🦟  Buzz off, mosquitoes

👋  Morning! If you're reading this, yay — the world didn't end yesterday. University of Illinois scientist Heinz von Foerster published a paper in 1960 predicting that the world would end on Nov. 13, 2026 — not so coincidentally, his own birthday (the man had jokes). He’d predicted humankind would meet its end due to overpopulation and getting “squeezed to death.” That one missed the mark considering ~55% of the world’s countries have fertility rates below replacement levels. OK, now back to worrying about the humanoid robot takeover.

NEWS FLASH 

💨  Think you know what SaaS stands for? Think again: Miami startup the Scent Standard wants your house to smell like a luxury hotel with its “scent as a service.” The company partners with HVAC operators to install its system and supplies fragrance and maintenance — you just pick your scent and take a deep breath.

🚴  Woody the Woodpecker could save your gourd: Vancouver startup Pikio Labs developed the world's safest bike helmet — inspired by head-banging woodpeckers. Instead of the typical plastic shell over polystyrene foam, the Pikio Si helmet featuring Oblik technology uses a new safety system with independent foam sections that move or detach on impact, minimizing the twisting force that causes brain injuries. The helmet leads the pack in Virginia Tech's safety ratings and clocks in at $379 — a worthwhile sum to protect ya neck.

🩸 Getting under your skin: London-based Sava Technologies just raised $36m in Series B funding to develop a wearable sensor that continuously measures glucose in the fluid beneath your skin using microsensors that are ~10x shorter than the thin filaments used by most devices, helping reduce skin disruption. The company hopes the device could be used to support insulin dosing decisions for patients with diabetes without the need for blood-drawing fingersticks, and to monitor other biomarkers in the future. 

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

• Drawing conclusions: Blueprints AI turns 2D sketches and PDFs into permit-ready architectural blueprints in minutes, aiming to flip architects’ time from 80% drafting, 20% design to the reverse.
  
• Worth its salt: Mana Battery raised $10.15m to develop anode-free sodium batteries that don't require lithium or other costly components in hopes of reducing reliance on China for batteries and materials used in them.
  
  
• Not so chatty now: Character.AI — a once buzzy startup that builds online bots for users to roleplay with — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will sell some of its assets to Disney for $20m.
  
• Shop til you drop: Loops raised $3.5m in seed funding to make online shopping less of a hassle by offering retailers a cohesive AI toolkit that searches products, answers questions, offers virtual try-ons, and finalizes purchases.
  

BYE BYE, BUSYWORK

Your CRM should already know

Most CRMs are just expensive filing cabinets. You log the call. You research the lead. You write the follow-up. You move the deal. Rinse, repeat, burn out.

HubSpot Smart CRM is designed to handle the busywork before you even open your laptop.

What runs quietly in the background:

• Calls: Logged and summarized the moment they end.
• Leads: Researched with a first outreach drafted, automatically.
• Deals: Next steps flagged before you have to ask.
• Workflows: Repetitive tasks automated — no code required.

It's not the CRM you have to manage. It's the one that may just manage itself.

See it work

THE BIG IDEA

These killer drones are declaring war on mosquitoes

When you think about the deadliest creatures on Earth, you probably think about lions, tigers, and bears... oh my.

But Mosquitoes kill more than 700k people annually through diseases like West Nile, Zika, and malaria.

As mosquito populations and illnesses rise in the US and worldwide, we face costly and somewhat outdated prevention methods.

It's time for them to buzz off. Tornyol, a France-based company, has a mosquito-hunting palm-sized drone set to hit the US market in 2027.

An idea worth scratching

It started with napkin math from founder Alex Toussaint — the kind that gives serious Good Will Hunting vibes — questioning whether a drone can lead to mosquito eradication. Though he claimed it was a "stupid idea," the math worked. How do you like them apples?

In 2024, Toussaint received a $28k grant from Manifund, a philanthropic platform that funds unusual, risky projects. Now joined by co-founder Clovis Piedallu, Tornyol was accepted into the Y-Combinator Fall 2025 Batch – a startup accelerator based in San Francisco.

This support helped their drone idea take flight... literally. So, what did this funding actually build?

Drone Specs:

• Weight: 40 grams, palm-sized
  
• Detection: Ultrasonic phased array sonar (like car parking sensors) paired with smartphone-grade microphones that listen to the distinct mosquito wingbeat — telling it apart from other flying insects
  
• The hunt: The drone rams the target mid-air, patrolling 5 acres per device
  
• Power: 3 minutes of flight per charge, ~30-minute recharge
  
• Set-up: No installation needed — just set your zone on the charging base

Napkin to no-fly zone

It has been a short amount of time since the concept was conceived, but progress has been sky-high.

• Succeeded in the first-ever air kill of an insect — a moth taken down mid-flight
  
• Raised $500k in seed round, backed by Y-Combinator and VC firms
  
• $50 monthly subscription — reservations open for a refundable $100 project
  
• Aiming to hit US markets in 2027

Even with the momentum, Tornyol still has some hurdles ahead — from short battery life to US regulatory approval, scalability and deliverability, and skepticism about whether they can outperform traditional methods.

As Toussaint put it on Tornyol's Y-Combinator page, the goal is to "lower the cost of mosquito control by 100x, eradicate vector-borne illnesses, and save lives.

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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

QR codes are here… and bar codes should be very afraid. Here’s how it’ll change everything in retail. 

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

Share of US workers who say they’ve “worked closely with a colleague whose behavior consistently made work life worse,” according to a recent survey by HR software company GCheck. In 38% of cases, a toxic coworker never faced any consequences for their actions. To add insult to injury, 23% said the bad apple in their office was actually “rewarded, promoted, or protected” following their complaint. (Ouch.)

Nothing inspires devotion like a boss who ignores your pleas for help, right? No wonder 40% of fed-up employees took matters into their own hands and called it quits if their toxic coworker was rewarded or protected.

HOW YOU HUSTLE

Y’all are always cooking up something neat. This is our weekly spotlight on a Hustle reader’s ambitious venture.

Founder: Brandon Kashani

Building: CheQRboard — a platform helping zoos, museums, aquariums, and gardens replace outdated signage and expensive apps with multilingual, interactive visitor experiences that drive donations and engagement.

Edge: What started as a wearable kid-tracking device for theme parks pivoted into software after COVID wiped out the original market — now the AI-powered platform prompts visitors for donations and memberships at the exact moments they’re most emotionally invested.

One truly innovative thing: “CheQRboard helps venues turn visitor engagement into action. Our AI-powered platform learns what visitors interact with, then prompts them at the right moment for donations, memberships, surveys, or other calls to action, when they are most emotionally connected to the story.”

Working on something cool? Tell us here.

AROUND THE WEB

📅  On this day: In 1892, Arthur Conan Doyle published his first Sherlock Holmes book. The detective was inspired by one of Doyle’s professors.

⚽  Game on: You’re a blob of slime playing soccer.

📈  History lesson: How the Bloomberg Terminal became the hub of real-time financial data.

🧟  That’s interesting: You’ve got “zombie cells” in your body. What do they do?

🐿️  Aww: Storing up for winter. 

SHOWER THOUGHT

Currency notes should be made smaller, like a credit card, to save paper and space. SOURCE

Today's email was brought to you by Ben Berkley, Singdhi Sokpo, Danny Jensen, and Bill Meincke.

Editing by: Sara "Don’t be a buzzkill" Friedman.

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