👋 Good morning. Remember that life is about the journey, not the destination. That was definitely true for two friends who drove a three-wheeled Reliant Robin car — named Sheila — 14k miles from London to South Africa in an attempt to break a Guinness World Record. The duo and their flimsy car survived breakdowns, mountain ranges, deserts, attempted coups, and airstrikes. And you think your commute is bad?
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🏥 Can’t deny it — this is a good use for AI: Startup Claimable uses AI trained on medical literature, insurance laws, and legal precedents to generate appeal letters for patients who’ve had claims denied by insurance companies. Fewer than 1% of patients appeal insurance denials and Claimable estimates ~850m claims are denied annually. So far, ~4k people have used the startup’s site and three in four have gotten their denials reversed.
🦉 Now there’s no excuse for disappointing the owl: Duolingo has made its advanced learning content available for free in nine languages, including English, Spanish, French, and Japanese. Duolingo says it’s an opportunity for job seekers to become more competitive in the global workforce. The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages’ research has found that those who know a second language are up to 50% more employable, per TechCrunch.
✈️ Coming through: Vancouver-based startup A&K Robotics makes Cruz, autonomous mobility bots that ferry passengers around airports using sensors that can navigate the complicated and often congested layouts. It just announced a ~$5.8m Series A, which it will use to move from pilots to permanent deployment and expand production.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
Up, up, and away: The company Sent In Space launched a Project Hail Mary Lego set nearly 22 miles into the atmosphere via balloon, earning a Guinness World Record for highest-altitude Lego flight.
In some very different Lego news… A California man is accused of stealing $34kin Lego sets. His method involved buying the sets from Target stores, replacing the bricks with dried pasta, and returning them.
Mapping the future: Google is adding generative AI to Maps and Earth, letting enterprise users create realistic Street View scenes for projects — like a movie set or building site — and analyze satellite data.
Megamerger: Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile are reportedly discussing what would be the largest public merger ever. The resulting company would be worth nearly $300B and reflect 200m+ mobile subscribers.
FROM OUR FRIENDS AT MINDSTREAM
Admin rights… for your face
YouTube is expanding its likeness detection tool — which identifies AI-generated content, like deepfakes — to protect creators, celebrities, and public figures from identity misuse.
It’s basically Content ID, but for AI-generated faces.
This platform connects adventure seekers with trusted guides
What you absolutely don’t want to do on your bucket-list vacation is waste time figuring out what to do, or worse, wandering off in the wilderness and, hey, real quick, what color are the dangerous snakes?
57Hours is an online marketplace connecting outdoor enthusiasts with certified guides. Since launching in January 2020, it’s grown to include 2k guides, and receives 60-100 new applications monthly.
CEO and founder Viktor Marohnić developed his own interest in climbing and backcountry skiing after moving to NYC from Croatia in 2010. He visited The Gunks, a popular climbing area in Upstate New York, with friends who’d hired a guide.
“What I realized is that I learned so much about traditional climbing that I would never be able to learn on my own,” he told The Hustle. “That was the whole concept of 57Hours. You can try to learn backcountry skiing by yourself, but it’s going to take 10 years.”
It’s also time-consuming…
… and expensive to become a certified guide, especially in the US. Full certification from the International Federation of Mountain Guides Associations (IFMGA) can cost up to $50k and take several years. For that reason, 57Hours offers a scholarship fund to ~10 guides per year in in-demand markets.
Guides are highly skilled outdoors, but “typically are not very tech savvy,” Marohnić said. They’re also frequently in remote areas without Wi-Fi.
57Hours handles marketing, sales, and customer support in exchange for 20%-30% commission, letting guides grow their business — some have seen a three- to five-fold revenue increase in two to three years on the platform and some have even scaled to build companies that employ multiple guides.
Mónica Fuentes and Albert Ojembarrena, co-CEOs and guides at Amarok Adventures, have repeatedly sold out their Hidden Trails of Iceland tour, which they attribute to the platform.
“[57Hours has] given us the freedom to create authentic adventures without cutting corners, putting us in front of the right kind of people,” they told The Hustle via email. “We can keep them challenging, immersive, and a little unpredictable, just like the places we explore.”
Who’s booking?
Customers can search for a specific trip, like hiking Machu Picchu, or browse by activity, such as mountain biking or sailing. Other categories include women-only, beginner, family, and luxury.
Guides handle all the logistics, and check in with travelers to make sure they meet required physical fitness levels. Some are admittedly rigorous, but others are pretty chill like this e-bike tour of Provence. Yeah, that’s more our speed, too.
BTW: The name comes from maximizing a weekend — ditching work early on Friday and staying out all Sunday night.
What do 200+ B2B decision makers think about AI search? Funny you ask — we surveyed them. Spoiler: It has a lot to do with trust.
NEWSWORTHY NUMBER
Age range of Cash App’s new target demographic. The Jack Dorsey-backed fintech company, which already serves ~5m monthly active teen users, is expanding its youth-focused services to include Gen Alpha with a new program that gives kiddos debit cards linked to accounts managed by their parents, perTechCrunch. Once they reach the ripe old age of 13, their accounts then “graduate” to include more grown-up functions, like buying crypto and trading stocks.
But perhaps it’s more important that they learn the value of money, or earn their first paycheck, before learning every way to spend it? While the company and others like it claim that starting ‘em young will improve kids’ financial literacy, critics argue just the opposite.
AROUND THE WEB
📅 On this day: In 1985, New Coke debuted. The launch marked the first change in the soda’s formula in 99 years. It was notably not a hit.
🛌 That’s interesting: Sci-fi movies often depict characters in suspended animation during long space voyages. How close are we to making such deep slumbers a reality?
📰 Newsletter: Start every morning with important and intriguing business news fromThe Quartz Daily Brief.
🧪 Useful: An interactive periodic table of elements.
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