the right collaborations this way.
And the dream is bigger than cameras. I want CATCH to become shorthand for connection. Like, if a brand wants to show up as human and real, they should think, Let’s do something with CATCH.
What roles are you looking to recruit to the team?
Content is the currency that businesses grow on now. People take our cameras to some amazing places and they’re telling stories with their photos. That’s an asset of ours. But our organic, in-house brand content isn’t good enough. That’s the business challenge. I’ve got to a point with my own expertise where it needs someone to take it to the next level.
So we want to recruit someone pretty influential in the company who can communicate our brand and story. That could be a young, hungry content creator looking for their first full-time job, through to someone who’s very experienced and it’s more of a fractional creative director role. I’m biased but I think it’s a very exciting opportunity.
But born from deep focus
Are there any brands out there that do this stuff well?
Do you know Manors Golf?
I do now.
A major part of their brand is their creative direction and execution. Lots of their content is actually behind the scenes stuff; it’s content of them filming their content, which is really effective and attracts a certain type of customer and employee. That’s definitely a model we’re going to see going forwards.
We’re also looking at ambassador-type roles — people with real influence who can represent us in their industry, be it nightlife, music, food and drink. We’ll be able to learn from them and they’ll be an adviser to us on where to take the brand. We’re currently building those partnerships which is exciting.
How can For Starters subscribers get in touch?
You can email me at [email protected] or DM me on IG. I’m still spending a few hours each week speaking with 4 to 5 first-time founders. Hopefully that can become part of CATCH’s company structure; giving grads or people in-between jobs exposure to a different type of business. And if you feel like your brand, wedding or festival deserves to be remembered in a way that doesn’t live on a feed, let’s talk!
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➠ Good idea
1. Vietnam’s time to shine → “The resources are here. The talent is here. The market is young, savvy and involved. What’s needed now is intent. The question is: who will get it right? Who will cut through the noise and “make it” as a stand-out brand?” 🇻🇳
2. Cook for your customers in their house → It worked for the founder of Omaha-based Kow Steaks 🧑🍳
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➠ Toolbox
🛠️ Resources
The Creative Cheat Sheet: a new directory of tools and resources for creatives, curated by Tony Bowe. More things are added every day.
📚️ Reads
How hawker signboards tell the story of Singapore. Straits Times (Super fun)
Perfect Lives. Wooden City
Why Do Asian Brands Pretend to be Japanese? The Chow
Nine Things I Learned in Ninety Years. Edward Packard
🧠 Findings
63% → The proportion of Spanish households that own a shopping trolley from Spanish heritage brand Rolser. Now that’s market share.
🙃 Fun
Not a Robot — can you beat this captcha challenge?
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➠ Town Hall
For Starters subscribers in the press! Congrats to Jenny Nguyen, the NYC-based founder of Hello Human, for the big Wallpaper feature. Jenny talks about her latest project, Human House, “a hybrid gallery, events space, and office where a furniture maker might debut their latest collection, an artist may hold a talk or you might attend a pop-up.” And Missy Malik-Flynn and Cameron Malik-Flynn, featured in For Starters #23, got dubbed ‘the cocktail makers of the moment’ in HTSI — have a read 🎉
Subscribers Sam & Katie Ridges, the sibling founders behind The Spotlight Market, a platform for digital design dealers to showcase and sell their wares IRL, are back with another edition on 10-11 October in Clapton, east London. These are highly curated events and Sam and Katie have got a killer lineup for this next round. 🎫 → Grab a ticket
And Vincent Sauvan, founder of STUDIO NEWDAYS, is back with a 3rd edition of his excellent London meetup, ‘Build the thing’, on 30 Sept. It’s “a networking event for people who just need a little push and a room full of others doing the exact same thing.” 🎫 → Grab a ticket (free)
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