- For Starters
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- You can't buy time
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.
Hey, starter! Read on for…
Inspiration ➠ Shoes, shops & poles
Advice ➠ Do you know cupuaçu?
Ideas ➠ Time for friction-maxxing!
Resources ➠ Pinterest’s big trends
Town Hall ➠ Community shoutouts
👋 For Starters is read by 9,100+ people, including new subs Leslie, a distillery owner in New York, and Andrea, a visual artist and publisher in Manchester.
➠ Get inspired
Flexible feet | Credit
1. A bright idea. When Rebecca Kelley and Duncan Robertson met, they realized they shared a frustration about kids’ footwear – the category was full of “downsized adult shoes that were thick, rigid, narrow and heavy.” And kids’ shoes rarely took into account the fact that their feet are still growing: “Bones are soft. Arches are developing. Movement patterns are being shaped for life.” So, like any good starters, Rebecca and Duncan decided to do something about it. Behold, their new company: Brightland. → Read more about their development process.
2. Charming to the max. Just look at this shopfront in Paris. We’re getting close to a platonic ideal here…
3. Pole position. And newly launched biz Goodside, founded by former choreographer and art gallery owner Tze Chun, can only be described as… a pole dancing studio for people who appreciate great design [ever so mildly nsfw].
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➠ Starter wisdom
This one’s for all you 9-5ers trying to start or grow a biz on the side…
By day, Ariel Altman has a demanding tech job – she runs industry partnerships at YouTube Health. But during early mornings, late nights, weekends, and pretty much every free moment in between, she’s focused on building a business, Figa Foods.
Figa, which Food Network called ‘like chocolate, but better’, has a mission to bring the wonders of the chocolate-like Brazilian fruit cupuaçu (pronounced coo-pu-ah-soo) to the American market and beyond.
→ Below, Ariel shares her experience working a 9-5 while growing a business and what it takes to tell the story of – and then sell – a relatively unknown ingredient.
Ariel & Ronny
Hey Ariel, how’d a New Yorker end up obsessed by a Brazilian superfruit?
I’m American and my husband Ronny is Brazilian. When we met and I started to go to Brazil, I became so inspired by all the amazing natural foods that were so clean and good for you, but which Americans had no idea about. I’d always been obsessed with health and starting my own business, so like any good millennial I went on Google, Gemini and ChatGPT to research Brazilian superfruits. That’s when I came across cupuaçu, which is considered to be the cousin of the cocoa plant. We discovered a YouTube video of a woman in the Amazon with no electricity using a hand-cranked coffee grinder to grind the seeds of the cupuaçu fruit. Similar to how cocoa beans can get turned into chocolate, we realized that you could take the seeds of the cupuaçu fruit and turn them into a bar.
Eureka!
So we asked all of our friends in Brazil, “Do you know anyone in the chocolate industry? Do you know anyone that knows anything about cupuaçu?” We started talking to researchers and authors of articles on cupuaçu and all these different people and everyone said, “You’re never going to be able to do this. And you’re never going to make it taste good.”
Why’s that?
On the first part, because no one’s really figured out the supply chain. Cupuaçu is seen as an afterthought crop. Farmers sometimes don’t even harvest it because they don’t see the value. Sometimes the pulp is used in desserts. If you get an acai in some parts of Brazil, it’ll be half acai, half cupuaçu – they’ll mix the pulp with cream and sugar, because the pulp’s really tangy and tart. The main use for the seeds is in the cosmetics industry. They’ll buy them super cheap and press them for the oil – it’s super high in moisture absorption and antioxidants. So we were like, alright, we’ve gotta figure this out. Let’s try and see who’s tried to make cupuaçu bars in Brazil.
And what did you discover?
We ordered small batch bars from anywhere that we could find. I remember doing a taste test at our kitchen counter. To be honest, they were mostly terrible, overly sweet, and tasted of really cheap or rotten chocolate. What we realized was, just like grapes turn into wine and cocoa beans into chocolate, there’s a process of fermentation involved. And with the bars that we were trying, the fermentation was really off. Luckily, there was a twist of fate. My husband’s uncle’s partner’s brother owned a restaurant, and the former pastry trainee at that restaurant is now a big deal chocolate maker in Brazil. Her name is Luisa Abram. One of the top artisan chocolate makers in the world. She told us, “I've always wanted to work with cupuaçu. This is the future of chocolate. I can make this taste good. Let's figure this out.”
So you were off to the races. What happened next?
We started to talk to farmers. We went on a field trip to where a lot of the cupuaçu and cocoa farming is done in Brazil. Oftentimes when you grow cocoa, you grow cupuaçu next to it because the cupuaçu tree actually provides shade for the cocoa tree. We found a fermentation expert on the ground, someone who’s been working in the cocoa industry for 30+ years and loved what we were doing, who said, “I can develop a fermentation protocol for you guys that tastes really good.” We're now working with four farmers and buying out their cupuaçu, teaching them how to ferment it and then paying them a much higher price than what they would get if they didn't harvest it or if they were just selling it to the cosmetics industry. These are small, family-run agroforestry or regenerative farms, not monocropped sprayed farms. They look more like a tropical forest and they’re way better for the environment.
That’s the supply chain sorted. Now the recipe – how’d you overcome the taste issue?
I’m a chocolate snob. I’m very picky with food. I wasn’t going to put something on the market that tasted bad. I remember sitting in the factory as we were doing tests and going through our first production run, thinking, “Unless I can look at someone I really respect and say this is delicious, then we're not doing it. We’re not leaving until it’s perfect.”
There was a lot of playing around with the roasting and what kind of sugar we use. I feel really strongly about clean ingredients and getting the most nutritional values you can out of whatever you put in your body. So we went with date sugar given the flavor profile and the high antioxidants. We started experimenting with recipes. I gave it to chefs at my work, at Google. I gave it to chefs at Eleven Madison Park. I gave it to chefs at José Andrés’ restaurant groups to get the Michelin seal of approval. Then we went to Expo West for the first time. We didn’t even have a final recipe or brand. We just had little minis from one farmer from last season's harvest, then started to get feedback and refine.
You mentioned your brand – what sort of feeling did you want to provoke in customers?
Designing the brand was such a fun experience. There’s so much focus and love for Mexican and Asian flavors in the American palette, but few people know Brazilian flavors or brands, besides Havaianas or Farm Rio, which do a gorgeous job. We wanted to show the beauty and creativity in Brazilian culture, so it was really important to work with a Brazilian design team. I spoke to 20 or 30 designers and we ended up finding an amazing couple – Gabi and Carlos at Vogau Studio – who helped us create the aesthetic, design and packaging.
I was inspired by Fishwife’s iconic illustrations and was thinking about how to create a brand vibe so that even if you don’t see our logo, you know it’s Figa. We looked back at old art archives in Brazil and were inspired by the post-modernist artist Tarsila do Amaral, who was big in the 1920s and developed a really bold, bright style. We then worked with an illustrator in Brazil, and our illustrations tell the story of the cupuaçu turning into the chocolate bar.
I imagine education is such a huge mountain to climb, right? Did you study how non-Brazilians learned about acai? At one point they were like, “What the hell is that?” Now it’s pretty mainstream.
Exactly. Acai, quinoa, kombucha – at some point those were unknown in the US. We have to make cupuaçu equally simple for people to understand. Using analogies is one way – like how mescal is to tequila, that's what cupuaçu is to your traditional chocolate bar. The same, but different. It’s funny, in my day job, I’m knee-deep in working with creators and the health industry in thinking about how to make complicated and unfamiliar health topics accessible, fun and eye-catching. So some of these same principles apply. But look, I’m not gonna lie, it’s definitely our biggest challenge. In order to get someone to buy it, it needs to look good and taste good. But if people don't even know what it is, that’s a much bigger barrier. So we try to do as many in-person pop-up activations as we can. We need to be there explaining it to people and building a sense of community, word of mouth and excitement around what we’re doing.
Are you worried that other companies will catch on with this ingredient? The more brands in the category, the easier your education job, I guess!
Do I think that there'll be more companies who can make cupuaçu taste good? Yeah, I’m sure. It’s just a matter of time. But I want us to be the best. I want us to also maintain direct relationships with farmers and make sure that we’re doing the right things. We’ve got pure ingredients and there’s a method to make it taste really good. It would be easy to put fake sugars in the mix, but that’s something that we’ll never compromise on.
You’ve got your day job at YouTube. How do you make all this work? What are the trade-offs?
I still work for Google full-time, which is challenging. And for weeks where it's busy with my corporate job, it’s hard to do as much as I would want to with Figa. We’re not working with a distributor, so Ronny and I go to the stores ourselves. Before work, I’m going to stores and talking to managers, and the same when I’m on my way home. It’s hard, but I’m grateful that I have the flexibility to be able to have a full-time job that I actually love which allows us to fund the business and not have to rely on investors. I feel like we can grow in an organic, sustainable way versus feeling like this is life or death.
I love that. Are you worried about growing slower than potential competitors because of that?
Sure. But when you start your own business, all you read about are VCs closing multimillion dollar rounds with all these food companies, but you don’t realize those companies have been around for years, and they started in the same place that we are – they just didn’t give up. Everyone starts somewhere.
This is very true.
My dad had a small business and I can’t tell you how many times I call him being like, “I feel like we're not doing enough. Are we doing well?” He’s like, “You're literally six months in! You're doing amazing. You both have full-time jobs. You've gotta give it time.” I went to dinner with a good friend who’s a very successful CPG founder. She made a good point that I always think about: You can't buy time.
Spreading the cupuaçu gospel
What about life as a starter – the pros and cons?
It’s not easy. There are non-negotiables like working out, eating right and sleep. There was a period of time where I was working till 11pm, which caused a massive, negative ripple effect on my life. Now, at 8:30pm I’m done. No matter what it is, I turn it off and get a good night’s sleep so that I can operate the next day. But there are other tradeoffs and intentional sacrifices when you follow your dreams. You adopt a mindset shift that ‘the business is going to take priority in my life right now.’ I’ve definitely not been as social as I would’ve normally been if this business didn’t exist. Ronny and I are also trying to navigate how are we a normal couple? There’s times when we’re so tired that we don’t even want to go on a date or dinner. So how do we make sure that at the end of the day, our relationship is the most important thing and how do we preserve that? Because we need that to be in a good place for everything else to work.
Does it also scratch an itch that the day job doesn’t?
Yeah, we’re doing things that are so drastically different from our jobs, it energizes us. We’re not making trade-offs to sit behind a computer. We’re meeting people, connecting with them on the street and in stores. It’s almost the antidote of everything else that’s happening in the world, with AI and tech and social media. Building these relationships and this company is a very human experience. I’ve wanted this for so long and I really feel like we’re onto something, so the whole process is also fun.
Any other advice for starters with a job AND a business?
Take the good with the bad. Maintain perspective. Be intentional about what you’re sacrificing. Set clear limits and boundaries on what’s possible. I wish we could grow faster – I’m constantly comparing myself to companies that have full-time founders. But you have to take a step back, enjoy the process, and find joy in it. That’s where all the good stuff happens.
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➠ Good ideas
Friction-maxxing 😱 → “The process of building up tolerance for ‘inconvenience’ … and then reaching even toward enjoyment.”
Wiffle Ball ⚾️ → The new pickleball?!
Matcha liqueur 🟢 → A new category is born.
Post office or cafe? 📬️ → Why not both?
Radio station or cafe? 📻️ → …Why not both?
Flying cars 🚘️ → You thought we’d have them by now, but instead we’ve got flying umbrellas.
Weird ideas 🤡 → Take ‘em seriously.
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➠ Toolbox
🛠️ Resources
Pinterest Predicts 2026 — including the rise of pen pals (good news for all you stationery starters out there…)
📚️ Reads
Running hubs: How community-driven fitness is reshaping urban retail. Frame (by FS subscriber Victoria Buchanan)
Why January is a terrible time to make big career decisions. Creative Boom
Hand-cut, Hand-sewn, Repeated Never: Oliver Church’s Shirts Are Literally One of One. Highsnobiety (by FS subscriber Jack Stanley)
How to arrange your desk. NYT
An East Village record store had the vinyl find of a lifetime — on an island in Maine. Gothamist
How Coffee Shops Are Thriving by Sharing Space With Other Businesses. Fresh Cup
🧠 Findings
17,561 → The number of knives sold in 2025 by Hugo Worsley's brand Allday. Look at this growth: “In 2021, I sold 86 knives in our first online sale and couldn't believe it - I was on top of the world! In 2025 we sold 17,561 units (up from 6,932 in 2024).”
🙃 Fun
The singularity? Oh yeah? If AI is so smart, why is it so consistently shit at generating accurate images of clocks?
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➠ Town Hall
And huge congrats to subscriber Bonnie Chung, founder of legendary company Miso Tasty, who just released her latest book, MISO. It’s what she calls “my magnum opus on my favourite ingredient.” I made it to the book launch this week, which was jam-packed with starters. → Grab a copy here.
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