Prick! I gently opened my eyes from an acupuncture session. I liked to do that when the world got too crazy and I'd made the conscious/unconscious decision that I was “too busy to meditate.” I found acupuncture like forced relaxation for the mind. Forced relaxation—an oxymoron. Anyway.

My acupuncturist, Natan, asked how I'd been. I responded with the illusory American response of “Good,” followed by “Busy.” Natan, sensing there was more to the story, asked what my caffeine intake looked like. I told him I was having 2–3 coffees per day.

Then Natan made a comment I'll never forget: “If you need coffee to enjoy your work, you should probably do something else.” Whoa. That hit me.

I was pretty sure I did enjoy my work. At the time my heart was all in on a tech startup called Tymeshift.

Nonetheless, Natan's question was provocative and I quit coffee the next day.

Two weeks went by without any caffeine. I read Why We Sleep, Caffeine and probably others I've since forgotten.

I remember thinking that caffeine in moderation is a useful “drug”, but I wasn't ready to go back to coffee so I decided to search for a better answer. And soon, that answer came. I first stumbled across matcha in a small Fairfield, Iowa cafe that offered what I would later learn was a single cultivar matcha from Yame. From the first sip, I was hooked. I breathed a sigh of relief that matcha had entered my life.

Fast forward to 2020 and the global pandemic hits. At first, I felt an overwhelming sense of disconnect from the sudden end of almost all routine activities. On the other hand, I noticed my mind's FOMO chatter had calmed. This was the only place I could be at this moment, which created what I can only describe as an odd sense of peace.

I know... you're probably thinking, “this is supposed to be a story about how Rebel Bunny, a matcha company, got its start”. The reality is, without the situation being what it was, I may never have gone as deep down the matcha‑rabbit‑hole as I did.

Stuck at home, I started ordering every matcha I could get my hands on and testing different preparation methods, tools, and recipes. Not a day went by without making matcha—it had become my new ritual.

Side note: For me, presence has been a lynchpin of my growth. When I embodied it, things flowed. When I didn’t, my mind got stuck solving endless problems that didn’t exist. Nearly a millennium ago matcha became a staple in Zen Buddhist monasteries in Japan and like meditation, yoga, and countless others, matcha can be supportive of bringing us into the present moment. Although I was unaware of it at the time, this was another powerful connection that drew me to matcha.

Anyhow, back to making matcha: My obsession spilled over everywhere. I was "forcing" friends and coworkers who had never tried matcha—or had only tried a “sweetened café latte”—to try it. One by one, just like I had, people fell in love.

I also started gifting matcha and a set of tools I'd hacked together to the people I converted. One of those people was my friend Alan. Little did I know this was one of those butterfly effect micro-decisions.

But this was all just for fun. I had another company to focus on. At least for now. Fast forward a few years, my startup got acquired, and I had my first “real” time off in over a decade. I spent some time in Nepal with my wife Shradha, where I felt a sense of peace… which, within about ten days, quickly turned into an itch to build something new. So I messaged my friend Alan and asked if he wanted to start a matcha company. Without hesitation he said, “Sure.”

I laid out the plan over the next few days. It was simple: offer really good matcha with top tier service and build a brand that is art first with the only rule being to spread good energy in anything we put out into the world. The rest of the rules were highly encouraged to be broken. On the “build the brand” part, I needed help. Enter: Camila.

Camila had also recently switched to matcha as an alternative to coffee and found it made a big impact on her sense of well‑being. She'd also gone through a similar inner shift during the pandemic, coupled with the pressure of building her startup, that had knocked her off‑center—and matcha had been a big part of reclaiming it.

Camila and I also found common ground on other topics—most notably we both believed that brand is art, marketing should entertain, never sell, and that success cannot be forced, only attracted.

From here, so much clicked into place. As if by pure magic, the universe conspired to create a chain of events that would bring Rebel Bunny into being.

We sampled hundreds of matchas from Japan's major producing regions—Uji (Kyoto), Nishio (Aichi), Yame (Fukuoka), Kagoshima, and Shizuoka. Through tasting and through conversations with the true heroes—farmers, tencha processors, and millers, we began to understand the components of what makes great matcha. We learned about how shading, harvesting period, leaf selection & picking methods, tencha processing, resting, elevation, climate, and milling methods, all came together to inform the final matcha we sip.

Growing up helping my dad on a small farm, I developed a deep appreciation for the intricacies of the end to end process required to make matcha as well as profound respect for the people who brought it to life.

At the time, all of this research & learning was in pursuit of deciding on one matcha to launch the brand with. (In hindsight, we probably spent too much time in indecision here and should have just launched with a few...)

Nonetheless, we finally settled on one. This is the matcha that would eventually be labeled as The OG.

Back then, though, there was no name for this matcha. While we were working on the packaging, our designer Susana mocked up a first draft. Since we hadn't given her a name to use, she named it herself: “Rebel Bunny Matcha.”

OMG. Rebel Bunny. 🐰 I DM'd Camila asking if we should change our company name. We had a different name at the time, but it just felt right. We snatched the .com and incorporated as Rebel Bunny, Inc.

The final thing to finish ahead of launch was our matcha kit. 18 months into development with countless iterations, it felt like it would never be ready. This was a tough one, because, one thing I knew in my heart from my time building startups was that you should ship before you're ready to get early feedback.

This awareness, was paired with, what I can only describe as a growing sense of urgency to finish and launch. Often, I've found, before market trends are evident, they exist as feelings in our collective consciousness. E.g., A barista at a cafe whispering “matcha, matcha, matcha” following a slew of matcha orders. And, I was now confident—if only by intuition—that the age of matcha was upon us, and I guessed that was driving those feelings.

But, alas, we weren't ready. Around this time, I met with a friend, Lis, in Miami to get some feedback on what I thought was our final kit, and she delivered some candid feedback that I knew in my heart she was right about. Our kit still wasn't perfect, and we needed to go through one more iteration cycle ahead of launch.

We scrambled, made the changes, and, finally, on March 14, 2025, went live with our pilot drop. Three months later, we were sold out.

What had happened?

This thing we'd worked on quietly for nearly two years seemed to have wings.

And, those feelings that to start, we could only sense in the collective consciousness, were now coming into being, giving us conviction we are no doubt on the ground floor of matcha's rise to a global category.

There is much to do and much to learn. But, we hope someday, no matter where you are in the world, when you think matcha, Rebel Bunny is in the ether.

With Gratitude,

David