Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291
Release Date: 05/20/2026
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
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
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
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
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
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
This Week in Startups
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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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Why the VC Hype Cycle Always Gets It Wrong | VC Roundtable | E2307
This Week in Startups
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Chamath on why young people need more agency, risk, and adventure
This Week in Startups
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Shopify
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Today’s show:
*It’s another All Star Summer, as we wel
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Why F1 Teams are Replacing Wind Tunnels with Smart Tape | E2305
This Week in Startups
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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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Why raise $200 million if you are already profitable? That’s the question Jason and Alex put to Mercury’s founder and CEO, Immad Akhund, after the entrepreneur raised another massive round for his upstart, technology-friendly bank. TWiST then welcomed Kled founder Avi Patel to discuss the startup he considers a clear ripoff of his own company. Jason gavels in verdicts on all parties involved, including Y Combinator and venture capital firm General Catalyst. The show closes with a news lightning round, including OpenAI’s decision to offer $2 million in token credits to hundreds of startups.
Guest Links:
Mercury https://mercury.com
Mercury funding announcement https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260520511817/en/Mercury-Raises-$200-Million-Series-D-at-$5.2B-Valuation
Immad Akhund on X https://x.com/immad
Kled https://www.kled.ai/
Avi Patel on X https://x.com/avipat_/
Avi’s complaint https://x.com/avipat_/status/2055384102409253056
General Catalyst https://www.generalcatalyst.com/
Y Combinator https://www.ycombinator.com/
Discussion links:
Anthropic’s attack on secondary trading https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/12/anthropic-warns-investors-against-secondary-platforms-offering-access-to-its-shares/
Vanta https://www.vanta.com/twist
Timestamps:
0:00 Welcome to This Week in Startups!
2:14 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin. You can check it out at https://Plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off!
3:27 Immad Akhund (Mercury) joins to discuss $200M raise
6:33 Mercury's origin story and path to $650M run rate
9:53 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
14:23 Stablecoins: where they work, why Mercury won't launch its own
20:13 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.
22:38 AI agents, and the future of money movement
27:30 Why Mercury raised less this round
30:11 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.
42:48 Avi Patel (Kled) joins to discuss copycat startups
57:06 Jason's verdict on YC's hacker culture & "appearance of impropriety"
1:17:39 Sam Altman's $2M-in-tokens-for-equity offer to YC founders
1:24:32 NYC hotel housekeepers cross $100K in time under new union contract
1:30:14 Minimum wage, immigration & the case for raising it slowly
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