- For Starters
- Posts
- Starting is messy
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 ➠ Knowing when to stop
Advice ➠ Navigating death valley
Ideas ➠ Unhinged brands!
Resources ➠ A clever calendar
Town Hall ➠ Small biz in Minnesota
P.S. Check out this wonderful interview about For Starters published this week in Objectively.
👋 For Starters is read by thousands of business-builders, including new subscriber Diana, a product photographer in Portugal.
➠ Get inspired
1. Let’s take a walk. On a trip to Chicago back in 2017, Toronto-based architect Karl van Es was visiting a Brutalist library and spotted a huge, intriguing glass dome. He had no idea what it was, so he walked in and was blown away. He wished he knew about it beforehand. So, like any good starter, he decided to create a company that filled what he saw as a gap in the market. His biz Avontuura now makes gorgeous, illustrated architecture maps – ya know, the real printed things – of cities around the world.
→ I’ve been mulling over doing this with small businesses at some point. Whaddya think? Starter maps!
2. A return to analog. And speaking of Chicago, this story – featuring the wonderful Paper & Pencil shop – makes me very, very happy:
3. Starting is inspiring, but stopping can be too. For the past 5 years, Clara Infante has been growing a beeswax candle business, Copito, which began as an arts and crafts project in her kitchen. From the outside, things were incredible – online orders were through the roof, she got coverage in the likes of Vogue, her IG ballooned to hundreds of thousands, and the biz, which she ran from the Spanish countryside, was growing fast.
Yet last year she shut it all down – and wants to ‘deinfluence’ you from turning your passion into a business:
“There’s no faster way to stop enjoying your work than to put a bunch of admin and logistics between you and that hobby.”
→ You don’t normally hear stories like this, but they’re much-needed. Starting a biz is amazing, beautiful and life-changing, but it’s also *unbelievably* hard, and sometimes not the right thing to do. (See Starter Wisdom, below)
4. We’re doing it live! Live-shopping is huge in Asia, but still nascent most other places. Until now… Dan Frommer writes about the rise of the live-shopping platform Whatnot, where you can buy products straight from video streams hosted by sellers ‘who act as expert guides, entertainers, and community leaders’:
“Whatnot’s sellers are individual entrepreneurs and small business owners, typically organized around a category, like sports cards, sneakers and streetwear, women’s fashion, and electronics. Many start as solo operators; some have scaled into the hundreds of millions of dollars in GMV. One in eight now works selling full-time on Whatnot, up 20% from 2024, the company says.
The growth can be dramatic. A Boca Raton card shop says it went from $40,000 in monthly revenue into the millions after adding live selling to its business model, and expanded from two to 39 employees.”
—
➠ Starter wisdom
The Startup Curve | credit
Whether you’re dreaming of opening a tiny neighbourhood bookshop or you’ve got 30 Claude Code tabs open on your computer and knee-deep in building an AI agent that autofills every tax form known to man… I’ve got news for you: you’re gonna fail. At least at first. But it’s okay! It’s basically the only universal law in business.
No interview this week. Instead, I wanted to leave you with the image above. You might’ve seen a version of it floating around. There are countless riffs, but the message is the same: building something new is messy and takes time.
You try things, tweak, experiment, talk to customers. You’re convinced you’re onto something. Then the illusion shatters. So you tweak again.
That’s the whole ballgame. Just keep going.
—
➠ Good ideas
Thin desires are eating your life 😭 → “A thick desire is one that changes you in the process of pursuing it. A thin desire is one that doesn't.”
Custom matchbooks 🕯️ → For your house!
Grindcore 🤓 → Subtly brutal, FT: “Intriguingly for a world known for its badly dressed nerds, the grindcore narrative has been fused with a monastic male wellness aesthetic. ‘The current vibe is no drinking, no drugs, 9-9-6 [working 9am to 9pm, six days a week], lift heavy, run far, marry early, track sleep, eat steak and eggs,’ Daksh Gupta, the 23-year-old co-founder of an AI start-up, told the San Francisco Standard recently.”
Unhinged brands 🤡 → Are people getting tired of them?
Mid-strength beer 🍺 → “A long-standing category in the UK and Australia is finally taking shape in the US, as brewers intentionally craft flavorful beers in the 2.5–3.5% ABV range rather than diluting higher-proof styles.”
—
➠ Toolbox
🛠️ Resources
For Starters subscriber Zosia Świdlicka, the brains behind brand strategy and copywriting studio Opening Line, has created a limited-edition calendar that works as a sort of flip book. It’s “a curious sort of calendar for a curious sort of now,” she says. The months, days and date are paired with words that make phrases; pretty cool. Zosia says they’re stocked at MagCulture in London, CASA Magazines and Iconic Magazines in NYC, and TOMO mags in Austin. Check it out!
📚️ Reads
What happens when brands confuse recognisability with authenticity? Layer by Layer
Not just ‘A Fking Magazine’: The unexpected renaissance of corporate publications. From dating apps to financial platforms, corporations are back to making magazines – and some of them are surprisingly good. Monocle
31-year-old’s porta-potty company brings in $4.3 million a year: We’ve built ‘a low-tech, AI-proof business’. CNBC
Detroit’s Black-owned coffee businesses aim to reclaim the bean. Detroit Free Press
The Dig-Out King of New York City. An unemployed tech worker making thousands by liberating cars from their icy graves. NY Mag
Are parents buying what kids' skincare brands are selling? Thingtesting (by FS subscriber Sarah Drumm)
Lawsuits over photo rights are getting more common. Here’s how to avoid one. BoH
Inside the London rollerskating scene’s fight for space. Huck
This Founder Quit His Job in VC to Host Game Nights for a Living. Inc
🧠 Findings
$400m → Justin Gill launched his Japanese BBQ sauce Bachan’s in 2019, based on a family recipe. He just sold the biz for 400 big ones.
🙃 Fun
How one small business in Brooklyn sold the Banksy on their building.
—
➠ Town Hall
“We often talk about how small businesses are the pillars of the community,” says For Starters subscriber Karis Hustad. “Nowhere has that been stress-tested more in recent months than in Minnesota.”
Karis, a Minnesota-born, UK-based biz journalist & brand strategist (and former colleague – Courier’s news editor!), explains how small businesses have switched gears to protect neighbors as ICE make the state its latest battleground, and what this community can do to help. Have a read:
There are already enough challenges to starting a business. Having to close your doors to protect your employees or open your doors to protect tear-gassed protesters shouldn’t be a part of the calculation. Yet the city and state’s businesses have done this and more without a second thought, using their influence, tools and resources to give back, bring joy and resist something that’s unequivocally wrong.
A quick search on IG and TikTok will quickly lead you to the businesses that are making a difference, from women’s sports bars to record shops to pizza restaurants. But here a few ways you can support:
→ The Salt Cure Fund is raising and distributing aid to restaurants that have seen a drop in foot traffic.
→ Mercado Central is fundraising to cover rent for 35 family-owned stalls.
→ Latinos in Comunidad are hosting day parties at Minneapolis’ impacted immigrant markets, and if you're local, the Lake Street Council is organizing ‘cash mobs’ to bring customers to affected businesses.
→ The Locavore has compiled a list of Minneapolis small businesses you can support through online shopping and delivery.
→ Civil Eats has pulled together a list of food aid organisations, including grocery stores offering free delivery.
→ And a few more of the (many) businesses where you can donate to mutual aid and other distribution efforts: Pow Wow Grounds, Moona Moono, Moth Oddities, Smitten Kitten, and Black Garnet Books.
— Karis
—