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👋 Good morning. How’d you sleep last night? If you’re a man, possibly not as well as you think. A new study found that women tend to report worse sleep quality despite objectively sleeping better, while men often overestimate the quality of their sleep and are less likely to remember brief nighttime wakings. The study did not examine who is hogging all the blankets and causing the awakenings, though we have a guess.

P.S. We’re off tomorrow in observance of Juneteenth, but we’ll see you bright and early Monday morning.

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NEWS FLASH

👢 Ugg, you got duped: D2C retail brand Quince won its legal fight with Ugg maker Deckers after a jury ruled that Quince’s shearling boot did copy Ugg’s Classic Ultra Mini Boot design but that the underlying patent was invalid. It’s the latest in the dupe culture wars pitting luxury retailers against their lower-cost copycats.

🚗 Carvana is taking new cars for a spin: The used-car giant, made famous by its car vending machines, is bringing its online, smartphone-based shopping model to a new car dealership. But don’t you dare call it a dealership: The Arizona-based company is opening “new-car playgrounds.” Instead of housing slides and childhood bullies, Carvana’s playgrounds will let customers browse vehicles on giant interactive screens, order test drives via QR codes, and buy cars without having to haggle with a salesperson.

🧸 Toys coming to life? Imagine that: Nauk Nauk (pronounced “knock-knock”) announced a free AI video-generating app designed to turn still photos of toys into animated shorts. When prompted, its tech will produce “Toy Story”-coded 15- to 20-second clips that enliven users’ toys, including Pokémon and “bricks,” which is what someone says when they don’t want to pay big bucks to Lego.

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

Red-hot burn rate: OpenAI reportedly spent $3.7B in the first three months of 2026, more than half of the $5.7B the company generated in revenue during the same period.
Now that’s patriotic: McDonald’s is bringing back its fried apple pie after 34 years to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary.
Knicks in five! The telecast of the team’s championship game averaged 24.5m viewers, making it the most-watched NBA Finals Game Five since 1998, according to Nielsen data.
Flighty bird: Sneaker company Allbirds turned AI company NewBird AI is once again rebranding. The company says it will now be called Smartbird and is bringing in a new CEO to guide the transition to AI from shoes.

FROM OUR FRIENDS AT MINDSTREAM

The chief emotion officer

Silicon Valley has a feelings guy, and it’s Joe Hudson.

Hudson works with leaders at major AI labs, including OpenAI, to teach leaders how to manage conflict, build trust, and develop something called “emotional fluidity.”

Sounds important to us.

👉 Read more on Mindstream.

THE BIG IDEA

A person with a white cane with landmarks in the background.

How blind people go sightseeing

As much as people love to travel, navigating an unfamiliar place (between language barriers, different customs, etc.) can be hard, even for the most well-seasoned traveler.

As you could imagine, navigating an unfamiliar place is exponentially harder when you literally can’t see — but it isn’t impossible.

That’s thanks, in part, to Traveleyes: an award-winning British travel company that empowers visually impaired (VI) adults to travel independently by pairing them with sighted travelers on group tours worldwide.

How it started

It was founded in 2004 by Amar Latif, who by age 18 had lost most of his vision but still longed to see the world.

Despite the discouragement of others, who thought it dangerous and perhaps a bit pointless for a blind person to set out globe-trotting, Latif studied abroad in Canada during college and discovered what skeptics didn’t understand:

Seeing the world wasn’t necessary to exploring it or reaping the benefits of travel.

But unable to find a tour company willing to accommodate him as a sightless solo traveler, he launched Traveleyes.

How it works

Traveleyes offers 30+ tours a year, which are “designed to be experienced through all the senses,” to destinations ranging from the Galapagos to Tokyo.
Groups typically consist of ~14-20 travelers, split evenly between VI and sighted individuals, who receive steep discounts for acting as “guides” — not caretakers — in exchange for describing surroundings and helping with navigation.

It’s enabled blind travelers to do things that might otherwise seem out of reach, like bungee jumping and skydiving, while providing sighted companions with new, often equally transformative experiences and perspectives.

“We’ve created a model that removes reliance on friends and family, allowing [VI] people to book and enjoy travel with the same ease and independence as anyone else,” Traveleyes told The Hustle.

Eyes on the future

The inclusive tourism market is worth an estimated $50B in the US alone.

When Traveleyes launched 22 years ago, as far as Latif knows, it was the only tour operator of its kind. Today, several others have entered the space.

See Sea Trips facilitates cruise adventures for blind travelers.
Platforms like Wheel the World, accessibleGO, and Travegali help people with physical disabilities, like wheelchair users, go kayaking, off-roading, and surfing in places like Costa Rica, Hawaii, and Spain.

Looking ahead, Traveleyes plans to grow its team and eventually expand tour offerings to ~70 locations a year.

But its ultimate goal is to reshape how travel is designed, so that “inclusive experiences benefit everyone” — blind or not.

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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Throw out your old B2B marketing playbook… that dusty thing won’t serve you. LinkedIn is writing a new one.

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

Pixels that make up the five galleries at Dataland, the world’s first AI art museum, which opens in Los Angeles this weekend. At the 25k-square-foot immersive entertainment complex, the biometrics of wearable-strapped visitors inform the AI-generated visuals, which Dataland’s founders say look like “the machine is dreaming,” per Forbes.

Tickets start at ~$50 while unlimited yearlong access costs $1.5k — though, if what you’re looking for are trippy visuals, shrooms are cheaper… just saying.

AROUND THE WEB

📅 On this day: In 1812, the War of 1812 began the day after Congress voted to declare war against Great Britain.

💀 That’s interesting: The history of gothic cross-stitch.

🤝 See you there: See all 200+ growth-fueling sessions at September’s UNBOUND conference in Boston and grab your tickets all right here. (P.S. Use our promo code “GEM-HUSTLE” for 10% off. Yeah, yeah, love you too.)

🌷 Game: Create the biggest words you can using select letters.

🐱 Aww: Treat, please.

SHOWER THOUGHT

A century from now, people will have access to HD photos and videos of the elderly as babies. SOURCE

Today's email was brought to you by Juliet Bennett Rylah and Singdhi Sokpo.

Editing by: Sara "More than meets the eye" Friedman.

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