Squeezing lemons 🍋

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Welcome to Issue #8 👋 

Eight issues and ~2,000 starters so far. Know someone who’s daydreaming about starting a business? I’d love if you tell them about the newsletter!

P.S: Imagine $5,000 fell into your bank account tomorrow and you had to spend it on a business idea. What would you spend it on? Tell me and I’ll share the best answers → [email protected]

–Danny

In this week’s issue…

• INSPO ↣ Loungewear lessons

• TIPS ↣ Are you flexible?

• IDEAS ↣ How to find your purpose

• TOOLS ↣ Food & wellness trends

• TOWN HALL ↣ Subscriber survey 🚨 🫵 

Tom Adam Vitolins is the inspiring guy behind Tom Àdam, a loungewear brand that’s collaborated with the likes of Airbnb, Openhouse magazine, Monocle, and hotels like Michelberger and Hoxton.

Tom, who was born in Latvia and is based between Berlin and Paris, started the business when he was a teenager (!) and he’s currently celebrating Tom Àdam’s 10th anniversary this year. Well, at least theoretically: “I’m currently too busy for anniversaries!” he tells me.

Let’s find out what he’s been up to this past decade…

Tom, did you always know you were a starter?

Growing up, my dad ran a business making cardboard packaging for brands. I just thought that’s what people do, they run businesses, they try to solve problems. Later in life I realized how important it is to have role models. Seeing people do something you want to do unlocks something in you. You realize what’s possible. I always knew I wanted to do something on my own. It was about ambition and curiosity. I’m also horrible with authority and people telling me what to do. If I ask them why and they can’t answer, that triggers me big-time.

I started working as an intern when I was 15, making money when I was 16, and dropped out of school. I somehow managed to finish it though; I found loopholes in the education system! I thought, What’s next? What do I want to do? I knew in my twenties I’d have the most freedom, before kids and mortgages and other responsibilities. I had to focus and squeeze the lemon as much as I could before then. And that’s pretty much what I've been doing the last 10 years. Now I’m 28. Still a young guy!

Wait, you started the company when you were 18?

Yeah! You only live once. You’ve only got a limited amount of time… 

Damn. And why a pajamas brand?

I was traveling in Japan and absolutely mesmerized by the culture and attention to detail. I walked into Isetan, the department store, and I was looking at the underwear and realized it was horrendous, mass market stuff, made from unsustainable materials that get holes in them after five wears. So I started making men’s underwear… before realizing how capital-intensive and difficult that business is. I started tinkering and thinking again: What’s something in the same realm, but maybe more versatile? And I landed on loungewear. 

When the pandemic happened, it was a horrible time for humanity, but a great time for a loungewear business. Something also clicked around then. I realized how interesting it is to collaborate with other people. That’s what kept me sane in a way. When you collaborate with others, you see new angles and you’re able to zoom out.

After ten years, you must have a philosophy on how to make things happen. 

Entrepreneurship is like running a marathon. It’s not about short-term brilliance. It’s persistence. At first you feel like five kilometers is difficult and twenty is unattainable. Then you run twenty but you’re like, I definitely can’t do a marathon. But if you keep running, putting the hours in, at some point you’re able to run a marathon. It’s all about breaking through these walls that you constantly feel like you can’t break through.

When you’re running a business, you’re hyper self-aware. Sometimes you think you’re on the right path and you’re very ambitious – you understand that, long term, this is definitely going to work out. But in the short term you think ‘This is absolute chaos, I have no idea what I'm doing’ and you constantly doubt yourself. Yet when you talk with other entrepreneurs, you quickly realize it’s actually constant chaos! It’s difficult to imagine a point where you sit by the beach, sip a piña colada, everything is calm, there are zero emails and no problems to be solved.

Do people start businesses because they enjoy the chaos, the stimuli? Or they just can’t function at a 9-to-5?

Everyone has their reasons. You talk with first, second and third-time entrepreneurs and the motivation changes. At some point you might realize, I have money but it genuinely doesn't make me happy. Running a company can also be very lonely because there aren’t a lot of people who can relate to your problems. The amount of hours you put in, the pressure – it's hard to put yourself in someone else’s shoes if you’re not doing it. Which is why it’s really important to have a support system of people who run businesses, to learn from them.

It’s also about control. You say to yourself: this is the effort I’m putting in and it’s all my responsibility. Either this is going to work out… or it’s not. A harsh reality. In business, the harder you work, the more lottery tickets you can pull. It’s difficult to assume I will pull this one lottery ticket and it’s all going to work out.

What are you watching, reading, listening, consuming these days?

For Starters! That’s what gets me up on Fridays, ready to conquer the world… 

I'm quoting you on that.

Sometimes I read other business stuff, but the majority of the time it’s nice to read books about a variety of subjects. Literature really drives me. There’s a book called A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. I highly recommend it. It’s splendid, really brilliant. He creates a beautiful fantasy world with a lot of sophistication. I think you can almost take that as a plot for a business, reverse engineer it, and then turn it into a brand story! If you’re a great storyteller and really passionate about your own thing, it can do wonders. I could listen to an auto mechanic talking for three hours about repairing a car if they’re super passionate about it! It’s all about people and storytelling – that’s the foundation of every great business.

And one more inspiring thing…

Check out the story of Paul Ninson, who runs Africa’s largest photo library:

You received this because you’re subscribed to For Starters, a weekly briefing for the next generation of small business owners. It’s written by Danny Giacopelli, a New York-born, London-based journalist (ex Monocle/Courier), photographer and starter. Thanks so much for being here.

3 decisions to make before starting your business

This is a special 3-part column written by Bonnie Chung, a ‘recovering entrepreneur’, mentor, cookbook author & founder of Miso Tasty. You’re reading part 2. Click here to read part 1.

How FLEXIBLE do you want your business to be?

Lots of starters develop the idea for their business before they fully reflect on the lifestyle they want to live. But you need to think about flexibility before you start digging into the specifics of your business.

Do you want your business to be a physical space with a heart and soul? A second home? A central hub with a close team you see frequently? Are you happy returning to this place day after day?

Or does this idea make you feel trapped? What if life becomes repetitive? Maybe the buzzy neighborhood hangout you’ve created becomes a prison?

On the other extreme, perhaps you prefer to work from whatever timezone suits you. Do you want to manage your business from a laptop in Bali? What if you miss in-person connections with your team or community? 

For me, in the decade I ran my business Miso Tasty, I got to experiment with various models until I found my happy balance…

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When my idea was just an embryo, it felt incredibly important to give it a place to call home. We rented offices with flexible landlords who allowed us to decorate and give our workplace tons of personality. The walls were lined with pictures of our team and paraphernalia of our early wins. We installed a little kitchen so I could cook and host team lunches. Having a central hub bonded the team and, for me, it quickly became a second home. 

My team was expected to come in 5 days a week – the norm pre-Covid – and this felt right. Building a rhythm of togetherness helped strengthen our commitment to the company. The office was our beating heart. 

Fast forward to the lockdown years and the sudden switch to remote working was frankly a relief. The team had grown significantly and it had become impossible for me to carve out my own time to do deep-work. My open-door policy meant there was always someone who needed to talk. I felt stretched and compromised between tending to the team’s needs and my own. I started to feel trapped in the rigidity of office-life and resented not being able to travel as much as I wanted to. 

Total remote work didn’t work well for us either. The office became a ghost town – a neglected shell with dusty relics. I could feel the culture we had carefully curated for our business begin to dissolve. Video calls became tiring and in-person meetings became desperate social events because we were starved of the once-warm buzz of our office.

But as we adapted to life post-lockdown, I slowly established a new happy medium. We downsized to a smaller, more manageable office in a shared co-working space with other similar businesses, which gave us a community I never knew we needed. I adored curating a smaller version of our once oversized office for my team to come in 2-3 times a week. The rest of the time I trusted the team to work from wherever they wanted, and I loved having the option to log on from anywhere, too. I was also able to attract quality talent who lived outside of London, those who wanted more flexibility in their lives. I just wish I had the courage and foresight to implement a hybrid structure sooner.

There’s no perfect model, but there will be a blend that suits you best. An independent store could have an online offering that could be managed remotely. A company with a 100% remote team selling beauty products could curate regular staff retreats to support team-bonding, while still recognizing everybody’s preference to work from a location of their choice.

Remember that flexibility and scalability are often linked. Generally, the more flexible the business can be (from supply chain to staff needs, etc) the more easy it is to scale up and grow with minimum additional overheads. If this is important to your growth ambitions, then building flexibility into the business from day one will be key. 

We now have the luxury of designing our businesses to support the life we dream about. Tech offers us more and more options for flexibility everyday. So get clear on the lifestyle you want right now and you’ll most likely attract a team who have similar values too.

This was part 2 of a 3-part series on decisions you need to make before starting a business. Bonnie’s final essay will be in next week’s issue 👀

Ikigai. It’s 73% possible that you already know, love and maybe even practice this idea, but in case you don’t (and even if you do!) it’s worth revisiting ikigai, a Japanese concept referring to something that gives a person a sense of purpose.

Héctor Garcia is co-author of the book Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life, which helped popularize the concept beyond Japan. In an interview, he explained how to use the Venn diagram above:

In other words…

Resources 🛠️

↣ I’ve been really enjoying the IG and TikTok videos of brand strategist Eugene Healey, which dive into cultural ideas analyzed through the lens of brand.

↣ Maybe it’s because the algorithm knows I’m writing this newsletter, but I’ve been seeing a lot of starters recently who are building in public: sharing their wins, failures and learnings as they happen. The founders of Yoka in Seattle have been sharing great tips on IG as they build their cafe, as have Poorboy Coffee in SF. Give them a follow!

↣ Glen Allsopp, who runs Gaps.com, has gone through the Financial Times’ 2025 ranking of fastest growing companies in Europe and curated what he thinks are the 50 most interesting.

↣ Dan Frommer, the maestro behind the excellent newsletter and consultancy The New Consumer, has teamed up with Coefficient Capital to release a special report on consumer trends in food and wellness. You can read the full report for free here.

↣ And I’ve been keeping an eye on new/interesting small business-focused finance and payments platforms. One is Apron, which keeps launching great products/features, including an expense card for small biz which they rolled out this week. Great brand too (developed by Tom Rogers from Margate, UK-based Outsiders).

Reads 📚️

↣ “Exploring the Legacy of South Asian Corner Shops in Britain” / Brown History

↣ “The tequila party’s over for Mexico’s agave farmers” / FT

↣ “Eastern Promises: In a Tokyo of tourists, the citizens have become strangers” / The Baffler

↣ “St. Marks Is Dead, Long Live St. Marks” / Punch

↣ “The Wizard of Vinyl Is in Kansas” / NYT

↣ “The Future of Food is Ancient” / GQ Middle East (featuring Sarah Ben Romdane, founder of Tunisian olive oil brand Kaia, who I interviewed here)

↣ Is your local on this list of the 50 most essential bars in America? / Wildsam

↣ “Shoppers are going online to pay dearly for discontinued items, from the perfect lip pencil to Tab.” / NYT

↣ “White Oak Denim: How a Southern Cotton Mill Became the Last Bastion of American Made Selvedge” / Son of a Stag

↣ “How these Black Culinary Entrepreneurs Keep History Alive in South Carolina’s Lowcountry” / Bon Appetit

For fun 🙃

↣ Why doesn’t your shop look like Kyoto’s ‘Face House’? The new standard. No excuses.

📩 Share your juicy links: [email protected]

No subscriber shoutouts this week, just a little survey. We’re 8 issues in and I’d love if you take a second to tell me what you think.

📩 Share your news & updates: [email protected]

Enjoyed this edition? Forward it to someone starting something new.