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Why the Future of Video Games is Moving Back to the Dinner Table

This Week in Startups

Release Date: 06/24/2026

The AI Securing Your Workforce Before a Mistake Ever Becomes a Breach | E2314 show art The AI Securing Your Workforce Before a Mistake Ever Becomes a Breach | E2314

This Week in Startups

This Week In Startups is made possible by: Vanta Superhuman YSecurity 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 new project, Sume’s Avatar, a multi-model orchestration layer that generates 60-second UGC videos from a single prompt… and gets it right on the first try, rather...

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The dawn of surgery bots + buy a home for $250 (w/ Andromeda & Mogul) | E2313 show art The dawn of surgery bots + buy a home for $250 (w/ Andromeda & Mogul) | E2313

This Week in Startups

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 CLA MongoDB 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 focuses on the software that will allow doctors to operate it from an iPad. Plus Mogul co-founder and CEO Alex Blackwood shows Jason how his platform lets anyone buy fractional shares...

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A Startup Is Trying to Buy PayPal… Craziest Deal of 2026! | E2312 show art A Startup Is Trying to Buy PayPal… Craziest Deal of 2026! | E2312

This Week in Startups

This Week In Startups is made possible by: MongoDB - Rippling - -   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 la Fin, physical AI as the next frontier, the power of Silicon Valley groupthink, and how startups are approaching the first days of...

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Jason turned $11 and one tweet into 1.1M views | E2311 show art Jason turned $11 and one tweet into 1.1M views | E2311

This Week in Startups

This Week In Startups is made possible by: Quo PayPal Open Northwest Registered Agent 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 a simple fact: builders love to see what other people are building, and growing your new project “in public,” sharing your journey on social media, is a great way to develop...

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Danny Bernstein left Big Tech to fund farm-bots | E2310 show art Danny Bernstein left Big Tech to fund farm-bots | E2310

This Week in Startups

This Week In Startups is made possible by: NetSuite Squarespace YSecurity 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. Here’s why he argues that automating farms isn’t just a new opportunity, it’s a national security issue. PLUS Jason responded to Gal Shir’s viral “AI beat me at...

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Why Data Is the Next $1 Trillion Market show art Why Data Is the Next $1 Trillion Market

This Week in Startups

This Week In Startups is made possible by: Digital Ocean - - - .   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 secondary markets, the state of startup M&A, why the SaaSpocalypse may be temporary, and what could trigger a...

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$100T is managed by “human duct tape” | E2308 show art $100T is managed by “human duct tape” | E2308

This Week in Startups

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 Hladcz

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This Week in Startups

This Week In Startups is made possible by:


CLA - www.claconnect.com/withyou

Northwest Registered Agent - www.northwes

info_outline Chamath on why young people need more agency, risk, and adventure show art Chamath on why young people need more agency, risk, and adventure

This Week in Startups

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 wel

info_outline Why F1 Teams are Replacing Wind Tunnels with Smart Tape | E2305 show art Why F1 Teams are Replacing Wind Tunnels with Smart Tape | E2305

This Week in Startups

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-embedde

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More Episodes

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’s AJ Piplica on the horn to chat hypersonic, autonomous jets. The startup’s technology bridges the gap between rockets and airplanes, and may represent the future of warfare, yes, but also fast freight!


Guest Links:


Brynn Putnam https://x.com/BrynnPutnam

Board https://board.fun/

Board Series A announcement https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/02/board-the-new-game-startup-from-mirror-founder-brynn-putnam-raises-20m-has-already-sold-thousands/

Mirror https://www.lululemonstudio.com/

AJ Piplica https://x.com/AJ_Piplica

Heremus https://www.hermeus.com/

Heremus Series C announcement https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hermeus-reaches-1-billion-valuation-with-350-million-raise-to-build-todays-fastest-aircraft-for-the-american-warfighter-302735273.html


Timestamps:


0:00 Board's Brynn Putnam joins the show

2:54 Board's proprietary AI software stack

6:43 Why Board manufactures in Mexico (not China)

9:21 LinkedIn: Thanks to our partners at LinkedIn! Post your job for free at https://linkedIn.com/twist then promote it to get access to LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant.

9:42 How to raise a Seed round for hardware without a finished product

15:26 Brynn's daughter and the mermaid example

17:09 Can Board limit screen time fears?

18:47 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 https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist

22:54 Selling the first 10,000 units

28:38 Deel - Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, get visas handled fast, and get back to building. Visit https://deel.com/twist to learn more.

29:42 Why Board is steering away from simple ports toward native IP experiences

35:32 Hermeus's AJ Piplica joins the show

35:32 What is Dark Horse?

43:48 Commercial applications: Cargo, organs, flowers, and trans-Atlantic in 90 minutes

47:47 Commercial applications: Cargo, organs, flowers, and trans-Atlantic in 90 minutes

57:00 Dark Horse range and the "reusable first stage" analogy

58:42 Dark Horse range and the "reusable first stage" analogy

1:02:42 $350M Series C led by Khosla; total funding now exceeds $500M

1:03:39 The SpaceX model: get customers to fund your R&D

1:07:47 Closing: the American Dynamism pitch


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