🕹️ A winning pivot

Plus: Corporate canoodling, some really bad business ideas, and more.

Share The Hustle: https://thehustle.co/join?ref=7598767985 Check your referral progress & prizes here 👋  Good morning. We hope someone left holiday cookies out in the office kitchen this morning. If you're lucky, they might be gingerbread. The cookie was the most purchased across 38 states, according to Target's nationwide sales data collected between Nov. 1 and Dec. 6. As such, the company has dubbed gingerbread the country's favorite holiday cookie, saying "America has spoken and the gingerbread cookie is king." Now someone go break it gently to shortbread.  STARTING UP Meat meets metrics    ❌  The problem: The $1T red-meat industry still relies on manual, subjective inspections, making grading inconsistent and leaving valuable product on the table.   💡  The pitch: MEQ Solutions wants to modernize meat's supply chain. Its AI-backed tech brings data to every stage of the process, from an ultrasound-powered prediction tool that estimates yield and beef quality from live animals to a handheld camera that monitors meat in the cold room.    🚀  The outlook: The startup's MEQ Camera became the first video-based system to receive USDA certification. With a fresh round of funding, MEQ plans to scale globally across Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, and the US. The startup aims to become the industry's objective-measurement standard, helping producers optimize feeding decisions, protect margins, and boost returns.   NEWS FLASH   Oh, boy: Foundation wants to build 50k of its Phantoms — humanoid robots — by 2027, which CEO Sankaet Pathak wants to lease to the US military for $100k/year each. They can fight and use guns and, honestly, do we even need any more episodes of "Black Mirror" when we're living in it? Skana Robotics' SeaSphere is a fleet management software system that lets submersibles use AI to communicate over long distances underwater, something that's traditionally required vessels to surface. The company has a government contract in the works and hopes to release a commercial product next year. Startup X9 is developing a device that uses ultrasound to help clinicians better insert cannulas (thin tubes attached to needles) for dialysis. Cannulations can often be uncomfortable for patients and, if done incorrectly, lead to infection or other complications. Nanit — which makes an AI-powered baby monitor system that tracks sleep, breathing, and other data — raised $50m to expand early childhood development insights to include speech, movement, and more. CEO Anushka Salinas told Forbes that while many adults now track a variety of health metrics, it's babies and young children who'd benefit most from early intervention. MAKE SPEEDY SPREADSHEETS Stop fighting spreadsheets — make them work for you instead   Some bad news: The average business professional spends 30% of their workweek (12+ hours) wrestling with spreadsheets.    Some good news: In our testing, tasks that originally took an experienced Excel user 45 minutes were completed in under 10 minutes using this guide on AI for spreadsheets.    Topics we simplified:  Why AI makes the perfect spreadsheet partner Spotting new patterns (magically) Cleaning up messy data (quickly) Generating formulas (prolifically)  5 mistakes and headaches to avoid 18 prompts for conquering spreadsheets THE BIG IDEA How this little-known company made the year's bestselling toy    If you had to guess what the most sought-after toy of the season was, you'd probably be wrong — because, odds are, you've never heard of it.     Some industry experts hadn't even until last month, when it became a Black Friday hit, outselling Xbox, blowing up on TikTok Shop, and ranking No. 1 in Amazon's Toys & Games category, per The Wall Street Journal.    The toy in question? Nex Playground, a $249 motion-based gaming console for kids that looks a bit like a Rubik's cube with a camera and is on track to 4x its sales this year.   How it works   The device is similar to a Nintendo Wii, but instead of controllers and buttons, it uses computer vision and AI to track users' movements.    Besides a TV, WiFi, and floor space, it comes with everything you need, including five free games.   Why parents love it: It's cheaper than other console systems, can accommodate up to four users at once, and unlike regular video games and screen time, it keeps kids off their butts.    No overnight success   In 2017, Nex launched as a software company. In 2018, it debuted its first product: HomeCourt, a basketball shot-tracking app powered by AI and computer vision.    But in 2020, recognizing the product's limited market potential, it repurposed the same technology to introduce gamified workouts.    Those were a hit, so it made a separate app solely for AR games. But after reviewing user engagement data, they eventually concluded that they needed to build their product for a bigger screen (i.e., TVs).   That's when Nex made what one investor called "the mother of all pivots" — from software to hardware — because of which we're now here talking about Playground, a success story.    How it's going   Before pivoting, Nex was making ~$3m and unprofitable. Now, thanks to Playground (which is currently sold out at most major retailers that carry it) it's on track to break even, with $150m+ in projected revenue for 2025 and 600k expected sales — up from 150k in 2024 and just 5k the year before that.    But will its success last?    Well, it did recently obtain licensing rights to the hit children's show "Bluey" for a new game, which, to use WSJ's words, "is like a baseball team signing Shohei Ohtani."   So we're gonna bet yes.  🔗   HIGHLY RECOMMENDED   Business ideas so good they sound illegal: Steal from seven $10m business ideas you could get in on early. NEWSWORTHY NUMBER Share of employees who say they've canoodled with a co-worker at a company holiday party before, per a recent survey by dating app Flirtini via Inc. What's more shocking: a whole two-thirds said they don't regret it, with 25% of respondents even admitting they have their eyes set on a colleague they want to cozy up to during this year's festive affair.  If it's feeling steamy in here, that's probably because your HR rep is sweating.   AROUND THE WEB 📅  On this day: In 1843, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol was published. 😠  Haha: Bad business ideas. 🤔  That's interesting: Tom Whitwell's always-excellent annual list of the 52 things he learned this year. 🧩  Game: Find the hidden words. 😍  Aww: You go ahead. I'll stay here. SHOWER THOUGHT Any alien observer would conclude that toothpaste must be the most valuable substance on our planet. As a species we are so wasteful of any and all resources — except when it comes to toothpaste, of which we collectively refuse to waste a single drop. SOURCE Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Singdhi Sokpo. Editing by: Sara "'Til we meat again" 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.