This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis covers startups, tech, markets, media, and all the hottest topics in business and technology. He also interviews the world's greatest founders, operators, investors, and innovators.
Insights from recent episode analysis
On the show
- Lon1 ep
- Will Edwards1 ep
- Maruchi Kim1 ep
Also: Chris Zacharia, Brian McRindle, Ning Ren, Josh Sirota, Etienne Louvet, Jason Ballard, Seby Rubino, Albert Brotherton, Boris Radilov, Bernt Børnich, Mark Jeffrey, Gareth Howells, Ole Lehmann, Rob May, Gyani, Rahul Chhabra, Joaquín Cuenca Abela
Audience Interest
Podcast Focus
Publishing Consistency
Insights are generated by CastFox AI using publicly available data, episode content, and proprietary models.
Most discussed topics
Brands & references
Total monthly reach
Based on 1 signal.
Built from
By chart position
- 🇺🇸United States · TechnologyHOME#5945K to 236K
- 🇮🇩ID · Technology#117.4K to 39K
- 🇨🇱CL · Technology#74.2K to 22K
- 🇨🇦Canada · Technology#512.6K to 14K
- 🇬🇧United Kingdom · Technology#841.6K to 8.5K
- Per-Episode Audience
Est. listeners per new episode within ~30 days
65K to 342K🎙 Daily cadence·1,000 episodes·Last published 2d ago - Monthly Reach
Unique listeners across all episodes (30 days)
216K to 1.1M🇺🇸69%🇮🇩11%🇨🇱6%+4 more - Active Followers
Loyal subscribers who consistently listen
119K to 627K
Market Insights
Platform Distribution
Reach across major podcast platforms, updated hourly
Total Followers
—
Total Plays
—
Total Reviews
—
* Data sourced directly from platform APIs and aggregated hourly across all major podcast directories.
| Date | Episode | Topics | Guests | Brands | Places | Keywords | Sponsor | Length | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10/26/26 |  Pregame Your Launch Before Your App Exists (w/ Amanda Bradford) | E2355 | This Week In Startups is made possible by: Odoo: https://odoo.com/twist G2i: https://g2i.co/twist Rippling: https://rippling.ai/twist Plaud: https://plaud.ai/twist Today’s show: Amanda Bradford’s “launch party” for her dating app The League actually extended for months. She “pre-gamed” the app’s formal launch with months of mixers, boat parties, and free events, where the only ticket required for admission was having the app on your phone. By launch day, she had a massive wait list, and still just let in 500 people, who ensure maximum buzz (and FOMO). At LAUNCH’s first-ever Tactical & Practical live event from San Francisco, Amanda walks the crowd through how she built a vetted, two-sided dating marketplace as a solo founder, eventually getting prominent enough to attract the attention of Match Group. (She sold The League for ~$30 million in 2020.) Hear exclusive tips you won’t get anywhere else, like how Amanda used a “fake paywall” to gauge willingness to pay for subscriptions, and how to time your rate of expansion into new markets. Plus, an all-new Flashback segment, featuring Alex and Lon looking back at a classic 2017 interview between Jason and Stripe’s Patrick Collison. Guests Amanda Bradford on X: https://x.com/amandabradford Book a Call with Amanda: https://intro.co/amandabradford The League: https://www.theleague.com/ Patrick Collison on X: https://x.com/patrickc?lang=en Stripe: https://stripe.com/ Relevant Links: The League was called "elitist." Its founder says that was never the case (CNBC): https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/20/founder-of-the-league-on-dating-ambition-and-that-viral-ad-campaign.html Alex Wilhelm’s Cautious Optimism: https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/ TWiST E723: Patrick Collison (2017): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-NepiMQGvY Timestamps: 0:00 Amanda Bradford on building The League 4:30 Hand-reviewing early applications 6:40 Building an MVP with a rented co-founder 8:56 The VIP approach 13:10 Why Amanda only let in 500 people 15:44 The “Heavy Hitter” fake paywall test 16:44 Odoo: The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at https://odoo.com/twist 17:46 Why live events are the real unlock 21:35 Controversy as a hook 24:22 Flashback to Patrick Collison in 2017 25:13 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations - interviews, meetings, calls - you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! 28:13 Stripe: Then vs. Now 30:53 G2i has been recruiting software engineers for over a decade. Go to https://g2i.co/twist to find out how G2i vets engineers, and can help you hire them in days, not weeks. 32:17 Why did PayPal stay PayPal? 37:50 Problem, not a product 44:33 Thanks to our partners at Rippling! Head to https://rippling.ai/twist and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business. 45:46 The outage nobody noticed 51:00 Why persistence beats pivoting 52:13 What’s left before a Stripe IPO? Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack: TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/ TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/ TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/ Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Thank you to our partners: Odoo: The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at https://Odoo.com/twist G2i has been recruiting software engineers for over a decade. Go to G2i.co/twist to find out how G2i vets engineers, and can help you hire them in days, not weeks. Thanks to our partners at Rippling! Head to https://Rippling.ai/twist and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business. Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://Plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ | 56m 48s | ||||||
| 10/24/26 | OpenAI’s $1.25T Raise, Starlink Mobile & Zuck’s Tax Deal | EP 2354 | This Week In Startups is made possible by: Plaud - https://plaud.ai/twist Sentry - https://sentry.io/twist Lightfield - https://lightfield.app Rippling - https://rippling.ai/twist Today’s show: Is OpenAI finally priced correctly? Jason argues that the reported $30 billion raise at a $1.25 trillion valuation is finally “right-sized.” He also says that he’d put money in at that price, while walking through the risks that could still sink the investment. It’s a Friday all-news episode with Jason and Lon, covering OpenAI’s latest round, SpaceX’s push to become America’s fourth major carrier, Zuck and Meta’s creative move around the proposed California billionaire tax, and some of Lon and Jason’s favorite documentaries. Plus we’re asking the timely question: who watches the AI watchdogs? Relevant Links OpenAI nears up to $30B round at $1.25T valuation, led by UAE investors (CNBC): https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/22/openai-funding-round-uae-investors.html Anthropic investors eye a $2T IPO (Nasdaq): https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/move-over-spacex-anthropic-targets-2-trillion-valuation Uber puts all 30,000 employees on ChatGPT Work (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/22/uber-puts-all-30000-employees-on-chatgpt-work/ Telecom stocks fall as SpaceX eyes 80,000 cell sites (Yahoo Finance): https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/telecom-stocks-fall-spacex-eyes-134838815.html Verizon launches simpler plans and drops activation and upgrade fees (Fox Business): https://foxbusiness.com/markets/verizon-launches-simpler-plans-new-loyalty-program-drops-some-fees Amazon Leo's launch slips past early 2026 (ITdaily): https://itdaily.com/news/network/amazon-leo-faces-delays/ METR and Redwood Research's write-up on red-teaming OpenAI's agent monitoring: https://metr.org/blog/2026-10-22-red-teaming-openai-agent-monitoring/ Open Philanthropy is now Coefficient Giving: https://coefficientgiving.org/research/the-story-behind-our-new-name/ Court documents show the alleged FSU shooter's ChatGPT chats (AOL): https://www.aol.com/news/court-documents-show-florida-state-233829466.html Meta's 8-K filing on the Founder Alignment Agreement (SEC): https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001326801/000162828026066700/meta-20261019.htm Polymarket: will California's billionaire tax pass?: https://polymarket.com/event/billionaire-one-time-wealth-tax-passes-in-california-election-2026 Mark Cuban vs. Ro Khanna on the billionaire tax (Fortune): https://fortune.com/2026/08/17/mark-cuban-california-billionaires-tax-wealth-ro-khanna/ Elizabeth Holmes: The Theranos Deception (60 Minutes archive): https://cbsnews.com/video/elizabeth-holmes-the-theranos-deception-60-minutes-archive “The Act of Killing” trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3FcB1UZHlg “Grizzly Man” trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWA7GtDmNFU “Hoop Dreams” trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uf9Nq2ju0t0 “The King of Kong” trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5XvArGGIzk “A Short Stay in Hell” by Steven L. Peck: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0983748446 “The Library of Babel” by Jorge Luis Borges [PDF]: https://sites.evergreen.edu/politicalshakespeares/wp-content/uploads/sites/226/2015/12/Borges-The-Library-of-Babel.pdf “The Eureka Machine” by Richard Socher: https://www.amazon.com/dp/154170570X Timestamps: 0:00 Jason’s in SF with the LAUNCH Accelerator 37 cohort 2:40 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations - interviews, meetings, calls - you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! 6:34 Tactical & Practical talks live at Salesforce Tower 10:21 Using Claude for brainstorming, not writing 19:26 Sentry - New users can get $240 in free credits when they go to https://sentry.io/twist and use the code TWIST26 20:42 OpenAI closing $30B at a $1.25T valuation 26:04 Why OpenAI could still lose 30:25 Would you put 30% of your retirement into OpenAI? 32:34 Lightfield - Name one person who's ever enjoyed updating a CRM. Exactly. Lightfield's AI agent does it for you - it even prospects and books your meetings. Used by thousands of startups. Free at https://lightfield.app 34:27 Every Tesla becomes a Starlink hotspot 43:06 What would be the ultimate SpaceX domain name? 45:00 Thanks to our partners at Rippling! Head to https://rippling.ai/twist and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business. 46:10 Is METR a fair watchdog for OpenAI? 54:03 Jason’s “Know Your Customer” plan for AI models 1:03:34 Meta’s deal to keep Zuckerberg in Cali 1:14:35 Why Jason would raise the minimum wage 1:18:42 Does Nathan Fielder give Liz Holmes a pass? 1:30:59 “A Short Stay in Hell” and “The Eureka Machine” Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack: TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/ TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/ TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/ Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com | 1h 33m 11s | ||||||
| 10/22/26 |  We asked 3 VCs: would you invest in Elizabeth Holmes’ next startup? | E2353 | This Week In Startups is made possible by: DigitalOcean - Head to https://do.co/twist to start building on DigitalOcean's AI-Native Cloud today — and cut your AI workload costs by up to 50% Odoo: The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at https://odoo.com/twist Thanks to our partners at Rippling! Head to https://rippling.ai/twist and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business. Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! Today’s show: Elizabeth Holmes remains in prison for defrauding Theranos investors, even as she stars in the hit Nathan Fielder/Lance Oppenheim documentary “You Can See Everything.” But we’re asking the real question: After all the very public accusations… the hit pieces in the press and the Hulu drama series picking apart the scandal… would tech investors and VCs be willing to back her NEXT startup, if the numbers were right? On today’s TWiST roundtable, Jason Calacanis is joined by Sam Lessin (Slow Ventures), Paige Finn Doherty (Behind Genius Ventures), and Jenny Fielding (Everywhere Ventures). In addition to reviews of the movie tech insiders can’t stop talking about, they cover why every seed portfolio needs a little bit of fraud, how diligence scales with check size, having trademark rights to your own voice, and the pro rata rights debate that’s still raging over Valar Atomics’ lawsuit with seed investors Day One Ventures. Guests Sam Lessin on X: https://x.com/lessin Slow Ventures: https://slow.co/ Paige Finn Doherty on X: https://x.com/paigefinnn Behind Genius Ventures: https://www.behindgeniusventures.com/ Jenny Fielding on X: https://x.com/jefielding Everywhere Ventures: https://www.everywhere.vc/ Relevant Links OpenSnow: https://opensnow.com/ “You Can See Everything” trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvW_N5p1q44 HBO Max “The Rehearsal” trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fjPFt8cpic Elizabeth Holmes moves to halfway house in 2027 (ABC7): https://abc7.com/story/elizabeth-holmes-scheduled-move-halfway-house-august-2027/19862832/ Billy Evans’ blood-testing startup Haemanthus (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/10/elizabeth-holmes-partner-reportedly-fundraising-for-new-blood-testing-startup/ Polymarket: Oscars 2027 Best Picture: https://polymarket.com/event/oscars-2027-best-picture-winner-20260727173620857 Kalshi: Oscars 2027 Best Documentary: https://kalshi.com/markets/kxoscardocu/event/kxoscardocu-27 Charlie Javice sentenced to 7 years (NBC News): https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/charlie-javice-sentenced-7-years-prison-fraudulent-175m-sale-financial-rcna234536 Trump pardons Nikola founder Trevor Milton (Axios): https://www.axios.com/2025/03/28/trump-pardons-nikola-founder-trevor-milton Sequoia writes its FTX stake down to zero (Fortune): https://fortune.com/2022/11/10/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-sequoia-writes-down-214-million-investment-to-zero-venture-capital-crypto Who lost money on Theranos? (Fortune): https://fortune.com/2018/05/04/theranos-investment-lost “Barbarians at the Gate” on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Barbarians-Gate-Fall-RJR-Nabisco/dp/B08YP9MDHX a16z backs Adam Neumann’s Flow (Commercial Observer): https://commercialobserver.com/2022/08/adam-neumann-350m-backing-andreessen-horowitz/ Martin Shkreli lifetime pharma ban (FTC): https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/01/statement-chair-lina-m-khan-ruling-judge-denise-l-cote-federal-trade-commission-et-al-v-vyera Isaia Taylor post announcing Valar suit: https://x.com/isaiah_p_taylor/status/2108679133467414855 Day One Ventures response: https://x.com/mashadrokova/status/2108732979191390528 ElevenLabs Iconic Marketplace: https://elevenlabs.io/iconic-marketplace Apple Corps vs. Apple Computer, a history (MacTech): https://www.mactech.com/2004/04/09/a-history-of-the-apple-vs-apple-dispute Cameo for Business: https://www.cameo.com/business Nox Metals: https://noxmetals.co Electric Plant Company: https://www.electricplant.co/ Ablieration: https://abliteration.ai/ Timestamps: 0:00 Our new “This Week in VC” newsletter 2:15 Panel intro: Sam Lessin, Paige Doherty, Jenny Fielding 8:09 Why gambling loses appeal for VCs 11:02 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations - interviews, meetings, calls - you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! 16:18 DigitalOcean - Head to https://do.co/twist to start building on DigitalOcean's AI-Native Cloud today - and cut your AI workload costs by up to 50% 17:35 Best moments from “You Can See Everything” 21:42 Unreliable narrators and unknowable situations 24:41 Living in a post-truth moment 30:02 Due diligence horror stories 32:45 Odoo: The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at https://odoo.com/twist 34:50 The VCs remember their fraud investments 38:39 How LAUNCH trains founders to prep for diligence 44:31 How Elizabeth Holmes kept raising money 54:54 Would you invest in an Elizabeth Holmes company? 57:27 Thanks to our partners at Rippling! Head to https://rippling.ai/twist and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business. 1:02:28 Why seed funds need pro rata rights 1:09:02 When “founder friendly” means rolling over 1:16:25 The three investor relationships: team, founders, LPs 1:21:02 ElevenLabs “Archer” voice controversy 1:27:16 How NIL deals reshaped college sports 1:33:54 Cameo for Business and long-tail celeb endorsements 1:35:51 Portfolio company shoutouts Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack: TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/ TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/ TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/ Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com | 1h 41m 10s | ||||||
| 10/20/26 |  Anthropic Gives Away 5% of Its Shares, Clone’s Muscle Robot, ElevenLabs Steals Podcaster's Voice | This Week In Startups is made possible by: Plaud: https://plaud.ai/twist Northwest Registered Agent: https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain Vanta: https://www.vanta.com/twist Rippling: https://rippling.ai/twist Today’s show: Jason can’t stop praising Nathan Fielder’s new A24 hybrid documentary about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, “You Can See Everything,” and he’s insisting that Lon check it out before the next podcast. Hear his spoiler-free review, how the film upended his expectations based on Fielder’s previous work, and why Lon also recommends Lance Oppenheim’s HBO Max series “Ren Faire.” Plus, we’re talking to Clone Robotics co-founder and CEO Dhanush Radhakrishnan about why he thinks robots should not just be humanoid but should look and move precisely like humans. We’re digging deep into how his hydraulic myofiber artificial muscle technology alters and even improves on the pulley-based systems being deployed by competitors, why he thinks the models that power domestic helper-bots will be commoditized, and how quickly he thinks he can put a robo-butler in every American home. Plus we’re comparing the potential impact of Anthropic’s new Public Benefit Fund vs. Elon Musk’s plan to give every baby a share of SpaceX, and re-considering simulation theory after Odyssey dropped an artificial fruit fly brain into an artificial landscape. Guest Dhanush Radhakrishnan on X: https://x.com/dhanushisrad Clone Robotics: https://clonerobotics.com/ Related Links “You Can See Everything” trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvW_N5p1q44 “You Can See Everything” on Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/you_can_see_everything John Carreyrou’s Theranos investigation (Wall Street Journal): https://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-has-struggled-with-blood-tests-1444881901 “Ren Faire” HBO Max trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHZUVTrrexE “Nathan for You”: Smokers Allowed clip (Comedy Central): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HttB2fYAm-8 Anthropic: Investing in the Public Benefit: https://www.anthropic.com/news/public-benefit-fund Elon Musk SpaceX pledge: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2112089556615123114 Dell’s $6.25B Invest America commitment: https://www.onedell.com/investamerica/ Odyssey Fly Simulation X post: https://x.com/odysseyml/status/2111589148146749616 Chris Williamson: “The ElevenLabs Situation is Crazy”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxDNHLgWInU ElevenLabs’ Legendary Voices marketplace: https://elevenlabs.io/iconic-marketplace TWiST newsletter on Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com/ LAUNCH Careers page: https://careers.launch.co/ Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:10 Plaud - If your work depends on conversations - interviews, meetings, calls - you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! 03:18 Jason's "You Can See Everything" reaction 14:37 Northwest Registered Agent - Got a new business idea? Northwest Registered Agent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more - with no purchase required! Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain 15:27 What films max out RT's critic and audience scores 20:08 Anthropic commits 5% equity to Public Benefit Fund 24:28 Would equity change how Americans feel about AI? 27:08 Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://www.vanta.com/twist 38:38 Rippling - Thanks to our partners at Rippling! Head to https://rippling.ai/twist and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business. 39:48 Dhanush from Clone Robotics joins the show 42:43 How hydraulic muscle technology actually works 54:55 When can we have our robot butlers please? 56:55 Where will Clone get its robot brains? 1:12:17 Odyssey trapped a fake fly brain in a simulated environment 1:23:09 Did ElevenLabs steal a podcaster's voice? 1:30:13 Check us out on Substack! Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack: TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/ TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/ TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/ Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekinstartups Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com | 1h 34m 19s | ||||||
| 10/17/26 | Flying Cars, OpenAI Spies, Why AI Isn’t Sticking (Superhuman CEO) | This Week In Startups is made possible by: Lightfield: https://lightfield.app Every.io: https://every.io/ PayPal: https://paypal.com/business Plaud: https://plaud.ai/twist GoDaddy: https://www.godaddy.com/ Today’s show: Today’s college grads are showing up to work at Jason’s company unable to write three sentences. He’s asking what Shishir Mehrotra of Superhuman, the company behind Grammarly, can do to fix that. Shishir delves into Superhuman’s reasons for acquiring GPTZero, the most popular AI detector, and the AI notetaker Fathom, and the spreadsheet startup Rows. Plus, how Shishir responds to accusations that Grammarly helps students cheat in the classroom, why writers should disclose when they’re collaborating with an LLM, and Jason's CEO wish list for fresh Grammarly features. In the news, Tesla demoed its long-awaited Roadster, which used SpaceX thrusters to do some flips and propel itself over five other Teslas… And OpenAI warned staffers that spies may be trying to seduce them in order to steal company secrets… And the shutdown of Character AI prompts Jason to declare: “AI relationships are evil.” Guests: Shishir Mehrotra on X: https://x.com/shishirmehrotra Superhuman: https://superhuman.com Relevant Links: Rows, the spreadsheet startup Superhuman bought, announces the deal → https://rows.com/blog/post/rows-is-joining-superhuman Superhuman to acquire GPTZero (Business Wire) → https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260623083788/en/Superhuman-to-Acquire-GPTZero-AI-Authenticity-Platform Is the Internet AI, GPTZero's live tracker of AI content on Reddit, LinkedIn and X → https://istheinternetai.com GPTZero AI Vision, the extension that flags AI posts as you browse → https://gptzero.me/ai-vision Superhuman acquires YC-backed notetaker Fathom (TechCrunch) → https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/14/superhuman-acquires-yc-backed-notetaker-fathom-as-productivity-platforms-push-for-agentic-work/ Grammarly Authorship, which shows how much of your writing came from AI → https://www.grammarly.com/authorship GPTZero Authorship and Writing Replay → https://gptzero.me/authorship Stanley Druckenmiller says his WSJ op-ed was written with AI (NOTUS) → https://www.notus.org/media/stanley-druckenmillers-wsj-op-ed-bessent-ai Superhuman Go, the AI assistant that works wherever you type → https://superhuman.com/go Tesla reveals its new Roadster with SpaceX thrusters (TechCrunch) → https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/15/tesla-reveals-spacex-powered-roadster-that-flies-and-falls-with-style/ OpenAI employee arrested over a hidden listening device in an executive conference room (NBC News) → https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/openai-employee-arrested-hidden-listening-device-company-says-rcna603262 Eight states sue OpenAI over ChatGPT's alleged harm to kids (NBC News) → https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/openai-sued-eight-states-alleged-harm-chatgpt-rcna603614 Timestamps: 00:00:00 Intro 00:07:14 GPTZero and the fight over what's human 00:09:27 How much of Reddit, LinkedIn and X is AI 00:10:56 Fathom and the 90% of work that's spoken 00:12:05 Lightfield - Name one person who's ever enjoyed updating a CRM. Exactly. Lightfield's AI agent does it for you - it even prospects and books your meetings. Used by thousands of startups. Free at https://lightfield.app/ 00:16:27 Why Jason says every employee should use Grammarly 00:18:04 How to test whether new hires can actually write 00:22:08 Every - For all of your incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, accounting, taxes or other back-office administration needs, visit https://every.io/. 00:24:22 Grammarly Authorship and proving the work is yours 00:25:53 How accurate are AI detectors 00:30:36 Jason wants AI writing flagged by default 00:32:34 Enforcing Grammarly and Go across a whole team 00:36:45 PayPal - PayPal is built for all businesses. Get started at https://paypal.com/business 00:37:28 Assist, chat and do, three kinds of AI agents 00:41:06 Jason's feedback on the Grammarly keyboard 01:13:27 Tesla demos the Roadster on SpaceX thrusters 01:21:20 OpenAI engineer charged with bugging an executive conference room 01:21:43 Why OpenAI warned employees about foreign spies 01:27:57 Eight states sue OpenAI over harm to kids Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack: TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/ TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/ TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/ Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com | 1h 33m 19s | ||||||
| 10/15/26 | The Ex-DeepMind Researcher Taking On China’s Open Source AI | This Week In Startups is made possible by: Paper: https://getpaper.ai/twist Superhuman: https://superhuman.com/ Odoo: https://Odoo.com/twist Today’s show: Misha Laskin of Reflection AI joins Jason to explain why big companies are done renting their AI from closed labs. Enterprises want to keep their data, cut their costs, and tune their models to their unique businesses. Reflection is launching its first open-weight model, Beam, just three months after acquiring its first big cluster. Misha admits that Beam trails the best Chinese open models by a couple of months, and needs 3 to 4 times fewer tokens to reach the same answer, but nonetheless, the race is on. PLUS, Misha explains how “reward hacking” led that rogue OpenAI model to break out of its test sandbox and steal the answers from Hugging Face's servers. The model solved the problem, just not the way anyone intended. There’s simply no way a few hundred safety researchers at closed labs can catch every flaw; open source is how software has always been made secure. It's also why he wants America to lead in open models again. So how close is America to catching up to the Chinese open source leaders? Watch this brand new TWiST and find out. Guests: Misha Laskin on X: https://x.com/MishaLaskin Reflection AI: https://reflection.ai/ Relevant Links: Introducing Beam, Reflection's first open model (Reflection AI) → https://reflection.ai/blog/introducing-beam Reflection AI unveils Beam as an open answer to Chinese labs (Semafor) → https://www.semafor.com/article/10/05/2026/reflection-ai-unveils-an-open-source-answer-to-chinese-labs Cursor's Composer 2 coding model, built on an open model (VentureBeat) → https://venturebeat.com/technology/cursors-new-coding-model-composer-2-is-here-it-beats-claude-opus-4-6-but micro1 passes $1 billion annual run rate, mentioned by Jason → https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/949082966/micro1-end-of-q3-update Hackers heat French supermarket fridges, sparking fires and spoiling food (CNN) → https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/12/europe/france-supermarket-cyberattack-fridges-intl Hugging Face postmortem on the OpenAI agent that broke out of its sandbox → https://huggingface.co/blog/agent-intrusion-technical-timeline NVIDIA OpenShell, an open-source sandbox for AI agents → https://docs.nvidia.com/openshell/latest/about/overview.html Timestamps: 00:00:00 Why companies are switching from renting AI to owning it 00:09:10 How Reflection sells the whole AI stack 00:10:24 Paper is the legal backbone for thousands of startup founders and fund managers - including Launch. Use getpaper.ai/twist to get your cap table free for a year - or two years if you're leaving Carta. 00:11:28 Who is moving AI onto their own servers 00:14:37 What it took to train Beam 00:20:26 Superhuman Go is an AI chat that's always there when you need it, already aware of what you're doing, and doesn't ask you to start from zero. Sign up to get the best in AI at https://superhuman.com/ 00:21:29 How reinforcement learning tasks get built 00:26:41 Hackers heat French supermarket fridges 00:29:07 The AI that broke out of its sandbox to cheat 00:31:05 The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at https://Odoo.com/twist 00:33:10 Why open source makes software safer 00:38:13 The encryption fight and Tim Cook's stand 00:42:53 Why China raced ahead in open models 00:47:35 How Beam stacks up against Chinese models 00:50:21 When American open models catch up 00:58:39 Staying independent Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack: TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/ TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/ TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/ Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com | 1h 00m 23s | ||||||
| 10/12/26 | The Gadget That's Better in Crowds Than Your Phone + Ring’s Founder Before Amazon Bought It | E2349 | This Week In Startups is made possible by: Plaud: https://plaud.ai/twist Northwest Registered Agent: https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain NetSuite: https://netsuite.ai/twist The Conservation Fund: https://conservationfund.org Today’s show: At packed concerts, festivals, and stadiums, your phone gets WORSE with every person who shows up. Totem gets better. Carter Fowler of Totem joins Alex to explain how his screen-free compass points you straight to your friends without relying on cell towers. Find out why Carter says Apple will never ship this in an iPhone, and why kids, ski patrols, and blind users have become some of his most loyal fans. PLUS, Lon and Alex dig into the archives for Jason's 2017 CES interview with Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, a year before Amazon bought the company. Jamie explains how a doorbell he couldn't hear in his garage became Ring, and why a strong mission is "cheating" when it comes to keeping a team focused. Then he tells Jason he wants to take Ring public, not sell it. Ironic because about a year later, Amazon bought it. And get ready for some hot takes on neighborhood license-plate cameras, years before the anti-Flock backlash. Guests: Carter Fowler on X: https://x.com/Carter_S_Fowler Totem: https://totemlabs.com Jamie Siminoff on X: https://x.com/JamieSiminoff Ring: https://ring.com Relevant Links: Totem Compass, the offline friend-finding compass → https://totemlabs.com Totem closes its $1.3M pre-seed round (Business Wire) → https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250212385814/en/Totem-Closes-%241.3M-in-Pre-Seed-Funding-to-Scale-Operations-for-Explosive-Demand Totem's community crowdfunding round → https://wefunder.com/totemlabs Totem's record Lost Lands deployment last year (Business Wire) → https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251009622355/en The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen, mentioned by Alex → https://www.amazon.com/dp/1633691780 Original TWiST Interview with Jamie from 2017 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puP_D3k7vVI Amazon officially closes its Ring acquisition in 2018 (TechCrunch) → https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/12/amazon-officially-owns-ring-so-lets-talk-product-integration/ Ring calls off its Flock Safety partnership after the Super Bowl ad backlash (Engadget) → https://engadget.com/home/ring-calls-off-partnership-with-police-surveillance-provider-flock-safety-031717605.html Flock Safety plans to cut about 18% of its staff (Reuters via The Star) → https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2026/10/09/exclusive-ai-surveillance-startup-flock-safety-to-cut-several-hundred-jobs-amid-backlash-sources-say Timestamps: 00:00:00 Totem, an offline compass for finding friends at festivals 00:00:31 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations - interviews, meetings, calls - you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://Plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! 00:04:27 Why phones fail in big crowds 00:06:42 How more devices make the mesh network stronger 00:09:07 Why Totem beats phone GPS in a crowd 00:11:40 Got a new business idea? Northwest Registered Agent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more - with no purchase required! - Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain 00:13:34 Why Apple won't build this into the iPhone 00:18:10 Raising money for hardware in an AI world 00:22:10 NetSuite: For the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to https://netsuite.ai/twist 00:23:08 Turning crowd movement into a predictive model 00:28:04 Rentals, kids and accessibility use cases 00:32:22 The Conservation Fund: Find out more about how The Conservation Fund is protecting land, wildlife, and our shared access to the great outdoors while also providing economic opportunities. Visit https://conservationfund.org. 00:35:47 Mesh networks on the front lines in Ukraine 00:38:01 Flashback to Jason and Ring's Jamie Siminoff at CES 2017 00:41:44 Roasting Jamie's earlier startups 00:48:26 How a doorbell in the garage became Ring 00:53:34 Why you should always bet on your friends 01:02:21 Why a strong mission is cheating 01:07:45 Selling to Amazon versus going public 01:12:09 License plate readers and the Flock backlash Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack: TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/ TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/ TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/ Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com | 1h 20m 26s | ||||||
| 10/10/26 | Jason Reacts To Japanese Founder Pitches + Fireside Chat With Yuki Shirato | This Week In Startups is made possible by: Lightfield: https://lightfield.app Rippling: https://Rippling.ai/twist Upwork: https://upwork.com Today’s show: AssetHub built an AI agent that recreates licensed characters in 3D while respecting copyright rules... But Jason says he needs to think BIGGER. 11 founders pitched their companies to Jason and Yuki Shirato of Techstars Tokyo at our Osaka event this week, and neither investor held back. Find out why Jason says Seekr feels more like a vitamin than a painkiller, and needs to ditch the press mentions from their deck. Plus, a vital lesson for founders: if everyone already knows about the problem you're solving, investors expect a tight solution and business plan. Truly novel business ideas get more leeway. Japan's startup community is booming, with many recent grads bailing on lifelong gigs at major corporations to start companies. But here's why Yuki says the fear of failure is still holding back progress. Guests: Yuki Shirato on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuki-shirato Techstars Tokyo: https://www.techstars.com/accelerators/tokyo Founder Pitches: Seekr: https://seekrai.global/product Arabat: https://arabat.it/ AssetHub: https://assethub.io/ CRAZIA: https://crazia.co/ JuJuJuu: https://jujujuu.com/ JAPANMEDIA: https://lp.japanmedia.ai/ Tsuin AI: https://www.tsuin.ai Rumi Light: https://www.rumilight.jp/ GENCHI: https://www.toraru.me/en TattvaSilicon: https://tattvasilicon.com/ Mimi AI: https://nihongo-chat-ruby.vercel.app/onboarding Relevant Links: Founder University Japan, Jason's pre-accelerator program with JETRO → https://japan.founder.university/ Techstars Tokyo announces its Class of 2026 → https://www.techstars.com/newsroom/techstars-tokyo-accelerator-announces-class-of-2026 Yuki Shirato on why Japan should be on every founder's radar (Techstars) → https://www.techstars.com/blog/insights-and-trends/should-japan-be-on-your-radar-as-a-founder How Techstars Tokyo is helping make Japan a global startup hub (The Japan Times) → https://www.japantimes.co.jp/2025/12/25/special-supplements/accelerating-business-ambitions-global-scale-techstars-tokyo/ VidiLabs, maker of the Seekr indoor positioning platform → https://seekrai.global/ Density, the people-counting sensor company Jason has backed for a decade → https://www.density.io Arabat, recovering critical minerals from batteries with citrus and farm waste → https://arabat.it/ AssetHub raises a $2M seed for its AI 3D platform (The Bridge) → https://thebridge.jp/en/2025/08/aix3d-production-platform-assethub-raises-approximately-¥300-million-in-seed-funding Seedance 2.0, the ByteDance AI video model Jason says fans are using to make Marvel shorts → https://seed.bytedance.com/en/blog/seedance-2-0-official-launch Bending Spoons, the company Jason cites for buying apps and running them with tiny AI-powered teams (TechCrunch) → https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/31/what-is-bending-spoons-everything-to-know-about-aols-acquirer/ Burning Chrome by William Gibson, the source of “the street finds its own uses for things” → https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ICMWZH4/ Timestamps: 00:00:00 Jason's first trip to Japan and the food crawl 00:03:07 Why everyone in Japan acts like a founder 00:03:42 Founder University comes to Japan 00:08:44 Techstars Tokyo and Japan's push for global founders 00:10:28 Why Japanese startups stay on the island 00:12:44 Parents, lifetime jobs, and the fear of failure 00:15:13 How Japan mastered product market fit 00:18:43 Lightfield: Name one person who's ever enjoyed updating a CRM. Exactly. Lightfield's AI agent does it for you - it even prospects and books your meetings. Used by thousands of startups. Free at https://lightfield.app 00:20:10 The white lab coat and the man who named his daughter Cinnamon 00:25:05 Seekr: centimeter-precise indoor navigation 00:27:38 Why investors want the business case, not the press 00:28:21 Rippling: Thanks to our partners at Rippling! Head to https://Rippling.ai/twist and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business. 00:34:54 Arabat: recovering rare earths with orange peels 00:38:26 Getting from free pilots to paid pilots 00:38:38 Upwork: Upwork helps businesses find highly skilled freelance professionals for specialized work. Post your job for free at https://upwork.com 00:43:57 AssetHub: AI 3D models for anime and game IP 00:52:40 Come for the tool, stay for the marketplace 00:54:35 CRAZIA: turning customer conversations into growth 00:56:42 JuJuJuu: giving alternative protein the structure of steak 00:59:02 JAPANMEDIA: AI manga and anime at a fifth of the cost 01:01:24 Tsuin AI: AI twins that think and act like you 01:03:15 Picking the layup and the wild card 01:09:29 Rumi Light: faster data paths inside AI servers 01:11:40 GENCHI: a local avatar that shops Japan for you 01:13:51 TattvaSilicon: analog circuit design in a day 01:15:36 Mimi AI: learning to actually speak Japanese 01:17:51 Why a live shopping avatar is Jason's wild card Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack: TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/ TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/ TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/ Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com | 1h 24m 45s | ||||||
| 10/8/26 |  What VCs Really Think About Personal AI Agents | E2347 | This Week In Startups is made possible by: Plaud: https://plaud.ai/twist Odoo: https://odoo.com/twist Northwest Registered Agent: https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain Quo: https://www.quo.com/perks/twist Today’s show: A personal AI agent that’s still invite-only just hit a $10 billion valuation. Guest host Deedy Das of Menlo Ventures is joined by Kanu Gulati of Khosla Ventures, Chris Farmer of SignalFire, and Sheel Mohnot of Better Tomorrow Ventures to debate whether Instinct can beat Meta’s Muse, what they actually use their own agents for, and what breaks when everyone’s agent makes the same move. Plus we’re also talking about OpenAI’s math breakthroughs, the Factory vs. Cognition fight, and whether SaaS is still worth funding. Catch the whole debate on this week’s VC roundtable. Guests: Deedy Das on X: https://x.com/deedydas Menlo Ventures: https://menlovc.com Kanu Gulati on X: https://x.com/KanuGulati Khosla Ventures: https://www.khoslaventures.com Chris Farmer on X: https://x.com/chriswfarmer SignalFire: https://www.signalfire.com Sheel Mohnot on X: https://x.com/pitdesi Better Tomorrow Ventures: https://www.btv.vc Relevant Links: OpenAI’s 722 math manuscripts from an unreleased internal model → https://github.com/openai/math OpenAI’s earlier Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize result → https://openai.com/index/navier-stokes-solution/ Pramaana Labs, the Khosla-backed startup turning tax rules into provable logic → https://pramaanalabs.ai Logos Research, the Imperial College spinout verifying AI-written financial code → https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/articles/2026/logos-research-plans-to-make-ai-reasoning-trustworthy-in-high-stakes-environments/ EvenUp, SignalFire’s AI company for personal injury law → https://www.evenuplaw.com/ WindBorne Systems, the Khosla-backed weather balloon company Kanu mentioned → https://windbornesystems.com Gokul Rajaram’s X Post: https://x.com/gokulr/status/2107851356019290569?s=20 micro1, the AI training data company Chris and LAUNCH backs → https://www.micro1.ai Vercel’s data on companies shifting to open-weight models → https://vercel.com/i/open-weight-models Instinct raises $1B at a $10B valuation (SiliconANGLE) → https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/28/everyday-personal-ai-assistant-startup-instinct-raises-1b-at-10b-valuation/ Meta introduces Muse, its personal AI agent → https://about.fb.com/news/2026/09/introducing-muse-personal-ai-agent/ Wajo, maker of the Fo agent Kanu uses → https://wajo.ai Factory’s CEO accuses his board adviser of spying for Cognition (TechCrunch) → https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/30/factory-ceo-just-accused-his-vc-board-advisor-of-spying-for-cognition/ xAI rents its Colossus 1 data center to Anthropic (Data Center Dynamics) → https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/musk-spacex-xai-is-actively-seeking-more-ai-compute-customers-following-anthropic-deal/ Bending Spoons agrees to buy Miro, weeks after Airtable → https://investors.bendingspoons.com/newsroom/bending-spoons-agrees-to-acquire-miro The FCC’s new rule on foreign-made robots → https://www.fcc.gov/covered-list-faqs-robots-inverters Timestamps: 00:00:00 VC roundtable with guest host Deedy Das 00:01:23 If your work depends on conversations - interviews, meetings, calls - you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! 00:02:11 OpenAI's math results and what's left to invest in 00:05:10 Formalizing taxes and code so AI can prove its work 00:06:37 Why science breakthroughs still need the real world 00:09:44 Odoo: The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at https://Odoo.com/twist 00:10:54 Can startups compete with the labs on compute? 00:13:02 Private data and vertical AI as the moat 00:18:54 Would you invest in AI training data companies? 00:20:34 Got a new business idea? Northwest Registered Agent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more - with no purchase required! - Learn more at www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain 00:26:29 What a great founder looks like in the AI era 00:29:13 Quo (formerly OpenPhone) gives you a clean, modern way to handle every customer call, text, and thread all in one place. Try it free at https://quo.com/TWiST 00:34:35 Is Instinct worth $10 billion? 00:41:31 Can Muse reach a billion daily users? 00:44:49 Favorite personal agent use cases 00:49:06 What happens when everyone's agent makes the same call 00:53:17 Factory vs. Cognition and VCs backing rivals 01:03:49 Is SaaS still worth venture money? 01:09:49 Where the panel gets its information 01:14:45 What a seed fund means in 2026 Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack: TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/ TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/ TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/ Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Thank you to our partners: Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ | 1h 18m 47s | ||||||
| 10/7/26 |  Jason Mentors The Next Generation + Why AI Is Bad at Teaching (Aristotle Interview) | E2346 | This Week In Startups is made possible by: Vanta: https://www.vanta.com/twist DigitalOcean: https://do.co/twist Sentry: https://sentry.io/twist Plaud: https://plaud.ai/twist Today’s show: The smarter AI gets, the more it just does the work for you, and the less helpful it becomes as a tutor. Shan Reddy of Aristotle joins Jason to demo a voice-first tutor built to run a session the way a $200-an-hour human tutor would. We also dive into why frontier models are trained to hand you answers rather than build real understanding. PLUS, in Ask Jason, an incoming Fordham student (Jason’s alma mater!) wants to prepare for a career in finance. Plus, David from NYU calls back and wants to discuss what everyone would do with $500K in free money. Then, why does Jason think the Doomerism is coming from inside the AI labs? Guests: Shan Reddy on X: https://x.com/rshanreddy Aristotle: https://www.heyaristotle.com/ Relevant Links: Shoe Dog by Phil Knight → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe_Dog Something Like an Autobiography by Akira Kurosawa → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Like_an_Autobiography Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson, which Dovid is reading now → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein:_His_Life_and_Universe Gartner, Jason's example of firms doing research on behalf of corporations → https://www.gartner.com/ "Religious Scholars Met With Anthropic. What They Heard Stunned Them." by Elizabeth Dias, The New York Times, Sept. 29, 2026; the story Lon brings up → https://www.inquirer.com/news/nation-world/religious-leaders-met-with-anthropic-20260930.html David Sacks accuses Anthropic of a "regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering"; the line Lon references (Bloomberg Law) → https://news.bloomberglaw.com/artificial-intelligence/anthropic-is-running-a-strategy-based-on-fear-mongering-sacks Aristotle's $5M seed round (PR Newswire) → https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/aristotle-secures-5m-to-replace-the-chatbot-with-high-dosage-ai-tutoring-for-students-302880500.html "The 2 Sigma Problem" by Benjamin Bloom (1984), original paper → https://web.mit.edu/5.95/readings/bloom-two-sigma.pdf Journal record (Educational Researcher / SAGE) → https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/0013189X013006004 NYC's AI moratorium through 8th grade (ABC News) → https://abcnews.com/Technology/new-york-city-public-schools-banning-ai-middle/story?id=136134872 Alpha School → https://www.alpha.school Brilliant's origin story at the LAUNCH Festival (NPR) → https://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/07/23/203677692/giving-brightest-kids-the-cram-school-experience-online Timestamps: 00:00:00 Live Ask Jason kicks off 00:00:14 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! 00:00:56 Fordham-bound caller asks how to break into finance in the AI era 00:05:59 Jason's gift: read one biography a month 00:10:06 Vanta: Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://www.vanta.com/twist 00:12:06 Returning caller David: what would you do with $500K? 00:19:53 DigitalOcean: Want to see what building on a true AI-native platform looks like? Head to https://do.co/twist to start building on DigitalOcean's AI-Native Cloud today - and cut your AI workload costs by up to 50%. 00:24:40 Bringing an AI protein folding tool into drug discovery 00:27:19 How to do customer discovery with big companies 00:29:44 The "dark arts" of market research and corporate intelligence 00:30:13 Sentry: Your team should be focused on shipping features - not chasing down bugs. New users can get $240 in free credits when they go to https://sentry.io/twist and use the code TWIST26 00:33:43 Is AI fear a dark PR campaign? 00:35:01 Anthropic meets with religious scholars 00:40:45 Are AI labs living through an Oppenheimer moment? 00:42:50 Why we need to talk about AI's upside in education 00:44:31 Sean Ready, co-founder and CEO of Aristotle, joins 00:45:42 Why AI models are getting worse at teaching 00:47:53 Aristotle demo: a voice AI tutor for AP Calculus 00:51:13 Predicting the next best teaching action 00:54:16 Bloom's two sigma problem and one-on-one tutoring 00:55:22 Aristotle's business model and pricing 00:57:53 Building a tutoring harness vs. relying on frontier labs 01:01:05 Why dyslexic students love Aristotle 01:02:40 Hand-grading thousands of hours of tutoring sessions 01:05:06 Socialization, classrooms and the future of public education 01:09:16 Where to try Aristotle and open roles Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack: TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/ TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/ TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/ Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ | 1h 10m 31s | ||||||
Want analysis for the episodes below?Free for Pro Submit a request, we'll have your selected episodes analyzed within an hour. Free, at no cost to you, for Pro users. | |||||||||
| 10/3/26 |  Inside The Startup Building Uncensored AI (Abliteration AI) | EP 2345 | This Week In Startups is made possible by: Every.io: https://every.io/ Northwest Registered Agent: https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain Odoo: https://odoo.com/twist Plaud: https://plaud.ai/twist Today’s show: What can AI do with the guardrails OFF? Devon Thomas of Abliteration.ai thinks defenders should have access to the same kinds of tools, rather than having one hand tied behind their backs. Then, on Ask Jason, learn what AI means for the billable hour from a legal-tech founder. PLUS, are AI microdramas a real ecosystem or a fad, and does AI finally make solo founders fundable? Guests: Devon Thomas on X: https://x.com/founderengineer Abliteration: https://abliteration.ai/ Relevant Links: Abliteration.ai on a16z speedrun — the accelerator Jason congratulated Devon on → https://speedrun.a16z.com/companies/abliteration TechCrunch: "Abliteration.ai is making a business out of removing AI guardrails" — the coverage behind the recent attention → https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/03/abliteration-ai-is-making-a-business-out-of-removing-ai-guardrails/ Abliteration.ai press page → https://abliteration.ai/press Anthropic Frontier Red Team: "GLM-5.3 and the spread of advanced cyber capabilities" — the blog Devon cited on how capable abliterated GLM-5.3 is → https://www.anthropic.com/research/glm-5-3-and-the-spread-of-advanced-cyber-capabilities CNBC: Trump's executive order renaming AI "super intelligence," signed the same day → https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/29/trump-ai-super-intelligence.html Nextgov/FCW: OpenAI agents accessed Census and SEC data — detail on the dozens of organizations OpenAI notified → https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2026/09/openai-says-its-advanced-models-may-have-gone-after-government-websites/416250/ Financial Times: "AI wrecking ball fractures billable-hour fee model" Seedance 2.5 — ByteDance's video model Bruno asked about → https://technode.com/2026/07/31/bytedance-launches-seedance-2-5-video-generation-model/ Pixar / Toy Story — the CGI "Toy Story moment" Jason expects for AI video → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_Story Practi — Mathew's platform for helping law firms move from hourly billing to subscriptions → https://practi.ai/hello Timestamps: 00:00:00 What http://Abliteration.ai does, and who the frontier labs are shutting out 00:02:44 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations - interviews, meetings, calls - you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! 00:02:56 Why defenders don't get the attackers' tools 00:04:16 "Inversion of control": letting customers set their own guardrails 00:06:47 Who's liable? The hammer analogy and the White House self-regulation pact 00:10:11 Every: For all of your incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, accounting, taxes or other back-office administration needs, visit https://every.io. 00:13:10 Why AI labs publicize their scariest hacks 00:18:52 Customers: from cyber startups to Fortune 500 CISOs 00:19:56 Northwest Registered Agent: Got a new business idea? Northwest Registered Agent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more - with no purchase required! - Learn more at http://northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain 00:24:41 Chinese image and video models 00:27:20 Why most businesses still barely use AI 00:29:02 Ask Jason begins 00:29:24 Mathew Kerbis (Practi): What does AI do to the billable hour? 00:30:16 Odoo: The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at https://Odoo.com/twist 00:32:45 Will subscriptions replace hourly billing? 00:37:27 Bruno Vilela: Are AI microdramas an ecosystem or a fad? 00:39:35 Lon's microdrama pitch to Snapchat and TikTok's PineDrama 00:48:09 Josh Ezell: Does AI change the bias against solo founders? 00:49:26 Jason's three-two-one framework and the risks founders must eliminate Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack: TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/ TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/ TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/ Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com | 53m 15s | ||||||
| 10/1/26 |  Justin Kan & Brian Chesky: The Rejections That Built Twitch and Airbnb | E2344 | This Week In Startups is made possible by: Plaud: https://plaud.ai/twist CLA: https://www.claconnect.com/withyou Sentry: https://sentry.io/twist Lightfield: https://lightfield.app Today’s show: Google once interviewed the entire Justin.tv (now Twitch) team and then walked away from an acquisition deal, saying they weren’t good enough. Seven investors passed on buying 10% of Airbnb for $150,000, a stake pegged at roughly $9.25 billion today. Lon Harris and Alex Wilhelm revisit classic TWiST interviews with Justin Kan of Twitch and Brian Chesky of Airbnb to find out what those founders understood that the market didn't. PLUS, how did a box of cereal win over Paul Graham and get Airbnb into Y Combinator? Flashback Guests: Justin Kan on X: https://x.com/justinkan Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ Justin Kan (@justinkan) on X Brian Chesky on X: https://x.com/bchesky AirBnB: https://www.airbnb.com/ Relevant Links: TWiST E900: Justin Kan, co-founder of Justin.tv, Twitch & Atrium (Feb 5, 2019) → https://thisweekinstartups.com/episodes/L3DP8VCE12s TWiST E1735: Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on early rejection, customer focus & AI (May 4, 2023) → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZ-BjJZxNoA Halo 3: the game that flooded Mahalo with traffic → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_3 Weblogs, Inc.: Jason's blog network, home of Engadget → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weblogs,_Inc. Instinct: the invite-only personal AI agent from founder Noah Shinn → https://www.instinct.co/ AMD to acquire World Labs for $8.2B in stock; Li becomes AMD chief scientist (Bloomberg) → https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-28/amd-to-buy-fei-fei-li-s-world-labs-ai-startup-for-8-2-billion Lovable: where Lon says he'd rebuild a bad app in two hours → https://lovable.dev/ Y Combinator → https://www.ycombinator.com/ Paul Graham on X → https://x.com/paulg Obama O's and Cap'n McCain's: the cereal that funded Airbnb → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbnb#History Stripe: what Paul Graham suggested they build instead → https://stripe.com/ Timestamps: 00:00:00 Justin Kan on episode 900 (Feb 2019) 00:03:44 When Jason and Justin realized people watch gaming 00:05:52 Mahalo, Halo 3, and betting a company on 3% of its traffic 00:10:21 CLA: Get started with CLA's CPAs, consultants, and wealth advisors now at https://www.claconnect.com/withyou 00:11:42 The "zombie startup" years and Google's rejection 00:17:06 Instinct: the AI agent built for venture capitalists 00:19:43 Sentry: New users can get $240 in free credits when they go to https://sentry.io/twist and use the code TWIST26 00:28:08 Kozmo.com and the era of "make number go up" 00:30:06 Lightfield: Name one person who's ever enjoyed updating a CRM. Exactly. Lightfield's AI agent does it for you - it even prospects and books your meetings. Used by thousands of startups. Free at https://lightfield.app 00:32:57 Why AI companies have to monetize faster 00:34:00 Clip: Justin Kan on knowing yourself as a founder 00:37:24 An early rejection of "founder mode"? 00:38:33 Brian Chesky on episode 1735 (May 2023) 00:39:27 "I hope that's not the only idea you're working on" 00:43:27 What 10% of Airbnb for $150K is worth today 00:46:05 Obama O's and the Y Combinator interview 00:48:15 Why investors fund unkillable, attention-hacking founders 00:54:37 Clip: Chesky on AI, deepfakes, and authenticity 00:58:13 Is AI costing jobs or just making them busier? 01:05:04 Did AI create "millions of startups"? Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack: TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/ TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/ TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/ Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com | 1h 18m 04s | ||||||
| 9/28/26 |  Jason’s Put a $5K Bounty on His Dream Chrome Extension | E2338 | This Week In Startups is made possible by: Every.io: https://every.io/ Northwest Registered Agent: https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain Sentry: https://sentry.io/twist Today’s show: A product that would have cost $500,000 to build in 2006 now costs less than a used car. Jason put up $5,000 on an idea he'd been sitting on for 20 years, and so far, we’ve received dozens of amazing submissions from vibecode experts. See how well the Top 3 demos fare, and which app was so good, Jason’s already thinking about spinning it off into a startup. PLUS, an unhoused founder calls in asking how to raise money for not one but two pre-revenue startups? Hear Jason and Lon’s advice. Submissions: Submission 1 — https://annotated.wtf By Robert Submission 2 — https://annotated.bytetalk.ai/feed By Alan Shiflett Alan on X: https://x.com/alanshiflett Submission 3 — https://anotated.com/ By Chirag Asarpota Chirag on X: https://x.com/ChiragAsarpota Relevant Links: annotated.com bounty brief — https://annotated.lovable.app/ All active TWiST bounties — https://www.thisweekinstartups.com/bo... The other open $5,000 bounty: a sidebar companion app for podcasts — https://www.notion.so/launch1/5K-Boun... Timestamps: 00:00:00 Why Jason bought annotated.com 00:00:33 The original idea: highlight any sentence on the web and dispute it 00:01:25 The rules: the code is open source, and Jason can cancel any time 00:02:06 Submission 1: Robert's annotated.wtf 00:10:08 Every.io - For all of your incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, accounting, taxes or other back-office administration needs, visit https://every.io 00:12:13 Submission 1 Scoring 00:12:28 Submission 2: Allan Shifflet's take 00:13:56 What it got right: profiles, follower counts, trending topics 00:16:40 Submission 3: annotaed.com, and buying the typo domain on purpose 00:20:20 Northwest Registered Agent - Got a new business idea? Northwest Registered Agent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more - with no purchase required! Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.... 00:23:26 Final scores, and how to enter round two 00:24:48 Incubating annotated inside a venture firm 00:29:46 Sentry - New users can get $240 in free credits when they go to https://sentry.io/twist and use the code TWIST 00:30:18 Ask Jason: a homeless founder with two startup ideas Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: / jason LinkedIn: / jasoncalacanis | 40m 46s | ||||||
| 9/28/26 |  The 5 Companies Apple Must Buy | This Week In Startups is made possible by: PayPal: https://paypal.com/business Northwest Registered Agent: https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain Odoo: https://Odoo.com/twist Today’s show: Wall Street suspects new Apple CEO John Ternus may do something predecessor Tim Cook almost never did: writing a huge check. So Jason and Lon are playing “fantasy draft” with Apple’s balance sheet, choosing five real companies to acquire over five “rounds.” Disney buys them a ton of IP and unlocks theme park synergies. Sony gets them a gaming console and massive anime distribution. Boston Dynamics buys them lots of robots, while Etched nets them cheaper inference. So many options! Then, we chat with Stacy Salvi of The90. Her wearable pendant tells you exactly how much sun damage you’re accumulating, long before you start to burn. Guest The90: https://the90.com/ Stacy Salvi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stacysalvi/ Relevant Links John Ternus becomes Apple CEO: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/04/tim-cook-to-become-apple-executive-chairman-john-ternus-to-become-apple-ceo/ Analyst: Ternus could bring bigger acquisitions: https://9to5mac.com/?p=1065466 “Grok Has Money” meme origin: https://x.com/gmfarcaster/status/2026318035103965414 Sunlight linked with lower COVID-19 deaths: https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2021/sunlight-linked-with-lower-covid-19-deaths Reid Hoffman: “If there aren’t any typos in this essay, we launched too late”: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/arent-any-typos-essay-we-launched-too-late-reid-hoffman/ Draft Picks ElevenLabs: https://elevenlabs.io/ Disney: https://thewaltdisneycompany.com/ Sony Group: https://www.sony.com/en/ Crunchyroll: https://www.crunchyroll.com/ Boston Dynamics: https://bostondynamics.com/ Perplexity: https://www.perplexity.ai/ DigitalOcean: https://www.digitalocean.com/ Etched: https://www.etched.com/ Rivian: https://rivian.com/ Lucid Motors: https://lucidmotors.com/ Superhuman: https://superhuman.com/ World Labs: https://www.worldlabs.ai/ PrismML: https://prismml.com/ Liquid AI: https://www.liquid.ai/ Kagi: https://kagi.com/ Sonos: https://www.sonos.com/en-us/shop Whoop: https://www.whoop.com/ Oura: https://ouraring.com/ Peloton: https://www.onepeloton.com/ Timestamps: 00:00:00 Will Ternus take "massively big swings"? 00:03:43 Round 1: ElevenLabs 00:04:46 Round 1: Disney 00:06:18 Round 2: Sony 00:08:22 Round 2: Boston Dynamics 00:09:23 Round 3: Perplexity 00:10:02 AD: PayPal is built for all business. Get started at https://paypal.com/business 00:11:52 Round 3: DigitalOcean 00:13:02 More picks: Etched 00:14:30 More picks: Lucid 00:15:58 More picks: Superhuman 00:16:48 More picks: Higgsfield and more 00:18:09 Fans make their selections 00:19:47 AD: Got a new business idea? @northwestagent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more, with no purchase required! Learn more at www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain 00:25:37 Stacy Salvi of The90 joins 00:29:28 AD: Thanks to our partner, Odoo, the all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at https://Odoo.com/twist 00:34:38 How the app calculates your Sunscore 00:42:12 Building a UV research dataset 00:45:09 Should The90 make a version for men? Names & Links Stacy Salvi - https://www.instagram.com/stacysalvi/ The90 - https://the90.com/ Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack: TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/ TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/ TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/ Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com | 50m 20s | ||||||
| 9/25/26 |  A rogue OpenAI agent hacked Australia’s government. Does this matter? | E2342 | This Week In Startups is made possible by: Lightfield: https://lightfield.app Paper: https://getpaper.ai/twist The Conservation Fund: https://conservationfund.org/ Plaud: https://plaud.ai/twist Athena: https://www.athena.com/jcal Today’s show: An OpenAI agent breached Australia's Medicare statistics portal in June, and it took 84 days for the Frontier Lab to publicly acknowledge it. Jason and Lon dig into whether this is an important cautionary tale about alignment, or if PM Anthony Albanese looking to join the AI conversation. Then Bryant Chou of Ploy joins to explain skipping pre-seed and seed entirely to raise $27M, and why he’s taking his time to build his all-in-one agentic solution for running businesses. Learn why Google is launching four TPUs into orbit for Project Suncatcher. PLUS, how many robots a week is Tesla now shipping with Optimus, and Jensen Huang told Ezra Klein basic math no longer matters. Is he right? Can we forget long division, at last? Guests: Bryant Chou on X: https://x.com/bryantchou PloyAI: https://ploy.ai/ Relevant Links: Ploy raises $27M seed led by First Round Capital and Y Combinator (Founderland) → https://www.founderland.ai/articles/webflow-co-founder-launches-ai-marketing-platform-with-27m-s-mqj8o952 OpenAI's $2M-in-tokens offer to every YC startup(TechCrunch via Yahoo) → https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/sam-altman-makes-mic-drop-212302858.html Original Bloomberg report on the a16z probe → https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-17/andreessen-horowitz-focus-of-doj-probe-over-board-directors Google: Project Suncatcher's first test launch on SpaceX's Transporter-18 → https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/google-research/google-project-suncatcher-facts/ ABC News (Australia): full timeline, from the June 18 breach to OpenAI's Sept. 10 email → https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-24/ai-agent-accessed-australian-government-site-pm-says/107189078 Ando emerges from stealth with $20M to take on Slack (TechCrunch) → https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/24/ando-eyes-slack-as-it-builds-team-messaging-platform-for-humans-and-agents-to-work-together/ Google's $900M investment in SpaceX's $1B round, January 2015 (VentureBeat) → https://venturebeat.com/technology/google-confirms-it-put-900m-into-spacexs-1b-round Tesla ramps Optimus to several hundred robots a week; hands are the bottleneck (Electrek, summarizing The Information) → https://electrek.co/2026/09/25/tesla-optimus-production-ramp-hands-ai-generalization-problems/ Jensen Huang tells Ezra Klein forgetting basic math may not matter, and that he doesn't know his own address (Kotaku) → https://kotaku.com/nvidia-ceo-doesnt-care-that-kids-are-forgetting-basic-math-because-of-ai-i-actually-dont-know-my-address-2000737092 Sydney Sweeney's Novig "Just Sports" ad and the athlete backlash, including Amy Hunt's comment (Yahoo) → https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/celebrity/articles/sydney-sweeney-novig-ad-controversy-172900515.html Nike exits the S&P 100 after 18 years (Fortune) → https://fortune.com/2026/09/08/nike-stock-plummets-sp500-market-cap-index/ The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth trailer: David Fincher directs Tarantino's script; IMAX Nov. 25, Netflix Dec. 23 (Variety) → https://variety.com/2026/film/news/the-further-mis-adventures-cliff-booth-trailer-brad-pitt-1236701901/ Timestamps: 0:00 Whoop fire alarm: Jason's dry-aged steak incident 1:30 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! 4:45 News: an OpenAI agent breached Australia's Medicare statistics portal 12:48 Scraper or hack? Australia's PM jumps into the AI safety debate 13:31 News: Google launches four TPUs into orbit for Project Suncatcher 18:27 Guest: Bryant Chou of PloyAI 20:07 AD: Paper is the legal backbone for thousands of startup founders and fund managers - including Launch. Use getpaper.ai/twist to get your cap table free for a year - or two years if you're leaving Carta. 21:11 Ploy's thesis: your website as your hardest working employee 27:05 Why a repeat unicorn founder went back to Y Combinator 38:55 The DOJ probe into a16z's Databricks and Fivetran board seats 44:57 "Nobody's thinking about you": Jason's stair story 45:17 Frontier models vs. your own model, and OpenAI's $2M YC token deal 54:04 News: Ando wants to replace Slack with agent-native chat 1:01:08 News: Tesla ramps Optimus to several hundred robots a week 1:04:48 Off-Duty: Jensen Huang tells Ezra Klein basic math may not matter 1:08:31 The MIT "Your Brain on ChatGPT" EEG study 1:09:57 Jason's five-part reset: sleep, diet, exercise, socializing, meditation 1:11:45 Off-Duty: Sydney Sweeney's Novig ad backlash 1:21:07 The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth trailer 1:23:41 Jason's first car: a 1970 Mustang Grande Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Subscribe to our Substack Newsletters! TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/ TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/ TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/ Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com | 1h 25m 53s | ||||||
| 9/23/26 |  VCs Would Bet on Open-Source AI Over OpenAI and Anthropic | E2341 | This Week In Startups is made possible by: Northwest Registered Agent: https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain Odoo: https://odoo.com/twist Rippling: https://rippling.ai/twist Plaud: https://plaud.ai/twist Harmonic: https://harmonic.ai/twist Today’s show: Anthropic and OpenAI released cheaper models on the same day with Claude Opus 5.5 and GPT-6, and these VCs would still bet on open source. Jason brings on Dave McClure of Practical Venture Capital, Jeff Clavier of Uncork Capital, and Jenny Fielding of Everywhere Ventures to discuss the argument for open-weight models over the frontier labs. Learn why median seed valuations have more than tripled since 2017. Why does Dave say it's a buyer's market for secondaries right now? PLUS, does Meta's Muse leave any room for Instinct, and why are fintech and healthcare suddenly out of favor? Guests: Dave McClure on X: https://x.com/davemcclure?lang=en Practical Venture Capital: https://practicalvc.com/ Jeff Clavier on X: https://x.com/jeff Uncorked Capital: https://uncorkcapital.com/ Jenny Fiedling on X: https://x.com/jefielding Everywhere Ventures: https://www.everywhere.vc/ Relevant Links: Instinct reportedly seeking $1B at a $10B valuation (report via The Information) → https://cryptobriefing.com/ai-assistant-startup-instinct-targets-10b-valuation-in-new-funding-talks-report/ Meta's Muse, the agent the panel sees as Instinct's biggest threat, now on Mac → https://aiweekly.co/alerts/meta-ships-muse-for-mac-agent-now-acts-in-native-macos-apps Trump calls Jensen Huang onstage at the All-In Summit → https://thenextweb.com/news/trump-phoned-jensen-huang-onstage-at-the-all-in-summit-to-call-ai-fear-a-hoax AI-assisted intel error nearly triggered a US intercept of a Chinese ship (CNN via gCaptain) → https://gcaptain.com/ai-error-nearly-triggered-u-s-intercept-of-chinese-ship-cnn-reports/ Bernie Sanders' 50% AI sovereign wealth fund bill + Altman meeting (Fortune) → https://fortune.com/2026/06/18/bernie-sanders-ai-fund-bill-sam-altman-1000-payments/ Stanley Druckenmiller's AI-written WSJ op-ed (Axios) → https://axios.com/2026/08/26/stanley-druckenmiller-ai-writing-wsj-op-ed Claude Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Sol/Luna launch the same day with price cuts (SiliconANGLE) → https://siliconangle.com/2026/09/22/anthropic-releases-claude-opus-5-5-and-openai-counters-with-two-cheaper-gpt-6-models/ Zipline: LAUNCH's "miss," later backed through the syndicate → https://www.flyzipline.com/ Micro1 → https://www.micro1.ai/ Founder University → https://www.founder.university/ [VERIFY] The Syndicate: angel invest alongside LAUNCH (apply, waitlist) → https://thesyndicate.com/ Timestamps: 0:00 What seed rounds looked like then: Fitbit's $2M seed 2:38 Jenny's Techstars NYC years and the two-unicorn mug 6:10 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! 7:51 All-In Summit: Trump calls Jensen Huang onstage. Staged or not? 8:56 P(doom) roundtable + Dave's AI sovereign wealth fund prediction 10:08 Northwest Registered Agent - Got a new business idea? Northwest Registered Agent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more - with no purchase required! Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain 13:35 The AI intel error that nearly triggered a US-China incident 17:44 "McClure's Law": a human with AI is the real risk 19:59 Odoo - The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at https://Odoo.com/twist 21:37 Stripe + OpenRouter: an anti-fraud play, not a routing play? 23:07 Seed valuations: median $8M (2017) to $28M today 23:58 Instinct: $2.5B to a reported $10B in weeks 29:49 Rippling - Thanks to our partners at Rippling! Head to https://Rippling.ai/twist and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business. 44:01 Opus 5.5 vs. GPT-6 Sol: the same-day price war 46:51 Gun to your head: open-weight models or frontier labs? 51:00 Secondaries: the top 30 names vs. everyone else 52:30 Why fintech and healthcare are unloved (and Jason's Robinhood bet) Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Thank you to our partners: (0:00) PARTNER - AD BLURB (0:00) PARTNER - AD BLURB (0:00) PARTNER - AD BLURB Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Subscribe to our Substack Newsletters! TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/ TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/ TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/ Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com | 1h 27m 02s | ||||||
| 9/21/26 |  Elon's New Hyperloop, Trump's AI Rename, and a Model That Won't Talk | E2340 | This Week In Startups is made possible by: Vanta: https://www.vanta.com/twist DigitalOcean: https://do.co/twist Lightfield: https://lightfield.app Plaud: https://plaud.ai/twist Today’s show: Elon revives the Hyperloop, promising a 30-minute commute between Austin and San Antonio. It's the kind of project that could reshape how Texans think about getting between two major cities entirely. Then, Jason and Lon explain why this pitch is different from the other Boring Company tunnels. Learn why President Trump wants to rename artificial intelligence itself and launch an "AI Force." It's a move that could reshape how the government talks about AI policy going forward. PLUS, a new startup's model refuses to write a single word of text, and it is 5 to 18 times faster with better accuracy. It's a completely different approach to how AI agents make decisions, and it might be a preview of where the industry heads next. Relevant Links: "Elon Musk's latest Boring Company pitch involves a Hyperloop between Austin and San Antonio" → https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/20/elon-musks-latest-boring-company-pitch-involves-a-hyperloop-between-austin-and-san-antonio/ The Boring Company → https://www.boringcompany.com/ Elon Musk's original 2013 Hyperloop white paper → https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_images/hyperloop-alpha.pdf Trump's Truth Social post proposing "Superior/Extreme/Supreme Intelligence" and announcing an AI Force and AI czar → https://www.unite.ai/trump-proposes-renaming-artificial-intelligence-announces-ai-force/ TechCrunch: "Trump says it's time to rebrand AI with a new name — and he's also creating an AI Force" → https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/19/trump-suggests-rebranding-ai-with-a-new-name-says-hes-also-creating-an-ai-force/ Vercel AI Open vs Closed Source Volume Chart → https://vercel.com/ai-gateway/leaderboards/models TypeSafe AI — makers of Jev, the "System One Model" → https://typesafe.ai/ TypeSafe AI blog: "Introducing System One Models & Jev" → https://typesafe.ai/blog/introducing-system-one-models-and-jev GeekWire: "Amazon blocks Meta's Muse AI assistant in new standoff over agentic shopping" → https://www.geekwire.com/2026/amazon-blocks-metas-muse-ai-assistant-in-new-standoff-over-agentic-shopping/ Meta's Muse — the AI agent Amazon blocked from shopping on its site → https://www.meta.ai/ "Meta's Dina Powell McCormick: The Case for Data Centers, Backlash, AI Job Boom & Meta's Future" (All-In Podcast, YouTube) — the clip discussed on the show → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp2IbgJ5Z-8 Robocurve's RoboHarm report — the robot-safety benchmark discussed on air → https://robocurve.org/roboharm/ RoboHarm on GitHub (tasks, protocol, and tooling) → https://github.com/robocurve/roboharm Timestamps: 0:00 Elon Musk revives the Hyperloop: a 30-minute Austin–San Antonio tunnel 1:03 A brief history of Hyperloop and the white paper 8:56 Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://www.vanta.com/twist 16:46 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! 20:32 DigitalOcean - Head to https://do.co/twist to start building on DigitalOcean's AI-Native Cloud today — and cut your AI workload costs by up to 50%. 21:40 News: Trump proposes an "AI Force," an AI czar, and renaming AI itself 22:49 "Get back to work, nerds" 30:22 Lightfield - Name one person who's ever enjoyed updating a CRM. Exactly. Lightfield's AI agent does it for you — it even prospects and books your meetings. Used by thousands of startups. Free at https://lightfield.app 31:56 TypeSafe's Jev, a "System One" model built to decide, not chat 39:49 Amazon blocks Meta's Muse AI agent 49:57 Dina Powell McCormick's tense All-In Summit exchange with Jason 1:02:38 Off-Duty: Robocurve's RoboHarm benchmark Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com | 1h 09m 39s | ||||||
| 9/18/26 |  Hugging Face Co-Founder on Open-Source, Microduck, and NVIDIA | E2339 | This Week In Startups is made possible by: Superhuman: https://superhuman.com/ Paypal: https://paypal.com/business Odoo: https://odoo.com/twist Plaud: https://plaud.ai/twist Harmonic: https://harmonic.ai/twist Today’s show: Hugging Face built a $399 open-source robot duck as a side quest, and sold 16,000 units off a single tweet. Co-founder Thomas Wolf joins Jason and Lon to explain Microduck happened, why storage is the company's real business, and what it felt like to get hacked by OpenAI's agents. Jason takes apart Gavin Newsom's new AI "kill switch" executive order: if these models are so dangerous, why not start with the same KYC every bank already requires? PLUS, Snap’s new AI-integrated glasses could be a game-changer. Guests: Thomas Wolf on X: https://x.com/Thom_Wolf Hugging Face: https://huggingface.co/ Relevant Links: Hugging Face — https://huggingface.co/ Microduck — https://pollen-robotics.com/microduck/ Pollen Robotics — https://pollen-robotics.com/ OpenAI: the Hugging Face incident and the road ahead — https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-incident-and-the-road-ahead/ Governor Newsom's executive order — https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/californias-newsom-issues-executive-order-to-weigh-ai-oversight-including-kill-switch-3a98040f Anthropic Wet Lab — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/18/anthropic-quietly-sets-up-biology-lab-as-it-ramps-ai-drug-program-report.html Lucid and Bolt to deploy 25,000 autonomous EVs across Europe — https://electrek.co/2026/09/17/lucid-bolt-25000-autonomous-evs-europe/ Snap opens pre-orders for Specs at $2,195 — https://www.specs.com/ Ray-Ban Meta Display — the $799 comparison https://www.meta.com/ai-glasses/ Clavicular at All-In Summit — https://x.com/clavicular/status/2099994778616348811?s=20 Physical: 100 (the Korean original) → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical:_100 Bad Therapy — https://www.abigailshrier.com/ Full Show Notes and Transcript from Pluad: https://plaud.ai/twist Timestamps: 0:00 Guest: Thomas Wolf, co-founder & chief science officer, Hugging Face 1:58 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! 4:17 Two years to build Microduck 8:43 How Hugging Face actually makes money: storage, not tokens 10:16 Superhuman - Superhuman Go is an AI chat that's always there when you need it, already aware of what you're doing, and doesn't ask you to start from zero. Sign up to get the best in AI at https://superhuman.com 17:18 Vibe-coding robotics: "train this new behavior for me" 20:00 PayPal - Pay zero processing fees on your first $100K in eligible PayPal payment volume. Learn more at https://paypal.com/business 23:20 Thomas Wolf's P-doom and the airplane-safety analogy 25:18 The Nvidia acquisition and what changes for open models 29:57 Odoo - The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at https://Odoo.com/twist 38:39 Inside the Hugging Face breach: stolen credentials and basic mistakes 43:33 News: Newsom's executive order and the frontier-model "kill switch" 45:04 Jason's counter-proposal: liability, insurance, and KYC for AI 1:00:08 News: Lucid and Bolt to put 25,000 robotaxis on European roads 1:10:01 News: Snap opens pre-orders for $2,195 Specs AR glasses 1:21:43 Off-Duty: Clavicular, the All-In Summit 1:31:01 Off-Duty: Physical 100 goes to Italy and Mexico Subscribe to TWiST on Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com/ Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com | 1h 33m 39s | ||||||
| 9/15/26 |  90% of AI prototypes never reach production (w/ Temporal's Samar Abbas) | AI Basics | The TWiST AI Basics series is made possible by Google for Startups! Build context-aware AI workflows using DeepMind models and orchestration tools with Google for Startups' new Startup technical guide on generative media. Get the guide here: https://goo.gle/technical_guide Today's show: The demo works, the vibes are immaculate, but then the app falls apart the second real users touch it. On today's AI Basics, Temporal co-founder and CEO Samar Abbas says the problem isn't with the model at all. You're missing a harness, the layer that keeps an AI agent's work durable, secure, and recoverable if/when something breaks. Temporal's durable execution platform is used by major companies from OpenAI to Stripe to Netflix, and helps to make their long-running software reliable and interruption-free. On AI Basics, he explains why so many AI-coded prototypes die in the imagineering stage, before ever hitting production. Plus he walks Jason through Temporal's live dashboard, to show how it gives developers full visibility into what their agents are doing at every step. Guest and Relevant Links: Samar Abbas on X: https://x.com/SamarAtTemporal Temporal: https://temporal.io/ Temporal raises $550M at a $12.55B valuation: https://temporal.io/blog/temporal-raises-usd550m-series-e-at-usd12-55b-valuation-ai GeekWire: Samar Abbas on the "massive platform shift" in AI: https://www.geekwire.com/2026/temporal-ceo-samar-abbas-on-the-massive-platform-shift-in-ai-fueling-the-startups-5b-valuation/ Temporal expands Google Cloud partnership: https://temporal.io/blog/temporal-expands-google-cloud-partnership-with-pay-as-you-go-pricing Timestamps: 0:00 Why every startup needs an AI harness 2:12 Why 90% of AI prototypes never reach production 4:16 What happens when an agent crashes mid-task 7:00 A look at Temporal's dashboard 13:02 OK but what is a "harness" exactly? 15:30 When to graduate an agent from laptop to production 17:44 Organizing agents into teams Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Thank you to our partner! Build context-aware AI workflows using DeepMind models and orchestration tools with Google for Startups' new Startup technical guide on generative media. Get the guide here: https://goo.gle/technical_guide Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out our suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@thisweekininc Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com | 19m 22s | ||||||
| 9/14/26 |  Ask Jason: AI Extinction, Grok's Rogue Meme Coin & Weed Farms as Data Centers | E2337 | This Week In Startups is made possible by: Quo: http://quo.com/TWiST The Conservation Fund: https://conservationfund.org CLA: https://www.claconnect.com/withyou Today's show: A 27-year-old Anthropic researcher quit last week warning that AI could cause human extinction, and by Friday, a caller's 76-year-old mother was texting her in a panic. Jason's answer: the labs are already shipping the safeguards Doomers say don't exist. On an all live calls episode of TWiST, learn about the AI implications Jason is actually scared of, and why it involves a terrorist cell and a thousand cheap drones. PLUS, who is liable when one AI prompts another AI into launching a meme coin, and can a 1.5-3 megawatt cannabis facility be converted into a data center? Relevant Links: Anthropic Resignee — https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/anthropic-safety-researcher-resigned-warning-rapid-ai-development-gamb-rcna596767 OpenAI's Navier-Stokes claim— https://www.science.org/content/article/how-ai-math-breakthrough-ignited-controversy CNBC: Tristan Buckmaster's challenge to the claim — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/09/openai-navier-stokes-math-problem-solved.html NVIDIA GB200 Grace Blackwell —https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/gb200-nvl72/ Composio's walkthrough of how Grok Bot actually works — https://composio.dev/content/guide-to-frok-bot Timestamps: 0:00 (Question) Jim, from the midterm Republican convention floor: is AI really going to kill us all — and is local AI the mitigation? 5:31 Where Terminator 2's logic breaks down 9:42 The threat Jason is actually scared of: slaughter drones and murder bots 9:54 Quo (formerly OpenPhone) - Quo gives you a clean, modern way to handle every customer call, text, and thread all in one place. Try it free at https://quo.com/TWiST 10:05 (Question) Michael Lee, who's responsible when one AI prompts another into launching a meme coin? 17:32 (Question) Lyda, calling from Greece: can an independent AI ecosystem still exist 19:03 The Conservation Fund - Find out more about how The Conservation Fund is protecting land, wildlife, and our shared access to the great outdoors while also providing economic opportunities. Visit https://conservationfund.org 21:08 (Question) John Wright: do you have to carve out more time now just to keep up with the tools? 25:42 Claude's caution vs. Grok's "hold my beer" 26:33 (Question) John Wright, part two: do you expect founders to get more done now 26:55 The three buckets: 10x, 5x, and the 20% crowd 29:22 CLA - Get started with CLA's CPAs, consultants, and wealth advisors now at https://www.claconnect.com/withyou 30:01 (Question) Ray, Vortex Console: can human-in-the-loop actually work at enterprise scale? 33:25 (Question) Kristen Dahl: how do you explain AI risk to your 76-year-old mom? 35:13 Why the chaos only happens at OpenAI and Anthropic 43:36 (Question) David Rosenberg, NYU physics: what's behind the academic backlash to AI solving Navier-Stokes? 53:35 Advice for a 20-year-old: find two smart people, build weird things 54:29 (Question) David's follow-up: any chance of an All-In Summit scholarship 56:21 (Question) Mo: can a cannabis cultivation facility be converted into a data center 1:02:30 (Question) Mo's follow-up: Mark Cuban's pickleball courts and the efficiency curve Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com | 1h 11m 14s | ||||||
| 9/11/26 |  The Pentagon Wants Equity in AI Startups | E2336 | This Week In Startups is made possible by: DigitalOcean: https://do.co/twist Odoo: https://odoo.com/twist Upwork: https://upwork.com Today's show: The Pentagon is reportedly in talks to lend AI cloud startup Fluidstack $5. billion, and Jason thinks the real story isn't the loan itself. It's the US government owning equity in private AI companies, and competing directly with venture capital. Plus returning friend of the pod Tibo Louis-Lucas shows us how he runs seven companies with fewer than 10 people by stacking AI agents. Can a few $200/month AI subscriptions really do the work of an entire marketing team? Tibo seems to think so. Plus it's Off-Duty Friday, so Jason and Lon are reviewing some current streaming favorites, and commemorating the 25th anniversary of 9/11 with some personal stories. Check out the full summary and transcript of today's episode from Plaud: https://plaud.ai/twist Guests: Tibo Louis-Lucas on X: https://x.com/tibo_maker Squad: https://squad.so/ Relevant Links: Fluidstack: https://www.fluidstack.io Google-Fluidstack warrants deal details: https://cointelegraph.com/news/google-acquires-5-4-stake-in-bitcoin-mining-company-cipher-mining-in-ai-deal Center for Public Integrity: Solyndra timeline: https://publicintegrity.org/politics/missed-warning-signs-a-solyndra-timeline/ The Hill: Energy Dept. loses $139M in Fisker auto loan default: https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/191258-energy-dept-loses-139-million-in-auto-loan-gone-bad/ Apple iPhone Duo: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/09/apple-unveils-iphone-duo/ Apple Mac Studio: https://www.apple.com/mac-studio/ Sonos: https://www.sonos.com/ Amazon Fire TV: https://www.amazon.com/b?node=8521791011 UniFi: https://www.ui.com/ Lanterns trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UIBOsuUwc4 Dark Matter Season 2 trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhB6_1UbR7s "Robin" biography by Dave Itzkoff: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1627794247 What Dreams May Come trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmZ-FuBThuQ Huffington Post on the Robin Williams-Disney feud: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/robin-williams-disney-feud-aladdin-picasso_uk_6a7cc304e4b079a0b2ec2233 Keith Roma: the 344th firefighter lost, remembered: https://www.firerescue1.com/9-11/articles/the-firefighter-everyone-forgot-about-on-911-142cs6WyLmn2FDib/ Timestamps: 0:00 Remembering 9/11, 25 Years Later 6:41 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! 9:10 Are we about to nationalize the AI industry? 9:53 DigitalOcean - Want to see what building on a true AI-native platform looks like? Head to https://do.co/twist to start building on DigitalOcean's AI-Native Cloud today — and cut your AI workload costs by up to 50%. 20:30 Odoo - The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at https://Odoo.com/twist 21:45 Apple's foldable iPhone Duo 29:43 Upwork - Upwork helps businesses find highly skilled freelance professionals for specialized work. Post your job for free at https://upwork.com 38:04 Tibo Louis-Lucas returns to TWiST 41:47 The affiliate update email that runs on autopilot 46:40 Why you should "stack" multiple AI subscriptions 52:57 Squad's ideal customer is a solo founder 54:11 Jason digs Hal Jordan on "Lanterns" 1:00:19 Lon reviews Apple's "Dark Matter" 1:03:39 Remembering Robin Williams Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com | 1h 12m 37s | ||||||
| 9/10/26 |  Becki DeGraw on founder vesting, advisor equity & the 4-term-sheet play | This Week In Startups is made possible by: Wilson Sonsini: https://www.wsgr.com/en/ Today's show: One of YouTube's three co-founders left for grad school and walked away with a fraction of what his partners made on the Google sale. Becki DeGraw of Wilson Sonsini joins Jason for Startup Legal Basics to explain the vesting schedule behind that gap, and why you want one even if you never take a dollar of venture money. Learn how VCs actually respond when a founder says "I've already put in four years," and the exact language Jason gives founders to turn one term sheet into three. PLUS, why is an inactive advisor still vesting your equity, and who wrote those performance milestones? Guests: Becki DeGraw on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-degraw-639bbb62/ Wilson Sonsini: https://www.wsgr.com/en/ Relevant Links: Becki DeGraw — partner in WSGR's San Francisco office — https://www.wsgr.com/en/people/becki-degraw.html TechCrunch broke the YouTube story— https://techcrunch.com/2006/10/09/google-has-acquired-youtube/ Sequoia Capital — https://www.sequoiacap.com/ Roelof Botha — led Sequoia's YouTube investment and later ran the firm globally → https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roelof_Botha ESOP / employee stock option pool — https://thisweekinstartups.com/basics Founder & advisor equity documents — https://www.wsgr.com/en/services/practice-areas/corporate/emerging-companies.html Timestamps: 0:06 Becki DeGraw on why founder equity is "near and dear" to every founder 1:53 Founder vesting explained 3:49 Why you want vesting even if you never take VC money 6:05 "Why do I have to vest again?" 7:32 Leverage is a function of how many offers you have 10:36 The exact script for landing a second term sheet 14:37 Don't let an AI write your three-page vesting schedule 18:19 Character in Silicon Valley: it's a small world after all 19:49 Take the emotion out of it Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com | 22m 34s | ||||||
| 9/9/26 |  Did OpenAI Steal the Navier-Stokes Solution? | E2335 | This Week In Startups is made possible by: Northwest Registered Agent: https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain NetSuite: https://www.netsuite.ai/twist Vanta: https://www.vanta.com/twist Plaud: https://plaud.ai/twist Today's show: An Anthropic researcher quit this week, saying both leading labs are gambling with everyone's lives. His coworker chimed in and predicts there is a greater than 10% chance that AI will end humanity IN THE NEXT 10 YEARS. Jason and Lon take it to Yohei Nakajima of Untapped Capital, Ben Lerer of Lerer Hippeau, and Rebecca Lynn of Canvas Prime, who cannot decide whether it is the greatest PR strategy in history or some kind of mass psychosis. Learn why Jason says founders should never hand a frontier lab their proprietary data, whether or not they're offered free credits. PLUS, who really solved Navier-Stokes, and what does the OpenAI–Buckmaster fight mean for anyone doing real work inside ChatGPT or Claude? Guests: Yohei Nakajima on X: https://x.com/yoheinakajima Untapped Capital: https://untapped.vc/ Ben Lerer on X: https://x.com/BenjLerer Lerer Hippeau: https://www.lererhippeau.com/ Rebecca Lynn on X: https://x.com/VCRebecca Canvas Prime: https://www.canvas.vc/ Relevant Links: Jacob Coxon quits Anthropic - "gambling with our lives" https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/09/gambling-with-our-lives-anthropic-researcher-quits-warns-against-self-improving-ai/ Evan Hubinger, Anthropic's Alignment Science lead, on X: >10% odds within a decade — https://x.com/EvanHub/status/2097497037956891126 Future of Life Institute — the 2015 Puerto Rico AI safety conference Jason asks Lon to pull up → https://futureoflife.org/ Meta debuts Muse (Axios) —https://www.axios.com/2026/09/08/meta-debuts-muse-personal-ai-agent Harmonic — https://harmonic.ai/twist China blocks Meta's Manus acquisition (CNBC) —https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/27/meta-manus-china-blocks-acquisition-ai-startup.html OpenAI fought dirty— https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/08/openai-fought-dirty-on-career-making-math-problem-says-nyu-mathematician/ Savvy Wealth — https://www.wealthmanagement.com/ria-news/savvy-wealth-raises-100m-valuation-hits-600m Augmodo — https://www.augmodo.com/ E2B — https://e2b.dev/ Daptic — https://www.daptic.com/ Timestamps: 0:00 Jacob Coxon quits Anthropic: "crunch time" and "endgame" 4:53 Evan Hubinger: >10% odds AI kills all humans in a decade 11:22 Northwest Registered Agent - Got a new business idea? Northwest Registered Agent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more - with no purchase required! Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain 12:23 "You have succeeded in scaring the bejesus out of Americans" 14:59 Jobs, the wealth divide, and which industries get wiped out first 20:07 NetSuite - For the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to https://NetSuite.ai/TWIST 21:09 Savvy Wealth's $100M round 26:52 The Kalanick story and why Jason built a syndicate backstop 29:04 Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://www.vanta.com/twist 30:16 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! 32:05 Meta ships Muse 32:56 Can Meta be trusted 35:29 Threads Metrics 49:27 Robinhood's free-share referral 51:16 NYU's Tristan Buckmaster accuses OpenAI of fighting dirty on Navier-Stokes 57:43 Jason: "It's a trap" 59:03 Harvey goes open-weight, Go.AI on-prem, Covenant Labs 1:12:22 High performing portfolio companies Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com | 1h 21m 24s | ||||||
| 9/4/26 |  Dr. Mark Hyman on Function Health & GLP-1 microdosing | E2334 | This Week In Startups is made possible by: Odoo: https://odoo.com/twist Northwest Registered Agent: https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain Rippling: https://rippling.ai/twist Today's show: Your doctor almost certainly isn't testing your insulin. Dr. Mark Hyman sits down with Jason to explain the broken system that Function is fixing, and what 100 million biomarkers say about how sick America actually is. Learn why insulin beats blood sugar as an early warning for TKTKTK. Why might "normal" lab ranges be unreliable? PLUS, how does an expert like Dr. Hyman feel about GLP-1s and psychedelics? Guests: Dr. Mark Hyman on X: https://x.com/drmarkhyman Function: https://www.functionhealth.com/ Relevant Links: The Dr. Hyman Show — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dr-hyman-show/id1382804627 Function pricing — https://www.functionhealth.com/pricing Ezra — the full-body MRI company Function acquired https://ezra.com/ Galleri (GRAIL) — the multi-cancer early detection blood test — https://www.galleri.com/ Tufts / JACC study — the source of the "93% of Americans have metabolic dysfunction" — https://now.tufts.edu/2022/07/05/only-7-american-adults-have-good-cardiometabolic-health American College of Cardiology — https://www.acc.org/ Dr. Jorge Plutzky — https://www.health.harvard.edu/authors/jorge-plutzky-md OpenEvidence — https://www.openevidence.com/ Stanford Metabolic Psychiatry Clinic — https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2022/11/metabolic-psychiatry.html Stanford Medicine on the ibogaine findings → https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2024/01/ibogaine-ptsd.html Texas SB 2308 — the $50M state investment in ibogaine trials — https://www.texastribune.org/2026/03/31/texas-ibogaine-research-clinical-trials-psychedelics/ Timestamps: 0:00 What Function actually is 6:43 Healthspan vs. sick care 10:16 Odoo - The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at https://Odoo.com/twist 11:32 A $300 vitamin D test vs. a $10 one 18:08 Should a 25-year-old get a whole-body MRI? 20:42 Northwest Registered Agent - Got a new business idea? Northwest Registered Agent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more - with no purchase required! Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain 24:23 Why medicine is still running on paper 25:41 The study where the chatbot beat the doctors 27:02 micro1, doctors in the loop, and why AI still needs guardrails 28:50 Wearables, records, and the CD-ROM problem 30:07 Rippling - Thanks to our partners at Rippling! Head to https://Rippling.ai/twist and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business. 32:51 The wearable that caught Jason's Covid 34:31 Alcohol, sugar, and why almost nobody tests your insulin 40:00 GLP-1s: Jason's 213-to-168 story 42:22 Microdosing GLP-1s, muscle loss, and "skinny fat" 48:48 Overdiagnosing mental illness: SSRIs, Adderall, and a lost decade 50:17 The biology underneath depression and anxiety 54:32 Psychedelics: ketamine, ibogaine, and the second revolution in psychiatry Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Thank you to our partners: Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com | 58m 28s | ||||||
| 9/3/26 |  Becki DeGraw on spinouts, IP licensing & clean exits | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics | This Week In Startups is made possible by: Wilson Sonsini Today's show: Spinouts are everywhere right now, and most founders get the cap table wrong. Jason sits down with Becki DeGraw, partner at Wilson Sonsini, to break down how to do it right, starting with his 80/20 rule for splitting the new cap table and why letting the old company keep too much of it kills your ability to raise. Becki also covers the legal side: who owns the IP, non-competes between the two companies, and the trap founders fall into when they're still on the old board. PLUS, the one question every Series A investor will ask. Guests: Becki DeGraw on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-degraw-639bbb62/ Wilson Sonsini: https://www.wsgr.com/en/ Relevant Links: Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (WSGR) — **https://www.wsgr.com/** Becki DeGraw — https://www.wsgr.com/en/people/becki-degraw.html Waymo — Jason's headline example of a big-company spinout — https://waymo.com/ Expedia's 1999 Microsoft spinout — https://www.britannica.com/topic/Expedia-com-American-company Nvidia's ~$20B deal for Groq's asset— https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/24/nvidia-buying-ai-chip-startup-groq-for-about-20-billion-biggest-deal.html Timestamps: 0:00 What a spinout actually is 0:50 Becki: the real "why" behind spinouts 2:24 IP licenses and the "acquihire" workaround 3:09 University spinouts 4:41 Google/Waymo and Microsoft/Expedia: spinouts at scale 5:03 Jason's 80/20 rule and the unicorn test 6:06 The broken cap table problem 6:36 Licensing deals as an M&A workaround 8:44 Exclusive licenses, full assignments, and license-backs 11:07 "What if Google spun out YouTube" 12:31 Groq–Nvidia, capital gains vs. income 13:23 Confidentiality, customer lists, and fiduciary duty traps 15:16 Get the paper done BEFORE you start the new thing 15:56 "It's a divorce," — and the employees are the kids Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com | 17m 53s | ||||||
| 7/20/26 | cybersecurityAI+4 | Brandon DixonDavid Im | EntSume | — | cybersecurityAI agent+5 | VantaCODE | 42m 01s | ||
| 7/17/26 | surgery botsreal estate investment+3 | Alex Blackwood | Andromeda SurgicalMogul+6 | — | surgery botsAndromeda Surgical+4 | Northwest Registered Agent | 46m 54s | ||
| 7/15/26 | venture capitalstartup acquisitions+3 | Eric BahnJeff Morris Jr. | Hustle FundChapter One+2 | — | StripePayPal+6 | MongoDBai | 1h 14m 04s | ||
| 7/13/26 | AI toolssocial media growth+4 | Thibault "Tibo" Louis-Lucas | PodMemeTweet Hunter+5 | — | PodMemeAI tool+6 | QuoCODE | 1h 29m 51s | ||
| 7/10/26 | automation in agriculturefarm robotics+4 | Danny Bernstein | FigmaDept. of Education+11 | — | farm jobsrobotics incubator+5 | NetSuiteTWIST | 1h 00m 54s | ||
| 7/8/26 | venture capitalstartups+4 | Nikhil Basu TrivediMichael Kim | FootworkCendana Capital | — | venture capitalstartups+5 | Digital OceanCODE | 1h 06m 01s | ||
| 7/6/26 | AIfinance+4 | Chris HladczukDylan Field | Hanover ParkFigma | — | $100 trillionhuman duct tape+5 | Northwest Registered AgentCODE | 58m 02s | ||
| 7/1/26 | venture capitalstartup valuations+3 | Aileen LeeMike Maples+1 | Bending SpoonsCowboy VC+6 | — | venture capitalstartups+5 | CLA | 1h 14m 11s | ||
| 6/29/26 | agencyrisk+4 | Chamath Palihapitiya | GoogleFacebook+7 | — | Chamath PalihapitiyaAI+5 | PlaudCODE | 1h 12m 06s | ||
| 6/27/26 | F1aerodynamics+5 | Lyall Davenport | SKN SystemsOpenAI+2 | Sterling, Virginia | F1aerodynamics+7 | PlaudTWIST | 1h 30m 27s | ||
| 6/13/26 | SpaceX IPOinvestments+3 | Ben Cera | SpaceXPolsia+5 | — | SpaceXIPO+5 | Plaudtwist | 1h 19m 56s | ||
| 6/10/26 | Seed investingstartup economics+4 | Tomasz TunguzMichael Downing+1 | Claude Fable 5Theory Ventures+4 | — | Seed dealsventure capital+4 | NetSuiteTWiST | 1h 08m 23s | ||
| 6/8/26 | AI educationSocratic Method+3 | Sue Khim | KojiAngel: How to Invest in Technology Startups | — | AI tutorSocratic Method+3 | Northwest Registered AgentCODE | 1h 00m 19s | ||
| 6/6/26 | AI policiesuniversal basic income+4 | Yoland Yan | ComfyUIIdeogram 4.0+5 | — | AI slowdownBernie Sanders+4 | Grasshopper Banktwist | 1h 33m 17s | ||
| 6/3/26 | space economyorbital transportation+3 | Tom MuellerDr. Tessa Lau | SpaceXRocket Lab+1 | — | SpaceXorbital economy+3 | Northwest Registered AgentTWIST | 1h 01m 36s | ||
| 6/1/26 | biological computerssynthetic biological intelligence+4 | Dr. Hon Weng ChongMichael Norcia | Cortical LabsPyka | — | Cortical Labssynthetic biological intelligence+4 | DeelCODE | 1h 06m 16s | ||
| 5/29/26 | seed fundingstartup advice+3 | Richard CorralØnProtons+3 | QuantoY Combinator+10 | — | seed roundfundraising+3 | Grasshopper Banktwist | 57m 55s | ||
| 5/27/26 | drone deliveryautonomous technology+3 | Bobby HealyIan Laffey | MannaTheseus | DublinKyiv | drone deliveryManna+5 | Rendertwist | 1h 01m 23s | ||
| 5/23/26 | US defense3D printing+4 | Lukas CzingerBrandon Goode+1 | ZoloftProzac+2 | — | Divergent TechnologiesLukas Czinger+7 | PlaudTWIST | 1h 47m 06s | ||
| 5/20/26 | startup fundingventure capital+4 | Avi Patel | KledGeneral Catalyst+3 | — | startupventure capital+7 | Grasshopper Banktwist | 1h 34m 22s | ||
| 5/9/26 | tech layoffsAI infrastructure+4 | AlexDavid Moscatelli+1 | Go AbacusYanez+6 | — | tech layoffsAI+6 | IM8 HealthTWIST | 1h 12m 00s | ||
| 5/6/26 | venture capitalinvestment concentration+5 | Michael EisenbergMike Granoff+1 | AlephManiv+1 | — | venture capitalLP commits+5 | Grasshopper Bank | 1h 23m 37s | ||
| 5/5/26 | venture capitalinvestment strategies+3 | Ankur NagpalJon Durbin+1 | AngelListChutes+1 | — | USVCventure capital+5 | RenderTWIST | 1h 38m 10s | ||
| 5/1/26 | AI agentsbusiness ownership+5 | Christian van der Henst | ValerieTargon+5 | San Francisco | AI agentvending machine+6 | Pilottwist | 1h 10m 05s | ||
| 4/30/26 | AI video marketinggenerative AI+4 | Joaquín Cuenca Abela | MagnificFreepik+1 | — | AIvideo marketing+5 | Google Cloud | 22m 34s | ||
| 4/29/26 | brain-computer interfacenoninvasive technology+3 | Rahul Chhabra | SabiKhosla Ventures+3 | — | brain-computer interfaceSabi+5 | RenderTWIST | 55m 43s | ||
| 4/28/26 | China's governmentMeta acquisition+4 | Lon | MetaManus+3 | ChinaSingapore | MetaManus+7 | IM8 Healthtwist | 53m 03s | ||
| 4/25/26 | venture capitalsocial media criticism+3 | — | AngelListNYT+1 | — | venture capitalNaval Ravikant+3 | Northwest Registered AgentCODE | 50m 20s | ||
| 4/25/26 | defense technology3D printing+4 | Will EdwardsMaruchi Kim | Firehawk AerospaceRay-Ban Meta+8 | — | Firehawk Aerospace3D-printed propellant+4 | Northwest Registered AgentCODE | 59m 15s | ||
| 4/22/26 | SpaceXAI coding+5 | Chris ZachariaBrian McRindle+1 | SpaceXCursor+4 | — | SpaceXCursor+5 | Plaud NotePinTWIST | 1h 13m 29s | ||
| 4/21/26 | AI ownershipenterprise software+3 | Josh SirotaEtienne Louvet | EragonIONA Drones+1 | — | AI modelenterprise AI+5 | QuoTWiST | 1h 16m 59s | ||
| 4/18/26 | 3D printinghousing crisis+4 | Jason BallardSeby Rubino | ICONResi Labs | — | 3D-printed homeshousing crisis+5 | IM8 HealthCODE | 1h 47m 05s | ||
| 4/15/26 | mobile gamesAI-generated games+4 | Albert BrothertonBoris Radilov+1 | Nanogram1X Technologies+3 | — | Nanogrammobile games+6 | LinkedIntwist | 1h 02m 46s | ||
| 4/14/26 | Bittensorrug pull+4 | Mark Jeffrey | BittensorStillcore Capital+5 | — | Bittensorrug pull+7 | Sentry | 1h 18m 38s | ||
| 4/11/26 | BittensorCovenant AI+4 | Gareth HowellsOle Lehmann | Covenant-72BOpenClaw+4 | — | BittensorCovenant AI+5 | PilotTWIST | 1h 21m 54s | ||
| 4/9/26 | AI modelscybersecurity+3 | Rob MayGyani | AnthropicNvidia+6 | — | AnthropicMythos+6 | LinkedIn JobsCODE | 1h 16m 48s | ||
Showing 61 of 1000
Pitch Fit is a Pro feature
See how bookable this show is for guests, which brands already advertise, the per-episode ad value, and the best-fit guest and sponsor profile. The numbers are blurred on the free plan.
How readily this show books outside guests like you.
How proven this show is for host-read sponsorships.
For Guests
ProFor Advertisers
ProUpgrade to Pro to unlock guest cadence, sponsor categories, fit scores, and per-episode ad value for this show.
Similar Audience Demographics
Podcasts that attract a similar listener profile
This Week in AI
Jason Calacanis
All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg
All-In Podcast, LLC
The a16z Show
Andreessen Horowitz
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Harry Stebbings
Y Combinator Startup Podcast
Y Combinator
TBPN
John Coogan & Jordi Hays
No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups
Conviction
Chart history for This Week in Startups
Peaked at #7 in CL, top 10 in 1 of 34 tracked markets, currently #7 in CL.
| Market | Genre | Peak | Current | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CL | — | #7 | #7 | — |
| ID | — | #11 | #11 | — |
| AE | — | #38 | #38 | — |
| Canada | — | #51 | #51 | — |
| TH | — | #55 | #55 | — |
| United States | — | #59 | #59 | — |
| NG | — | #62 | #62 | — |
| MY | — | #71 | #71 | — |
| Australia | — | #74 | #74 | — |
| PL | — | #78 | #78 | — |
| SA | — | #80 | #80 | — |
| Denmark | — | #81 | #81 | — |
| HK | — | #82 | #82 | — |
| United Kingdom | — | #84 | #84 | — |
| Sweden | — | #88 | #88 | — |
| Finland | — | #89 | #89 | — |
| South Africa | — | #92 | #92 | — |
| HU | — | #94 | #94 | — |
| CZ | — | #101 | #101 | — |
| Ireland | — | #119 | #119 | — |
Chart Positions
34 placements across 34 markets.
Chart Positions
34 placements across 34 markets.