This Week in Startups

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Today's show:
*Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg published a 6,500 word essay about the future of AI, and Jason thinks it's his smartest PR move in years.
The thinkpiece, "The Future is for Everyone: The Path to a Positive AI Future," arrives alongside a new open-weight Meta model — Muse Glimmer — and the promise of an open-weight version of Muse Spark 1.2 to come. Zuckerberg's clearly pitching an "abundance" narrative, promising the American public untold benefits from AI technology — everything from a PhD-level tutor for every student to scientific breakthroughs, personal assistants, and beyond — all for the low low cost of not banning new data centers. Do our hosts think everyday voters will take this deal?
PLUS X retires its revenue sharing program, the CLARITY Act misses a key pre-recess vote, what can we do to stop widespread AI-powered community college cheating, and some of the podcasting positions for which LAUNCH is hiring.
Relevant Links
Meta: "The Future is for Everyone": https://about.fb.com/news/2026/08/the-future-is-for-everyone/
Meta: "Introducing Muse Glimmer": https://research.meta.ai/blog/introducing-muse-glimmer-open-agentic-model
MS Now: "Kevin O'Leary wants to atone for his data center sins": https://www.ms.now/news/kevin-oleary-wants-to-atone-for-his-data-center-sins
"The Social Reckoning" teaser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM4LkaXwGuY
X: Original Content Rewards Program: https://help.x.com/en/using-x/original-content-rewards
TechCrunch: Nikita Bier steps down as X's head of product: https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/05/nikita-bier-steps-down-as-xs-head-of-product/
Congress.gov: H.R. 3633 - Digital Asset Market Clarity Act: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/3633/text
Politico: "Crypto faces a setback in the Senate": https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/07/delays-imperil-senate-crypto-bill-01029817
NYT: "AI Agents are Taking Entire Online Courses for Cheating Students": https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/10/us/ai-cheating-online-degrees.html
Inside Higher Ed: "Brown Professor Suspects Majority of His Class Used AI to Cheat": https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/learning-assessment/2026/07/08/brown-professor-suspects-most-his-class-used-ai-cheat
Podnews: Spotify's Skip Ahead ad skip test: https://podnews.net/article/spotify-threat-ad-skipping
Tommy Vietor X post on Spotify: https://x.com/TVietor08/status/2085073214968037428?s=20
JJ Smith SF "open drug market" video: https://x.com/war24182236/status/2086839186137710724
Timestamps:
0:00 Why Zuck thinks the future is open source
2:26 Meta's roadmap: personal assistants and beyond
9:21 Every.io - For all of your incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, accounting, taxes or other back-office administration needs, visit https://every.io
20:22 Netsuite - For the first time ever, you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to https://NetSuite.ai/TWIST
27:43 How to win the data center argument
29:32 YSecurity - The on-demand security team for startups. Need enterprise-grade security without hiring a $400k CISO? YSecurity gives you 40+ expert engineers, matched to exactly what you need, by the hour, with your first six hours completely free. Go to https://YSecurity.io/TWIST
39:24 X intros Original Content Rewards
51:58 The CLARITY Act faces new setbacks
1:00:46 AI agents are taking students' tests for them
1:09:37 LAUNCH is hiring!
 
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Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland
 
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Today's show:
A hedge fund just blew up shorting SaaS stocks. In turns out, the software companies that went all in on AI are bouncing back. Figma's CEO — still riding high on strong revenue — forfeited roughly $46 million in stock awards to ease investor nerves. Twilio posted its strongest quarter in years. Airbnb's CEO credits AI as the single biggest factor in the company's incredible turnaround.
Jason and Lon break down what's separating the winners this earnings season from the companies that are falling behind.
PLUS we're chatting with Bluecore Energy CEO and founder Kofi Asante about his plan to power ports, and one day AI data centers, with small, floating nuclear reactors.
AND we're kicking off the TWiST Weight Loss Challenge! Co-host Lon and Jason's brother, Jamie, are both starting GLP-1s. We'll track their progress and follow along as they attempt to collect $15,000 EACH in prize money.
Guest
Kofi Asante on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kofiasante1/
Bluecore Energy: https://www.bluecore.energy/
Jamie Calacanis on X: https://x.com/CalacanisJamie
Relevant Links
Bloomberg: Figma CEO forfeits $46M: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-05/figma-ceo-forfeits-46-million-in-stock-after-share-decline
Twilio announces second quarter 2026 results: https://investors.twilio.com/news-releases/news-release-details/twilio-announces-second-quarter-2026-results
TechCrunch: Twilio co-founder Jeff Lawson buys The Onion: https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/26/area-man-twilio-co-founder-jeff-lawson-buys-the-onion
Chesky: Airbnb will spend a lot more on AI: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/07/chesky-airbnb-ai-earnings.html
"Unreasonable Hospitality" by Will Guidara on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Unreasonable-Hospitality-Remarkable-Giving-People/dp/0593418573
The Times: Meet the unreasonable hospitality master who inspired "The Bear": https://www.thetimes.com/magazines/the-sunday-times-magazine/article/will-guidara-hospitality-the-bear-tkgzqz33w
Port of Long Beach partnership on nuclear-powered shipping: https://gcaptain.com/port-of-long-beach-marad-launch-first-u-s-partnership-on-nuclear-powered-shipping/
Reuters: ByteDance targets mega AI model: https://www.reuters.com/technology/bytedance-targets-mega-ai-model-nearing-anthropics-mythos-ft-reports-2026-08-07/
Axios: OpenAI says its AI agents breached its own systems before Hugging Face: https://www.axios.com/2026/08/06/openai-hugging-face-black-hat
Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House: https://franklloydwright.org/site/ennis-house/
Dwell: Why "The Studio" built a faux Frank Lloyd Wright HQ: https://www.dwell.com/article/the-studio-apple-tv-filming-locations-production-design-frank-lloyd-wright-john-lautner-97c68081
"Predators" documentary trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibVZkvpAJjI
A24 "Primetime" trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fHXyqQOKL8
Alex Honnold free solos Taipei 101: https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/25/sport/alex-honnold-taipei-101-free-solo-netflix-intl-hnk
Harmonic.ai: https://harmonic.ai/
Ro.co: http://ro.co/twist
Timestamps:
0:00 Figma, Twilio & Airbnb earnings: who's winning at AI?
9:50 DigitalOcean - Head to https://do.co/twist to start building on DigitalOcean's AI-Native Cloud today — and cut your AI workload costs by up to 50%.
11:32 The real cost of stock-based compensation
17:38 Kofi Asante of Blue Core Energy joins the show
19:47 Sentry - Your team should be focused on shipping features — not chasing down bugs. New users can get $240 in free credits when they go to https://sentry.io/twist and use the code TWIST
20:51 What is a small modular reactor (SMR)?
26:00 Floating nuclear reactors for ports and data centers
29:47 Lightfield - Name one person who's ever enjoyed updating a CRM. Exactly. Lightfield's AI agent does it for you — it even prospects and books your meetings. Used by thousands of startups. Free at https://lightfield.app
31:56 Nuclear waste, submarine risks, and public perception
42:41 The generational shift in how we think about nuclear
48:19 ByteDance is training a 10 trillion parameter model
53:47 When AI models plan heists: the Hugging Face caper
58:02 Jason's Roko weight loss competition
1:11:38 Off duty: To Catch a Predator, Alex Honnold, and comedy




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Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland
 
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Today's show:
*Airtable just sold for $2.25 billion, an 81% drop from its peak of $11.7 billion. On this week's TWiST VC Roundtable, Aditya Agarwal (South Park Commons), Niko Bonatsos (Verdict Capital), and Rick Heitzmann (FirstMark Capital) break down why the venture world sees this as a good outcome, not a financial disaster.
By declining the deal, would Airtable's team have just been delaying the inevitable? Is the fact that they reached $400M+ ARR on its own a reason to celebrate? Find out why our investor panel prefers unwinding a stuck situation rather than chasing a growth rate that's no longer sustainable.
PLUS Robinhood's booming prediction market business, the secondary market flap over Anduril shares, why so many VCs shy away from "vice" categories, and a glimpse at how insiders are talking about the Apple-OpenAI lawsuit.
Guests
Aditya Agarwal on X: https://x.com/adityaag
South Park Commons: https://www.southparkcommons.com/apply
Niko Bonatsos on X: https://x.com/bonatsos
Verdict Capital: https://verdictcap.com/
Rick Heitzmann on X: https://x.com/rick
FirstMark Capital: https://firstmark.com/
Relevant Links
Airtable: https://www.airtable.com/
Bending Spoons announces Airtable acquisition: https://investors.bendingspoons.com/newsroom/bending-spoons-agrees-to-acquire-airtable
Constellation Software: The Anti-Conglomerate: https://www.eaglepointcap.com/blog/constellation-software-the-anti-conglomerate
Introducing Robinhood Ventures Fund II: https://robinhood.com/us/en/newsroom/introducing-rvii/
Quartz: Robinhood posted record quarterly revenue: https://qz.com/robinhood-record-revenue-prediction-markets-earnings-073026
Riot Games: https://www.riotgames.com/en
AngelList's USVC Fund: https://usvc.com/
Baseten: https://www.baseten.co/
OpenEvidence: https://www.openevidence.com/
Hermes Agent: https://hermes-agent.org/
Granola: https://www.granola.ai/

Timestamps:

0:00 VC intros & Bending Spoons buys Airtable
9:19 Why growth is the only metric that matters
9:45 Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://www.vanta.com/twist
20:52 Agree.com - Stop chasing invoices and automate your entire contract-to-cash stack. Go to https://agree.com and tell them Jason sent you to get 50% off for life!
26:25 When should VCs sell in secondary markets?
30:55 Odoo - The all-in-one business platform. Get started for free at https://Odoo.com/twist
35:38 Robinhood's prediction markets are exploding
43:13 The USVC-Anduril secondary controversy
46:18 How VC firms use open source models
58:43 Telling the real founders from the grifters
1:02:38 Why Apple is suing OpenAI


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Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland
 
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Today's show:
*Before Bespoke's "travel concierge" chatbot could actually hold a conversation, founder/CEO Akemi Tsunagawa and her team quietly answered customers themselves. That "fake it till you make it" strategy paid off. Bespoke landed Narita Airport as a customer based on the strength of their "chatbot" answers, and now the team runs three companies, and is expanding into shipyard robots.
In the fourth and final edition of TWiST Tokyo for Summer '26, Jason and Akemi discuss her thesis: "solve the labor gap first, [then] build the tech to math." Plus insights into Japan's tourism boom, how founders should consider the country's accelerating population decline, the economics and politics of importing foreign labor, and why AI may already be taking over more jobs than you think.
Guest
Akemi Tsunagawa on X: https://x.com/AkemiTsunagawa
Bespoke: https://www.be-spoke.io/
Bebot: https://www.bebot.io
BeTrained: https://www.be-spoke.io/en/be-trained
Relevant Links
Disrupting Japan: "Silicon Valley Has Chatbots All Wrong": https://www.disruptingjapan.com/silicon-valley-has-chatbots-all-wrong-heres-how-they-really-make-money/
CNN on Japan's population decline: https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/07/asia/japan-biggest-population-decline-record-intl-hnk
Paul Graham: "Do Things That Don't Scale": https://www.paulgraham.com/ds.html
Wispr Flow: https://wisprflow.ai/
TripAdvisor: https://www.tripadvisor.com/
KPMG on Japan's Business Manage Visa Reforms: https://kpmg.com/xx/en/our-insights/gms-flash-alert/flash-alert-2025-195.html
Business Traveller on the "Akiya" renovation trend: https://www.businesstraveller.com/insights/features/japan-akiya-boom-buying-abandoned-homes/
THR on the 2004 satirical film "A Day Without a Mexican": https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/a-day-without-a-mexican-20-years-later-1236293209/
Founder University x Japan: https://tokyo.founder.university/
JETRO: https://www.jetro.go.jp/en/
Antler in Japan: https://www.antler.co/location/japan
Timestamps:


0:00 Founder U Japan Cohort 3: Coming in Jan 2027!
1:06 Introducing Akemi Tsunagawa, founder of Bespoke
3:08 Why investors passed in 2015
4:49 Selling Narita Airport on Bebot
6:29 The roots of Japan's tourism explosion
9:27 Odoo - The all-in-one business platform. Get started for free at https://Odoo.com/twist
14:17 Japan's population decline, by the numbers
20:06 Quo (formerly OpenPhone) - Quo gives you a clean, modern way to handle every customer call, text, and thread all in one place. Try it free at https://quo.com/TWiST
21:38 Training foreign workers via smart glasses
27:50 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
33:06 Moving into shipyard robotics, too?
37:44 Some customer development lessons
48:21 Plans for even more expansion
52:52 Q&A: How AI changed hiring
 
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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
 
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This Week In Startups is made possible by:
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Today's show:
AI models can solve PhD-level math equations and code an app in minutes… So why does everything they design look like identical slop? Thais Castello Branco, founder of Taste Labs, raised $18.5M in seed funding to teach frontier models about aesthetics and outputting quality content. She talks to Jason and Lon about why even frontier models regress to the mean on subjective tasks, how paid "TasteMakers" can improve output quality, and whether AI accelerates or destroys the half-life of "what's cool."
PLUS Leopold Aschenbrenner's AI hedge fund liquidated its public stock portfolio, but it may be too soon to count this 25-year-old completely out. Google Earth adds AI generation and turns into a misinformation factory. LinkedIn and Substack join the AI slop crackdown. And why does every venture capitalist seem to have an opinion about the Ceuta border crisis?
Guest
Thais Castello Branco on X: https://x.com/thaiscbranco_
Taste Labs: https://tastelabs.com/
Amplify Partners: "Kill the Slop": https://www.amplifypartners.com/blog-posts/kill-the-slop-announcing-our-investment-in-taste
Relevant Links
Leopold Aschenbrenner's essay "Situational Awareness": https://situational-awareness.ai/
CNBC on SA fund collapse: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/31/leopold-aschenbrenner-situational-awareness-fund-fire-sale.html
Henk van Ess thread on Google Earth + Nano Banana: https://x.com/henkvaness/status/2082912544394498228
Substack CEO Chris Best: "Against Claudefishing": https://post.substack.com/p/against-claudefishing
NPR on the Ceuta crisis: https://www.npr.org/2026/07/31/g-s1-136507/morocco-spain-migration
Ethan Goodhart's self-driving golf cart post: https://x.com/EthanGoodhart/status/2082136189998682598?s=20
"Wind" app on TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/zZqmhhwf
TechCrunch: "Gritt exits stealth": https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/21/gritt-exits-stealth-with-34-million-for-robots-to-build-solar-plants-then-everything-else/
CA Gov: Project Nexus solar-covered canal announcement: https://www.gov.ca.gov/2026/04/29/governor-newsom-announces-the-completion-of-first-of-its-kind-solar-covered-canal-in-the-central-valley-piloting-a-new-way-to-save-water-and-reduce-costs/
Molly Wood's "Everybody in the Pool" podcast: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/
Timestamps:
 
0:00 Coming up on today's show…
1:23 Thais Castello Branco on teaching models to have good taste
10:45 YSecurity - The on-demand security team for startups. Need enterprise-grade security without hiring a $400k CISO? YSecurity gives you 40+ expert engineers, matched to exactly what you need, by the hour, with your first six hours completely free. Go to https://YSecurity.io/TWIST
15:19 The "TasteMaker" community of paid human curators
20:37 MongoDB - AI-assisted and agentic coding is helping you build faster than ever. Start building at https://MongoDB.com/ai
24:40 Jason's personal "cool hunter" prompt
30:16 Odoo - The all-in-one business platform. Get started for free at https://Odoo.com/twist
37:36 Situation Awareness lacked situational awareness
46:59 Claude models hacked three external organizations
50:54 Google Earth adds Nano Banana for some reason
54:24 The AI Slop crackdown spreads
57:54 Too many opinions about the Ceuta migrant crisis
1:04:05 Self-driving golf carts and also cars
1:09:53 Robot arms are installing solar panels
 
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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
 
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