Hey, starter! Read on for…

—Danny (tell me your biz dreams: [email protected])

👋 Thousands of business-builders around the world read For Starters every Friday. Thanks for being one of them. Learn more.

1. The last column maker. 73-year old Thomas Lupo is the third generation owner of American Wood Column Corp – New York City’s last remaining column factory – which has been open for 110 years. The business is now at a crossroads. Watch this beautiful short film by Joshua Charow. → Joshua says that serious inquiries for the business should get in touch with Thomas here. 🪵

2. Ice cream on a boat. Meanwhile, an hour’s drive east, check out what the Mann family are doing. They sell their homemade, small-batch ice cream off their 21-foot boat, puttering around the coves and canals of Long Island’s south shore (not far from where I grew up…), while boaters and waterfront neighbours flag them down or call ahead for a scoop. Dad Eric quit a career in electrical construction last year to open an ice cream parlour, reviving recipes from his grandfather’s old bakeries in Queens. The boat began as a summer side hustle and now the whole family’s in on it: his wife Linda and their daughters Caitlin, Amanda, and Cassidy. “Why not bring something that we love to the water?” Caitlin says. → Why not indeed. I’ll be visiting soon. 🍦

3. Build your own valley. In 2021, Chris and Liza Simonova left London – he’d been a lawyer, she’d researched alternative community living models – and bought a patch of land in the countryside north of Lisbon. Their brief to the architects included a chicken coop... and a dance hall. What grew is Fools’ Valley, a co-living community and residency where guests come and go as they please. There’s a swimming pond, a guest house they call the octopus building, and a hall that hosts dance and meditation retreats. Some stay a week or a month. Others stay for years. One neighbour’s opening question: “You’re not a cult, are you?” → Nah, just starters... 😃

4. Hecho a mano. And it’s week 32 of Gerardo Dexter Ciprian’s 52 week sprint to build a design studio in public. → Follow along on the journey 👋

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Starter Stack, in partnership with Whatnot

Sarah spent 17 years as a nurse. Now she’s one of the top pet supplies sellers on Whatnot.

Based in Arizona, Sarah joined the live-selling app Whatnot in December 2022, selling clothes from her own closet with “zero intention of turning it into a business,” she tells For Starters. It was just a way to declutter her house, make some cash, and try something new.

But she fell for the community side of live selling, and a few months in she quit nursing to go all in. No small call as a single mom…

It took a while to find the pet niche. Sarah, who goes by NurseSarah on the app, sold a bit of everything at first – home decor, electronics, beauty, plants – before spotting what others had missed. “There wasn’t a pet category on Whatnot, and I hadn’t seen anyone selling pet items, but I could clearly see there was demand.” So she filled the gap, hunting down deals for people who love spoiling their pets.

The numbers she told me suggest she made the right call:

Getting there meant going live almost every day and staying nimble: “The inventory and what people are looking for can be unpredictable, so you have to stay flexible and constantly adapt,” she says. Her advice for anyone still on the fence? “Start before you feel ready. You don’t need everything figured out on day one.” Stay consistent, she says, and give yourself grace while you grow.

→ And that’s a wrap on our Whatnot series. Three starters who found their thing and ran with it. If you’ve been waiting for a sign to start live-selling something of your own, maybe this is it. ✨

By day, Ukraine-born, London-based For Starters subscriber Yuriy Oparenko is a product designer at WhatsApp. By night and weekends? He’s building a matcha company called Idle Hour.

The brand came from scratching two itches: 1) a gap he spotted in matcha branding, and 2) an urge to make something physical after a career spent on apps and screens.

The idea: whereas coffee is ‘rush hour’ (i.e. the stuff you reach for to get going in the AM), ‘idle hour’ is the opposite. It’s a chill moment when, as Yuriy puts it, ‘you can do whatever you want.’

→ Alright, let’s hear how the real-world biz-building is going…

💬 Hey Yuriy, Idle Hour looks great. Tell us about your path to becoming a designer.

My path to design was very nonlinear. I didn’t study design; I was self-taught. As a kid I loved Sherlock Holmes, how he noticed little things, understood people’s behaviour and connected dots. First I wanted to be a journalist, then I studied political science. Eventually I started making websites, writing blogs, and I even created a small DIY print publication. I realised that coming up with the ideas and designing them was the most fun. I basically slowly became a designer. I got hired for my first design job and gravitated towards tech, because it’s fun to make things people use everyday. I’ve been working in tech for over a decade now, which is crazy to me.

💬 Where’d your idea for a matcha brand come from?

I tried creating different things – apps, websites, classic side projects, but I was like, you know what, I’ve designed so many apps and screens at work and in my career. It’s become boring. I’m tired of that. I wanted to create something physical. But I didn’t know what I wanted to create. My girlfriend, now fiancée, Alisa and I kept talking about different ideas. Matcha was one of them. We go to LA every year, and in LA there are places that serve really good matcha. That helped give us the spark. While coffee has lots of beautiful, expressive, fun packaging, matcha branding is often quite ugly. So we decided to build a cool brand for matcha. 

💬 Idle Hour is a great name. What’s the story behind it?

It took a very long time to go from idea to name. In general, I can’t create something if it doesn’t have a good name and brand. I struggle with it. I also didn’t want an association with Japan. It doesn’t need to sound Japanese, because I’m not Japanese and my partner isn’t Japanese. So why pretend that we’re some fake Japanese brand? It would be disrespectful. I still have a list of all the names we went through. And Idle Hour fully clicked when we hired our designer, Rokas Sutkaitis, who did the brand identity.

💬 Oh so you didn’t want to design the brand yourself?

I knew I’d struggle! Even though I could have theoretically done it myself, I wanted to outsource it to a proper graphic designer. And then when Rokas drew a lying man, the name just clicked. The thinking was you have rush hour which is for coffee. You drink it when you wake up, to be productive in the morning. Idle hour is the opposite. It’s chill. It’s the same feeling we get in LA when we just sit, the sun is shining, it’s beautiful outside. You’re not trying to inject productivity. You can do whatever you want. It’s just… idle hour.

💬 Have you been developing this as a fun side project or are you looking for it to be your new main gig? I realise the answer might not be black and white.

At some point I thought the numbers seemed very simple: we just need to sell X number of tins per year and that will make £X in revenue. And then you’re like, “Oh, wait, matcha has become more expensive because it’s exploding in popularity.” And then you’re like, “Oh, actually selling it is quite hard.” And then you’re like, “Oh, the marketing is also very expensive.”

At the moment, I think it needs more work for us to make it work. And only then it might become something bigger – at least for one of us. To reach the scale where it’s a meaningful, big business, you might need to raise venture capital, and I don’t necessarily want to go to VC – at least not yet, because it’ll add pressure. I know this well from the tech side of my career.  So we’re taking it slowly.

💬 Taking it slowly is more often than not the wisest path…

We’re learning and then we’ll see how it goes. It’s just a very different feeling building this brand and seeing how people react to it. I’m so happy that it’s not an app! ☼

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We crave company 🤝 → Spending time with others may be a basic biological necessity, like food or water.

Luxury as ‘a tax on our insecurity’ 🥹 → “Most of the luxury goods we buy are actually a payment to silence an undercurrent of doubt about whether or not we’re good enough.”

Street vendor carts 🍛 → A new prototype is being tested in India

Students can’t read 🫠 → “The generational collapse in literacy is measurable, persistent, and likely to get worse.”

A braid machine 💡 → Biomechanical engineer Yinka Ogunbiyi has invented a device that helps hair stylists with braiding, HaloBraid.

Decision fatigue 🥱 → It literally makes you tired IRL.

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Four new books for starters…

…and two things worth your time:

Brunello Cucinelli. Om Malik (RIP to Om, who passed away last week – this piece of his has been doing the rounds since, as one of the best biz interviews around)

The year is 2063 and you were never interesting. Liz Lee

At home with Saager Dilawri and Karyna Zepick, founders of Neighbour. Faculty Department

Why are so many people in fashion retraining as therapists? 1Granary

The traymakers of Old Kent Road. Nation of Artisans

The practice of paying attention. The Subtext

Got a creative hangover? Here’s how to kick it. The Creative Factor

22.1 million hectolitres → The amount of beer the French drank last year, compared to the 22 million hectolitres of wine they drank. Beer > wine consumption for the first time there.

You can now buy this enormous building in Ohio that’s in the shape of a giant basket. (How have I never seen this before?)

Firewood.

Stone.

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Stroll on over to the website of FS subscriber Cole Kennedy’s business Saunter, and scroll down till you can’t scroll anymore. Play a fun game. Then hit him up for all your creative needs! 🏓

Check out the slick new app for Opulist, the search platform for beautiful places to eat, drink and stay – it was designed by longtime FS subscriber Luke Beard. 🤌

Subscriber Zosia Swidlicka, creator of the fun printed publication Between the Lines, is working on the next edition. It’ll feature 365 community responses to 12 writing prompts. If you want the chance to be featured, share your thoughts before Sunday right here. “Starter or starter-to-be, everyone is welcome to share their thoughts,” Zosia says. ✍

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