👶 Baby app trap

Plus: Corporate storytellers, an AI oracle, and more. 

Share The Hustle: https://thehustle.co/join?ref=7598767985 Check your referral progress & prizes here 👋  Good morning. While they say you can never truly go home again, nostalgic millennials are getting a little closer this holiday season. The McCallisters' famed house from Home Alone, which recently sold for $5.5m+, is being restored to its former glory. The new owners plan to peel back the modern, all-white renovations made in 2018 and restore the cozy goodness of the 1990s. Our inner children are thrilled with the makeover, though our adult selves are left wondering what the McCallisters did for work to afford a 9k-square-foot home. STARTING UP Milk, hold the moo ❌  The problem: Animal-free dairy is a tough curd to crack. Regulatory processes are slow-moving, stunting development, and it's a challenge to compete in the market against cost-effective traditional dairy products — regardless of their environmental impact. 💡  The pitch: Eden Brew is tackling those obstacles head-on with its cow-free casein protein that mimics the melt and mouthfeel of real dairy. The startup, which is the first in Australia to file for regulatory approval of a precision-fermented dairy protein, says the milk made with its casein generates 70% fewer emissions and uses 99% less water than conventional dairy milk.  🚀  The outlook: While the company awaits regulatory approval, it's shifted its focus to a B2B model selling its casein as an ingredient for supplements, food fortification, and sports nutrition. Thanks to casein micelles, Eden Brew is able to load up its proteins with iron, zinc, and magnesium for a slow-release drip of nutrients — something that will be increasingly marketable as GLP-1 drug use skyrockets. NEWS FLASH   Hot topic: Scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder have created Mesoporous Optically Clear Heat Insulator (MOCHI), a silicon gel material that is so well insulated, you could hold fire. And while that'd be a cool party trick, the ultimate idea is to use it to insulate windows for increased energy efficiency. Can't exactly stuff this in a stocking: Nearly half (45%) of Americans ages 18-28 would love the gift of crypto this year, per a Visa survey. While not necessarily a gift that keeps on giving due to the volatility of the crypto market, one expert told CNBC that bitcoin is best, as it has the most global adoption. For those of you who forget to drink water: First Voyage is building Momo Self Care, an app with an AI pet that suggests and helps build healthy habits. Its users have created 2m+ tasks so far, mostly associated with productivity, mindfulness, and spirituality, while the company recently raised $2.5m. Our year of slop: Dictionary.com may have gone with "6-7," but Merriam-Webster chose "slop" as its annual word, defined as "digital content of low quality" typically made with AI. It's been such a sloppy year that Macquarie Dictionary also chose "AI slop" as its word of the year. FOUNDERS KEEPERS AI Tools for Launching, Hiring, Funding, and More It's time to stop dabbling and start dominating. Top AI tools are the golden keys to catapulting growth, so we're sending you seven of the finest.    Peruse our seven-part AI startup playbook for the workflows and prompts you need to build like you've been there.   Scenarios deciphered:  Launch a product in less than 30 days Hire and onboard your first employees Create a lead generation system Validate your idea with intel Raise seed/Series A funding Find your first 100 customers Act on feedback (fast) Seize the toolkit   THE BIG IDEA Parental anxiety — there's an app for that    New parents are a notoriously stressed-out, sleep-deprived, barfed-on demographic: all qualities that can be pretty lucrative.   Newborn care app Sprouty recently closed a $550k seed round. It offers AI-backed support for key parenting elements — from weight tracking to figuring out why your baby is crying (with 80% accuracy, allegedly).    And Sprouty is just one app in a growing market, with many focused on older kids: Bark, a parental phone control app, allows parents to keep tabs on their kids' screen time and flags alarming communication.  Cozi, essentially a child-friendly Google Calendar, keeps parents and kids aligned on day-to-day scheduling. Joy Parenting Club recently raised $14m to scale its AI-powered parenting assistant and double its 50k-member base.  Baby tracker apps account for just under 30% of the market, and the industry as a whole is expected to grow to over $6B by 2035, from $1.7B in 2024.    The sector is blowing up, but these baby care apps raise a few eyebrows — a big question being, "Do they alleviate or compound the anxiety they profit from?"   An anxious bunch    Millennial parents deal with a lot — even beyond the conventional troubles that come with keeping a tiny, fragile, easily scarred-for-life human being alive.    A recent report from the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago found: 46% feel burned out.  58% say they struggle to balance their work and home life 85% believe social media creates unrealistic parenting expectations And while a lot of parents are clearly feeling anxious, it remains to be seen whether or not technology is the solution.    It is, however, if you ask OpenAI CEO and new dad Sam Altman, who said he can't imagine raising a newborn without ChatGPT.   Special shoutout to Huckleberry's reported 5m+ users, many of whom are proudly logging 45-minute stretches of sleep at 2am. We see you.  🔗 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED   Have a lawyer's tagline stuck in your head? It might be because of your commute to work. Lawyers — and their over-the-top taglines — are buying up millions of dollars of ads. But why? NEWSWORTHY NUMBER How many times the words "storyteller" and "storytelling" were mentioned during earnings calls and investor days this year through Dec. 11, according to FactSet via The Wall Street Journal. That's up from 359x last year and 147x in 2015. Meanwhile, the number of LinkedIn job postings that mention "storyteller" have also doubled since last year. So, who are these in-demand professionals? Likely people who prefer the title "digital content creator" to "journalist." The uptick represents a shift in corporate strategies away from earned media — publicity acquired through journalists and traditional news outlets — and toward self-published content through avenues like social media, YouTube, and newsletters.   HOW YOU HUSTLE We don't need to tell you — our readers are amazing. We wanted to dedicate some real estate to a Hustler building something big.   Who: Jourdann Lubliner What: Doubles Social The elevator pitch: "Doubles Social is a first-of-its-kind members community and app for couple friendships. It connects like-minded couples with each other, schedules double dates, and plans coveted couples events so you can intentionally expand your social circle and have fun doing it." The problem they're solving: "The launch of Doubles Social arrives at an important time as societal changes are impacting adult friendships. We're facing a friendship recession as work becomes a dominant social identity, screen time increases, exurban communities rise, and third places decrease. Plus, a surge in groups — from childfree millennials and sober-curious people to racquet sport enthusiasts — are actively seeking community." Origin story: "I got married in June 2024 and have always loved double dates. However, once I hit my 30s, I realized that coordinating four different schedules to plan a double date was becoming an Olympic sport. Oftentimes couples say to each other, "We should hang out soon!" or "We should totally get dinner!" but then the actual planning fizzles out. This conundrum was certainly one I wanted to solve." Entrepreneurship advice that's BS: "Wait until you have really high demand for your product before launching an app. The beauty of Doubles Social is the app, and I am happy we started out with the app from the jump." What are you working on? Tell us here.   AROUND THE WEB 📅  On this day: In 2003, Peter Jackson's final Lord of the Rings film, The Return of the King, debuted. It won 11 Oscars. 🔮  Haha: Consult the AI oracle for your fortune. 🕵️  Game: A detective game where you write SQL queries to uncover clues. 💰  Useful: A website that compares cost of living. 😍  Aww: Excuse me. SHOWER THOUGHT Instead of being able to celebrate new technology, society has become used to dreading its use for destructive reasons. SOURCE Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah, Singdhi Sokpo, and Jay Fuchs. Editing by: Sara "Less apps, more naps" Friedman.   Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here. Working on something big? We've got a whole library of business-building resources for you. Subscribe to our other newsletters Stay up-to-date on AI: Mindstream  |  Expert insights: Masters in Marketing  |  Sell better: The Science of Scaling Follow The Hustle on YouTube, LinkedIn, and Instagram. HubSpot Media, 2 Canal Park, Cambridge, MA, 02141, USA, +1 888.482.7768 Never want to hear from us again? Break our hearts and Unsubscribe.