This Week in Startups

01:31:28

Bill Gates foresees massive AI job loss: these VCs...

This Week in Startups ·

2026/08/26

This Week In Startups is made possible by: Lightfield https://lightfield.app Northwest Registered Agent https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain Rippling https://Rippling.ai/twist Today's show: *Bill Gates dropped a 6,000 word warning: AI will be "the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst sort of injustice." The Microsoft icon has an AI agenda for the US: new national institutions, AI use taxes, and jobs legally reserved for humans only. Our VC roundtable guests — Sheel Mohnot

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24:50

You Can't Fire a VC From Your Board: Here's Why |...

This Week in Startups ·

2026/08/25

Today's show: Can a founder actually fire a board member? Short answer: almost never. And the reason why may surprise a lot of founders. On this edition of Legal Basics, Wilson Sonsini partner Becki DeGraw joins Jason for a deep dive into who really controls your board, when investors start earning seats, and the differences between a board member and a board observer. Check out an episode that might just save your cab table someday. PLUS they walk through the full lifecycle of your startup's board,

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01:20:22

China wants you to cheer for the robots taking your...

This Week in Startups ·

2026/08/25

This Week In Startups is made possible by: Odoo https://Odoo.com/twist Quo https://quo.com/TWiST Conservation Fund https://conservationfund.org how old a movie has to be for me to be able to show a part of it on youtube Generally 10 seconds or less of a film clip can fall under fair use for commentary or criticism — which is how most podcasts and talk shows use clips without issue. But there's no hard legal rule based on age. What actually matters more than age is fair use, which considers:

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01:09:14

Open source is going to win it all: Harvey proves it...

This Week in Startups ·

2026/08/21

This Week In Startups is made possible by: Superhuman https://Superhuman.com Sentry https://sentry.io/twist Lightfield https://lightfield.app Today's show: Jason's been saying it for years now (and we've got an All In clip from 2023 to prove it). Open source will win the AI race. This week gives us a major evidence point, as $11B legal AI company Harvey released its own in-house model, trained on an open-weight Kimi K3 base. Harvey made a proprietary specialized solution without having to risk

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21:05

Taste is the new programming language (w/ Astrocade...

This Week in Startups ·

2026/08/20

The TWiST AI Basics series is made possible by Google Cloud! 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 Astrocade is building super-intelligence for the interactive world. Build the future of fun: https://www.astrocade.com/careers Today's show: *Making a video game once required a studio, an engine, and a team of five or more people

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54:19

Neurosymbolic AI outperforms chatbots and product...

This Week in Startups ·

2026/08/19

This Week In Startups is made possible by: Vanta https://www.vanta.com/twist Agree https://agree.com YSecurity https://YSecurity.io/TWIST Today's show: Frontier AI models can ace PhD-level exams, but it's still bad at tracking down the product you want in the style that suits you. Onton's Zach Hudson tell us that the problem is that models are a black box. His solution? A neurosymbolic model, Ontology 1, that learns about your taste and preferred aesthetic over time, then produces product searches

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01:24:54

Bittensor creator Const on Affine, dTAO, "mining...

This Week in Startups ·

2026/08/17

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") to

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01:20:16

What we'll learn from Anthropic's $2-$3T IPO | E2325

This Week in Startups ·

2026/08/15

This Week In Startups is made possible by: PayPal Open https://paypalopen.com 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 keep

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01:03:44

These robots could cut delivery costs by 80% | Next...

This Week in Startups ·

2026/08/12

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

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01:20:18

Zuck's AI manifesto is a data center PR masterclass |...

This Week in Startups ·

2026/08/11

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

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01:18:16

How AI splits startups into winners and losers | E2322

This Week in Startups ·

2026/08/07

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

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01:12:33

Airtable's 80% off value crash: VCs explain why it's...

This Week in Startups ·

2026/08/05

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

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01:02:16

How Bespoke faked AI until it actually worked (w/...

This Week in Startups ·

2026/08/03

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

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01:15:09

Why AI has no taste and how to fix it (w/ Thais...

This Week in Startups ·

2026/07/31

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 regress

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01:25:49

Banning Chinese robots isn't regulatory capture | E2318

This Week in Startups ·

2026/07/29

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 broke

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43:52

While other cultivated meat companies are collapsing,...

This Week in Startups ·

2026/07/27

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

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45:02

Why quantum has been "10 years away" for 30 years |...

This Week in Startups ·

2026/07/24

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

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01:12:25

Why this longevity startup raised in Japan, not...

This Week in Startups ·

2026/07/22

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 in

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42:01

The AI Securing Your Workforce Before a Mistake Ever...

This Week in Startups ·

2026/07/20

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

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46:54

The dawn of surgery bots + buy a home for $250 (w/...

This Week in Startups ·

2026/07/17

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

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