This Week in Startups

Is AI the new cigarettes? Our VC panel digs into Anthropic’s S-1 | E2356

6.2K views · 1d ago · 1:12:25

Guest: D.A. Wallach

This Week In Startups is made possible by PayPal The Conservation Fund Hostinger Plaud Today’s show Anthropic’s S-1 is here, and finally, we can start to develop a real understanding for the AI economy and whether the numbers add up. Anthropic shows an operating profit, a mostly non-cash $80.7 billion loss, and customers spending a shocking 9x what they were spending on intelligence just one year ago. Is this the greatest business in history?

Topics: Anthropic files its public S-1 · Anthropic vs. OpenAI revenue run rates · PayPal is built for all businesses. Get started at · “The greatest business in the history of capitalism” · Is intelligence the new tobacco? · The “meat sack constraint”

Pregame Your Launch Before Your App Exists (w/ Amanda Bradford) | E2355

2.5K views · 3d ago · 56:49

Guest: Amanda Bradford

This Week In Startups is made possible by Odoo Rippling Plaud 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).

Topics: Amanda Bradford on building The League · Hand-reviewing early applications · Building an MVP with a rented co-founder · The VIP approach · Why Amanda only let in 500 people · The “Heavy Hitter” fake paywall test

OpenAI’s $1.25T Raise, Starlink Mobile & Zuck’s Tax Deal | EP 2354

6.5K views · 6d ago · 1:33:12

This Week In Startups is made possible by Plaud Sentry Lightfield Rippling 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.

Topics: Jason’s in SF with the LAUNCH Accelerator 37 cohort · Tactical & Practical talks live at Salesforce Tower · Using Claude for brainstorming, not writing · OpenAI closing $30B at a $1.25T valuation · Why OpenAI could still lose · Would you put 30% of your retirement into OpenAI?

VCs React to the Theranos Movie, the Pro Rata Lawsuit & ElevenLabs’ Voice Drama

5.7K views · 1w ago · 1:41:11

Guest: Sam Lessin

This Week In Startups is made possible by DigitalOcean Odoo Rippling AI Plaud 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...

Topics: Panel intro: Sam Lessin, Paige Doherty, Jenny Fielding · Why gambling loses appeal for VCs · Best moments from “You Can See Everything” · Unreliable narrators and unknowable situations · Living in a post-truth moment · Due diligence horror stories

Anthropic Gives Away 5% of Its Shares, Clone’s Muscle Robot, ElevenLabs Steals Podcaster's Voice

4.2K views · 1w ago · 1:34:20

This Week In Startups is made possible by Plaud Northwest Registered Agent Vanta Rippling 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.

Topics: Jason's "You Can See Everything" reaction · What films max out RT's critic and audience scores · Anthropic commits 5% equity to Public Benefit Fund · Would equity change how Americans feel about AI? · Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at · Dhanush from Clone Robotics joins the show

Flying Cars, OpenAI Spies, Why AI Isn’t Sticking (Superhuman CEO)

4.1K views · 1w ago · 1:33:20

This Week In Startups is made possible by Lightfield PayPal Plaud GoDaddy 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.

Topics: GPTZero and the fight over what's human · Fathom and the 90% of work that's spoken · Why Jason says every employee should use Grammarly · How to test whether new hires can actually write · Grammarly Authorship and proving the work is yours · How accurate are AI detectors

The Ex-DeepMind Researcher Taking On China’s Open Source AI

7.2K views · 2w ago · 1:00:24

This Week In Startups is made possible by Paper Superhuman Odoo 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.

Topics: Why companies are switching from renting AI to owning it · How Reflection sells the whole AI stack · Who is moving AI onto their own servers · What it took to train Beam · How reinforcement learning tasks get built · Hackers heat French supermarket fridges

The Gadget That's Better in Crowds Than Your Phone + Ring’s Founder Before Amazon Bought It | E2349

3.6K views · 2w ago · 1:20:27

This Week In Startups is made possible by Plaud Northwest Registered Agent NetSuite The Conservation Fund 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.

Topics: Totem, an offline compass for finding friends at festivals · Why phones fail in big crowds · How more devices make the mesh network stronger · Why Totem beats phone GPS in a crowd · Why Apple won't build this into the iPhone · Raising money for hardware in an AI world

Jason Reacts To Japanese Founder Pitches + Fireside Chat With Yuki Shirato

6K views · 2w ago · 1:24:46

This Week In Startups is made possible by Lightfield Rippling Upwork Today’s show 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.

Topics: Jason's first trip to Japan and the food crawl · Why everyone in Japan acts like a founder · Founder University comes to Japan · Techstars Tokyo and Japan's push for global founders · Why Japanese startups stay on the island · Parents, lifetime jobs, and the fear of failure

What VCs Really Think About Personal AI Agents | E2347

6.8K views · 3w ago · 1:18:48

Guest: Kanu Gulati

This Week In Startups is made possible by Plaud Odoo Northwest Registered Agent Today’s show A personal AI agent that’s still invite-only just hit a $10 billion valuation.

Topics: VC roundtable with guest host Deedy Das · OpenAI's math results and what's left to invest in · Formalizing taxes and code so AI can prove its work · Why science breakthroughs still need the real world · Can startups compete with the labs on compute? · Private data and vertical AI as the moat

Jason Mentors The Next Generation + Why AI Is Bad at Teaching (Aristotle Interview) | E2346

6.8K views · 3w ago · 1:09:47

This Week In Startups is made possible by Vanta DigitalOcean Sentry Plaud 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.

Topics: Live Ask Jason kicks off · Fordham-bound caller asks how to break into finance in the AI era · Jason's gift: read one biography a month · Vanta: Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at · Returning caller David: what would you do with $500K? · Bringing an AI protein folding tool into drug discovery

Inside The Startup Building Uncensored AI (Abliteration AI) | EP 2345

4.8K views · 3w ago · 52:40

This Week In Startups is made possible by Northwest Registered Agent Odoo Plaud 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

Topics: What Abliteration.ai does, and who the frontier labs are shutting out · Why defenders don't get the attackers' tools · "Inversion of control": letting customers set their own guardrails · Who's liable? The hammer analogy and the White House self-regulation pact · Why AI labs publicize their scariest hacks · Customers: from cyber startups to Fortune 500 CISOs

Justin Kan & Brian Chesky: The Rejections That Built Twitch and Airbnb | E2344

3.9K views · 4w ago · 1:17:19

Guest: Justin Kan

This Week In Startups is made possible by Plaud Sentry Lightfield Today’s show Google once interviewed the entire (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.

Topics: Justin Kan on episode 900 (Feb 2019) · When Jason and Justin realized people watch gaming · Mahalo, Halo 3, and betting a company on 3% of its traffic · CLA: Get started with CLA's CPAs, consultants, and wealth advisors now at · The "zombie startup" years and Google's rejection · Instinct: the AI agent built for venture capitalists

The 5 Companies Apple Must Buy

4.2K views · 1mo ago · 49:56

This Week In Startups is made possible by PayPal Northwest Registered Agent Odoo This Week In Startups is made possible by PayPal Northwest Registered Agent Odoo Description Wall Street suspects new Apple CEO John Ternus may do something predecessor Tim Cook almost never did: writing a huge check.

Topics: Will Ternus take "massively big swings"? · Round 1: ElevenLabs · Round 1: Disney · Round 2: Sony · Round 2: Boston Dynamics · Round 3: Perplexity

A rogue OpenAI agent hacked Australia’s government. Does this matter? | E2342

6.7K views · 1mo ago · 1:25:17

This Week In Startups is made possible by Lightfield Paper The Conservation Fund Athena Summary of this episode from Plaud Today’s show 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.

Topics: Whoop fire alarm: Jason's dry-aged steak incident · News: an OpenAI agent breached Australia's Medicare statistics portal · Scraper or hack? Australia's PM jumps into the AI safety debate · Guest: Bryant Chou of PloyAI · Why a repeat unicorn founder went back to Y Combinator · The DOJ probe into a16z's Databricks and Fivetran board seats

VCs Would Bet on Open-Source AI Over OpenAI and Anthropic | E2341

9.6K views · 1mo ago · 1:26:25

This Week In Startups is made possible by Northwest Registered Agent Odoo Rippling Plaud Harmonic 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.

Topics: What seed rounds looked like then: Fitbit's $2M seed · Jenny's Techstars NYC years and the two-unicorn mug · All-In Summit: Trump calls Jensen Huang onstage. Staged or not? · P(doom) roundtable + Dave's AI sovereign wealth fund prediction · The AI intel error that nearly triggered a US-China incident · "McClure's Law": a human with AI is the real risk

Elon's New Hyperloop, Trump's AI Rename, and a Model That Won't Talk | E2340

25K views · 1mo ago · 1:09:02

This Week In Startups is made possible by Vanta DigitalOcean Lightfield Plaud 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.

Topics: Elon Musk revives the Hyperloop: a 30-minute Austin–San Antonio tunnel · A brief history of Hyperloop and the white paper · Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at · News: Trump proposes an "AI Force," an AI czar, and renaming AI itself · "Get back to work, nerds" · TypeSafe's Jev, a "System One" model built to decide, not chat

Hugging Face Co-Founder on Open-Source, Microduck, and NVIDIA | E2339

13K views · 1mo ago · 1:33:13

This Week In Startups is made possible by Superhuman PayPal Odoo Plaud Harmonic 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.

Topics: Guest: Thomas Wolf, co-founder & chief science officer, Hugging Face · Two years to build Microduck · How Hugging Face actually makes money: storage, not tokens · Vibe-coding robotics: "train this new behavior for me" · Thomas Wolf's P-doom and the airplane-safety analogy · The Nvidia acquisition and what changes for open models

Jason’s Put a $5K Bounty on His Dream Chrome Extension | E2338

6.9K views · 1mo ago · 40:11

This Week In Startups is made possible by Northwest Registered Agent Sentry 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.

Topics: Why Jason bought · The original idea: highlight any sentence on the web and dispute it · The rules: the code is open source, and Jason can cancel any time · Submission 1: Robert's annotated.wtf · Submission 1 Scoring · Submission 2: Allan Shifflet's take

90% of AI prototypes never reach production (w/ Temporal’s Samar Abbas) | AI Basics

10K views · 1mo ago · 19:23

Guests: AI Basics, Temporal’s Samar Abbas

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

Topics: Why every startup needs an AI harness · Why 90% of AI prototypes never reach production · What happens when an agent crashes mid-task · A look at Temporal's dashboard · OK but what is a "harness" exactly? · When to graduate an agent from laptop to production

Ask Jason: AI Extinction, Grok's Rogue Meme Coin & Weed Farms as Data Centers | E2337

6.1K views · 1mo ago · 1:10:42

Guest: Ask Jason

This Week In Startups is made possible by The Conservation Fund 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.

Topics: Where Terminator 2's logic breaks down · The threat Jason is actually scared of: slaughter drones and murder bots · Claude's caution vs. Grok's "hold my beer" · (Question) John Wright, part two: do you expect founders to get more done now · The three buckets: 10x, 5x, and the 20% crowd · CLA - Get started with CLA's CPAs, consultants, and wealth advisors now at

The Pentagon Wants Equity in AI Startups | E2336

5.4K views · 1mo ago · 1:12:08

This Week In Startups is made possible by DigitalOcean — Want to see what building on a true AI-native platform looks like? Head to to start building on DigitalOcean's AI-Native Cloud today — and cut your AI workload costs by up to 50%.

Topics: Remembering 9/11, 25 Years Later · Are we about to nationalize the AI industry? · Apple's foldable iPhone Duo · Tibo Louis-Lucas returns to TWiST · Why you should "stack" multiple AI subscriptions · Squad's ideal customer is a solo founder

Becki DeGraw on founder vesting, advisor equity & the 4-term-sheet play

3.6K views · 1mo ago · 22:35

This Week In Startups is made possible by Wilson Sonsini 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.

Topics: Becki DeGraw on why founder equity is "near and dear" to every founder · Founder vesting explained · Why you want vesting even if you never take VC money · "Why do I have to vest again?" · Leverage is a function of how many offers you have · The exact script for landing a second term sheet

Did OpenAI Steal the Navier-Stokes Solution? | E2335

14K views · 1mo ago · 1:20:42

This Week In Startups is made possible by Northwest Registered Agent NetSuite Vanta 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.

Topics: Jacob Coxon quits Anthropic: "crunch time" and "endgame" · Evan Hubinger: 10% odds AI kills all humans in a decade · Jobs, the wealth divide, and which industries get wiped out first · Savvy Wealth's $100M round · Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at · Meta ships Muse

Dr. Mark Hyman on Function Health & GLP-1 microdosing | E2334

9.8K views · 1mo ago · 57:46

This Week In Startups is made possible by Odoo Northwest Registered Agent Rippling 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.

Topics: What is a function, actually · Healthspan vs. sick care · A $300 vitamin D test vs. a $10 one · Should a 25-year-old get a whole-body MRI? · Why is medicine still running on paper · The study where the chatbot beat the doctors

Becki DeGraw on spinouts, IP licensing & clean exits | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics

2.9K views · 1mo ago · 17:54

Guest: Becki DeGraw

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.

Topics: What a spinout actually is · Becki: the real "why" behind spinouts · IP licenses and the "acquihire" workaround · University spinouts · Google/Waymo and Microsoft/Expedia: spinouts at scale · Jason's 80/20 rule and the unicorn test

VC experts on why Physical AI funding is heating up | E2333

7.4K views · 1mo ago · 1:19:47

This Week In Startups is made possible by Sentry Lightfield Odoo Today’s show Are we one step closer to data centers in space? Katelin Holloway of Seven Seven Six and Paige Doherty of Behind Genius Ventures break it down what it would take. Plus investor interest is surging in Physical AI companies. Paige explains why she backs applications of physical AI over general-purpose robotics, and how her thesis on multimodal AI led to the largest check she's ever written.

Topics: Why making it to Fund IV is when it gets real · Pentagon rolls out ChatGPT Mil and Grok for Government · Paige on defense tech and three years at Northrop Grumman · Katelin: The bottleneck used to be winning the contract, now it's surviving one · Autonomous weapons, robot dogs, and the Boston Dynamics conversation in Paris · EU designates ChatGPT a "very large online search engine" under the DSA