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This Week in Startups
30 episodes
Bittensor creator Const on Affine, dTAO, "mining reasoning," and more | E2326
Ep 2326 · Aug 17, 2026 · 1 hr 25 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Northwest Registered Agent https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist DigitalOcean https://do.co/twist Odoo https://Odoo.com/twist Today's show: We've been going deep on Bittensor and how it works all year on TWiST, meeting with the creators of some of our favorite subnets, and exploring how the system decentralizes inference, compute, and storage. Now, on this very special episode, Jason and Lon welcome Bittensor co-founder Jason Steeves (aka "Const")…
What we'll learn from Anthropic's $2-$3T IPO | E2325
Ep 2325 · Aug 15, 2026 · 1 hr 20 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: PayPal Open https://paypal.launch.co CLA https://claconnect.com/withyou Odoo https://Odoo.com/twist Today's show: *Anthropic is likely headed for the largest IPO in history. A reported 2-3 trillion October debut would blow past SpaceX's recent record. Jason breaks down why the. numbers matter less than what they'll reveal about the entire AI economy. Then, chats with a pair of founders: one who's selling subscription water filtration systems that will k…
These robots could cut delivery costs by 80% | Next Unicorns
Ep 2324 · Aug 12, 2026 · 1 hr 4 min
These robots could cut delivery costs by 80% | Next Unicorns This Week In Startups is made possible by: Squarespace https://squarespace.com/twist Northwest Registered Agent https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist Agree https://agree.com Today's show: *Cytronic built a robotics-first fulfillment network, packing and shipping orders for cents instead of dollars, from small, city-adjacent micro-warehouses. Alex chats with CEO and co-founder Kevin Gibbon about how he can build a fulfillment wareh…
Zuck's AI manifesto is a data center PR masterclass | E2323
Ep 2323 · Aug 11, 2026 · 1 hr 20 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Every.io https://every.io NetSuite https://NetSuite.ai/TWIST YSecurity https://YSecurity.io/TWIST Today's show: *Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg published a 6,500 word essay about the future of AI, and Jason thinks it's his smartest PR move in years. The thinkpiece, "The Future is for Everyone: The Path to a Positive AI Future," arrives alongside a new open-weight Meta model — Muse Glimmer — and the promise of an open-weight version of Muse Spark 1.2 to come…
How AI splits startups into winners and losers | E2322
Ep 2322 · Aug 7, 2026 · 1 hr 18 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: DigitalOcean https://do.co/twist Sentry https://sentry.io/twist Lightfield https://lightfield.app Today's show: A hedge fund just blew up shorting SaaS stocks. In turns out, the software companies that went all in on AI are bouncing back. Figma's CEO — still riding high on strong revenue — forfeited roughly $46 million in stock awards to ease investor nerves. Twilio posted its strongest quarter in years. Airbnb's CEO credits AI as the single biggest fac…
Airtable's 80% off value crash: VCs explain why it's still a win | E2321
Ep 2321 · Aug 5, 2026 · 1 hr 13 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Vanta https://www.vanta.com/twist Agree https://agree.com Odoo https://Odoo.com/twist Today's show: *Airtable just sold for $2.25 billion, an 81% drop from its peak of $11.7 billion. On this week's TWiST VC Roundtable, Aditya Agarwal (South Park Commons), Niko Bonatsos (Verdict Capital), and Rick Heitzmann (FirstMark Capital) break down why the venture world sees this as a good outcome, not a financial disaster. By declining the deal, would Airtable's t…
How Bespoke faked AI until it actually worked (w/ Akemi Tsunagawa) | E2320
Ep 2320 · Aug 3, 2026 · 1 hr 2 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Odoo https://Odoo.com/twist Quo https://quo.com/TWiST Northwest Registered Agent https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist Today's show: *Before Bespoke's "travel concierge" chatbot could actually hold a conversation, founder/CEO Akemi Tsunagawa and her team quietly answered customers themselves. That "fake it till you make it" strategy paid off. Bespoke landed Narita Airport as a customer based on the strength of their "chatbot" answers, and now the t…
Why AI has no taste and how to fix it (w/ Thais Castello Branco) | E2319
Ep 2319 · Jul 31, 2026 · 1 hr 15 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: YSecurity https://YSecurity.io/TWIST MongoDB https://MongoDB.com/ai Odoo https://Odoo.com/twist Today's show: AI models can solve PhD-level math equations and code an app in minutes… So why does everything they design look like identical slop? Thais Castello Branco, founder of Taste Labs, raised $18.5M in seed funding to teach frontier models about aesthetics and outputting quality content. She talks to Jason and Lon about why even frontier models regre…
Banning Chinese robots isn't regulatory capture | E2318
Jul 29, 2026 · 1 hr 26 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Northwest Registered Agent- NorthwestRegisteredAgent.com/twist Odoo - Odoo.com/twist MongoDB - MongoDB.com/ai Today's show: The FCC's decision to ban Chinese humanoid robots over security concerns is a boon to American startups, which now face a narrower competitive market. But where should we draw the line on security over competition? Menlo Ventures' Deedy Das, Weisburd Pierce's David Weisburd, Plexo Capital's Lo Toney, and LAUNCH's Jason Calcanis bro…
While other cultivated meat companies are collapsing, this one turned a profit | E2317
Ep 2317 · Jul 27, 2026 · 44 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Every.io https://every.io MongoDB https://MongoDB.com/ai Agree https://agree.com Today's show: *Most lab-grown meat companies have already gone under. It's expensive to produce, and there's little demand from real-world consumers. But Tokyo's IntegriCulture is still standing after selling their proprietary serum to cosmetics companies. On Episode 3 of TWiST from Tokyo, Jason sits down with Dr. Yuki Hanyu, an Oxford-trained chemist who started a DIY meat…
Why quantum has been "10 years away" for 30 years | E2316
Ep 2316 · Jul 24, 2026 · 45 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: PayPal Open https://paypalopen.com DigitalOcean https://do.co/twist Rippling https://Rippling.ai/twist Today's show: *For three decades now, we've been told that breakthroughs in quantum computing are right around the corner. So why hasn't anything materialized? On TWiST in Tokyo, Jason sits down with Yaqumo CEO Kazuhiro Nakashoji and discusses what needed to change (like better algorithms and hardware), and why we may finally be nearing quantum's big m…
Why this longevity startup raised in Japan, not Silicon Valley | TWiST Tokyo | E2315
Ep 2314 · Jul 22, 2026 · 1 hr 12 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Sentry https://sentry.io/twist Agree https://agree.com Northwest Registered Agent https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist Today's show: French ex-martial artist Bilal Kharouni is building his longevity startup from Okinawa, one of the world's "blue zones." (These are regions with the most people living long, healthy lives.) In this TWiST taping from Founder University in Tokyo, Jason investigates why a $200K raise in Japan can out-build a $2M raise i…
The AI Securing Your Workforce Before a Mistake Ever Becomes a Breach | E2314
Ep 2314 · Jul 20, 2026 · 42 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Vanta https://www.vanta.com/twist Superhuman https://superhuman.com YSecurity https://YSecurity.io/TWIST Today's show: *Cybersecurity has long focused on cleaning up a system AFTER a breach but Ent founder Brandon Dixon says that's backwards. He just raised a $100M seed round to put an AI agent on everyone's company laptops that catches the risky clicks, leaked files, or rogue agents BEFORE they wreck havoc. PLUS Clawra creator David Im return swith his…
The dawn of surgery bots + buy a home for $250 (w/ Andromeda & Mogul) | E2313
Ep 2313 · Jul 17, 2026 · 47 min
The dawn of surgery bots + buy a home for $250 (w/ Andromeda & Mogul) | E2313 This Week In Startups is made possible by: Northwest Registered Agent https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist CLA https://claconnect.com/withyou MongoDB https://MongoDB.com/ai Today's show: *Andromeda Surgical is building the autonomy layer that could one day allow robots to perform surgery. Rather than building their own intricate, complex hardware, Andromeda uses off-the-shelf arms from a German manufacturer, and…
A Startup Is Trying to Buy PayPal… Craziest Deal of 2026! | E2312
Ep 2312 · Jul 15, 2026 · 1 hr 14 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: MongoDB - MongoDB.com/ai Rippling - Rippling.ai/twist Agree.com - agree.com Today's show: Hustle Fund's Eric Bahn and Chapter One's Jeff Morris Jr. join our venture capital roundtable directly following the news breaking that Stripe wants to buy PayPal. The possible transaction highlights how little interest today's leading startups have in going public any time soon. With host Alex Wilhelm, Bahn and Morris dug into when startups should burn the boats à…
Jason turned $11 and one tweet into 1.1M views | E2311
Ep 2311 · Jul 13, 2026 · 1 hr 30 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Quo https://quo.com/TWiST PayPal Open https://paypalopen.com Northwest Registered Agent https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist Today's show: *Jason spent $11 building out PodMeme, an AI tool that tracks down the best segments from top podcasts about a specific topic, then stitches them together into a single stream. His post laying out how he did it, featuring a simple screenshot of the product, got all the way to 1.1M views in just a few days. It's…
Danny Bernstein left Big Tech to fund farm-bots | E2310
Ep 2310 · Jul 10, 2026 · 1 hr 1 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: NetSuite https://NetSuite.ai/TWIST Squarespace https://squarespace.com/twist YSecurity https://YSecurity.io/TWIST Today's show: *America posted 400,000 farm jobs last year, and fewer than 1% got a single domestic applicant. Danny Bernstein of Reservoir believes it's time to start automating this backbreaking labor, like picking stone fruit in 110°F temperatures. So he built the world's first on-farm robotics incubator on 40 acres of California farmland.…
Why Data Is the Next $1 Trillion Market
Ep 2309 · Jul 8, 2026 · 1 hr 6 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Digital Ocean - do.co/twist Agree.com - agree.com Every.io - every.io. Today's show: How many startups matter in tech? Fewer than you think. That's why venture capitalists are tripping over themselves to get onto their cap tables, no matter the cost. Why? Footwork's Nikhil Basu Trivedi argues that the Valley has never been more "power-law-pilled" than it is today. Basu Trivedi joined Cendana Capital's Michael Kim and TWiST's Alex Wilhelm to go deep on s…
$100T is managed by "human duct tape" | E2308
Ep 2308 · Jul 6, 2026 · 58 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Northwest Registered Agent https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist Vanta https://www.vanta.com/twist Sentry https://sentry.io/twist Today's show: *There are $100 trillion in global assets sitting on top of what Hanover Park co-founder/CEO Chris Hladczuk calls "human duct tape": armies of accountants in offices patching together work from various legacy tools (QuickBooks, Excel) that are holding funds' own data hostage. Can all of this be replaced wit…
Why the VC Hype Cycle Always Gets It Wrong | VC Roundtable | E2307
Ep 2307 · Jul 1, 2026 · 1 hr 14 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: CLA - www.claconnect.com/withyou Northwest Registered Agent - www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twist Agree.com - www.agree.com Today's show: Forget the triple-triple-double-double-double; the new bar for startups hoping to raise venture capital has reached the stratosphere, though our venture panel is worried that startups are focusing too much on today's problems that may not become companies tomorrow. During a lively VC roundtable, Cowboy's Aileen Lee…
Chamath on why young people need more agency, risk, and adventure
Ep 2306 · Jun 29, 2026 · 1 hr 12 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Plaud https://Plaud.ai/twist Shopify https://shopify.com/twist LinkedIn Jobs https://LinkedIn.com/twist Northwest Registered Agent https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist Today's show: *It's another All Star Summer, as we welcome back some of our favorite guests from throughout "This Week in Startups" history. Chamath Palihapitiya's development platform 8090 just raised $135 million, and he's using it to go after a $4 trillion market: the software ma…
Why F1 Teams are Replacing Wind Tunnels with Smart Tape | E2305
Ep 2305 · Jun 27, 2026 · 1 hr 30 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Plaud - https://Plaud.ai/twistSentry - https://sentry.io/twistNorthwest Registered Agent-https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twistDigitalOcean - https://do.co/twist Today's show: F1 teams spend up to a third of their budgets on aerodynamics, often utilizing wind tunnels to simulate what happens on the track. But Lyall Davenport of SKN Systems created a sensor-embedded tape that sticks directly to race cars as they drive around the real world, generatin…
Why the Future of Video Games is Moving Back to the Dinner Table
Ep 2304 · Jun 24, 2026 · 1 hr 9 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Deel - deel.com/twist Northwest Registered Agent - northwestregisteredagent.com/twist LinkedIn - linkedIn.com/twist Today's show: Jason sits down with Brynn Putnam, CEO and founder of Board, to learn more about her company's tabletop gaming console. The pair talks about how to raise capital for yet-to-launch hardware projects, the screen-time debate, and how Board is approaching building or buying IP for its family-friendly games. Next, Alex got Heremus…
The hottest running app has nothing to do with speed | E2303
Ep 2303 · Jun 22, 2026 · 1 hr 3 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by:Agree - https://agree.comQuo - https://quo.com/TWiSTSuperhuman - https://superhuman.comToday's show:In this double-header, Jason and Lon chat with Louis Phillips, founder of the gamified running app INTVL, which turns a quick job around the block into a worldwide turf war competition. Find out how he grew the app to over 1 million downloads without any paid ads, just making videos from his home office.PLUS Alex sits down with Alice Zhang, CEO of Verge La…
Why SpaceX Buying Cursor Changes Everything
Ep 2302 · Jun 18, 2026 · 1 hr 41 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Deel - deel.com/twist LinkedIn - linkedIn.com/twist Northwest Registered Agent - northwestregisteredagent.com/twistPlaud - https://Plaud.ai/twist Today's show: Anthropic stabbed Cursor in the back. Then SpaceX swooped in with $60 billion. Today, TWiST connects the dots on the biggest deal in AI since the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership, and why it's a warning sign for every startup building on top of a frontier model. Jason is joined by Bling Capital's Ben…
The Startup Building the First Hotel on the Moon…
Ep 2301 · Jun 15, 2026 · 1 hr 41 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Every.io - visit every.io Sentry.io - sentry.io/twist Vanta - vanta.com/twist Today's show: The next SpaceX won't be building rockets; it'll build the first hotel on the Moon. Today on TWiST, GRU Space founder Skyler Chan brings a brick made from lunar soil into the studio and lays out a plan to manufacture on the Moon as early as next year. We get into the science, the business model, and the regulatory land-grab ahead! Then, the US government forces A…
SpaceX IPO Day: What Wall St. and the media missed | E2300
Ep 2300 · Jun 13, 2026 · 1 hr 20 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Plaud https://Plaud.ai/twist Pilot https://pilot.com/twist Agree https://agree.com IM8 Health https://IM8health.com/twist After watching Elon build out his rocket (and AI) company over the past 20 years, Jason celebrates the SpaceX IPO on a new TWiST. He explains why some investments are evaluated based on earnings and current numbers, while other stocks are bets on expensive visions for the future, and why SpaceX why likely pay off across multiple time…
Why the most expensive Seed deals are the cheapest | E2299
Ep 2299 · Jun 10, 2026 · 1 hr 8 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: NetSuite - Netsuite.com/TWiST Deel - Deel.com/TWiST Squarespace - Squarespace.com/TWiST Two days before SpaceX launches the largest IPO in history at a flat $135/share, our VC roundtable drops a scorcher: The top 1% of seed deals might actually be underpriced. Plus: the "Sequoia scam" dual-tranche controversy, tokens-for-equity deals, and whether Claude Fable 5 is a true step function. Tomasz Tunguz (Theory Ventures), Michael Downing (Castalia Capital),…
The AI Tutor That Makes Kids Actually Think | E2298
Ep 2298 · Jun 8, 2026 · 1 hr
The AI Tutor That Makes Kids Actually Think | E2298 This Week In Startups is made possible by: Northwest Registered Agent https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist LinkedIn Jobs https://LinkedIn.com/twist Shopify https://shopify.com/twist Plaud https://Plaud.ai/twist Today's show: *Schools teach kids to memorize formulas. AI helps them skip thinking entirely. Brilliant founder Sue Khim joins TWiST to tell us how her new AI tutor, Koji, uses the Socratic Method to help students solve complex pro…
Anthropic wants to slow AI down and Bernie wants 50%: JCal Reacts | E2297
Ep 2297 · Jun 6, 2026 · 1 hr 33 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Grasshopper Bank https://grasshopper.bank/twist Vanta https://www.vanta.com/twist Render https://render.com/twist Plaud https://Plaud.ai/twist Today's show: Anthropic wrote a blog post calling for a global AI slowdown. Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders wants the government to seize 50% of every major AI company's stock. Find out why JCal is reconsidering universal basic (or even high!) income policies, and why he thinks the 2028 presidential election will…
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