What Fine Dining Looks Like With Absolutely No Plastic
The restaurant industry's reliance on plastic 'has become more and more drastic over the years,' says Edward Lee, a former Iron Chef America contestant whose book Buttermilk Graffiti (Artisan, 2018) won a James Beard Foundation Book Award. 'It's not necessary. It's just that it's so convenient and it's so prevalent and it's everywhere that we don't even think about it.'
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Yahoo
06-08-2025
- Yahoo
I raised $25 million at 23. Here's my advice to other Gen Z entrepreneurs.
Jaspar Carmichael-Jack founded Artisan at 21. The company has now raised over $35 million. The Artisan CEO shared with Business Insider his advice to aspiring Gen Z founders, from books to read to where to live. "Young people are just more willing to do what they need to get eyeballs," Carmichael-Jack said. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, the 23-year-old CEO of Artisan. It's been edited for length and clarity. When I was 7, I had a candy shop in my bedroom. It wasn't really a company, but we technically made revenue. When I was 13, I started buying and reselling domains. I didn't even apply to any universities. I knew in high school I wasn't going to go. I started an app for booking cleaners after finishing high school in London. It turned out to be a terrible, tarpit idea, but I learned a lot about how to build a company and how not to build a company. I founded Artisan when I was 21 At the beginning of 2023, I came up with Artisan. In January 2023, I spent a couple of months trying to find a cofounder and building the company. It was like a failed engine. I interviewed 100 cofounders, and didn't find anyone particularly good. In August 2023, I got another wave of motivation. It moved pretty fast then, and I got very lucky early on. Within the first month, we had a very basic prototype. We managed to raise $1.75 million just from a LinkedIn message. People are always like, "How did you raise money so early on?" That's complete luck. We got into Y Combinator a week after that. We launched V0 of Artisan in 2024, but the product barely worked. In June of last year, we launched V0.1, and that's when we started to see some growth. Our $12 million seed round was wrapped up in August, when I was 22. We raised a Series A that we closed in Q1 of this year at $25 million, which has enabled us to build out the team and hire a lot of really great talent and to double down on product again. We now have $6 million in annual recurring revenue. My advice for Gen Z tech entrepreneurs There's a relatively built-out playbook you can follow. First of all, educate yourself on the space and understand the type of company that you're building, how to build it, but then more broadly, what the startup ecosystem looks like. Do everything you can to be in the Silicon Valley startup ecosystem, rather than whatever town or city you're from. If I tried to raise that first round of funding in London, I probably would've gotten $100,000 or $200,000, a terrible valuation. We were able to raise a $15 million valuation with no products and just an idea because we went down the SF route, rather than the European route. You really need to have a strong founding team. I don't have a degree, and I've never had a job. Finding someone who can help with whatever you're weak at is super important. Reading high-quality books and watching Y Combinator videos helped me early on. "Zero to One" by Peter Thiel — he has some questionable opinions beyond the book, but that's a really good one. "Principles" by Ray Dalio and "The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries are really strong. People also don't go all in. They'll dip their toe in. Especially when you're early on, you need to make the company your life. You should be working 80+ hours a week and moving to San Francisco. That's what I didn't do in January 2023, and it's the reason I had the false start. I was doing it for 30-40 hours a week, and it never got the momentum it needed. I did it differently in August. Raising funding is really difficult if you don't have experience. You have to put yourself in positions to get lucky. Meet the right people, network. Build a credible story and look like you're going to succeed. The most important thing is building a product that people want. If you do that, you don't even need to fundraise or have a great team. Here's how Gen Z founders are different from their predecessors There's more of an approach of doing whatever you need to do to get attention with younger founders. We were part of it with our controversial billboard campaign. Young people are just more willing to do what they need to get eyeballs. The biggest AI companies now are foundation models. You couldn't really do that well as a Gen Zer, because you don't have the experience. I think we're going to see that shift pretty dramatically over the years, as product layer becomes more relevant and the foundation models mature. You've already seen it with Cursor. They're above $500 million ARR now. There's a bunch of other stories like that emerging. This is where younger founders will start to shine more, when the app layer pushes through. Read the original article on Business Insider
Business Insider
05-08-2025
- Business Insider
I raised $25 million at 23. Here's my advice to other Gen Z entrepreneurs.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, the 23-year-old CEO of Artisan. It's been edited for length and clarity. When I was 7, I had a candy shop in my bedroom. It wasn't really a company, but we technically made revenue. When I was 13, I started buying and reselling domains. I didn't even apply to any universities. I knew in high school I wasn't going to go. I started an app for booking cleaners after finishing high school in London. It turned out to be a terrible, tarpit idea, but I learned a lot about how to build a company and how not to build a company. I founded Artisan when I was 21 At the beginning of 2023, I came up with Artisan. In January 2023, I spent a couple of months trying to find a cofounder and building the company. It was like a failed engine. I interviewed 100 cofounders, and didn't find anyone particularly good. In August 2023, I got another wave of motivation. It moved pretty fast then, and I got very lucky early on. Within the first month, we had a very basic prototype. We managed to raise $1.75 million just from a LinkedIn message. People are always like, "How did you raise money so early on?" That's complete luck. We got into Y Combinator a week after that. We launched V0 of Artisan in 2024, but the product barely worked. In June of last year, we launched V0.1, and that's when we started to see some growth. Our $12 million seed round was wrapped up in August, when I was 22. We raised a Series A that we closed in Q1 of this year at $25 million, which has enabled us to build out the team and hire a lot of really great talent and to double down on product again. We now have $6 million in annual recurring revenue. My advice for Gen Z tech entrepreneurs There's a relatively built-out playbook you can follow. First of all, educate yourself on the space and understand the type of company that you're building, how to build it, but then more broadly, what the startup ecosystem looks like. Do everything you can to be in the Silicon Valley startup ecosystem, rather than whatever town or city you're from. If I tried to raise that first round of funding in London, I probably would've gotten $100,000 or $200,000, a terrible valuation. We were able to raise a $15 million valuation with no products and just an idea because we went down the SF route, rather than the European route. You really need to have a strong founding team. I don't have a degree, and I've never had a job. Finding someone who can help with whatever you're weak at is super important. Reading high-quality books and watching Y Combinator videos helped me early on. "Zero to One" by Peter Thiel — he has some questionable opinions beyond the book, but that's a really good one. "Principles" by Ray Dalio and "The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries are really strong. People also don't go all in. They'll dip their toe in. Especially when you're early on, you need to make the company your life. You should be working 80+ hours a week and moving to San Francisco. That's what I didn't do in January 2023, and it's the reason I had the false start. I was doing it for 30-40 hours a week, and it never got the momentum it needed. I did it differently in August. Raising funding is really difficult if you don't have experience. You have to put yourself in positions to get lucky. Meet the right people, network. Build a credible story and look like you're going to succeed. The most important thing is building a product that people want. If you do that, you don't even need to fundraise or have a great team. Here's how Gen Z founders are different from their predecessors There's more of an approach of doing whatever you need to do to get attention with younger founders. We were part of it with our controversial billboard campaign. Times Square billboard for AI company sparks backlash for calling for human workers to be replaced by AI. 'Stop Hiring Humans. AI employees are here.' — Oli London (@OliLondonTV) June 22, 2025 Young people are just more willing to do what they need to get eyeballs. The biggest AI companies now are foundation models. You couldn't really do that well as a Gen Zer, because you don't have the experience. I think we're going to see that shift pretty dramatically over the years, as product layer becomes more relevant and the foundation models mature. You've already seen it with Cursor. They're above $500 million ARR now. There's a bunch of other stories like that emerging. This is where younger founders will start to shine more, when the app layer pushes through.
CNBC
04-08-2025
- CNBC
Where Morningstar's 2025 bond manager of the year sees the best opportunities right now
Artisan Partners' Brian Krug looks for opportunities where others see none. As a portfolio manager on Artisan's credit team, Krug aims to have a concentrated portfolio that invests selectively across the risk spectrum. That includes assets that may have sound businesses but are unpopular for some reason. "We buy sickly, out-of-favor businesses when they're good businesses. They are just out of favor because of circumstances," Krug said in an interview with CNBC. For instance, when the cruise ship companies were hit during the Covid pandemic, he and his team stepped in and provided financing. The strategy has earned Krug kudos from Morningstar, which recently gave him an investing excellence award for 2025 as outstanding fixed income portfolio manager . The financial services firm said Krug "honed an aggressive but effective style for high-yield bond investing" at his previous firm, Waddell & Reed, and has continued that success at Artisan Partners. "He's surrounded himself with a talented team, and together they've tactfully selected corporate bonds and bank loans to build a concentrated, potent portfolio," Morningstar wrote. "Splicing together his record over his Waddell & Reed and Artisan tenures, Krug stands out as a top high-yield bond investor." The team, based in Denver and one of 11 autonomous investment groups, includes a chief operating officer, senior analysts, fixed income traders and a data scientist. They use both quantitative methods and qualitative techniques to generate ideas. They'll screen for yield, performance and relative value to narrow down the investment universe and then identify sector and company dislocations. The funds Krug manages include the Artisan High Income Fund (ARTFX), rated five stars by Morningstar. The fund, which is closed to most new investors, had a 30-day SEC yield of 6.73% , as of June 30, and a 0.94% expense ratio. The majority of holdings are corporate bonds, with some 44% in B-rated assets, 26.5% in BB-rated and 20.3% in CCC and below. Creating opportunity Krug said he doesn't necessarily consider his investment style "aggressive" and believes his concentrated portfolio is really about having the team's best ideas drive results — rather than being a diverse offering. It includes both high-yield bonds and loans. Plus, higher-grade bonds are more efficiently priced than lower-grade assets, he said. "When you think about some of the lower grades, you have a lot more inefficiency because some investors will say, 'Well, I don't want to invest in that because it's risky,'" he said. "So that creates opportunity on a very selective basis." ARTFX YTD mountain Artisan High Income Fund in 2025. Bottom-up research also helps Krug and his team identify specific assets that make sense. In addition, the team gives the investments time to work through any issues. When the cruise lines needed financing in 2020, the timing was horrible because the operators had shut down in the midst of the pandemic, he said. "We went very big into [the] space and provided capital to companies to basically have liquidity, to give themselves time to work through the virus," Krug said. "We bought when they [were] distressed, and now they're on a path to investment grade." The 48-year old said his 25 years in the business have helped shape his strategy. A native of Milwaukee, he attended Miami University in Ohio and graduated in 1999 with a degree in finance. He then wound up at Pacholder Associates, later acquired by JPMorgan, as an analyst for a distressed portfolio. That allowed him to understand business models and study how things go wrong, he said. "The number one thing that I would think I learned is just avoiding mistakes and then selectively finding opportunities in deploying capital when other people panic," he said. Finding opportunities now These days, Krug sees opportunities in several areas of the fixed-income market. One is insurance brokerages, where the firm has had significant exposure over time, he said. "Insurance brokerage has great credit characteristics [and] predictable revenue streams," he said. "You've got high margins, and that supports strong valuation from an equity basis." Artisan High Income Fund's top holding is insurance broker Ardonagh Group, at 4.5% of assets as of June 30. Cruise lines continue to provide incremental value, although the absolute returns won't be what they were in the past, Krug said. "Companies are going to get upgraded," he said. "As you get the upgrade to investment grade, you have a new buyer base that comes in and that new buyer base will basically pay much tighter spreads than what a high yield investor would." Carnival and NCL, or Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings , are both top holdings in ARTFX. Lastly, there are some inefficiencies in the loan market, Krug said. "As the broadly syndicated loan market has increased, it has taken more credit risk than has [been present] in the past," he said. "If a company has a misstep and they get downgraded, it really creates an opportunity, or even the threat of a downgrade creates an opportunity," he said. Meanwhile, any potential economic downturn or recession doesn't scare Krug. In fact, it creates a great buying opportunity, he said. "We, as high-yield investors, are perennially glass-half-empty investors," he said. "We always think about what can go wrong." "If dislocation occurs, that provides us more opportunity to create alpha," Krug added. "You have a little bit of a panic, and through our individual security selection we've been able to take advantage of the panic."
