We tracked how much 3 young startup founders actually sleep

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.

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: 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.

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: 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 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: