5,000+ Tech Workers Laid Off This Week. It's Just The Beginning. | E2286
Release Date: 05/09/2026
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
$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
info_outline
Why the VC Hype Cycle Always Gets It Wrong | VC Roundtable | E2307
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
This Week in Startups
This Week In Startups is made possible by:
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
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
info_outlineThis Week In Startups is made possible by:
IM8 Health - https://IM8health.com/TWIST
Every - Every.io
Sentry - https://Sentry.io/TWIST
Banks don’t want to hand over their data to AI labs. So David Moscatelli built a $250,000 box that runs AI on-prem. He already has 1,600 pre-orders. On today’s episode of TWiST, Jason and Alex sit down with the Go Abacus founder and Yanez's Jose Caldera to unpack how regulated industries are getting AI without the cloud, why Bittensor subnet 54 is incentivizing miners to attack identity systems, and why Cloudflare just laid off 20% of its workforce in the same week it raised guidance. The show closes with Jason explaining what it means to build an AI-first startup, and how workers can derisk their future employment!
Guest Links:
Bittensor Subnet 54 on TAOstats
LAUNCH Links:
Founder University Japan application portal
News Links:
Cloudflare lays off 20% of its staff
Coinbase cuts 14% of its staff
Block post on how it is rebuilding its company
Block’s earnings, including its raised guidance
Anthropic’s massive upcoming funding round
WHOOP’s new on-demand clinicians
Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction: Jason in Brooklyn, Knicks playoffs
2:30 Go Abacus joins: AI infrastructure for regulated industries
3:25 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!
4:00 The Go1: 2,000-user on-prem AI appliance
7:04 Pricing the Go1: How far does $250,000 go?
7:24 1,600 orders and the hardware delivery challenge
10:14 Sentry - New users can get $240 in free credits when they go to https://sentry.io/twist and use the code TWIST
20:23 Every.io - For all of your incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, accounting, taxes or other back-office administration needs, visit https://every.io
27:22 Chicago tech scene and in-office culture
30:09 IM8 Health: Start feeling like your best self every day. Go to https://IM8health.com/twist and use the code TWiST to get a free welcome kit, five free travel sachets, and 10% off your order.
35:11 Yanez joins: How to prove personhood and uniqueness
38:32 How biometric capture and bio-keys work
40:05 Agent delegation: proving humans authorized AI agents
44:19 Bittensor Subnet 54 and incentivizing adversarial miners
47:11 Founder University Japan Cohort 2 applications open
49:15 Tech layoffs: Cloudflare cuts 20%, Coinbase cuts 14%, Block raises guidance
1:02:14 Anthropic's $50B round at $900B pre-money
1:04:22 WHOOP adds on-demand clinicians
1:06:42 Federalism, state-level regulation, and AI policy
Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com
Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com
Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp
Follow Lon:
Follow Alex:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm
Follow Jason:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis
Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/
Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland
Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis
Follow TWiST:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups
Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com