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1 week ago | 
thehustle.co | Sam Barsanti
Sports are getting techier, with gimmicks like indoor golf battles, but it’s not just about making things more exciting. Modern advancements are also bringing sports to underserved fan bases. Accessibility slam dunkProfessional sports teams are working with startups like OneCourt, Touch2see, and Field of Vision to help blind and low-vision fans follow the action via tactile devices, per CNBC.
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2 weeks ago | 
thehustle.co | Sam Barsanti
Liberty Mutual’s LiMu Emu recently topped a study’s list of the best brand mascots in the insurance industry. But its competition, Progressive’s Flo and Allstate’s Mayhem, put up a good fight, proving that insurance companies are ahead of the marketing curve. The time of ToomgisThere’s a surprising trend in advertising, per a recent Digiday report: Everyone’s using mascots again.
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2 weeks ago | 
thehustle.co | Sam Barsanti
Unless you’ve been living under a really heavy rock (in which case, scoot over) you know that US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs are turning the global economy upside down. But there’s a more surprising victim than the Nintendo Switch 2 or your 401k: IPOs.Taking stockThe market has been tough on initial public offerings for years, with things looking rough even back in 2018 — pre-Trump’s second term and pre-covid — when the number of startups making IPOs was steadily declining.
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3 weeks ago | 
thehustle.co | Sam Barsanti
Everybody’s into microplastics these days — or at least they’re really into us, having been found in food, water, and even newborns. We don’t know exactly what microplastics do to our bodies, but it’s probably something, and that can be scary. Meet Clarify ClinicsA London startup is hoping to assuage microplastic fears by offering to clean your blood, and all it costs is two hours… plus nearly $13k.
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3 weeks ago | 
thehustle.co | Sam Barsanti
Truth Initiative’s antismoking campaign was launched with the goal of making smoking seem aggressively uncool for young people. Then vaping happened. But even addictive trends die fast, and one startup wants to fix quitting. Making quitting coolNicotine replacement therapy company Jones just raised $10m for its new, cooler way to stop you from smoking, per Forbes.
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1 month ago | 
thehustle.co | Sam Barsanti
The future of transportation is in the sky, apparently, but there’s something to keep in mind while soaring with the birds…… It can be really annoying for everyone on the ground. Studying the BladeIn New York, the Blade app has simplified the experience of chartering a chopper, per Business Insider. It’s so common among the Big Apple’s elite that “Blading” has become a verb. It’s sometimes cheaper and faster to take a Blade than an Uber.
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1 month ago | 
thehustle.co | Sam Barsanti
If you Google the phrase “Is Google getting worse,” you get an AI Overviews answer saying that “many users and studies suggest that Google search results have declined in quality.”So, how do you find a search engine that’s worth your time? Try opening your walletKagi, a relatively new Google competitor, has an interesting hook: You have to pay for it.
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1 month ago | 
ign.com | Sam Barsanti
DC villains aren’t known for the practicality of their evil schemes: laughing fish, stealing stuff by twos, leaving behind a clue in the form of a riddle, things of that nature. But it says something about the sensibility of Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League that, when confronted with the villainous plot of the main bad guy (which involves firing gangsters into the air with a giant gun), a kidnapped Damian Wayne quips, “This is so dumb.
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1 month ago | 
thehustle.co | Sam Barsanti
Golf has been around for centuries, but it’s massively contributing to — and suffering from — the ongoing climate crisis. Now, there may be a way to keep golf alive and make it more fun than it has been for all these centuries. PGA meets WWETGL is a new indoor golf league hosted at Florida’s SoFi Center, where professional players (including co-founder Tiger Woods) hit golf balls at a ~3.4k-square-foot screen, per The Verge.
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1 month ago | 
thehustle.co | Sam Barsanti
When sales on food delivery apps jumped by 162% YoY during the pandemic, brands capitalized on the demand with “ghost kitchens.”These virtual restaurants only sold food through apps and used existing kitchens to ship out trendy (often celebrity-backed) food concepts like the allegedly “inedible” MrBeast Burger. The ghost kitchens have evolvedGhost kitchens have inherent issues, but a startup called Wonder is trying to avoid them by building one from the ground up.
