This Week in Startups
@twistartups • 100,271 subscribers
Your thrice weekly deep dive into startups, markets, & tech | Hosted by @jason, @alex, and @lons. We're hiring a producer! Apply @ [email protected]!
Videos
J-Cal says the exact dollar amount at which money stops mattering: $10 million. Park it, earn 5%, and you're clearing half a million a year without lifting a finger. You can go do whatever you want or nothing at all. That's real F-U money. Everything past that is just keeping score.
This Week in Startups471,002 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
When Bank of America wouldn’t let Jason take out $20K from his account for a Vegas trip… he decided it was time for a new financial partner. So he called three banks and asked each one to send him $10K in $2 bills. One delivered… and became his new bank. It’s the classic “Van Halen rider” test. If you still see Brown M&Ms in the proverbial bowl, the venue didn’t read your rider, and doesn’t really value your business. A vital lesson in picking your partners with diligence. (cc: @jason, Lon Harris, Van Halen, Bank of America)
This Week in Startups863,187 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten
Sam Altman walked into YC, offering founders $1M in free tokens for a slice of equity. Jason's advice: run. OpenAI is watching your token usage, ranking the winners, then shipping the top 5 as native features. Get off the frontier models, use open source, and own your data. @jason
This Week in Startups196,409 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
Chamath: “Facebook, Tesla, Google… they almost had an allergic reaction to the traditional software stack. They refused to use it.” Find out why he raised a $135M Series A to redefine development, giving every enterprise the opportunity to build and maintain their own software without the $4T in consultants and middleware that usually comes with it… in the debut episode of TWiST All Star Summer 2026. 0:00 It's TWiST All-Star Summer! 0:44 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin. You can check it out at and use code TWIST for 10% off! 3:21 Chamath's origin story 7:54 Tom Sawyer entrepreneurship 11:29 Shopify - Turn those What If's into sales with the ecommerce platform powering millions of businesses. Sign up for your $1-per-month trial today at 16:25 The $5 trillion software market 21:06 LinkedIn Jobs - Hire right, the first time. Post your first job and get $100 off towards your job post at 25:00 Building "a co-founder for every human" 31:51 Northwest Registered Agent - Get more when you start your business with Northwest. In 10 clicks and 10 minutes, you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity — Learn more at 35:00 How product development lost its way 45:00 Regulated industries are the beachhead 50:00 Raising the $135M Series A 55:00 8090's "System on a Chip" model 1:04:44 What to tell your kids about AI cc: Chamath Palihapitiya, @jason, 8090 🎥 Watch the full episode here 👇
This Week in Startups110,050 Aufrufe • vor 27 Tagen
Have you been mass buying Mac Minis for your new OpenClaw🦞 workflows? One man who skated to puck is Alex Cheema, founder of EXO Labs! He joins TWiST today to show @jason how his open source software helps users connect all of their Mac Minis. Check out how you can start running your own AI compute cluster!
This Week in Startups680,613 Aufrufe • vor 5 Monaten
A Brown University professor moved his final exam to in-person after suspecting AI use on the take-home midterm… The drop-off was nuts… one student fell from 100% to 16.5%, and 18 students dropped the class rather than taking the exam in person... @jason's take: this isn't the students' fault. Teachers know AI is being used and won't adapt. His fix: every test, in person, blue book, with pen and paper. How do you think schools should use AI?
This Week in Startups56,992 Aufrufe • vor 15 Tagen
Alex Karp and Palantir's 9-point "AI Sovereignty" manifesto grabbed the world's attention earlier this week... but Jason has been saying basically the same thing since February (!) on All-In. Just compare Karp's opener or The Original JCal: KARP: "Sovereignty is the precondition for choice, relinquishing sovereignty transfers the future choices of your institution to others." JASON: "Intelligence sovereignty is you can't tell me what to think. You can't use your AI to analyze my photos, emails, messages, and tell me how to interpret the world." Basically, whoever controls the model controls the outcome, and if that's not you... it's someone else.
This Week in Startups83,646 Aufrufe • vor 24 Tagen
Chamath spent $4M building a private research team, just so he could stay informed on energy. He figured: If you’re going to allocate real capital, you need a prepared mind and high-quality information. This sort of research is expensive, so he systematized it. Now, for $1K/year, any investor can get the same analyst digest that he’s using. Learn more about how he got thousands of subscribers to pay for his information infrastructure through “Learn With Me.” cc: Chamath Palihapitiya, @jason
This Week in Startups83,984 Aufrufe • vor 26 Tagen
Wild conspiracy theory: Anthropic got sabotaged by its own backers… Amazon flagged a jailbreak to the government to subvert a rival it secretly competes with. @jason isn't buying it. "There's no grand conspiracy here." The real story is much more boring, and more believable… What do you think?
This Week in Startups114,485 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
JCal: "The real crime is that rich people have rigged the markets." You can bet on the Knicks, gamble on blackjack, and YOLO any meme coin you want. But you legally can't buy SpaceX, Uber, or Tesla before they go public... For some arbitrary reason, we draw the line in private markets, even though that’s where all the value is created. @jason
This Week in Startups76,423 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
Here’s why J-Cal told this VC, “You're going to be the worst venture capitalist of all time.” Jason flew across California for a VC meeting he didn't even ask for. The firm had begged a mutual friend to set it up. 5 AM wakeup, 6 AM flight, rental car up to Santa Rosa, then somewhere on the 101, he checks his phone: voicemail. The meeting's been canceled… Two years later, that same VC tried to apologize over sushi. Jason's response is one of the best comebacks you'll hear.
This Week in Startups82,447 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat
Here’s why OpenHome creator Jesse Leimgruber says, if you’re still prompting OpenClaw🦞 on a screen, you’re falling behind! The whole point of AI agents is that they can do things for you in the real world. But what’s the point if you’re still interacting with them exclusively through a laptop. That’s why Jesse created a smart speaker that allows you to interact vocally with your agent from any room in your home, 24/7. Having an agent listen in on your conversations, and learn all about you and your life in context, opens up an entirely new level of productivity… and might just save your Valentine’s Day as well.
This Week in Startups209,839 Aufrufe • vor 5 Monaten
HBO is spending a rumored $5.6 BILLION on this new Harry Potter series but Jason says… it’s actually a smart bet. The “Potter” show reportedly costs $100 million PER EPISODE. That’s around 20x more costly than Season 1 of “Game of Thrones”! How could HBO Max subscriptions alone possibly make that money back. On TWiST, @jason notes that the lifetime value of a hardcore Harry Potter fan is well above $1000. If this show creates 5 million die hard “Potter” fanatics, it earns that money back just from HBO Max subscriptions, let alone theme park visits, merch, new books, video games, and beyond. Dig deep into the economics of IP and how a big investment of front could pay off over generations of fandom on TWiST. cc: @jason, Lon Harris
This Week in Startups146,668 Aufrufe • vor 4 Monaten
This founder’s viral plea to Trump: Don’t kill eCommerce 🇺🇸📦 Steven Borrelli Steven Borrelli, founder of Cuts, joins @jason and alex 🏴☠️🇺🇸🇺🇦 to break down the massive blow new tariffs and the end of the 321 exemption could deliver to bootstrapped American brands. 🔹 145% tariffs = business-killing math — no brand can survive that kind of hit. 🔹 CUTS ships from Mexico using 321 rules — but that loophole ends May 2. 🔹 No time to pivot: Moving production takes 6–9 months — not 6–9 days. 🔹 Tariffs ≠ higher prices — they mean no sales at all. 🔹 Borrelli says: “We’re living the American Dream — don’t forget the bootstrappers.” This is a must-watch for anyone building (or buying from) American eComm brands.
This Week in Startups408,283 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr
