Uploaded October 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
In 1938, Popular Mechanics called hemp "the new billion-dollar crop." So why isn't your T-shirt made of it today?
Curious about what other materials can launch huge business opportunities? Here's our list of 8 others: 🔗 clickhubspot.com/a56953
Hemp should have replaced cotton decades ago. It uses a third of the water, yields twice the fiber per acre, and has been used as a textile for 10,000 years. Yet cotton and later synthetic fibers won. This video traces exactly how that happened.
We dive into the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 (and the lobbying behind it from newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst), why industrial hemp got caught in marijuana stigma despite having almost no THC, the technical breakthrough called "cottonization" in 2017 that finally made hemp fiber feel soft like cotton, and the regulatory barriers still killing hemp cultivation today, from the 0.3% THC rule that can destroy an entire hemp farm overnight.
Despite all this, the hemp industry is surging. Hemp harvest acreage in the US almost doubled from 2022 to 2024, and analysts predict the industry will hit $30 billion by the early 2030s.
Subscribe to The Hustle:
🔗 clickhubspot.com/vu3l
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🔗 clickhubspot.com/3kln
About HubSpot:
HubSpot is a customer platform that provides education, software, and support to help businesses grow better. The platform includes marketing, sales, service, commerce, operations, and website management products that start free and scale to meet our customers’ needs at any stage of growth. Today, thousands of customers around the world use HubSpot’s powerful and easy-to-use tools and apps to attract, engage, and delight customers.
#TheHustle #HubSpot #Documentary
In 1938, Popular Mechanics called hemp "the new billion-dollar crop." So why isn't your T-shirt made of it today?
Curious about what other materials can launch huge business opportunities? Here's our list of 8 others: 🔗 clickhubspot.com/a56953
Hemp should have replaced cotton decades ago. It uses a third of the water, yields twice the fiber per acre, and has been used as a textile for 10,000 years. Yet cotton and later synthetic fibers won. This video traces exactly how that happened.
We dive into the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 (and the lobbying behind it from newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst), why industrial hemp got caught in marijuana stigma despite having almost no THC, the technical breakthrough called "cottonization" in 2017 that finally made hemp fiber feel soft like cotton, and the regulatory barriers still killing hemp cultivation today, from the 0.3% THC rule that can destroy an entire hemp farm overnight.
Despite all this, the hemp industry is surging. Hemp harvest acreage in the US almost doubled from 2022 to 2024, and analysts predict the industry will hit $30 billion by the early 2030s.
Subscribe to The Hustle:
🔗 clickhubspot.com/vu3l
Get the 5-minute newsletter keeping 2M+ innovators in the loop
🔗 clickhubspot.com/3kln
About HubSpot:
HubSpot is a customer platform that provides education, software, and support to help businesses grow better. The platform includes marketing, sales, service, commerce, operations, and website management products that start free and scale to meet our customers’ needs at any stage of growth. Today, thousands of customers around the world use HubSpot’s powerful and easy-to-use tools and apps to attract, engage, and delight customers.
#TheHustle #HubSpot #Documentary
