🤫 No water cooler talk here

Plus: E-scooter crime, a map of history-making ideas, and more.

Share The Hustle: https://thehustle.co/join?ref=7598767985 Check your referral progress & prizes here 👋  Good morning. Let's start this first week of 2026 off on the right foot: dogs. More of them, to be exact. The American Kennel Club is officially recognizing three new dog breeds. The Russian Tsvetnaya Bolonka, the Basset Fauve de Bretagne, and the Teddy Roosevelt Terrier became official breeds this month after passing the club's rigorous vetting process. While the organization's criteria includes breed standards and generations of pedigrees, our dog requirements are much simpler: Can we pet it? STARTING UP The startup built to stop gym members from running away  ❌  The problem: Many of us muttered "new year, new me" while filling out membership forms at a gym Jan. 1, but few will be left sprinting on the treadmill come spring. To make matters worse, traditional booking platforms only notify gyms and studios once a member has already left, meaning businesses don't have a chance to prevent churn.  💡  The pitch: Recovr uses AI-powered behavioral intelligence to spot the early signs of a disengaged member at risk of leaving. The platform analyzes things like booking patterns and engagement data to predict churn risk, then automates personalized outreach.  🚀  The outlook: The startup is getting big (like you in the gym) in Australia and saw a 322% increase in gym adoption in the six months leading to Dec. 2025. Recovr will use its recent seed round to expand into the US this year, with plans to service everything from boutique studios to big-box gyms and franchise networks. NEWS FLASH   Still split: A viral TikTok question pits a hypothetical remote job that pays $120k/year against an in-office one that pays $240k. The internet is split and so were Business Insider readers, where a poll of 365 people saw the remote job win by one vote. Some see the fatter paycheck as a way to get ahead financially, but others would prioritize the mental health benefits and freedom. Pushing your buttons: Clicks Technology — a startup that makes smartphone accessories for people who miss physical keyboards — is also launching the Communicator for anyone willing to pay $500 to email and text with a real keyboard. Chipotle and Cava have both invested in Hyphen. Its Makeline is an automated food assembly system that can help prep salads and bowls while cutting down on food waste by tracking and portioning ingredients. Startup Space Forge launched a manufacturing furnace into space, where it reached temperatures hot enough to generate plasma. Why? Space Forge wants to make semiconductor crystals in space, resulting in crystals 4k times purer than those made on Earth. ONE-WEEK MASTER Go from AI basic → expert in a week   You wouldn't explain how to cook a perfect Thanksgiving turkey in just a couple sentences.    Likewise, you shouldn't expect chatbots to churn out genius answers off of very little input.    Just follow this advanced prompt engineering guide to go from AI basic → expert in under a week.  Adapt a true engineering mindset Design advanced prompting frameworks Develop specific, deep-expert personas Level-up to modular systems and custom frameworks Copy-paste skillful long-form prompts Don't go burnin' your bird… Teach it how to fly.   Prompt engineering 101 THE BIG IDEA Finally, some peace and quiet for the introverts Are you relieved it's January, with no more festive parties on the horizon? Do you avoid coworker happy hours? Do you frequently take lunch solo and spend your working hours at your desk, headphones on? You're not alone — even if you often prefer to be alone. A majority of people define themselves as more introverted than extroverted:  A 2023 YouGov poll found that 39% of respondents identified as either completely or more introverted, while 31% said they were an equal mix. Just 22% identified as more extroverted. The Myers-Briggs Co. found that ~57% of the US population prefers introversion.  While there's nothing wrong with either personality type, it can get tricky for introverts when they're surrounded by schmoozing and small-talk. They may feel forced to participate lest colleagues — or bosses — think they lack passion, which can lead to burnout. In 2012, author Susan Cain published Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking, which led companies and organizations to launch initiatives to support their more taciturn peers. And since the pandemic's remote work boom, introverts have become even more open about their work preferences, per The Wall Street Journal.  What are companies doing? A Glassdoor poll found that introverts value remote or hybrid work, no mandatory social events, quiet spaces in the office, and async work. Pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb's office has a quiet room where introverts can recharge. It's also had a "Valuably Quiet" program since 2021 to help supervisors and colleagues understand introverts, from how they best get stuff done to how they show enthusiasm. Accounting firm KPMG has placed individual desks near grouped desks, allowing introverts to listen and be near, but not directly in the mix. Other companies and organizations have been launching employee resource groups (ERGs) that offer more introvert-friendly ways to socialize — book clubs, crafts, online forums, etc. Biopharmaceutical company Sobi's Quiet ERG allows introverts to contribute ideas and perspectives in ways that work for them.  Fun fact: Beyond extroverts and introverts, there are ambiverts (they're somewhere in the middle) and omniverts (they flip between extremes, though there's not much scientific research on this type). New is "otroverts," coined by psychiatrist Rami Kaminski last year to describe people who feel perpetually on the outside.   🔗   HIGHLY RECOMMENDED   Leave it to Costco… Your favorite destination for jumbo-sized snacks is one of the few foreign big-box retailers to crack Japan's market. Here's how it grew to nearly 40 locations.    NEWSWORTHY NUMBER Increase in street- and vehicle-related crimes around Chicago neighborhoods that offer e-scooter rentals, according to a recent study via The Wall Street Journal. Since the Midwestern city introduced electric scooters in 2019, crime rates have risen in the areas where they're available, leading researchers to conclude that the fast, easy-to-obtain, easy-to-discard two-wheelers have become vehicles of choice among criminals like bag snatchers and car thieves. It's not hard to imagine such a scenario playing out, though Lime probably wishes that wasn't the case — naturally, the e-scooter rental company, which services the Chicago area, rejected the study's findings.   AROUND THE WEB 📆  On this day: In 1953, playwright Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" premiered in Paris. 😆  Haha: DownDetector's down detector. 🗞️  Newsletter: Join Mindstream, a human-first AI newsletter that prioritizes clarity and progress. 💡  That's cool: A map of human ideas. 🐶  Aww: A shelter dog adventure.   SHOWER THOUGHT The older you get, the more dead people appear in your dreams. SOURCE Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Singdhi Sokpo. Editing by: Sara "Hold the small talk" 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. 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