Hey starter!

Here’s what’s inside Issue #89…

01. Consider me a longtime fan of Taylor Bruce’s oeuvre. He previously founded Wildsam, publisher of some of my all-time favourite travel guides (seriously, they’re amazing). Then he created First Light Books, an indie bookshop and cafe in Austin. And just a few days ago, Taylor launched Carver Books, “a book publisher of original & heirloom works.” Keep your eye on this one… 📚

02. I’m really feeling the retail vibes of both locations of this photo shop and film lab in Melbourne. 📸

03. And some words of truth for you on this fine Friday…

In partnership with Faire

For 3 weeks, we’ve been daydreaming a For Starters shop with help from Faire, where 700K+ indie shops buy wholesale from 100K+ brands.

We worked out how to stock a shop without blowing the budget. Then we filled the shelves with 10 brands from FS subscribers: Crispin Finn planners stacked by the till, Vagabond Heart patches by the door, an Earl of East candle flickering in the window.

(Quick note to the readers who emailed asking if I’m really opening a shop: I mean… not yet! This one’s make-believe. Yours doesn’t have to be.)

A few tips for your opening day:

Hugh Thomas has asked himself those questions more than most starters. He co-founded Ugly Drinks, the zero-sugar sparkling water brand, with his buddy Joe Benn in 2015. Still in his early-20s, Hugh raised millions in venture capital, hired a big team, expanded globally, and got Ugly into 15,000+ stores.

He left the business in 2021 with a few scars and lots of lessons. Now he’s building GIANTS, a functional coffee brand, with his biz partner Theo – and doing it the opposite way: he’s bootstrapping it for under £10K. About 18 months in, it’s at a seven-figure run rate. Wild scenes.

→ Over a coffee at Tate Modern, we talked about what raising big $$$ does to a biz, and how much you can build (hint: a lot) with very little…

💬 Hey Hugh, let’s take it back to your Ugly days…

Sounds good. I’ve always been an entrepreneur, always in consumer products. I worked for Vita Coco coconut water when it launched in the UK and then I started a sparkling water brand called Ugly with my mate Joe. We did that for six, seven years. It was a mixed journey – it got very big, then Covid was painful, and we didn’t quite get the outcome we wanted. There are some scars there that inform what I do now.

💬 You’ve been through the wringer.

Yeah, I’ve been through it. That was a venture-backed business. We raised a ton of money and expanded very fast in a lot of countries. I was in my early 20s, which was crazy. We were an early, self-taught direct-to-consumer company. I fell in love with that style of business, because of the one-to-one relationship with the consumer. People either buy you or they don’t – and you can talk to them directly. You can do quite a lot of interesting things without asking a retailer if they want to stock you.

💬 So you can iterate, test, learn.

Exactly. So when I finished with Ugly and was thinking about what I wanted to do next, that model was a big part of it. I’ve always been a big coffee drinker. I also liked the idea of repeatable products. It’s possible to sell furniture via ecommerce, but you’re not buying a table every week. Yet people drink coffee every day. You and I are drinking coffee right now!

💬 Products based on daily habits, in other words.

Yeah – a habit, a ritual. When you go to the cupboard and you’ve run out of coffee, it’s one of the worst feelings… but you still have to go get coffee! It’s not like when you run out of vitamin C. Coffee is life or death, at least for me.

💬 So how’d you start building a coffee biz? Two of them, in fact!

Coming out of Ugly, I got approached by Top of the Mornin’ Coffee, a brand started by the YouTuber Jacksepticeye, to be their CEO. I’m based here in London, but we actually run the company out of Lincoln, Nebraska, where we have a roastery, warehouse, and operations team. We do regular coffee, flavored coffee, K-cups, hot chocolate, matcha, merch, you name it…

💬 Very cool. Where does your brand GIANTS come into the story?

The roots for GIANTS came earlier. While running Ugly, I moved to NYC. I got into the whole bulletproof coffee thing – adding stuff to coffee to make it functional.

💬 Like yak butter?

Like a whole block of Kerrygold butter! I grew out of that because I realized I was just… drinking butter. But I started to see people adding functional ingredients like collagen or creatine to coffee, so I played around with that. I’ve been on my own health journey over the years, and if you track your macros or diet, you realize how hard it is to get enough protein and other things in your diet. You realize maybe I do need some collagen for my muscles or recovery, for instance.

When I moved back to London, I had the idea to build a brand that initially started with coffee. Again, talking about daily habits, if I had collagen in my cupboard, I might forget to take it. But I don’t ever forget my coffee. So if it’s already in my coffee, it’s done.

💬 You’re building GIANTS in a very different way from Ugly. Almost the polar opposite way. Why?

I’d gone on a crazy fundraising journey with Ugly, and I really wanted to avoid that again. Fundraising almost becomes a full-time job as an entrepreneur. You’re meeting investors, pitching a vision, and at times I was selling the vision so hard that I became disconnected from the business.

💬 Is raising loads of cash a direct consequence of building a large drinks brand? Or did you just think raising VC was what you should be doing as a startup founder?

We started Ugly very innocently: “Let’s start a canned soft drinks brand!” But it’s a high-volume, low-margin game. To make a lot of money, you have to sell a lot of cans, and you’re probably going to need to raise capital to do it. We started it in our bedrooms in London, then took it to America, then realized, wow, we’re going to have to have a lot of employees and a lot of stock, so we need a lot of money.

Some people pull it off – Poppi selling to Pepsi, for instance – but pretty much all these brands raise tons of capital. We sold millions of cans of Ugly, which is cool, but it’s a very tough game. You end up just raising cash all the time to fund it. And when Covid hit, it was a very challenging environment in which to run the company.

💬 I remember everyone suddenly talking about profitability!

Yeah, because people had got away from those basic economics. In many ways raising venture takes the purity out of a startup. There’s something pure in making something for X and selling it for Y. The value is decided by the consumer, which is how you build a business. Many startups lose that. You read about some company that’s raised X at a Y valuation, but none of that is real. Sadly, if you started your business without profitability in mind, it’s hard or impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. 

💬 So how’d you approach GIANTS differently?

I said to myself, “Can I start a company for less than £10,000?” I started tinkering. I got samples made of coffee with collagen and other ingredients in it. Then Theo, who’s now my business partner, reached out to me via email. He’d found me on Twitter. Theo’s 10 years younger than me, in his mid-20s, and was literally working across the road from where I was living. A half hour later, we were having coffee. We hit it off straight away. He had an energy I had maybe 10 years ago. I have some scars that he doesn’t yet have. It’s a good balance! 

💬 So you’re bootstrapping it! How’s it gone so far?

We’re bootstrapping it. We’ve got a seven-figure run-rate.

💬 God damn, Hugh. Congrats.

It’s so early and we’ve done everything DIY. We haven’t even scratched the surface of it yet. I’m very aware it can go wrong from here. That said, we’re looking at raising just a little bit of money from some angels.

💬 Go on…

Well, it’s a bit like building a bonfire. Capital is gasoline, and gasoline can be good or bad. You get the kindling, light the fire, let it burn a bit, add some more wood, don’t choke it out, add a bit more wood, and then when it’s a roaring fire, do you put some gasoline on it, or will that make it get out of control? That’s a decision you have to make. Right now we’re thinking about putting just a little bit of money into this, so we can improve the branding, make the website better, improve the formula, get some more creators on board, and bring in some more experts. Let’s see!

💬 What do you put GIANTS’ success down to? Ecommerce tactics, SEO tricks, influencer marketing, luck?

All of those are important. But the most important is asking: What do people want? Think about pricing. Lots of businesses price their products based on how much they think CAC [customer acquisition cost] will be, or what they need to cover their costs. Instead, ask: What is the right price point? When we started selling at the right price point, our CAC came down, because it’s less friction for the consumer. The consumer thinks: “This solves my problem and it’s at a good price.” You also don’t have to force people into crazy subscription funnels, because when they buy it and try it, they like it, and they buy it again!

💬 Ugly had a big team and big overheads. Now you’re two guys, few overheads, and you’re making a lot of money. What’s that say about building a biz these days?

I started GIANTS for £10,000, but you could do it even cheaper now. There are so many creative ways of getting things off the ground with all the new tools available. You can make something look incredible in a weekend. There’s something beautiful about constraints. You don’t have to ask: “Should I spend it?” If it’s not there, you can’t spend it! The decisions are made for you. You have to go from A to B via the fastest route, otherwise it’s over. At the same time, you have to be patient. What’s that quote? Most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade.

💬 Imagine a big corporation knocks tomorrow and buys GIANTS. What’s your next move? What ideas are in your Notes app?

I just optimize for a good life now. I need to spend more time thinking about it, but it’s inevitable I’d start something new, because I enjoy the journey of building things and learning. It’s quite fulfilling. For me, success is simple: it’s building stuff you’re passionate about with people you like. ☼

Genre-based bookstores 📚 → People are going bananas for them.

Landscape hotels 🌄 → “The term has been cropping up more and more to describe Instagram-ready properties set in a beautiful natural environment.”

AI may quickly generate ideas… 🤖 → …but working with real people leads to more creative ones.

Restaurant substitution culture 🍴 → Is the customer always right? Has swapping things in a meal order gone too far?

Prestige paint brands 🎨 → The new status symbols?

The solo economy 🙋‍♂️ → The big opportunity in targeting the solo consumer – particularly in the travel industry.

Disco balls to dog toys → It’s all on Faire, where 700K+ indie shops buy wholesale from 100K+ vetted brands. Why not open your own perfect little shop? Eligible new shops can get up to $20K in 60-day payment terms, interest-free. In partnership with Faire

Nothing’s cups and straws → “Everything we make is designed to vanish in 180 days or less. Back to the dirt, the air, the earth it came from.”

OpenPitch → “A human-vetted living directory of creatives behind the world’s most impactful brands.”

Whole Foods’ 2027 Trends Report → Eight trends that shoppers may see in grocery stores in 2027.

I’m quitting branding. Vivid Cereal

Everything rhymes with porcelain. Works in Progress

In Vietnamese nail salons, culture is passed down hand to hand. Service95

An interview with Will Brown and Marie Willey, the duo behind Old Town. Paynter

79% → The percentage of Gen Z who say they feel more connected to the real world by collecting physical objects. 84% of the general population says they prefer physical objects over digital ones.

Good Times General Store, from Potato Head in Bali.

Railpass.

01. Hot dreams. This handmade, bespoke, 1-of-1, 10-person, sculptural sauna made of Douglas Fir is for sale in the UK. It was crafted by Sam Ludgate Bloom in Cornwall. Look at that porthole window! (Thanks to subscriber Lucy Werner for sending it my way.) → Make it yours

02. The roadhouse. A 26-year-old just bought a historic roadhouse in gorgeous Talkeetna, Alaska, two hours north of Anchorage. She spent the summer working under the previous owner, who ran it for 30 years, and who also bought it when she was 26! → Follow her adventures on TikTok.

Freelancer mental health. Longtime For Starters subscriber Matthew Knight runs Leapers, a project supporting the mental health of the self-employed. Every year it asks freelancers a simple question – how are you doing? – and turns the answers into a useful report. The 2026 survey is anonymous and takes 10 min! → Have your say here

Matchmaking for starters. And in LA, new FS subscriber Naghmeh Moftakhar is founder of The Blue Mango, a creative co-op that pairs small businesses with vetted creatives for design, development, strategy, content, and marketing. → Check it out

Subscribe for free / For Starters is a weekly newsletter for starting the business of your dreams. It’s written by Danny Giacopelli, formerly of Monocle, Courier, and Mailchimp → Subscribe today

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