- For Starters
- Posts
- Become the ocean
For Starters #20 — Hello, starters! Someone spotted a FS cap in the wild this week — I think we’ve officially breached containment? How’s your week been? What are you building? What business dream are you quietly plotting? Hit reply and lemme know. In the meantime, here’s what I’ve got for you…
Inspiration ➠ A big BAO lesson
Advice ➠ Poetry for starters
Ideas ➠ The rise of social sports
Tools ➠ Tiny Startups
FS Community ➠ Planet-positivity
For Starters is a weekly newsletter for the next-gen of small biz owners. It’s written by Danny Giacopelli, former editor of Courier magazine and host of Monocle’s The Entrepreneurs podcast.
➠ Get inspired
DO NOT X-RAY by SISSILU | sissilu.com
01. “I accidentally started a pouch business.” In 2023, photographer Sissi Lu went on a 6-month trip around the world with hundreds of rolls of film. She used a handmade pouch for the rolls, with a label asking airport workers not to X-ray them (film rolls hate X-rays and CT radiation). After getting DMs from inquiring minds, Sissi decided to actually sell the pouches. After a year and a half of product development, they’re now on sale online and at 300+ camera stores around the US and Canada. → Good to remember: accidental starters sometimes build the best brands 📸
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02. Who doesn’t love stationery shops? ✏️ If you’re in Chicago, check out the new-ish, independent, queer-owned store Paper & Pencil Chicago Stationery, run by couple Eric Campbell and Tyler McCall. The two have curated products that are largely made in the US and sourced from women- or LGBTQ+ owned brands…
“Opening a stationery shop has been a lifelong dream for McCall, an entrepreneur, and Campbell, who worked in the service industry. The couple started tossing around ideas for it in spring 2022. ‘We talked about it, and [Tyler] was secretly sourcing products and looking at things,’ Campbell said. ‘We lightly started looking around at what storefronts are available in the neighborhood, just play-talking, and then it started becoming real. It all just started to come together, and then we got here where we’re like, ‘Oh… I guess we’re doing it!’”
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03. Ten years ago, three young creatives fresh out of art school decided to start a Taiwanese food biz in London. It’s been absolutely wild to see how far BAO has grown since then – from a shack in a car park to 7 locations, a team of 200, a Michelin Bib Gourmand, a lifestyle and merch arm, fun films and events, and a community of very loyal fans. It’s extremely easy for a restaurant to stagnate or try too hard after a decade. Bao’s somehow avoided that fate. No easy task.
We asked BAO’s co-founder Erchen Chang to squeeze all those years, wins and mistakes into a tidy, wisdom-packed lesson. She DM’d us the perfect response… 🤌
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04. There’s a new design shop in upstate New York… Three hours northwest of NYC, in the western Catskills town of Andes (pop. 1300), in an old 2,500 sq ft stone masonry warehouse, is ESTRO. Owners Sara and Harry have swung open the doors recently – and it looks a beaut. Pop by for 20th century design, furniture, art, objects and more. 🪑
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05. And in Bengaluru, too! Meanwhile, Malini Malik and Spandana Gopal (founder of Tiipoi) have opened up a ‘design store and occasional gallery’ in the Ulsoor neighborhood of downtown Bengaluru. It’s called General Items. 🏺
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06. It all started as a joke. Brooklyn-based Roy Wellington, a self-described high school dropout, was with friends at a grocery store before heading to a Phish concert. That’s when someone dared him to try selling baklava at the concert. “Naturally,” Roy says, “I grabbed a few containers and thought, ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’” A few hours later those containers were empty and our hero had $150 in his pocket. Today, Roy runs the brand Good Baklava. Here’s what he told us about his journey…
“Starting a business is a scary process. It’s emotional, tiring and risky, to say the least. Sometimes I question if it’s worth it. This quote really speaks to me: “What a blessing it is to be tired in the pursuit of a challenge of your own choosing.” Selling baklava isn’t much, but it’s honest work and I’m so lucky to be able to do it.”
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07. Adorable desserts. Speaking of sweet stuff, after 20 years working in fine dining and Michelin-starred kitchens, Maryland-based chef Takeshi Nishikawa is soon opening up a beautiful, minimalist ice cream shop called Snow Crane. (Checks flights from London…) Until then, Takeshi’s open to consulting work “to help keep things steady while Snow Crane is in its pre-opening phase.” 🍨
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08. Listen up. Denis Mospanov is the founder of Automatic Audio, a Montréal-based company that builds beautiful, bespoke speakers. The Main, a very good publication that should be on your radar, has got a new profile of Denis that you might wanna read — it’s well worth it. 🎶
“The story of Automatic Audio is, at its core, about a kid who grew up crate-digging in suburban record shops, got ignored by the gatekeepers, and built his own sound system from the ground up: Not just for audiophiles, but for anyone who still believes music can change the atmosphere of a room.”
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09. Backgammon dreams. Meanwhile, a pretty (or as the kids incorrectly say, aesthetic) coffee shop where you can also learn how to play backgammon is opening up on Spring St in NYC. 🎲
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10. In Austin, the liquor store experience is getting a bit of a makeover. Adam Rios and Zach Hill have just opened up a calm, curated, neighborhood bottle shop and “parlour” called Goodnight Cowboy — named after a legendary 19th century Texas Ranger called Charles Goodnight. The two previously worked on a project together that was slightly more… flashy: the Las Vegas Sphere. 🔮
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11. Blank Page. And how’s this for an inspiring way to kick off a new business!? Congrats to Livvy Moore! 👏
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➠ Get smart
It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.
But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.
Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.
— “Fear” by Kahlil Gibran
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➠ Good ideas
🏓 Social sports → The first location of Ballers in Philly will have 6 pickleball courts, 3 padel courts, 4 golf simulators, fitness/recovery areas, and food/drink spaces. Context…
“Whatever you want to call these modern urban country clubs … we think, culturally and thematically, there is a big and durable surge in people wanting to have more meaningful shared experiences where competition is the centerpiece.”
🍣 Food concerts → Tech founder Phil Libin (formerly of Evernote) is flying in Michelin-starred Japanese chefs to Bentonville, Arkansas (home of Walmart) for magical dinners. His new company is called Bentoville (get it?)
“It’s a concept that Libin calls Food Concerts, which involves flying in big-name chefs to prepare and host a few evenings of dinners in mid-sized cities—places that might be great to live and work in, but are neither affluent nor populous enough to sustain a Michelin star restaurant.”
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➠ Links, etc.
🛠️ Resources
Tiny Startups → A launch platform for micro companies, solopreneurs and side-projects run by UK-based starter Jaisal Rathee.
📚️ Reads
Inside Cimoro, maker of custom ultralight backpacks & sought-after apparel. How the designer behind the cottage label turned a Savile Row education into designing performance packs & custom gear that fit like a bespoke suit. Field Mag
The Reenchanted World. On finding mystery in the digital age. Harpers (by Karl Ove Knausgaard!)
On the North Fork, a Spirited Laboratory of Unexpected Flavors. Surface
Built on a rich coffee history, Yemeni cafes find U.S. success and new challenges, too. NPR
Craig Mod on the Creative Power of Walking. “From this boredom, words flow. I can’t stop them.” Lit Hub
🧠 Findings
More than 50% → The share of Gen Z respondents in a new survey from the always-excellent Substack As Seen On who say they have one or more side hustles (or plan to start one in the future).
🙃 Fun
One Minute Park. POV footage of a random park, somewhere in the world, for 60 seconds. The world needs more projects like this.
Hand-painted signs, edition 234,000. Eagle-eyed subscriber Brett, knowing our singular obsession with hand-painted shop signs, shared this video of a sign-painting course in LA that’s been around for 100 (!) years.
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➠ Our community
→ Amsterdam-based FS subscriber Andreas Tzortzis, a writer and strategist, has just published a book with WeTransfer co-founder Damian Bradfield called Not a Playbook. The book “explores how brands can grow without sacrificing integrity, told through the story of WeTransfer.” Check it out.
→ And subscriber James Haycock has just launched BRiMM, a new “planet-positive shop, journal and collective.” The designer and entrepreneur has cooked up a membership-based biz with an interesting business model: BRiMM sells products from vetted, impact-driven companies, then takes 10% of the revenue and invests it in initiatives with those brands to help them lower their impact.
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