The young class of AI founders has gone hardcore, with sober lifestyles and 996 schedules.
Sleep, however, remains an open question.
There are two competing sleep cultures in Silicon Valley. The biohackers say that rest helps optimize performance. The hustlers say that founders should work through the night. To sleep or not to sleep, that is the question.
Business Insider asked three young founders to share their sleep habits. And to be scientific about it, we didn’t just take their word for it. We spent four days tracking their shut-eye, requesting early morning texts detailing their prior night.
Some founders demanded their Zzzs. Others stayed up grinding.
Lance Yan knows he doesn’t sleep enough
Lance Yan knows sleep is important. Bryan Johnson gave a talk to his Y Combinator batch, after all.
And yet, the 19-year-old founder of the AI startup Traverse often gets only 5 to 6 hours of sleep. “If there’s any work, I usually end up staying on longer and dragging it out,” he said.
It’s still better than his YC days. “We would wake up when it was dark, and go to sleep when it was sunny,” Yan said.
Yan works late, then doomscrolls in bed until he falls asleep. When he wakes up, he starts working almost immediately. He knows it’s bad.
“There has to be a balance between chilling and locking in,” he said.
Yan’s sleep diary:
- Monday: 3 hours of sleep. Slept “horribly” and was in bed from 4 to 8 a.m.
- Tuesday: 6.5 hours of sleep. Worked late, but let himself sleep in. Was in bed from 3 to 10 a.m.
- Wednesday: 5 hours of sleep, from 4 to 9 a.m. His health stats “got cooked” because he had only one meal and a “tiny bit” of water.
- Thursday: 5 hours of sleep, between 3 and 8 a.m. It was “also not the best,” but he felt good after eating regular meals.
Kavitta Ghai has firm sleeping rules
Kavitta Ghai will never, ever pull an all-nighter.
The 29-year-old cofounder of the ed-tech startup Nectir can see instantly when she hasn’t slept enough. It shows up in her work and in her cognitive function. So, she’ll stop everything to get her 7 hours.
Ghai’s best thinking comes in the late evening and early morning, so she often doesn’t sleep until 3 a.m. Her chief of staff knows: no meetings until 11 a.m.
She wants her employees to be able to work when they function best, too. Nectir is remote, and will always remain remote, she said. “It allows people to do their work on their schedule,” she said.
Ghai is exacting about her sleep. She takes magnesium every night and sets the temperature between 66 and 68 degrees. She wears a sleep mask and a Whoop band. Her body doesn’t touch the bed until it’s bedtime.
It works: Ghai said that she falls asleep in under 3 minutes.
Ghai’s sleep diary:
- Monday: 7 hours and 32 minutes of sleep. Had “a ton of dreams,” but forgot to journal them in the morning.
- Tuesday: 8 hours and 2 minutes of sleep. That’s “a little longer than I prefer,” Ghai said. So she woke up groggy.
- Wednesday: 7 hours and 28 minutes of sleep. Usually meditating before bed helps her dream, but this night she had no dreams that night, “which sucks.”
- Thursday: 7 hours and 7 minutes of sleep. Ghai wished she had gotten 30 more minutes.
Boris Skurikhin is not a grindmaxxer
Boris Skurikhin has an expensive mattress with no bed frame.
Well, he does have a bed frame, but he hasn’t gotten around to assembling it. “I will do it soon,” the 26-year-old cofounder of the AI startup Docket said. “I keep telling myself this.”
Skurikhin gets in bed around 12 a.m. and then starts watching something on his laptop. He’s not scrolling. He prefers a documentary or a long YouTube video.
He’s not one to cut down on his sleep. He described what might be called a “grindmaxxer” in his coworking space who works constantly and never sleeps.
“He was also the hospitalmaxxer,” he said. “It’s just not healthy.”
Skurikhin’s sleep diary:
- Monday: 7.5 hours of sleep. Fell asleep at 2 a.m. to UFC videos. Woke up briefly at 7:30 a.m. because he “drank too much tea before bed.”
- Tuesday: 8 hours and 40 minutes of sleep. Fell asleep at 1:30 a.m. and woke up at 10:10 a.m.
- Wednesday: 7 hours of sleep. Fell asleep at 1:30 a.m. to videos about athlete rivalries in sports. Woke up early because he left his window open.
- Thursday: 7 hours and 20 minutes of sleep. Fell asleep at 2 a.m. while watching the 2002 movie “Copenhagen.”
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