Start the business of your dreams.
Hey, starter! Read on for…
Inspiration ➠ Hyphen-mania
Advice ➠ Survey responses! 🥁
Ideas ➠ What’s Vinted brain?
Resources ➠ Every tool… ever
Town Hall ➠ Community shoutouts
👋 It’s so good to see you. For Starters is a weekly briefing for the next-gen of small business owners, written by former Courier, Monocle & Mailchimp editor Danny Giacopelli. Nearly 10K business-builders around the world subscribe for inspo, ideas, tips & tools every Friday. —DG
➠ Get inspired
Sunday Club | Credit: Dana Golan
Hello friends! Trying something new today. I’ve got a galaxy-size stack of stories, brands, links & tabs in front of my face, and I’ve spent far too much time decoding our big survey (below), so here’s a firehose of starters who entered my field of view this week…
In New York, Ira Blossom is a UX research manager at Google by day, yet his awesome side hustle is a games-only, print-only newspaper 🗞 called Sunday Club which he sells at a newsstand (above). In this interview he pinpoints the source of his inspo: “A little bit of screen time fatigue, a lot of digital fatigue in general, [and] a love for nostalgic media that I think is coming back.” Speaking of Google peeps as starters, Lebanese-born ex-Googler Vanessa Hobeika has built an awesome knife brand 🔪 called SEKKIN – you seen it?
Elsewhere, William De Sena is building SENA, the ‘it’ loafer brand of the moment 👞 (he talked to Jake Woolf here), and Zewiditu Jewel and Derrick Faulcon continue to kill it with their biz Cloudy Donut – Jay-Z’s Favorite Donut Shop 🍩. “We’re not in it for any sort of food accolades or awards,” Zewiditu said. The biz is a vehicle “for us to be living the life that we believe that we deserve.”
Here in the UK, a fixer-upper with soul: Ian Burgess, he of London cafe/roastery Climpson & Sons, teamed up with David McHugh of Notting Hill Arts Club to buy a very green, nearly century-old garage in Kent, and turned it into a cafe-car-wash-micro-nursery 🚗 called… The Green Garage. (IMO the more hyphens in a biz description, the better.) And Edinburgh-based fashion designer Emily Millichip is completely relaunching her eponymous brand after 15 years – and it’s because of her parallel love: farming 👩🌾.
Oh, and a dreamy one for the road: Kelly Peeler swapped the US for the starter life on a tiny Greek island, where she set up a creative arts residency for women 🎨. She’s now teaching other women how to set up their own residencies. Cool.
Phew. My browser feels lighter.
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➠ Starter wisdom
How your survey responses find me.
Two weeks ago I shared a survey, asking what you’d want from For Starters in the future. What would you find useful? What should I build? Boy did you deliver the goods. Here we go…
First of all, thanks so much. You’re all amazing. Nearly 150 of you filled in my 10-question survey with no prize at the end of it (note for next time: give a prize). I read every word. Below I’m sharing all the insights in the spirit of building in public – so you can see where my head is at, and why/how For Starters might evolve along the way.
Here’s who responded…
A cross-section of starters from around the globe, everywhere from London and LA to Tokyo and Stockholm, building every type of biz you can imagine. More than half (55%) are currently running a business – and about 1 in 8 are running more than one (how do you find the time?!).
14% recently launched a business. Just over a third haven’t started yet, but want to (I’m so glad you’re here). And 10% are here for the vibes. I respect that. We’ll turn you into a starter soon.
I listed 8 possible features of a FS paid membership club, and asked you to pick the 3 you’d actually pay for and use.
The answer was very clear: you want a directory of vetted tools, experts & resources – 55% of you put it in your top 3, more than anything else.
Landing close behind, within a couple of points of each other:
virtual sessions, office hours and interviews
a digital place to talk/connect/learn/build with other starters
and IRL meetups (88% of you said you’d attend if it’s near you)
My personal favourite, For Starters caps, are down (but not out…)
I left an open box for this question and your answers can be sorted (more or less) into a handful of buckets. Here’s what you said (anonymized, of course).
🔎 Help me find my people. The thing most of you asked for wasn’t some vague community, it was a lot more specific: a way to find the right person, at the right stage, for the thing you’re stuck on:
“A match-making service. I have skills I’d be happy to share, and I’d love to find people with reciprocal wants and needs.”
“If there were a club that matched you with people at similar stages of business to give each other advice, that would make it worthwhile.”
“Advisory from founders in a similar industry to mine – their advice on attorneys, manufacturers, sourcing.”
“A place for pre-starters to come together to help each other start!”
“True community where people really connect and show up for each other.”
“Finding a way that make connections feel more real. I feel like I’ve done a number of networking events and online chats that never lead anywhere. How do we find the ones that click?”
🧑🤝🧑 Get all of us starters in a room together. Meetups, dinners, and a conference came up quite a lot:
“A structured, conference-y gathering of folks from this community would be amazing.”
“In-person events feel intimidating, so some way to make it feel less so.”
“A For Starters conference with founders in various business types covering different topics.”
📚 Something physical to hold onto. Some of you asked for a book or mag or even a zine of the previous month’s editions:
“A print edition, naturally.”
“A For Starters print magazine with longer-form content could be really cool.”
“A zine compilation of the past 4-5 Friday newsletters all in one tactile copy.”
✅ Give us advice on biz-building. Tons of you asked for practical advice on the unglamorous stuff of running a new biz, taught by the starters who’ve done it:
“Resources for managing all the various tech pieces you have to use to run a business. For me, the nuts and bolts are what need attention.”
“Actionable content with guidance from those who’ve already done it successfully.”
👍 Remember to keep it simple. A smaller group said something I’m taking seriously: don’t break what's already working:
“The expansion is a great idea, but don’t lose the simplicity of the newsletter format and the clean content.”
Roger that. To confirm: unlikely this free email will change much, if at all.
I asked what business challenges you’re dealing with. A handful of broad themes emerged…
👋 Getting customers & getting seen. By a distance, this was the most common answer from the respondents who have already launched a biz:
“Escape velocity: getting to a point where I’m not fighting for every last invoice, so I can shift from survival to growth.”
“Visibility. It’s tough to get seen by the right people without completely ripping through any cash reserves.”
“Getting new clients and paid projects through the door.”
“How to be more visible without leveraging social platforms that don’t align with my core values.”
🏃♀ Starting (and knowing what to start). And this was the most common answer from respondents who haven’t yet launched a biz:
“When do you have enough credibility to actually start reaching out to people? I feel like you only get one shot at that.”
“Figuring out what to start; I’m a multi-disciplinary creative stuck behind a computer wanting to build something IRL (or support someone doing it!)”
“Taking the first leap; currently at a crossroads career-wise and thinking going it alone but no idea where to start first.”
“The actual getting started point. So many ideas but not sure where to begin.”
“Run a successful business solo for 20 years, but ready to pivot into something totally new. But what?!”
⌛ Finding time. Day jobs, life, kids, and only so many hours in the day.
“Flooded with ideas and enthusiasm, but intentional delay due to day job.”
“I have a new idea I’m really excited about, just haven’t had time to actually start building it.”
“Finding time to make everything work as I juggle a baby and multiple projects.”
“How to manage starting a side hustle with 2 small kids?”
“Figuring out when to spend time on my own thing with a full time job.”
“Juggling a full time job and being a mom.”
“I have a full time job that’s very demanding, so oftentimes my business falls by the wayside, so my launch date continues to get pushed back.”
🫠 The nuts & bolts. Tax, admin, pricing, the financial side, etc:
“Lack of confidence about the financial side of things.”
“How to price yourself as a maker, and how to value the objects you make.”
“Navigating the legal structure and financial setup.”
🤖 Plus lots of other things. Tons of answers were about a mood, the economy, AI, and anxiety about facing/making big decisions:
“Direction, tbh. I’m a year in and in assessment mode.”
“Feels like tough times at the moment. Trying to stay positive.”
“Losing clients because of AI.”
“I started, launched the website, and inquiries are coming, but not so drastically. I’m not stuck. But moving very slowly.”
“Currently in a space where I really want to take myself offline and relearn what my thoughts/ideas/interests actually are.”
“Procrastination.”
“Mojo.”
And a few of you said you weren’t stuck at all: “Fingers, toes and eyes crossed it stays this way for a while.” More of this, please 👏
I’m still working out For Starters 2.0 (thus the survey), and I’d rather show you than promise you stuff I can’t deliver yet.
But the shape of what you want is really clear: a club built around connecting you to the right person, expert, starter, or tool for whatever you’re stuck on. That’s the brief. How it works, what it looks like, and what it costs… I’ll show you when it’s real.
P.S. A full half of you asked to be the first to hear when the doors open. You will. And if you haven’t done the survey, check it out. I’m still reading.
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➠ Good ideas
Vinted brain 🧠 → The perils of online shopping.
Transparent tech 🫥 → The kids yearn for it.
The fig crisis 🙅 → Don’t expect to see them on restaurant menus this year.
Slop puppets 🤷♀ → “Are we giving up?”
Duppies 😓 → “Downwardly mobile young professionals are increasingly shaping culture, marketing, and politics.”
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➠ Toolbox
🛠 Resources
Normal Tools → A site with 193 embedded tools to do things like resize images, count words, and merge PDFs: “Open a tool, do the thing, leave. No account, no download, and nothing between you and the answer.” Whoa.
📚 Reads
The real AI economy is being built by ordinary people. Rest of World
Inside the 3,000-zine library in a Texas living room. Hyperallergic
Why is everyone in tech so sad? Noēma
WTAF is a solopreneur? LOOK-UP.WORLD (by FS subscriber Morwenna White-Thomson)
What do booksellers make of “the end of reading”? Defector
🧠 Findings
$60 → The cost of a single loaf of rye bread at a new NYC bakery.
🙃 Fun
This 1961 painter’s studio for sale on the coast of Denmark.
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➠ Town Hall
Shoutouts, wins & opportunities in the For Starters community.
1. For Starters subscriber Stepan Mitaki recently launched a new mobile journaling app for parents, called Chapter One. He’s kept a daily journal since 2013, and when his daughter was born three years ago, he started keeping a second journal for her too: “Sort of a little time capsule for when she’s older,” he says. “There are no great tools for that, so I decided to build one.” Check it out
2. In Australia, new reader Josh Gardiner runs a premium pepper brand called PEP (ace name). Just got my hands on one of their pepper grinders and it purrrs.
3. And subscriber Lola Hoad recently featured For Starters (and me) in her fantastic Q&A series. Had lots of fun going deep on what it’s like writing/building a newsletter. Have a read
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