This Week in Startups
@twistartups • 99,154 subscribers
Your thrice weekly deep dive into startups, markets, & tech | Hosted by @jason, @alex, and @lons. We're hiring a producer! Apply @ [email protected]!
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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 Startups81,376 次观看 • 2 天前
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 Startups468,292 次观看 • 12 天前
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 Startups863,038 次观看 • 2 个月前
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 次观看 • 4 个月前
A jar of living neurons just beat a top AI chip at learning. 5,000 to 1. Chips can catch up by training in simulations faster than real time. But real robots can't speed-run reality. In the physical world, neurons might actually win. That’s why Cortical Labs has been quietly building this future for years, running AI on living neurons instead of silicon.
This Week in Startups42,672 次观看 • 9 天前
The cost to go from idea to first customer used to be $3 million and 12 months. Now you can get there in a weekend. On a TWiST devoted to your questions, Jason and Lon reflect on how getting early-stage companies launched and funded has changed, how to compete with major players like OpenAI and Anthropic, and who Jason dislikes the most in Silicon Valley. 0:00 Inside the TWiST private group chat 3:25 How to react when an investor says your "too early." 6:50 The ultimate seed round funnel 8:48 Jason's new Associate in Training program 10:09 Grasshopper Bank - Time is money. Don't waste either. Go to and get an exclusive $500 cash bonus just for opening an account. 18:28 How have the metrics for early-stage companies changed? 20:20 LinkedIn Jobs - Hire right, the first time. Post your first job and get $100 off towards your job post at 22:34 TWiST Bounties update 23:43 Competing against frontier labs 30:03 What signals real investor-founder alignment? 30:14 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 36:07 A crash course in Bay Area startup culture 40:15 Automatons-as-a-Service (AaaS) 42:29 Who in Silicon Valley does Jason really not like? 49:59 Museum Etiquette with Lon Harris cc: @jason, Lon Harris, JS, sergedawg, Peridot: Curated matchmaking, Shawn Sully 🎥 Watch the full episode here 👇
This Week in Startups45,672 次观看 • 12 天前
$20/month? Insane. $200/month? No one will pay that. $2,000/month? She doesn't know what she's talking about. OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar on why everyone keeps getting AI pricing dead wrong: OpenAI, Sarah Friar, @jason, Chamath Palihapitiya, The All-In Podcast, David Sacks, david friedberg
This Week in Startups23,650 次观看 • 7 天前
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 Startups146,647 次观看 • 2 个月前
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 次观看 • 3 个月前
China is blocking Meta’s Manus acquisition, and it might just be our news story of the year. If a startup is strategically important, the CCP can just reach through with a “golden share” (a “symbolic” 1% / board seat / veto power) and kill the deal mid-flight… What Should Meta do? Unwind it and tell the VC’s to send the money back? 🤔
This Week in Startups60,568 次观看 • 1 个月前
Our OpenClaw is now ULTRON and he’s here for our jobs! Producer Oliver drops back in to show us all of our Digital Producer’s latest skills… and previews how he’s going to take over the job of about 20 entry-level employees. And with ZERO coffee breaks! Plus we’re joined by EXO Labs founder Alex Cheema who saw the agentic revolution coming and started building hardware solutions to running frontier LLMs at home! AND we’re announcing our Gamma Pitch Deck WINNER! Congrats to Nextvisit AI and co-founder Ryan Yannelli ! They’re walking away with a $25K investment from LAUNCH and our pals at Gamma. 🎥 Watch the full episode here 👇
This Week in Startups147,854 次观看 • 4 个月前
A Vietnamese miner with a GPU can now compete with anyone in the world. No visa. No approval. No gatekeeper. This is what Bittensor subnets actually unlock: anyone, anywhere, plugging into a global network and getting paid purely on contribution. This is what permissionless actually means.
This Week in Startups39,976 次观看 • 29 天前
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 次观看 • 1 年前
