This 28-Year-Old Started a Caffeinated Side Hustle. It Made $125K in Year 1 — So She Quit Corporate to Work on It Full-Time.

Résumé détaillé

Rosie Goldwasser wanted to create a product delivering calm, focused energy without the crash.

This Side Hustle Spotlight Q&A features Rosie Goldwasser, 28, of Santa Monica, California. Goldwasser was working full-time as a customer experience strategist at PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) when she started her side hustle: More Than Matcha, a premium matcha and lifestyle brand.

The business hit $125,000 in revenue without spending a single dollar on advertising in its first year and doubled revenue in its second. Goldwasser left her corporate role in March 2026 to focus on More Than Match full-time. The brand is on track for between $400,000 and $500,000 in revenue this year. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

When did you start your side hustle, and where did you find the inspiration for it? I started building More Than Matcha in 2023 and officially launched in March 2024. The idea actually came from a personal frustration. For years, I was either too tired to function or too wired, jittery and anxious from coffee to sleep. There was no in-between until I discovered matcha. It was love at first sip. It gave me a calm, focused energy that actually lasted.

But finding high-quality matcha was challenging. Cafés charged $10 for drinks that consistently left me disappointed. At-home options lacked quality, consistency and a brand I could genuinely connect with.

Having spent four years in marketing and six years in customer experience consulting, I’ve always been fascinated by what makes consumers fall in love with brands and how to create experiences that exceed their expectations. As a daily matcha consumer myself, I saw a gap I couldn’t ignore.

What were some of the first steps you took to get your side hustle off the ground? How much money did it take to launch? I was never going to launch a matcha brand unless I found a matcha powder so good that I felt I’d be doing the world a disservice by not bringing it to market.

So I spent months researching, sourcing, sampling and learning everything I could about what makes exceptional matcha, from growing…

After…

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