👋 Good morning. Reminder that you’re out of toilet paper. Luckily for you, you can avoid a marital spat with help from Amazon Prime. According to new data from the company, that’s what many of us are doing: Amazon said it delivered 13B+ items the same or next day worldwide in 2025, with 8B+ in the US alone.
STARTING UP
One startup is mustering up the courage to disrupt farming
❌ The problem: Mustering (AKA rounding up) livestock over large plots of land is time consuming and expensive — many farmers use low-flying helicopters to nudge their herds in the right direction.
💡 The pitch: Y Combinator-backed GrazeMate — founded by a 19-year-old entrepreneur — uses autonomous drones that can mimic human stockmanship tactics and respond to cattle in real-time. Farmers can summon their herds through an app on their phone and control up to 2k animals with a single drone.
🚀 The outlook: GrazeMate is already mustering thousands of cattle weekly across 1.73m acres and is eyeing the $120B US livestock market. Talk about moving things in the right direction.
NEWS FLASH
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Not to the moon: Due to a liquid hydrogen leak found during a pre-launch test, NASA delayed its Artemis 2 mission, meaning the soonest astronauts will travel to the moon is March. NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said the setback was anticipated, and part of why they conduct rehearsals.
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Fun for the whole fam: Fitbit founders James Park and Eric Friedman’s new venture is Luffu, an AI-powered health platform for the whole family. Currently in private beta, it analyzes each member’s individual data, gathered from devices, manual inputs, and other apps, to provide insights.
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Zap! Seattle startup Carbon Robotics makes LaserWeeder, a robot fleet that — perhaps obviously — weeds with lasers. It just announced its Large Plant Model, an AI model it built to recognize plant species so farmers can target any new weeds that pop up without retraining the bots.
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Munchies update: PepsiCo is reducing the price of its snacks, including Doritos and Cheetos, by up to 15% following customer complaints that they’d become too expensive. New prices drop this week, ahead of the Super Bowl.
SEVEN SUPER STARTUPS
The AI gold rush is happening as we speak
Scene: Skinny 17-year-old Zach Yadegari wants to bulk up.
Solution: He builds his own $24m calorie tracker using photo-reading AI tech and all-out fitness influencer marketing (nice one, Zach).
In a great deal of unenlightened industries, solo founders are turning souped-up AI wrappers into cash cows. Explore seven clever AI business models as featured on the "My First Million" show.
We looked at bootstrapped operations that are solving and scaling for customers, like Umax (looksmaxxing), Jenni.ai (college essay citations), Replika (companion), and HeyGen (hyperrealistic avatars).
THE BIG IDEA
Why chill when you could become a falconer?
Does a nice relaxing vacation sound terrible to you? Then you might be up for a “skillcation” or “curiosity leave,” in which you swap the beach for knowledge.
This could be either professional development, or learning a cool skill or hobby. Axios Chicago highlighted trips surrounding foraging, falconry, and learning to play mahjong.
We just hate to be bored…
… which probably explains all the time we spend staring at our phones. But what if we could trade our doomscrolling for something fun and enlightening?!
- Hilton’s 2026 Trends Report found that many travelers were taking “whycations,” where the intention behind the trip mattered more than the destination itself.
- Hilton also found 72% of survey respondents wanted to take time off to explore a personal passion, skill, or hobby.
These vacationers generally spend ~$7k on such getaways, significantly more than those who choose relaxation, per a Future Partners survey.
What’s the benefit?
Personal growth and new hobbies can be just as rejuvenating as a day at the spa.
Samantha Edu, senior manager for care, equity, and inclusion at meditation and mental health app Headspace, told Thrillist that they allow us to access a beginner’s mindset — the concept of approaching something with openness and curiosity.
That unlocks the state of play we experience as children, which can help us feel more creative.
That said…
… Lana Peters, chief revenue & experience officer at HR platform Klaar, told Forbes that upskilling should be part of what companies offer employees, not something they feel they must use their PTO to do.
“Workers should instead use earned vacation time to relax, unwind, and disconnect,” she said. “Doing this can help them bring their best selves to work and reduce the likelihood that they’ll experience burnout.”
But if unwinding means learning how to play the didgeridoo or ride a horse, go for it.
Fun fact: Future Partners also found that 26% of US travelers were into "doom tourism," or visiting a location threatened by environmental or other factors before it’s too late.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
You just tossed your coffee cup… but did you notice the trash can you threw it into? Probably not, but your city might have spent $3k+ on that bin alone. Here’s why.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
Reported number of users on Moltbook, a new social media for (allegedly) autonomous AI agents. Since launching last week, the Reddit-style website has already generated over 110k posts and 500k comments, all from bots discussing everything from poetry to philosophy to unionizing.
Meanwhile, on human social platforms, techies are divided over whether this is just a gimmick, with human operators cosplaying as AI bots — humans can’t post but can instruct bots on what to say — or a sign of AI consciousness and a step toward the end of humanity. (Regarding the latter: probably not.)
Either way, it really makes you miss the days of simple, non-existential internet debates, like how to pronounce GIF and what color that one ugly dress was…
HOW YOU HUSTLE
Every week, we like to check in on what you’re building. Here’s our spotlight on a Hustle reader working on something big.
Who: Lydia Sugarman
What: Kithli
The elevator pitch: “Kithli is filling a critical gap in healthcare, providing 'door-through-door' escort service for out-patient screenings and procedures that involve sedation or anesthesia.”
Origin story: “It was a lightbulb idea. Filling out papers in a doctor's office prior to a minor procedure, I came to the field asking for a Contact of Record, that person who will take responsibility for you at discharge and ensure you get safely settled at home. I didn't need one that day but realized, because I'd moved to a new city, that I really didn't have anyone local that I felt comfortable asking…”
The problem they’re solving: “Kithli is solving a problem that has several beneficiaries. It provides a dependable, friendly service for ambulatory out-patients; a compassionate service for providers who need flexible work hours; and [a solution] for healthcare providers that are experiencing $50B in losses annually due to abandoned appointments.”
What are you working on? Tell us here.
AROUND THE WEB
📅 On this day: In 2000, video game “The Sims” launched. Developer Will Wright had already released “SimCity” in 1989, but was inspired to create “The Sims” after losing his home in a fire, buying a new one, and filling it with new items.
✈️ That’s cool: Travel Roulette.
💣 That’s interesting: What happened when AI coding agents attempted to build “Minesweeper.”
😬 Haha: Stay stimulated.
🐾 Aww: Six seconds of drama.
SHOWER THOUGHT
Microsoft might have lots of your personal data, but it still can't remember what size window you want your emails to open in. SOURCE
Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Singdhi Sokpo.
Editing by: Sara "Just a normal vacation, please" Friedman.
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