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 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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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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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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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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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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This Week In Startups is made possible by:
Northwest Registered Agent https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist
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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 is made possible by:
Shopify
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Today’s show:
*It’s another All Star Summer, as we wel
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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
info_outlineThis Week In Startups is made possible by:
Grasshopper Bank https://grasshopper.bank/twistLinkedIn Jobs https://LinkedIn.com/twistNorthwest Registered Agent https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist
Today’s show:
Jason breaks down the real math behind raising a seed round. Here’s the funnel: contact 150 firms, get 50 first meetings, convert 2o into second meetings, and close 2 term sheets.
PLUS Jason responds to viewer questions about why hardware is no longer a dirty word for investors, how to differentiate your startup from frontier-model companies like OpenAI, even when they’re in your niche. Plus a pitch for “Founder Community College,” and anecdotes from Lon’s European odyssey.
Thanks for the Questions:
Richard Corral: CEO of Quanto: https://quanto.co/
ØnProtons on X: https://x.com/0nProtons
SergeDawg on X: https://x.com/sergedawg
Mahika Golani
Peridot: https://www.tryperidot.com/
Shawn Sully on X: https://x.com/aroogle
Programs and Accelerators Mentioned:
Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/
Techstars: https://www.techstars.com/
Antler: https://www.antler.co/
PearX: https://pear.vc/pearx/
Sequoia ARC: https://www.sequoiacap.com/arc/
Kauffman Fellows: https://www.kauffmanfellows.org/
Companies and Startups Referenced:
Whoop: https://www.whoop.com/
Knightscope: https://knightscope.com/
Eight Sleep: https://www.eightsleep.com/
Cafe X: https://www.cafexapp.com/
Media Referenced:
New Yorker Sam Altman profile: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/04/13/sam-altman-may-control-our-future-can-he-be-trusted
Off-Duty Recommendations
Terra Kaffe Demi compact automatic espresso machine: https://www.terrakaffe.com/products/tk-demi
Osteria Pastella (Florence, Italy): https://www.osteriapastella.it/
Timestamps:
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 https://grasshopper.bank/twist 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 https://LinkedIn.com/twist
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 https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist
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
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