Whether you're starting your freshman year, heading into your senior year, balancing school with a job (or two), competing as an athlete, building a business, or simply trying to keep up with everything on your plate, sleep can easily become the first thing you sacrifice.
One late night finishing an assignment turns into another. Work runs late. Deadlines pile up. And when you're young, it can be tempting to think you can get away with sleeping less now and catch up later. But protecting your sleep is also protecting your health -- and your ability to perform at your best over the long run.
Few people understand that lesson quite like Harry Gestetner. He started his first company at just 11 years old, built and sold Fanfix while still in his early-20s, was named to Forbes's 30 Under 30, and spent years working at a pace that eventually forced him to confront what he had been neglecting: his own health.
Today, in his mid-20s, he's applying what he learned to his latest company, Orion, a sleep technology born in part from his own search for better sleep. We spoke to Harry about what it takes to build companies, being underestimated because of his age, turning rejection into motivation, the health consequences of working around the clock, and why even the most ambitious among us need to take sleep seriously.
YH: You started building companies so very young. Did you always know that invention and entrepreneurship were what you wanted to pursue?
HG: It runs in the family. I was always into invention and creating and building things. My first company, I was 11, and it was a clothing company. And it was just so exciting being able to take something that was an idea in my head into something that people used and loved. I started so many things that failed. People think Fanfix was my first company. It wasn't. It was probably my 12th company. The first 11 failed. I tried starting an affiliate shoe website. I tried starting a storage facility in my parents' garage for local businesses. I was selling scented pencils on the streets. My first real success was in the nonprofit space. It was called Fuel Our Heroes. It was COVID, and I was a sophomore in college. I found 18 hospital networks all around the country. We had a team of about 140. We raised about half a million dollars for healthcare workers during COVID. Being able to just one day come up with an idea, have something that just keeps you up at night, and then, through a lot of hard work, turn it into something that changes people's lives, that's, I think, the coolest thing about being a founder.
YH: Safe to assume you had to deal with people not taking you seriously because of your age. How did you handle the rejection while raising money and building Fanfix?
HG: For sure. I mean, I've been dealing with people underestimating me because of my age since I was 11. I remember, with my first company, we had a supplier we were dealing with over email, and then they wanted to get on a phone call. I got on a phone call, and they realized through my voice that I was a child, and so they completely ghosted me, and I never heard from her again. So I've been used to that. I've been dealing with it my whole life. Certainly when I was founding Fanfix, I was not the typical founder. I had to scratch and claw to raise any money. I got over 100 no's before we got our first yes. And those are hard no's as well -- no's that you have five meetings for, and you're very emotionally invested in, and they all seem very keen, and then they just give you a no, or you never hear from them again. As a founder, you've got to be very, very thick-skinned. Rejection can either break you or you can use it to fuel you. And I was very good at being able to turn rejection into fuel of, "I'm going to prove you wrong."
YH: As your companies became successful, did you struggle with having to become more public? Did you prefer being able to stay behind the product?
HG: I still think of myself as a very private person. I generally don't post on social media. I use my social media kind of only for work purposes. Any type of public activity, like press, is for two things: either telling people about this new product I'm building -- in this case, Orion, which is helping tens of thousands of people sleep way better -- and then second is inspiring young founders. I was very lucky to have success very young and build a multi-million-dollar company at age 20. I think there's this amazing time now where young founders are able to really do what was not possible for me when I was in my teenage years. So, yeah, anything I can do to kind of help inspire young founders.
YH: Did you already know you had that kind of resilience and ambition, or was that something you discovered about yourself while building Fanfix?
HG: I never thought about ambition or drive or resilience or anything like that. To me, it was fun, and it was just what I wanted to be doing on my weekends, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. If you look at the best athletes in the world -- you look at LeBron James or Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan -- they eat, sleep and breathe it, and they love it. I think it's the same thing with being a founder. It's too hard to do as just a job. You can't count your hours. This has to be your life, and you have to thoroughly enjoy it. There's a lot of pain you deal with, but the level of freedom and the level of excitement of the ups and downs -- that's what makes it fun. There's a game element to it, and so I always thoroughly enjoyed it.
YH: When you were under so much pressure -- going to school while building a major company -- were there things you neglected physically or mentally that you would now tell other young founders to prioritize earlier?
HG: I founded Fanfix when I was 20. I sold it when I was 21, and I was very lucky to have success young. But I was working like a dog seven days a week and completely neglecting my health. I was sleeping terribly, eating terribly, not working out, I was extremely stressed, and I wasn't taking care of my health. I started to get health problems. I got this inner-ear condition, which gave me vertigo and basically incapacitated me from working for a period of time. I realized the hard way that, as a founder, I'm the greatest asset to the business. You've got to take care of yourself. You've got to take your performance seriously and think of yourself like an athlete. So I started to get very into longevity and started tracking my sleep, and that's what led me down the path of founding Orion, because I wanted to fix my own sleep. Whatever you do, whatever dreams you're pursuing, you've got to prioritize your health. I think there is rarely an excuse not to get eight hours of sleep. You've got to take care of yourself, because I had to learn the hard way that you can't sustainably neglect your health.
YH: What did you actually change in your own lifestyle?
HG: The main thing I prioritize is my sleep. I was sleeping terribly. I had no sleep hygiene. I wasn't tracking my sleep. I was sleeping way less hours than I needed. I had a lot of sleep debt. Then I started tracking my sleep through wearables, and I realized just how badly I was actually sleeping. But the problem was, the wearables basically just told me to be in bed longer, and that for me wasn't possible. I only had a limited amount of hours to be in bed. So I wanted to create something that could maximize and squeeze the juice out of every second I had to be in bed for. Practically, I wanted something that could make 6 hours of sleep feel like 10, and so that's why I created Orion.
YH: What does your nighttime routine look like now?
HG: My nighttime routine starts about 4 hours before bed. I try and cut off my last meal 4 hours before I go to bed, and I limit alcohol. I wear blue-light-blocking glasses the two hours before I go to bed, and then I try and shut off my phone about 30 minutes before bed. I have blackout blinds. I wear an eye mask that completely blocks everything. I use mouth tape. And I always try and get that 8 hours -- that's the sweet spot. Then I have my Orion set on extra cold. It gets really, really cold. It goes down to 60 degrees about an hour after I fall asleep, and then it keeps me very cold the first half of the night. The second half of the night, it warms me up, and I have a thermal alarm set, so it warms me awake.
YH: When things become extremely stressful, what helps you manage it and switch off?
HG: For me, I love living with my best friends and having roommates who are your best friends that aren't founders. When I come home from a very long day, if it were just me, I would just sit there and ruminate. It's too easy to dwell on the problems. And if you have roommates who also are founders or work with you, you can never really switch off. Whereas I've found having roommates who are your best friends, who have very different jobs, is very grounding.
YH: Who is Orion ultimately for? Is sleep optimization something you think people should start thinking about as early as college or their early 20s?
HG: I think you've got to start. Orion is, in my opinion, the best form factor for optimizing your sleep, and it's totally passive. You don't have to do anything. You put it on your bed, and it just works like magic to help improve your sleep. I certainly think someone as young as 20 should be using an Orion. I think this is a product that should be and needs to be in every American household. The barrier to entry is price. So for us, a lot of the work we're doing is: how do we bring the price down and make it more accessible over the next few years?
YH: You've described building companies as something you genuinely love rather than simply a job. Is there anything you wish you had more time for outside of it?
HG: This is my life. And I definitely would not recommend people get so obsessed with one particular vision. It's definitely not healthy, but it's the way I'm wired, and it's what I love to do. I think I'm the luckiest guy in the world that I get to do something I love so much and build things that people love, and build an amazing team working with some of the smartest people in the world. For me, I'm just so obsessed that we're in the office seven days a week, and I work nights and weekends on this around the clock. But I definitely wouldn't recommend people do that, and I wouldn't encourage people to do that, because there's more to life. I wish I could be a better friend and family member and spend more time with the people that love me.
