Hey! Nick here again.

Last time I left off coming home from Patagonia. Here's the part I didn't tell you: I didn't come home with a business idea. I came home obsessed.

Back in Montreal, I picked my old life right back up. Same job at a software company, one I did not love, if I'm being honest. But now there was one difference. Every day I was at my desk drinking mate from my gourd.

And when you drink from a gourd in an office, people ask questions. A lot of them.

So I'd explain it. What it was, where it came from, why I carried it around. And I kept seeing the same reaction. People were impressed, and then they'd get this look, like I'd just described something they'd been looking for without knowing it. Turns out a lot of them were trying to cut down on that second or third coffee and had no idea there was another option.

Then came the question I couldn't answer: "Where do I get some?"

Because here's the thing. Mate was hard to find back then. Honestly, it still is today. I didn't have a good answer for them, and that stuck with me.

I found a spot in Canada where I could buy it in bulk, so I started ordering more than I needed and passing it along to the people around me. I basically became the unofficial mate dealer of my community. And I loved it. Not the reselling part, the sharing part.

When you think about it, there are very few things left in 2026 that people know absolutely nothing about. Mate was one of them. So it became my little mission: share everything I'd learned. The effects, the benefits, the ritual, all of it.

At some point the math got obvious. If my friends and coworkers wanted it, other people probably did too.

So one day, bored out of my mind at a job I couldn't wait to leave, I saw a Shopify ad. One of those "look how easy it is to build a store" ones. And I thought, why not. I'll build a little shop for the mate I'm already sharing anyway.

That's how the very first version of Mateina was born. Except it wasn't called Mateina yet. It was Mate Boutique.

It was scrappy. It was tiny. It was one guy buying bulk mate and reselling it out of pure obsession. But it was a first step, and every single thing that came after started right there.

Looking back, I think that was the moment I realized you don’t need to have the entire plan figured out. Sometimes you just need one thing you believe in enough to keep following.

I didn't have a business plan. I had a gourd, a full-time job I wanted out of, and a and a dream of making mate easier to discover and share. A gourd and a dream. That was really it.

And somehow, that little Shopify store became Mateina.

More of the story soon, including how Mate Boutique turned into what you know today.

In the meantime, I'm curious: What’s something you believe in so deeply that you can’t help but share it?

Talk soon,
Nick