Tom Noble is building his business in public — and letting the internet shape what comes next
Tech.eu Cate Lawrence
Tom Noble is building a wine brand in public, with LinkedIn and Instagram as the showroom. The twist: the attention is real, but so are the credit card bills.
Based on reporting by Tech.eu, Cate Lawrence — read the original for the full story.
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Tom Noble has turned business-building into a performance, but not the polished kind. He talks openly about what he’s making, what’s failing, and what the internet thinks of it. That started with Flat White or F*ck Off, the flat-white-only coffee chain idea sparked by Rory Sutherland. Noble originally joined to make a video. Instead, the thing blew up, pulling in around 30 million views and more than 46,000 Instagram followers.
The first Flat White or F*ck Off venue opened on 28 January last year at OUTERNET near Tottenham Court Road Station. For 12 hours it served more than 1,500 flat whites. The maths, though, did not work. Noble says the project cost £27,000 and brought in £5,500. He also says the team’s biggest problem was structural: they were a bunch of people who met online, each convinced their piece mattered most, while the business itself sat there waiting for attention to become revenue.
That lesson pushed him toward something more physical and, in his view, more filmable: wine. After a month off, a vineyard visit, and a casual “yeah, go on then” from a vineyard owner, he started Chateaunoble by buying a bottle, crossing out the original name, and writing his own underneath. He set himself a target of selling 20 bottles on LinkedIn. He sold 16. Then the post about shutting the business down went viral, and he decided to keep going.
Noble says he has put about £4,600 into buying and collecting 150 bottles, with potential revenue of around £7,000 if they all sell. He’s also funding the early stages himself, including putting wine on a credit card. “I’ve hit my first £3k month — and it’s not in sales. It’s credit card debt,” he says. The brand is attracting attention, but not yet enough cash to cover the cost of building a real product and a real identity.
What makes Noble unusual is that he’s not pretending the audience is separate from the business. He sees the content, the brand, and the sales pitch as one loop. Followers complain that the wine needs more explanation, the website needs work, and his own credibility needs to be earned. He’s treating that criticism as free market research, not an insult. And that, frankly, is more useful than another founder pretending “the market” loved the idea while the bank balance quietly disagreed.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the modern founder hustle in its purest form: sell the story first, then hope the product can catch up. It works until it doesn’t, and a lot of people are now learning that views are a dreadful substitute for margins. The internet loves a man with a plan and a camera; creditors tend to prefer something less cinematic.
Read more about this at: Tech.eu
