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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 ➠ Normal & boring
Advice ➠ How I built Hoop Chips
Ideas ➠ Pay what you FEEL
Resources ➠ How to freelance
Town Hall ➠ Sourdough starter
👋 For Starters is read by thousands of business-builders, including new subscribers Mario, a brand consultant in California; Yasmine, co-founder of snack brand ForElle; and Andy, who’s growing the London creative agency Close Orbit. Welcome!
➠ Get inspired
1. Normal... Check this out: the Australian indie non-alcoholic craft beer brand Heaps Normal has just swung open the doors to what it’s calling a ‘health club’ — a giant bar, shop, dance hall, venue, R&D brewery, warehouse sort of place in Sydney, with potentially a sauna and bathhouse in the works. It’s what their chief brand officer calls a place for 'wellness through the lens of social connection'. I’m digging it. 🍻
2. And boring... In Santa Monica, California, a group of starters have launched a company called Boring Stuff. So what do cofounders Zack Honarvar, Amanda Marcovitch, Jon Youshaei, and Varun Bhuchar actually do? They’ve got a verrrry particular specialty: they do taxes, bookkeeping, payroll, and other mindnumbingly tedious ‘BS’ for TikTokers, YouTubers, other big-time creators. Brilliant. More here. 🤓
3. Where you pay to work. Meanwhile, there’s a bookshop in Scotland where you can live out your fantasy of owning a shop in a small town by the sea… without all the pesky details like, well, taxes and payroll. The Open Book, in Wigtown, is a bookshop holiday/residency experience in which you live in the apartment above the shop for a week or two, open up in the morning, and sell titles to visitors who must wonder why the proprietor is perpetually confused. 📚️
4. And speaking of fantasies, every month, this starter writes a new fantasy story, prints it, seals it in an envelope with a wax seal, and posts it to 600 people in 30 countries around the world. He charges £6.99/month and he’s aiming to grow his audience to 700 by the end of Feb. Why not take a look and sign up? 🦄
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➠ Starter wisdom
I’ve always been drawn to businesses that find clever ways to give back – to their neighborhood, their community, and society at large. I know… businesses need to make money, by definition. But they can also be so much more. Just look at Hee-Won Cho’s biz, Hoop Chips.
As co-founder of local London basketball club Hackney Jedis, Hee-Won became frustrated at the long, bureaucratic process of raising funds for the team. So he turned that frustration into a solution – setting up his own brand of all-natural plantain chips, which donates 23p (~$0.30) from each pack sold to support his cause of building 230 new outdoor basketball courts in the UK by 2030.
→ Below, the Korea-born, UK-based starter shares his story in his own words, from marketing at a megacorporation, to working in the family biz, to the eureka idea for his brand…
Front and center.
How I did it: Hee-Won Cho, Hoop Chips
Back in university, my friends and I said that whatever we all end up doing for a living, let’s make sure we bring a bit of joy to people. That was our promise to each other. Lots of people were going down secure routes like banking, consulting, law, making good money. I did accounting for years – which was boring, but a good business background and I learned a lot. Yet I knew I wanted to do something commercial. Since my dad worked in the food industry, importing meat and deli products between Europe and Korea, I was always attracted to food. So I ended up at Kraft Heinz.
I was very lucky to be there. I did a year in HR, then moved to marketing for four years. Learning a new skill took a while, but I'm really glad I did it. They gave me the portfolio of the BBQ sauce brand Bull's-Eye. So they were like, here’s the budget, own it, treat it as a bit of a startup, and make it work. That was an amazing experience. But I eventually lost a bit of drive with the corporate world and got bored with corporate life. They were about to do another restructure. I felt the time was right to leave.
Anyone who’s smart or hardworking enough can work in any function – you just need to learn the language. Having worked in the corporate space in multiple roles, I realized that marketing and sales people can work in finance and vice versa. I always thought it would be quite cool to learn the languages of different functions. Some people say it’s better to be really good at one thing. But I'm trying for the generalist route.
After leaving Kraft Heinz, the idea was to work with my dad in Korea, at his small exporting business – one he’d always wanted to pass on to me. My dad’s thing has always been Asian humility, affordable products, that vibe – rather than aspiring to buy a new Lamborghini! I started working with him in Korea, doing a bit of exporting and learning the family business, then doing my own thing here in London. It was two months in Korea, two months in London, two months in Korea, two months in London. It was fun, but exhausting. I was constantly jet-lagged. None of my projects really kicked off. And when you keep losing momentum, you ultimately realize you need to focus on one thing.
Whether it’s a relationship or a job, you always know when something’s not working. Sometimes you’re too scared to have that conversation. There’d always been family discussions about whether I’d move back to Korea. But my life was in London, my partner is here, my network is here. I knew I had to talk to my dad about it. After a year of working with him, we were having family dinner at a local spot. I was a bit drunk and said: Dad, I’m just gonna be really honest with you: this isn’t working. I need to do my own thing. I immediately thought, Oh my god, my Korean dad’s gonna tell me off. But he was so supportive. He was like, Look, I get it. I was 33 when I started my own business. You’re 33 now. You should do it. If you fail, you fail. If you succeed, fantastic. Give it a go. You realize that your parents just want you to be happy.
Hoop Chips.
I’m not a baller at all, but I used to play back in Korea. So when I moved to London in 2013, I knew I wanted to do something sports-related. I was interested in grassroots coaching and soon met Perry, now one of my best friends, who was coming to the end of his professional sports career and looking to set up a club. It was perfect timing. So we set up a youth club called Hackney Jedis in east London. It was a passion project with no long-term thought to it. The first season we had six kids and we lost every game. Now we have 280 kids, seven coaches, five youth coaches, and we’re there Monday to Sunday. It’s become a thing!
The idea was, no one would be turned away from Hackney Jedis if they couldn’t pay. We wanted to make it super accessible and inclusive. Hackney was traditionally a bit of a deprived area. So we only charge £240 for the entire year, or £20 per month. Other clubs charge up to £80 per month. So I’ve spent a lot of time fundraising and I’ve seen how broken the funding model of community sports is, particularly for basketball.
Basketball is the second most popular team sport in England, but the money tends to trickle down to sports like football and cricket. Our activities cost us £70K per year to run and Hackney Council was giving us £15-20K. The council really helped. But because of big budget cuts from the government, their youth sports funding was cut. A lot of clubs have had to shut down. So you end up having to go to corporate and individual donors, who always say that we need to build a sustainable model. So you end up grant-writing, which can be a very murky world.
Momentum!
From this community sports advocate role I’d built around myself, Hoop Chips was born. I always thought it would be cool to create a high-rotating item where a significant proportion goes towards supporting new sports. So we came up with Hoop Chips – they’re made from plantains grown in Costa Rica, they’re gluten-free, all-natural and have zero palm oil. There are lots of purpose-driven brands these days, but in my opinion, tons of them are just PR. They’ll say they give away 5% of their profits, but people don't really see where that money goes, and 5% of profit can mean anywhere between zero pounds to a lot more. So we were like, let’s just be really explicit: 23p of the revenue (not profit) from each pack sold goes to the Hoop Chips Foundation, which funds youth basketball. I include this donation in the cost of goods, just to make it really clear. 23 is, of course, a nod to the great Michael Jordan.
Hoops Chips tackles a visible low-hanging fruit. You can move the needle with not too much money in basketball. People are really going to see local change for themselves. Our goal is to build 230 new outdoor basketball courts in the UK by 2030. We've only given away around £3,000 to date, but you gotta start somewhere. Once we start getting supermarket orders, with volume we’ll be able to start giving £10K to clubs, which is quite cool. That’s the idea. I don't know if it’ll work, but so far traction’s good, the product is good, and the product feedback is good. People seem to understand the story. We’re selling online and we’re waiting for the factory accreditation to send into big retailers. That should arrive in April, as it’s a seven-month process.
I’m doing it all on my own so far. I went full time last September. I’ve got a freelance designer. I’m doing some fundraising – I’m trying to raise about £200K. One, because I need to pay myself a small salary, as I’ve been growing the brand with my savings until now, which has been quite a lot of money. We’re also looking for freelance social media people. And then as soon as we get into retailers, we’ll start building a proper team and sales people. It’ll be quite cool. When we pull it off, it’ll be a sick story. Join us! ☼
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➠ Good ideas
Pay what you feel 💰️ → Dulcie, the skincare brand formerly known as Haeckels, is experimenting with a radical way of pricing/selling its products.
A cassette tape cafe 🎶 → In Japan, where else?
Fortunate mistakes 🐴 → A manufacturer accidentally stitched a frown instead of a smile on a horse. Now the ‘Cry-Cry Horse’ is selling out.
Your grandma, brand ambassador 👵 → Hey, it works for Jacquemus.
Bliss on demand 💆 → A new meditation startup promising access to the jhanas, or advanced Buddhist mental states.
Autotelic experience 👍️ → The fulfillment and satisfaction that arise from doing a job well for its own sake.
Traditional Chinese Medicine 🍵 → Interest is exploding.
Visioning vs planning 🔮 → The difference, for starters.
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➠ Toolbox
🛠️ Resources
From redundancy to freelancing – a pragmatic guide.
📚️ Reads
Akin to believing light beer is a solution to alcoholism: My time at Patagonia. A Restless Transplant
Brands want to post like humans. Where is their humanity now? Link in Bio
Is tableware the design industry’s safest bet right now? The Edit
An interview with Charlotte Yau, founder of skincare brand Muihood. Kim Does Marketing
US small businesses are doing fine. Don’t believe me? Look at the numbers. Guardian
This Meal Might Bring You to Tears. Nautilus
Why are brands starting to look, sound, and act the same? Theo Garcia
🧠 Findings
1,000,000 → That’s how many burgers George Motz, the filmmaker turned owner of indie spot Hamburger America, has sold since opening in 2023.
$300 million → The 160-year old hat company Stetson saw sales grow from $200m in 2021 to $300m by the end of 2024. Why? Westernwear obsessed 25 to 34 year-olds.
3 minutes → How long it took for Noma’s $1,500-per-person LA tasting menu to sell out.
🙃 Fun
Fitdrop: another one of those ‘just trust me’ links…
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➠ Town Hall
Over in Salt Lake City, Utah, For Starters subscriber Amy Connors is busy building a biz called Quail Street. She sells a single product: packaged pizza dough. 🍕🧑🍳
“I started Quail Street when it became clear to me, after nearly 10 years building a corporate career, that a job would never be enough for me to feel fulfilled,” she tells us.
The idea emerged when she was baking at home and realized just how interesting pizza dough is. It captured her curiosity – and soon enough her tests captured the interest of neighbors at the local farmer’s market. “Since then, I've been on a journey to grow Quail Street into a business that suits me.”
“It doesn't replace my old salary (not even close!),” she says, “but the money it does make has given me the courage to quit a full-time job and switch to freelance work so that I can spend more time building it. That shift alone has had a huge impact on my life.”
Making dough.
Amy’s still figuring out how to grow the biz, but she’s already partnered with local businesses, gone on research trips, and joined pop-ups and food conferences, all of which has made her realize that “starting something of your own is about so much more than making money.”
“I had no idea this is the journey I'd be on, but I think that's what's so fun about being a starter! All I had to do was start building something to be on an endless journey of discovery, inspiration, and growth.”
→ Amen to that. Get in touch with Amy to say hi and, ya know, grab some dough.
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