My entire life, as far as I can remember, has been about dreaming up new startups.

As much as buying an existing cash-flow business and improving it is the recommended path — and one I would strongly advise for any fledgling entrepreneur — there is nothing more fun than a true zero-to-one startup. To ideate something from the ether, find product–market fit, and bring that vision viably to life.

But it turns out, at least for me, that is incredibly difficult to do. They say 9 out of 10 businesses fail, so just start 10 and one will stick. But in my nearly 20 years of entrepreneurial pursuits, I think I’m closer to 100 startup ideas I’ve worked on. Some with much more varying degrees of resource and investment input.

It is much harder than I ever imagined it could be to start a business that can have lasting impact.

During each failed attempt through the years, I would always learn a lesson — or a framework, rather — that would inform my next hypothesis of what business to start.

I knew, in exploring my next business, that getting 2–3 of these frameworks right would make a decently successful business. But during the couple of years I spent researching Excelsa coffee, I started to realize all 10 frameworks were lining up for me — as if by some cosmic, divine force — and it made me realize this endeavor could be far larger than I ever dreamed of.

So without further ado, here are the 10 frameworks I have learned through years of hardship and work that are aligning for me to go all in on my next startup: Excelsa Coffee.

1. Have a Black Umbrella (An Insurance Policy)

Things will inevitably go wrong, and insurance is your way to not lose it all. I have a vivid memory of my business college professor lecturing this 20 years ago.

It should be assumed, as the little guy in business, that any product–market fit you validate with your idea will be taken by a much more capitalized organization who will put you out of business.

With Excelsa, we acquired the IP (trademarks and domains) in advance, leveraged AI for SEO and content, to ensure our multiple internet assets will be top of Google, ChatGPT, Amazon, and Walmart for the next century.

If and when Nestlé or Starbucks jumps on the Excelsa bandwagon with their billion-dollar investment, squeezing all of our supply, I already know 30% of organic internet traffic (millions of people) will be funneled through these IP assets by reverse engineering their long established behavior.

So we can move forward being viable as a specialty coffee company (fun!) or have an exit to sell to the big brands — because we have an insurance policy of capturing a vast amount of organic search traffic forever. (What is 30% of internet traffic worth to a big brand entering a billion-dollar space? A LOT.)

2. Be On Time, But a First Mover

This is incredibly hard to time. Being early is just as damaging as being late. But over time, after enough lived experiences, you start to see patterns and oscillations in the evolution of businesses, news, and their life cycles.

You want to be ahead of the news cycle so you can actually be part of the narration of the news and take control of it. Being early entrenches the moats of unfair advantages, and market efficiencies that make up the mix of our reality.

Being early means you are wasting time and money, getting burnt out. Being late means you are chasing the competition and spending money inefficiently. Because a subset of every customer you acquire will go through you to the best seller (the first mover) in perpetuity.

We spent almost a year holding out on incorporating our business. I was convinced everyday I’d wake up to someone beating us to the punch. But the timing was perfect, and that patience saved us thousands and thousands of dollars.

3. Have an Unfair Advantage and Economic Moats

When we named our company Excelsa Coffee and launched ExcelsaCoffee.com, it was a massive economic moat and unfair advantage based on those assets’ ability to acquire search traffic for excelsa coffee from Google, ChatGPT, Amazon, and Walmart (a bulk of total internet traffic).

For every subsequent Excelsa coffee brand that launches, it builds validity, and search volume traffic to our original internet assets which outrank as the incumbent.

We further launched ExcelsaCoffee.org and ExcelsaCafe.com to further entrench an unfair advantage — leveraging the internet (a tool billions use per day) to capture a bulk of that traffic and to be able to tell the story we wanted to put forth around Excelsa (to further propagate narratives being written so we can control much of them).

It would have been an uphill battle to start an Excelsa coffee company without these powerfully relevant unfair advantages and economic moats.

4. Entropy and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics

Business and consumer behavior are human activities. Human activities reflect nature by their very essence of being part of the natural environment.

Entropy explains how time can only move in one direction (forward), and how disorder/fragmentation will always increase — because it’s overwhelmingly more likely it will.

When looking at a large macrocosmic consumer trend, if we apply an entropic lens by saying “general coffee” is low entropic, and that the rearranging of its inner constituents is more likely with the passage of time to become highly entropic, then the end result of the coffee movement is to be specialized and nuanced.

Coffee becomes Excelsa, Liberica, Geisha, and so much more. Excelsa, as a constituent within an industry of low entropy, is likely to become more centered and forefront with the passage of time.

Wine, beer, spirits, cooking oils all went through this entropic transformation. I would never bet the highly nuanced wine industry will default back to consumers just saying “red” or “white” wine like they did 100 years ago.

The only challenge: we don’t know how long the timing will take (it might not even happen in our lifetimes — see item 2). But its inevitability is literally baked into the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Seeing these oscillations and potential opportunities is important in the dark days when your work shows no output and no one sees your vision. Use the physical laws visible now, to envision a possible future world before anyone can see it.

5. Efficiency Rules the World

Without going too far down the rabbit hole, even concepts like socialism and capitalism are just labels people fight over that mask an underlying and purely objective efficiency of the universe.

Most people think there is a man somewhere pulling all the strings — when it’s in fact a bunch of powerless people thinking there is a man somewhere pulling all the strings.

More than anything, the world is ruthlessly efficient and no one is in control. All the IP, trademarks, patents in the world won’t protect your moats faster than the sheer efficiency of the markets, people, behaviors, et al.

If peanuts grow in California’s Central Valley, and you want to sell them to the California market, no amount of IP or moats will protect your business if you want to run your office in Europe. Markets always become most efficient.

Geography is a massive driver of this efficiency. Being in Southern California is a powerful efficiency for coffee grown in Southeast Asia, brought to a port near our house, and distributed to the USA market. The coffee is going to cross our neighborhood whether we do business or not because thats its most efficient path. That is a huge advantage for us to choose a business that is done already most efficiently where we live.

6. Total Available Market

It’s likely I’ll never be able to take more than a fraction of a percent out of my business each year as my salary without causing damage or incurring deep inefficiencies to my operations.

Therefore, whatever I pursue needs to have a prerequisite total available market — before I even start ideating or deploying a strategy — that’s big enough to make it worth the work. That makes worthy pursuits few and far between.

If I wanted a million-dollar-a-year salary one day, then my business needs to be doing far more than $100M a year in revenue — probably closer to $200M+. In the $150B/year coffee space, I only need to conquer 0.13% market share to be able to ask for the salary I want. Not easy at all, but at least possible.

7. A Disruptive Go-to-Market Strategy

Think of consumer behavior as a giant brain, with neural pathways of repeat behavior that get baked into concrete over time they way habits in your day cause repetition.

No one is looking for a new iPhone company — Apple solved that problem in 2009 and we moved on. I don’t care to buy a different car than a Toyota because I trust that brand and don’t want to think about which car to buy.

The more problems I solve with what I already trust, the more I can move on to the next exciting thing.

But disruptions are patterns — very predictable ones (see item 4) — if you focus long enough on a category. As a disruptive product, you need to move quickly, ship something great, invite competitors into the market to validate your contrarian view, and then attack the incumbent.

With Excelsa, climate issues are hitting monoculture coffee hard, and demand for nuanced, specialty flavor is growing. We ship quickly, build loyalty, invite others in, and don’t wake the giant until it’s too late.

Seems obvious, but it’s hard. Good marketing can only carry a bad product so far. Eventually, efficiency beats even the most brilliant marketing.

8. A Good Product

I had a compostable plastics company once. It felt good — until I found out each product contained PFAS, a forever chemical. Greenwashing. I folded before I became the one holding the bag when the music stopped.

Excelsa is the opposite: genuinely better coffee, and I believe that with my whole heart.

9. Vertical Integration

For centuries, the proprietor was the USP — it was hard to source quality materials, make the product, and distribute it with meaningful marketing, and once achieved it was a trade secret. Now? Everything’s accessible. White-labeling a gadget just validates it for a more capitalized company to copy.

The only defense is vertical integration: doing something efficient, unfair, and first from manufacturing to the end consumer— so you can’t be instantly replaced.

10. Altruism and Purpose

I left this for last because, as a personal driver, business has to be more than the bottom line.

My biggest failure would be to be rich and old, sitting in a lonely house, with no one visiting me because I only served myself.

Altruism solves real problems — waste, inequality, biodiversity loss — and, when truthful, it becomes one of the most powerful foundations for a brand.

Coffee’s industrial complex keeps farmers in poverty and fills our bodies with chemicals. Excelsa can fix pieces of that — creating a better cup, a better livelihood for farmers, and something I can feel proud of.

So those are my ten frameworks from 20 years of entrepreneurial trials. Even getting a few right gives you tailwinds. But to have all ten align? That’s rare.

That’s why I decided to go all in on Excelsa Coffee Company — to create something that can last 100+ years.

Coffee is crowded. On every level — brand, roaster, café, franchise, heritage name — the space is overflowing.

The moment a message resonates with consumers, “big coffee” can amplify it louder, faster, and cheaper, thanks to their scale and lower cost of goods. At best, the smaller company has simply spent its capital to validate a message for a bigger company to take. Breaking through that noise is almost impossible.

But I believe there’s a massive gap emerging.

The industrial monoculture that dominates coffee has forced reliance on unregulated, heavy chemical use. It’s vulnerable to disease. It’s already seeing production declines.
We’ve seen this story before — in beer, wine, spirits, even cooking oils — as once-commodity products evolved into specialty categories. Coffee might be the last big commodity left to make that leap.

Excelsa could be the bridge.

It’s not Arabica. It’s not Robusta. It’s a separate species — a coffee tree with deeper roots, thicker leaves, and natural resilience that requires little to no pesticides. It harvests on its own cycle, supports biodiversity, and produces a bright, complex cup unlike anything else.

The challenge? Almost no one knows it. And once they do, they don’t remember it. Even people I’ve crossed paths with for years — watching me build this company day in and day out — still get the name wrong: Excelsor, Excelsia, Excelsior… anything but Excelsa.

Consumers expect coffee beans to be identical in size and perfectly free of blemishes — the result of decades of industrial sorting and spraying. Excelsa looks different. Because it’s wild.

When we started, we were literally paying people to climb trees and mail us whatever processed Excelsa they could find. Quality control didn’t exist. We’ve fought to improve it with every harvest, and we’re convinced we’ll produce the best Excelsa in the world. But we’re still asking consumers to try a coffee that’s not yet “perfect” by industrial standards — while trusting that the journey toward higher consistency is part of the story.

That’s the risk. If we go viral too soon, demand could outstrip supply or the quality curve, and consumers might turn away. Excelsa isn’t a fad. It’s a crop that can help solve the crisis facing global coffee producers — while offering consumers richer flavor, fewer chemicals, and naturally different caffeine levels.

So how do we bridge the gap between “good enough to launch” and “world-class,” without losing the audience along the way?

We make the wildness the point.

Our positioning — rewilding coffee — connects two truths:

• Coffee needs biodiversity and regenerative agriculture to survive.
• Consumers need to understand that visual “imperfection” is a sign of authenticity and health, not a flaw.

Excelsa beans don’t all look the same because they’re not part of the chemical-driven industrial complex. That’s not a weakness. That’s the premium. Like champagne, the rarity and exclusivity of the cup come from its origin — and in an era of GMOs and lab-grown food, wild matters more than ever.

Framed this way, the message becomes bite-sized for consumers while carrying real weight for producers and the planet. And “wild” unlocks an entire blue ocean of marketing white space — stories rooted in regional cultures, ancient wisdom, and heritage traditions — all running counter to the homogenized sameness of the Anthropocene. It also makes the brand more fun — creating provocative, exciting content that taps into coffee’s humanity and ritual, and using that energy to build campaigns that actually break through the noise.

We’re not just here to sell coffee. We’re here to rewild the world — starting with your morning cup.

My first business out of college was a digital agency focused on early ecommerce, branding, and marketing. This was nearly 20 years ago. My business partner handled the design and coding. He came from a well-connected tech family. I took on sales and operations, carrying $85,000 in student loans and the quiet pressure of parents who actively discouraged me from pursuing entrepreneurship. I was hungry to prove them wrong. I wanted out of debt. I wanted to make a mark.

After a few small projects in the $2k to $5k range, I was desperate to land bigger clients. We got our shot when a bi-coastal investment bank from New York reached out with a request for proposal. On the drive over, my partner and I argued about pricing. He begged me to stick to our usual range. In their boardroom, I didn’t. I quoted a price ten times higher than our biggest project to date. My partner visibly flinched. I stomped his toe under the table to stop him from speaking. The room got tense. I held the silence. Then they agreed to the terms.

On the way back to the car, my partner quit.

I had no backup plan. No cash. Just a deposit check and a massive commitment. I scrambled to build a team, hired designers, outsourced development to India, and charged forward. I thought the project was a windfall, but it dragged on for months. I ran out of money. Took on credit card debt. Moved back home. My chest hurt every day. I lost hair. I had no margin. But I delivered a new site, launched a rebrand, wrote a 60-page style guide that still sits on my desk, and made sure every person who worked got paid.

During those sleepless nights—handling designers by day and developers in India by night—I came across a new song from Arcade Fire. It was called Intervention. One lyric from the chorus hit hard:

“Hear the soldier groan, we’ll go at it alone.”

It stuck with me. It became a mantra.

When I felt alone. When I didn’t know what would happen next.
That line anchored me.

Years later, I had co-founded a charity that trained lifeguards across 25 countries. We’d been building it for seven years. We had a team. We had resources. Then the Syrian refugee crisis hit. I saw images of drowned children in the media. Lifeguards we’d trained in Greece and Turkey reached out and asked us to help.

I sat in my office in Los Angeles and felt the weight of it. I knew stepping in would overextend our nonprofit. I knew it would drag us into territory we weren’t prepared for. But I also knew if we didn’t do something, no one else would.

We went. We poured everything we had into that year. We supported rescue missions. We trained teams. We coordinated gear, transport, and logistics in an active humanitarian disaster.

Over 2,000 lives were saved.

It was one of the hardest and most uncertain periods of my life. And again, that lyric came back.

“Hear the soldier groan…”

I wasn’t even sure what I believed in spiritually at the time. But I knew what faith felt like.

Years passed. Things stabilized. I had a good job. A six-figure salary. I walked to work. I had balance. Life was calm. But something in me was still restless.

Despite the comfort and the appeals of people who cared about me, I signed a lease 45 minutes south in a high-crime area near the Mexico border. A warehouse. My name on it. I sourced a product from a factory in Wuhan. The idea was bold. I believed in it.

Then COVID hit.

The factory shut down. Orders disappeared. I had to scramble to find new inventory, sourcing product myself from trips to Guadalajara and CDMX, Mexico. I kept trying to pay my employees, working late night shifts on the forklift myself. Trying not to default on the lease. I took on more debt. More investors. Long drives home. Chest pain. Sleepless nights. I’d left a good life for this. I’d risked everything.

Part of me was angry at myself. But the other part knew this was the path.

And that line came back again.

“Hear the soldier groan, we’ll go at it alone.”

Now there’s Excelsa.

This coffee variety is different. It’s resilient. Pesticide-free. Chemical-free. Beautiful. A chance to serve farmers. A chance to offer something better to people. A shot at real climate impact and meaningful ritual.

There are amazing people doing work with Excelsa—Ron Dizon’s Teofilo in Los Angeles, who showcases all four coffee species as Philippines coffee heritage. Taste and See in Camiguin Island, who opened the world’s first Excelsa-only café. Dr. Aaron Davis at Kew, doing climate-resilient research. Excelsa café in Dubai serving all four bean types (and our own Excelsa cafe serving exclusively excelsa in California). Women owned farms in South Sudan growing Excelsa. It’s inspiring. But there’s no coordinated push to bring this to the world at scale.

That’s what I’m doing now.

A full, intentional effort. To scale farms. Integrate supply chains. Bring Excelsa to direct-to-consumer, to cafés, to retailers like Sprouts and Whole Foods. To tell the story right. To do it in a way that honors the farmers and the land.

If someone else were already doing this, and I could support them, I would. But they aren’t. So I am.

It’s not about being the hero. It’s just about listening to what keeps calling. About knowing what your work is, even when no one else sees it yet.

This is the fourth time that lyric has carried me through. Maybe the most important yet.

And once again, I hear it.

“Hear the soldier groan, we’ll go at it alone.”