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 ➠ Herbs as meditation
Advice ➠ How Willy’s Pies grew up
Ideas ➠ Nonnamaxxing 👵 💪
Resources ➠ Google’s secret tips
Town Hall ➠ Subscriber shoutouts
—Danny (tell me your business dreams: [email protected])
👋 Thousands of business-builders around the world read For Starters every Friday. Thanks for being one of them. Learn more.
➠ Get inspired
“I launched Seed Folk because I think growing food is one of those basic human skills we’ve drifted too far from,” Gemma Hudson tells For Starters.
I met Gemma the other week at Salad Days, a small business pop-up market in London, where I saw her beautifully arranged table of colourful seed kits. They were hard to walk past without finding out more.
Gemma started the company to “show people that growing your own food can fit into modern life, even in small spaces. You don’t need a big garden to do it either. Even a sunny windowsill or a simple grow light can be enough to grow something edible.”
“A couple of generations ago, growing at least some of your own food wouldn’t have felt unusual,” she explains. “Now it can feel almost radical.”
I took her up on the challenge – buying an herb garden kit for the balcony of my flat – and then asked her to tell us more…
🌿 On gardening’s power:
“Once someone grows even one thing successfully, something shifts. It builds confidence. It makes food feel less abstract. It reconnects people to seasonality, patience and care in a way that’s surprisingly powerful. At first glance, Seed Folk may seem like a gardening brand, but what I’m really trying to do is make reconnection feel accessible.”
🍅 On biz challenges:
“The biggest challenge is the juggle. My husband runs his own business, we have two children in primary school, and I’m building Seed Folk alongside family life and an allotment, so there’s a constant balancing act between ambition and practicality. What I try to come back to is this: if the business is moving forward and my children are happy, then I’m doing alright. Like a lot of working parents, I’ve had to make peace with the fact that balance rarely feels tidy.”
🥬 And an opportunity for starters:
“There’s a big opportunity in analogue experiences as a form of escape. As everything becomes more digital, there’s a clear shift back towards things that are physical, tactile and slower. People are craving something real. Not necessarily a complete lifestyle change, just small, everyday ways to step away from screens and do something more grounded. There’s a lot of space for brands that make those kinds of experiences feel accessible, whether that’s through products, workshops or shared spaces. Especially things that are simple to start, don’t require loads of skill, and give people a quick sense of progress or satisfaction.”
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➠ Starter wisdom
Do you like savoury pies? I love ‘em. And if you love pies and live in London, you almost certainly know Willy’s Pies.
Started in 2020 as a lockdown project after being furloughed from Brat, one of London’s top restaurants, chef William Lewis and cofounder Josh Hill built something serious out of handheld pies. Now, six years later, Willy’s is running out of space.
Their railway arch production facility in London Fields is too small for the growing operation. They make 10,000 pies a week (!), but have ambitions to make a lot more. So they’re raising money and moving to a new home.
→ Below, Will tells For Starters about growth, constraints, and what’s on the menu for the year ahead…
That’s a lot of pies.
💬 Will, you started Willy’s Pies during lockdown, now you’re thinking about making 20,000 pies a week. Looking back must feel surreal. Was this the plan when you started?
Not at all. But I’ve always been entrepreneurial and I’ve always wanted to do things my way and focus on something I’m passionate about.
Lockdown was a weird blessing. The repetition of going into back-to-back lockdowns allowed Willy’s to become a business. If we’d just gone back to work immediately, I’d still be working as a chef. Instead, the business gained momentum and a following.
I’ll be honest, though: I haven’t got a business background. I got a U in business at school…
💬 Is a ‘U’ bad? I grew up in the American system…
Like… I didn’t pass. Completely failed.
💬 Oh.
I got pulled back a year in business too!
💬 You should forward this newsletter to your teacher.
I know. It’s funny. But I’ve always been a good hustler and been able to figure things out. I used to make scotch eggs and sell them down my local pub at 16 – shit like that, you know? Then I used to work for myself as a gardener. That was my first real job.
💬 The educational ROI on selling scotch eggs and gardening was probably higher than most online business courses.
100%.
💬 You ended up working in the kitchen of Brat, one of London’s best restaurants. What did that teach you about starting something of your own?
It gives you a toughness – not necessarily in the bad way that’s often associated with kitchens. Kitchens are tough and brutal at times, but they also make you resilient and give you a real inner strength. That helped give the confidence to do something for myself.
💬 An elite kitchen like that must also teach you how to be efficient.
It almost gives me shivers talking about kitchens now. Working at that level is hard, but it’s so incredible when you’re in tune with the people next to you. There’s an amazing sense of teamwork. You all respect each other and want to get the job done to the best of your ability. There’s nothing like it. I used to play quite a lot of team sports growing up, and being in a kitchen like that gives you the same buzz as right after you’ve played football or rugby on a Sunday.
It also teaches you a lot about delegating, which is so important. You can’t control absolutely every part of your business. You have to trust your team and give them confidence, because if you want a team that backs you, they need to be allowed to grow without someone looking over their shoulder. Letting go is necessary for the business to grow. If you don’t, you're stuck. Today at Willy’s there are multiple people – not just me and my biz partner – who are bringing new ideas to the table.
💬 What sorts of new ideas are you thinking about these days at Willy’s? Besides your bigger space, which we’ll get to in a minute!
We’re working on our unit economics right now, dissecting every ingredient in every pie – thinking about, without cutting any corners and staying completely true to what we’re about, where can we make savings on the unit cost of each pie? You suddenly say… Why didn’t we look at this fucking ages ago?! Like, why have we got white wine in a football pie, when people are on the concourse and they’re having three or four pints? They don’t care – but that’s costing us X. It’s worth us exploring that!
💬 Do you have a ‘chef brain’ and a ‘business brain’, in which the chef brain might think white wine is required for the recipe but the biz brain wants to cut it?
Even well before that, it’s Josh’s brain versus Will’s brain. Creative and the cook versus the business mind and money. We used to clash with stuff like that all the time but now I’m more realistic. We’re not changing anything about the quality of the product; it’s more about exploring our unit economics. I was always reluctant to do that because I was stubborn. But that’s the beauty of having a business partner who challenges you. If you’ve got two people who are always agreeing, everything will go tits up. You need someone grabbing your arm and going like, Nah, man, we need to fucking look at this.
💬 Let’s talk about your current space in London Fields. How did you make the decision to move?
It creeps up on you. As a business owner you’re spinning plates with marketing and sales and trying to get the brand out there, but there’s actual production challenges.
When you take on a big client, you allocate X amount of units per week to them. So you’re going, that’s a chunk there. Then you take on another client – that’s a chunk there. You get to a position where you just can’t push the team anymore. Our bake team would come in at 4am – now it’s 5am – and they’ve got until 1:30pm to finish baking pies and get out the door before the cook team arrives and starts cooking. Then the cycle starts again.
We’ve loved being in the London Fields community. We built the brand to be community-led. It’s just got to the point where you look around and say, “God, we are so stretched here.” We just don’t have the space. The freezers and fridges are absolutely full to the brim. Imagine if we could do everything at the same time? You realize it’s possible – we’ve just gotta move.
💬 There’s a philosophy that constraints lead to a better business. Thoughts?
100%. When you’re in a tight space, everything’s amplified tenfold, but it forces you to figure it out. And if you’re able to figure it out in a smaller space, then when you eventually move into a larger space – which comes with its own challenges – then you’re better prepared for how to navigate those challenges.
💬 You make 10,000 pies a week in your current spot, and your new space allows you to make 20,000, and even more. Will you immediately fill that capacity? That’s a LOT of pies.
We’ve found a new site, but we need to fit it out. We’re raising investment in order for us to move to the new site. We’re looking at staffing. We’ve done work on getting connections with football clubs. And we’re in conversations with some national retailers. There’s a lot going on.
Sometimes you’ve gotta just bite the bullet. Even if you don’t have the funds in your account, you get into a position where you’ve got enough momentum and just have to keep things moving. You’ll say: “If we don't pull the trigger on this, it won’t happen.”
I want to have our contract book filled, move to the new site, and hit 15,000 pies, with the goal of getting to 20,000 by the start of 2027. But you’ve gotta build that – and that’s on us. We’ve just gotta just push it along. That’s what it feels like right now. Push it along. And then – fingers crossed – you get the business to a place where you can go, okay, we’re all together now. Let’s go.
💬 Tell us about your current fundraise. What’s the money for?
We’re trying to raise £1m, which allows us to move to the new site, gives us a bit of runway, and helps us to fill some new roles. Then we’ll be in a solid place – we’ll have a great brand and a business that’s competing at a premium level. Our goal is to become a £50m business by 2030.
💬 What kind of investor are you looking for? VC, angel, crowdfunding?
We were due to hit £750,000 revenue this year – and we exceeded that and hit £800,000. But we haven’t yet hit the million pound revenue mark yet, which is what excites most funds. But we’re moving in a great direction. We’ve so far raised around £440,000 [at the time of this interview] and we’re looking to raise another £560,000. We’re talking to angels. In the past we’ve actually done amazingly well from small tickets and through Instagram!
💬 Instagram, amazing.
Yeah. It’s pretty mad. So we’ve slightly exhausted the IG route!
💬 When you say Instagram, you mean via posting and promoting yourself?
Yeah, just stories, whacking up posts. We’ve done incredibly well off that. Our minimum ticket is £10,000, but we’re trying not to do too many small tickets. In an ideal world, we’d get this wrapped up by June and move into the new spot and be ready by August.
💬 Does Willy’s completely consume your life now, from a work-life balance perspective?
Weirdly, no. It has in the past. But I stopped drinking which made a massive difference on my ability to focus on what’s important and what’s not. I also just got a dog and I love going for dog walks. I’m in a good place at the moment. Having balance is crucial. You can get so caught up in the moment – you’re blurry, not clear, not concise, not moving forward, you know what I mean? But eventually you realize you’re not focusing on what truly matters.
💬 What’s your biggest takeaway from the past six years of Willy’s?
As long as you’re true to yourself, believe in what you’re doing, working hard and grafting, then you’re going in the right direction. You’ll get there. I really do believe that. ☼
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➠ Good ideas
Schrodinger Saturdays 😿 → In which we have the weekend ‘off’, but we’re also in a constant state of semi-work.
Nonnamaxxing 👵 → This is the one ‘maxxing’ trend you should actually follow.
Linen in Belfast 🧵 → The fabric that once built the city is having a local revival.
Mom & Pop Czar 🍎 → NYC’s got someone to help local small businesses navigate bureaucracy.
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➠ Toolbox
🛠 Resources
Trend Report: Trend Report™ — FS subscriber Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick, writer of a brilliant weekly newsletter, has put together a 60-page, “entirely human-made and completely AI-less” analysis of our current times.
Quiet Media — “A print-first publication founded on the simple belief that our attention is our most valuable resource, and it should be treated with care.”
Google’s Secret Reference Desk — An extremely useful collection of ways to search more efficiently on Google.
📚 Reads
Gatecrashing with Daniel Giacopelli. I Like Networking (an interview with yours truly by FS subscriber Isabel Sachs!)
Canada’s indie bookstores are teaming up. The Peak
We gave an AI a 3-year retail lease in SF and asked it to make a profit. Andon Labs
Why young Americans are buying $200 notebooks from a store in Paris. Make It
The viral campaign that cost (almost) nothing. All Ears (by FS subscriber Frankie Jones)
What Does Extreme Wealth Do to the Brain? Intelligencer
🧠 Findings
$165 billion → The annual cost of 'the annoyance economy', i.e. the small, irritating hassles that eat away at your time, patience and wallets
🙃 Fun
— A “bagel-specific investment fund”. Can I be a scout?
— Buy a renovated 14th century flour mill in Normandy and turn it into the workshop of your dreams.
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➠ Town Hall
A starter space… on a boat
For Starters subscriber Rosanna Irwin is building a life on her terms. Besides running Samsú, a beautiful off-grid cabin company in Ireland which I wrote about in February, she also recently renovated a houseboat. It was a passion project. And now she’s selling it.
“Over the past year, I’ve been commissioning and renovating a widebeam houseboat in London. It’s been a bit of a passion project – designed carefully, built out with intention, and now at the point where it’s ready for its next owner,” she says.
“The brief we gave ourselves was simple: it shouldn't feel like a boat. It should feel like a home that happens to float. The room I'm most proud of is the ‘library’, which was designed for the reality of how creative people actually live and work. Which is to say, fluidly, and in the same room as everything else.”
Rosanna told me she’s selling it because she’s moved back to Ireland to build Samsú and “the boat deserves someone who will actually be on it.”
Any starters want a new live/work space?! It goes to auction on April 29th.
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