The Hustle - 😴 $70B for bedrotting on your vacation

Happy Trends Tuesday!

Welcome to part deux of my obsession with travel trends, courtesy of Hilton’s 2025 travel trend report. Today we’ll talk about yet another quirky term, and the business opportunities it inspires. 

👉 ICYMI: Check out Part 1 here for a refresher.

In today's email…

• The billion-dollar opportunity in helping travelers sleep better
• VC fundraising data and insights from 500+ early-stage startups
• What we’re surfin’, from unhinged brands to the #1 nonalcoholic beer in the US

Let's dive in! 

🐽 SNIFF OUT STORIES LIKE THE HUSTLE

We dropped 80+ sources on this spreadsheet. See the websites, socials, and newsletters The Hustle uses to track down stories that matter.

🚀 WHERE TO BUILD NEXT

Don’t snooze on “hurkle-durkling”

The folksy-sounding Scottish phrase means to “intentionally lounge all day in bed.” 

That’s an easy activity to get behind: one in five travelers around the world enjoy a chill day with no itinerary on their vacation. 

But really, the popularity of “hurkle-durkle” shows that travelers are taking the spirit of self care and wellness on the road — and a cozy bed is essential to the experience.

Lounge all day, sleep all night. What else do you need? Source: Apartment Therapy Instagram

Wellness tourism is a wild market. The industry hit $814B+ in the US, and is projected to grow by 21% annually through 2025. Sleep tourism alone is worth $70B. 

And it’s clear that jetsetters are willing to pay up for premium sleep on vacation: 

🛌 40% of travelers choose hotels where they can get a better night’s sleep (separate beds with partners, sleep-centric amenities, etc.) 

🧖‍♀️ 25%+ will book a wellness treatment to further improve their sleep on vacation 

😴 78% of hotel guests who experienced better-than-expected sleep quality said they “definitely will” return to that establishment.

Hotels have spied an opportunity here: provide the weary masses with sleep sanctuaries. A growing number of American establishments now offer top-quality snooze tech, from 24/7 sleep concierges to guided sleep hypnosis sessions. 

And consumers are tucking (themselves) in.

Average monthly US Google search volume. Source: Ahrefs

A few ways for entrepreneurs to count sheep, and profits:

🤝 Brand partnerships. A weekend of top-quality snoozing could become a popular mini vacation option. Partnering with hotels is an easy way for sleep brands to get their products in front of the masses. It’s also a great way for smaller hotels (or Airbnbs) to attract clientele. 

If you’re a small biz in the sleep or hospitality space, get in bed with well-matched partners, or act as a middleman and connect brands. 

📊 Off-peak specials. Existing establishments could attract sleep-hungry clients with specials during off-peak times. 

DayUse.com offers hotel rooms for 75% off to guests who use them only during the day — and the site gets ~537k visitors/mo., per Similarweb. Launch a sleep-centric version that allows busy professionals (or parents 😅) to book sleep hotels for the best day nap of their lives.

Or, use sleep to attract clients during other off-peak times, such as weeknight snooze specials or winter sleep getaways.

Best. Nap. Ever. Source: Tenor

🤑 High-end sleep journeys. In 2022, Rosewood Hotels & Resorts launched Alchemy of Sleep, a collection of retreats where guests can opt for one-night “Dreamscapes,” or five-night journeys of “Sleep Transformation” (at $5k+ per night 👀).

This is likely the first of many luxury sleep retreats that will cater to the high-end market. As sleep tourism rises, this demographic may look to professionals to curate their dream snooze-cations, and sleep travel agents may become a thing (sign us up).

We can’t all afford $5k+/night dreamscapes (sigh). Keep reading to see 2 ways you can bring sleep luxury to the masses.

⚙️ OPERATOR WISDOM

How are startups raising money today?

Startup founders have been feeling the pinch in recent years:

📉 Nearly a quarter of fundraising rounds are down rounds in Q1 2024

⏳ Time in between rounds is getting looonger

🫗 Overall deal count is low

Source: Carta

It makes you wonder: How are the founders holdin’ up? How should they adapt? 

My colleagues from HubSpot for Startups set out to find the answer. 

They surveyed 500+ early-stage startup founders — from pre-seed to series B — across the US and Europe, and compiled an insights report that I can only describe as… meaty AF. 🥩

Some snippets of their findings: 

• 52% of founders pitched 10-50 investors before getting any funding
• 42% say that fundraising has been more difficult in the last year
• 53% of startups raising $4m+ are AI-based (surprise, surprise) 

Oh, and almost 60% of the startups surveyed categorize their product or service as AI. 

While AI-based startups are getting a leg-up in the fundraising race, it still takes a combination of classic moves and new tech to up their rizz in front of investors. 

What are those moves, you ask? Head over to the full report, with expert insights from both ends of the spectrum. 

To give you a taste, here are some gems straight from the horse’s mouth: 

What are investors looking for?

👉 Josephine Chen, Partner at Sequoia Capital

In VC fundraising, the name of the game is to find product market fit. When it happens, you see an inflection point of some sort. It could be:

• Attention
• User growth
• Product velocity (i.e. people asking you for more features)

We all look at the market, the founder(s), the product, and the level of customer love. For each stage, we weigh different parts of these slightly differently. 

It's about the market dynamics and there being a really good 'why now?' We look for the intersection between the market and an outlier founder. And in all our early stage companies, we want to see velocity, in both speed and direction.

👉 Jason Druker, Chief Commercial Officer at SFC Capital

At SFC, it really comes down to the team. We take as scientific an approach as possible to assessing the cofounders (we like co-’s rather than solos).

We invest in underrepresented founders and have a diversity mindset. We look at how a founder's personality aligns with their cofounder. We like to see somebody who's driven, then someone else who is either sales or somebody you want to follow.

👉 Nate Morgan, HubSpot Ventures investor

What we also look for, and what founders shouldn’t underestimate, is the power of a strong community when it comes to securing funding in a competitive VC landscape for AI-native startups.

Building community within your early customer base and partner ecosystem means you can develop it over time, and a large (and loud) community online tends to stand out over everything else.

On fundraising timeline

👉 Sophie Winwood, Co-Founder and CEO of WCV:E (a VC summit) 

Fundraising in general is still pretty difficult. We've seen timelines extend — seed is looking like 3-4 months. That's a significant jump.

My rule of thumb:

• Preseed: Give yourself up to 3 months. If it's taking longer, maybe something's not right. 
• Seed: Up to 6 months
• Series A: Up to 12 months

It's become an investor-friendly market, and more time is being taken by investors, which is a good thing for both sides. You want an investor who really knows your business — they're more likely to be a long term player and support your business if they build the relationships before investment. 

👉 Eva Dobrzanska, Managing Director of Fundraising Playbooks

Start raising sooner than you think you need to. You're not going to build a relationship within one touchpoint of one email. Finish off your first outreach with a cliffhanger, then follow up with relevant updates. Then it becomes a line, not just a point.

👉 Jason Druker, Chief Commercial Officer at SFC Capital

Founders need to consider [fundraising timelines] as far out as possible. Be driven by the runway, but also by the fact that your runway could easily run out whilst you're raising your seed round. Start that process as early as possible and enable yourself using tech.

'Nuf said. Go check out the full report for:

• Startup growth indicators for different stages
• A fundraising checklist
• Most popular fundraising tech stacks

...and a hell lot more!

🗂️ OPEN TABS

🥜 Branding unhinged: The rise of "DGAF" brands... and their mascots

⌛️ From Reddit: Folks who became successful despite starting late in life

🍺 Listen: How Athletic Brewing became the #1 NA beer in the US  

⚒️ DIY: A step-by-step on how to create a YouTube channel using only AI