Instead of bars and restaurants, saunas are the new place for investors and founders to socialise and raise money
3 min
When tens of thousands of software engineers, tech enthusiasts and salesmen descended on San Francisco for the annual Salesforce mega conference in September, startup founder Jari Salomaa had an idea: What if he rented out a sauna?
Salomaa was looking to pitch his startup Valo, which has built an artificial-intelligence tool that helps users on Salesforce’s platform. But an anti-alcohol movement that’s sweeping through the tech industry is disrupting work gatherings that revolve around drinking or eating. That’s leading Salomaa and others to try “social saunas,” where networking happens inside a steamy 200-degree box. In bathing suits.
The experience can take some getting used to. Bathrobes and bikinis can be distracting. It’s also very sweaty.
But investors and venture capitalists say it’s refreshing to have someplace other than a bar to gather and that business is getting done everywhere from a pop-up sauna in a Napa vineyard, to an 80-person sauna in New York.
Salomaa, 46, grew up in Finland where the sauna was part of everyday life and at his first job for Nokia in Helsinki, saunas were built inside the offices.
“There are more saunas than cars in Finland,” he said. “As many saunas as toilets.”
Still, he worried how Americans would react to hanging out in their bathing suits for a corporate event. “Scandinavians are more at ease with body images than the average American,” he said.
He thought about having one event for women and another for men, but the planning soon got complicated. In the end, Salomaa decided on a sort of social experiment: a coed gathering in San Francisco. He wound up with a wait list of 100 guests.
Salomaa imposed some sauna etiquette—bathing suits required and stay hydrated. And he started the event like any other investor pitch, by giving a PowerPoint presentation to an audience clad in bathrobes.
Attendees shared images of the event on social media, and soon Salomaa was fielding calls from friends in the tech industry, asking how they could do a similar event. He’s eager to help, but maintains some reservation about moving too much work inside the sauna.
“If it’s all talk about work, it kind of kills the vibe,” he said.
New social saunas have popped up in San Francisco, New York and Colorado this year.
They are built with stadium seating to fit more people—usually around 20 to 40 people—and conversation is often encouraged.
At Othership, a new sauna facility that opened in New York City’s Flatiron district in July, the sauna can fit up to 90 people. Lined with ambient lighting that can switch from warm red to neon pink, the sauna looks more like a nightclub than a place of tranquility.
Founder Robbie Bent, 40, said young tech founders make up a large part of his clientele. “They want to be healthier, meet like-minded people, and often don’t want to be out late,” he said.
The company hosts founder nights, as well as events for investors and founders to mingle. Othership says tech companies big and small are considering offering its services as a benefit to employees.
Othership has also offered to organise complimentary “team sweats” as team-building exercises. But according to Bent, they received pushback from human resources at companies across tech and Wall Street. Colleagues congregating in bathing suits wasn’t going to fly.
In response to these critiques, Bent designed a “corporate swimsuit”—basically a full-body rashguard for people to wear in the sauna.
Will Drescher, 29, built a social sauna in Boulder, Colo., after going to one in Minneapolis this year. “Neither me nor my co-founder drink,” said Drescher. “And we just thought, why don’t we have this?”
They built Portal, a “more DIY” option than the saunas popping up in New York and San Francisco, said Drescher.
“We wanted to bridge what’s happening in the coasts with what we’re seeing in the middle of the country,” said Drescher.
Venture investor Helene Servillon, 35, proposed a meeting with a founder of a tech company at Portal.
The meeting lasted an hour, which allowed them to cycle in and out of the sauna for three sessions. After learning more about the startup, Servillon said she plans to invest in it soon.
“VCs socialise a lot. If we only have two options—have a drink or a meal—that can just get really exhausting,” she said. When founders or investors ask to meet for happy hour these days, she will often counter-propose with a sauna or a hike.
Fintech investor Sheel Mohnot, 42, co-hosted an August social sauna event in San Francisco and attended an investor event in Napa, where a mobile sauna was wheeled on to the vineyard.
“The reality is there are always chances for people to feel uncomfortable, and more people are feeling that way about drinking,” Mohnot said. “We just didn’t have great sauna options here before.”
Not all tech workers have bought in. Laila Danielsen, chief executive of an AI software company, was invited to a social sauna event in October. She enjoyed the event and the environment it provided to have conversations, but she didn’t go into the hotbox.
“I don’t know if I’d necessarily put on my bikini to go out and pitch a VC, you know what I mean?” the 55-year-old said. “I’ll consider meeting them at the sauna after we close the deal.”
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The lunar flyby would be the deepest humans have traveled in space in decades.
4 min
It’s go time for the highest-stakes mission at NASA in more than 50 years.
On April 1, the agency is set to launch four astronauts around the moon, the deepest human spaceflight since the final Apollo lunar landing in 1972.
The launch window for Artemis II , as the mission is called, opens at 6:24 p.m. ET.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration teams have been preparing the vehicles to depart from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on the planned roughly 10-day trip. Crew members have trained for years for this moment.
Reid Wiseman, the NASA astronaut serving as mission commander, said he doesn’t fear taking the voyage. A widower, he does worry at times about what he is putting his daughters through.
“I could have a very comfortable life for them,” Wiseman said in an interview last September.
“But I’m also a human, and I see the spirit in their eyes that is burning in my soul too. And so we’ve just got to never stop going.”
Wiseman’s crewmates on Artemis II are NASA’s Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
What are the goals for Artemis II?
The biggest one: Safely fly the crew on vehicles that have never carried astronauts before.
The towering Space Launch System rocket has the job of lofting a vehicle called Orion into space and on its way to the moon.
Orion is designed to carry the crew around the moon and back. Myriad systems on the ship—life support, communications, navigation—will be tested with the astronauts on board.
SLS and Orion don’t have much flight experience. The vehicles last flew in 2022, when the agency completed its uncrewed Artemis I mission .
How is the mission expected to unfold?
Artemis II will begin when SLS takes off from a launchpad in Florida with Orion stacked on top of it.
The so-called upper stage of SLS will later separate from the main part of the rocket with Orion attached, and use its engine to set up the latter vehicle for a push to the moon.
After Orion separates from the upper stage, it will conduct what is called a translunar injection—the engine firing that commits Orion to soaring out to the moon. It will fly to the moon over the course of a few days and travel around its far side.
Orion will face a tough return home after speeding through space. As it hits Earth’s atmosphere, Orion will be flying at 25,000 miles an hour and face temperatures of 5,000 degrees as it slows down. The capsule is designed to land under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean, not far from San Diego.
Is it possible Artemis II will be delayed?
Yes.
For safety reasons, the agency won’t launch if certain tough weather conditions roll through the Cape Canaveral, Fla., area. Delays caused by technical problems are possible, too. NASA has other dates identified for the mission if it doesn’t begin April 1.
Who are the astronauts flying on Artemis II?
The crew will be led by Wiseman, a retired Navy pilot who completed military deployments before joining NASA’s astronaut corps. He traveled to the International Space Station in 2014.
Two other astronauts will represent NASA during the mission: Glover, an experienced Navy pilot, and Koch, who began her career as an electrical engineer for the agency and once spent a year at a research station in the South Pole. Both have traveled to the space station before.
Hansen is a military pilot who joined Canada’s astronaut corps in 2009. He will be making his first trip to space.
Koch’s participation in Artemis II will mark the first time a woman has flown beyond orbits near Earth. Glover and Hansen will be the first African-American and non-American astronauts, respectively, to do the same.
What will the astronauts do during the flight?
The astronauts will evaluate how Orion flies, practice emergency procedures and capture images of the far side of the moon for scientific and exploration purposes (they may become the first humans to see parts of the far side of the lunar surface). Health-tracking projects of the astronauts are designed to inform future missions.
Those efforts will play out in Orion’s crew module, which has about two minivans worth of living area.
On board, the astronauts will spend about 30 minutes a day exercising, using a device that allows them to do dead lifts, rowing and more. Sleep will come in eight-hour stretches in hammocks.
There is a custom-made warmer for meals, with beef brisket and veggie quiche on the menu.
Each astronaut is permitted two flavored beverages a day, including coffee. The crew will hold one hourlong shared meal each day.
The Universal Waste Management System—that’s the toilet—uses air flow to pull fluid and solid waste away into containers.
What happens after Artemis II?
Assuming it goes well, NASA will march on to Artemis III, scheduled for next year. During that operation, NASA plans to launch Orion with crew members on board and have the ship practice docking with lunar-lander vehicles that Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have been developing. The rendezvous operations will occur relatively close to Earth.
NASA hopes that its contractors and the agency itself are ready to attempt one or more lunar landing missions in 2028. Many current and former spaceflight officials are skeptical that timeline is feasible.
