Launch Date: January 2026

Geography: Los Angeles, California 

Founder: Lauren Sudeyko, Founder + CEO

Executive Team: Olivia Gigone, Head of Strategy and Growth

2026 Full Year Projected Revenue: Under $2M, according to industry estimates

Primary Category: Wellness

Other Category: Skincare

Funding: Venture Capital

Primary Distribution Channel: DTC

Other Distribution Channel: Amazon

Key Retail Partner: DTC Focus

2026 Projected Offline Distribution Points: DTC

Sleep or Die is a challenger sleep wellness brand built for people who are done being sold outdated sleep solutions. We make dissolvable oral sleep strips: fast acting, no pill, no gummy, just a strip that dissolves on your tongue and works. The packaging looks like a cigarette box. The brand is called Sleep or Die. Because that's the truth: Sleep is not self-care, it's survival. We're targeting millennial and Gen Z women who've optimized every other part of their health and still can't sleep and who are over the soft wellness language that's been following them around for a decade. Sleep is power. Rest is rebellion. And we're building the brand that finally says that out loud.

Insights: Lauren Sudeyko, Founder + CEO

Why now and why you?

The sleep category is worth over $585 billion and still looks like a pharmacy aisle. Every brand is selling the same thing: lavender and whispery promises. Nobody is telling the truth. Sleep is the single most important thing you can do for your health, your longevity, your everything, and the category is treating it like a spa service. The timing is right because consumers are waking up to that gap. The cultural conversation has shifted. People know sleep matters. They just haven't found a brand that actually reflects that. I'm the right person because I built this from the inside out. I'm a consumer who couldn't find what she needed and decided to make it. That proximity lives in every decision we make, from the strip format to the cigarette box to the campaign world we're building around it.

What fuels your competitive advantage?

Product format is part of it. Dissolvable strips are faster acting and more bioavailable than gummies, easier to take than pills, and genuinely novel on shelf. But the real advantage is brand. We built a world, not a product. The Strip Club. Persephone. A visual identity that stops people mid-scroll. In a category full of lavender and light blue, we look and sound completely different. That distinctiveness is a moat. You can copy a formula. You can't copy a point of view.

What’s your proudest accomplishment to date?

Getting here bootstrapped and scrappy without compromising the brand. Every visual, every line of copy, every campaign concept has been built with intention and almost no budget and almost entirely on my own. We got a Forbes feature. But honestly, what I'm most proud of is myself. For following my gut. For moving in the direction that felt right even when it was hard, and for what that ended up unlocking. The investment from True Beauty Ventures followed. That coherence at this stage is rare and I don't take it for granted.

What is the one thing you wish someone had told you?

How long everything takes. Not in a discouraging way, in a practical way. Every timeline you set, double it. Every conversation that feels promising, assume it needs six more follow-ups. The gap between "this is going well" and "this is done" is enormous and nobody warns you about it. If I'd known that earlier, I would have started sooner and panicked less.

What would you tell your past self before starting this journey?

Start before you're ready, and stop waiting for permission. The version of the brand and life you're imagining in your head is real. Create it. Then ask for feedback on the brand and that will make it better faster than any amount of private iteration will. 

What does success look like in the next 3-5 years? 

Sleep or Die is a household name in the way that Glossier was a household name—not because of distribution, but because of cultural resonance. We're in 1,000+ retail doors. We have a loyal subscriber base that treats their sleep strips like a utility, not a treat. We've expanded the product range beyond sleep into the broader recovery and restoration space. And we've built a community, the Zombie Club, that has genuine gravity. The metric I care about most is whether people feel like Sleep or Die is theirs. That's the win.

What's one industry trend that is overhyped, and what's being overlooked? 

Overhyped: "clean beauty" as a differentiator. It's table stakes now, not a positioning strategy. Brands still leading with clean as their primary identity are fighting for space in a very crowded, very undifferentiated bucket.

Overlooked: format innovation. Everyone is focused on what's in the product. Nobody is focused enough on how the product is delivered. The strip format exists in pharma and has for decades. Why did it take this long to show up in wellness? The brands that figure out delivery format will have a head start that's very hard to close.

How do you think the industry needs to evolve?

It needs to start building brands again. Real ones. The kind that make you feel something, that connect people to each other, that stand for a point of view beyond the product inside the box. Right now too much of the industry is copying itself. The same colors, the same language, the same formulas repackaged and relaunched. The brands that will matter in the next decade are the ones willing to think past what has worked before, take creative risks, and build something people actually want to be part of. Emotional connection is not a marketing tactic. It's the whole thing.

If you could wave a magic wand, what one wish would you make for your business?

The ability to have the startup grit and bootstrapped mindset of a founder in year two, combined with the operational knowledge and pattern recognition of someone who has built a $100M+ revenue company. I understand why those two things don't naturally coincide. But that combination would be deadly. The scrappiness and the conviction are what got us here. The experience of having done it at scale is what gets you the rest of the way.