This Week in Startups

41 episodes scanned. 8% of ad slots promote the show's own products.

Recent Episodes

1. Odyssey CEO Oliver Cameron is 90% sure we live in a simulation | E2358

   Nov 3, 2026

   Oliver Cameron, co-founder and CEO of Odyssey, discusses the company's world model technology, which trains AI on video to learn physics, cause and effect, and to generate simulated environments in real time. He explains why a demo of a simulated fruit fly brain flying through an AI-generated world went viral and how it sparked interest in simulation theory. The conversation also touches on the potential uses of world models for robots and AI agents.

2. Binance Hacked $6.3B Stolen, DoorDash Buys Instacart For $17B, Jake Newfield from Hermetiq, + More!

   Oct 31, 2026

   This Week in Startups episode covers the roughly $6.3 billion Binance hack, including Jason Calacanis's 2021 warning about leaving funds on crypto exchanges and CZ's backstop of customer losses. It also discusses DoorDash's $17 billion acquisition of Instacart and whether the deal is an overpay or a regulatory risk. The episode features Hermetiq co-founder and CEO Jake Newfield, per the episode title and show notes, and includes the annotated app contest and a tribute to Patrick Stewart.

3. Is AI the new cigarettes? Our VC panel digs into Anthropic’s S-1 | E2356

   Oct 29, 2026

   D.A. Wallach, co-founder and general partner of Time BioVentures, joins Dave McClure and Ben Black on a This Week in Venture panel with host Jason Calacanis to discuss Anthropic's S-1 filing. The conversation covers the reported revenue growth, operating profit, the roughly $80.7 billion net loss driven largely by non-cash convertible note charges, and the 900% net revenue retention figure. The panel also debates whether AI spending will reach enterprise budgets at scale, whether AI is comparable to cigarettes as an addictive product, and how Bitcoin and small emerging VC funds are faring.

4. Pregame Your Launch Before Your App Exists (w/ Amanda Bradford) | E2355

   Oct 27, 2026

   Amanda Bradford, founder of the dating app The League, presents a talk recorded at LAUNCH's San Francisco event on how she built a vetted, LinkedIn-verified dating marketplace as a solo founder. She covers pre-launch tactics such as invite-only events, a waitlist built through founding members, press outreach, a fake paywall test, and a staged city rollout. The episode also includes a Flashback segment in which Alex Wilhelm and Lon revisit a 2017 Jason Calacanis interview with Stripe's Patrick Collison.

5. OpenAI’s $1.25T Raise, Starlink Mobile & Zuck’s Tax Deal | EP 2354

   Oct 24, 2026

   This Friday all-news episode of This Week in Startups features co-host Lon Harris and host Jason Calacanis discussing OpenAI's reported roughly $30 billion raise at a $1.25 trillion valuation, which Jason argues is priced reasonably, along with the risks to that view. The conversation also covers SpaceX's mobile carrier ambitions, Meta's approach to California's proposed billionaire tax, the question of who oversees AI watchdogs, and the hosts' documentary picks, including a debate over the Elizabeth Holmes film. Jason also describes the show's Salesforce event and its new tactical, practical founder newsletter.

6. We asked 3 VCs: would you invest in Elizabeth Holmes’ next startup? | E2353

   Oct 22, 2026

   This This Week in Startups roundtable features three venture investors, Sam Lessin (Slow Ventures), Paige Finn Doherty (Behind Genius Ventures), and Jenny Fielding (Everywhere Ventures), with host Jason Calacanis. The panel discusses the Elizabeth Holmes documentary "You Can See Everything" and whether VCs would back Holmes's next startup, alongside prediction markets such as Polymarket and Kalshi. They also cover the licensing of celebrity and cloned voices and share portfolio company updates.

7. Anthropic Gives Away 5% of Its Shares, Clone’s Muscle Robot, ElevenLabs Steals Podcaster's Voice

   Oct 20, 2026

   Lon Harris and Jason discuss Nathan Fielder's documentary about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, Anthropic's plan to put 5% of its stock into a public benefit fund, and Elon Musk's pledge to give SpaceX shares to children. They also cover Chris Williamson's claim that ElevenLabs cloned his voice for a now-removed voice. The show notes say the episode includes an interview with Clone Robotics co-founder and CEO Dhanush Radhakrishnan about humanoid robots with hydraulic myofiber artificial muscles, but that interview is not present in the transcript provided.

8. Flying Cars, OpenAI Spies, Why AI Isn’t Sticking (Superhuman CEO)

   Oct 17, 2026

   Shishir Mehrotra, CEO of Superhuman (the company behind Grammarly), discusses the company's recent acquisitions of Rows, GPTZero, and Fathom, and how it integrates or runs them standalone. The conversation also covers Grammarly's role in education, the debate over AI writing assessment and disclosure, and the host's suggestions for workforce writing tools. The episode's news segments touch on Tesla, OpenAI security concerns, and state lawsuits and calls for limits on AI companions for children.

9. The Ex-DeepMind Researcher Taking On China’s Open Source AI

   Oct 15, 2026

   Misha Laskin, co-founder and CEO of Reflection AI, discusses why enterprises, sovereign entities, and large companies are moving from renting closed frontier models to owning open-weight models. He covers the infrastructure stack needed to run open models, the training approach behind Reflection's first open model, Beam, and how the company compares to Chinese open-source labs. The conversation also touches on AI safety, reward hacking in a sandbox-escape incident, and talent and mission in open-source AI.

10. The Gadget That's Better in Crowds Than Your Phone + Ring’s Founder Before Amazon Bought It | E2349

    Oct 13, 2026

    Carter Fowler, founder of Totem, explains the Totem Compass, a screen-free pendant that uses GNSS positioning and an offline mesh network to help festival-goers find friends without cell service. The conversation covers the Lost Lands deployment data, why mesh networks improve as adoption grows, and the company's one-time-purchase model, pre-seed and crowdfunding rounds, and 58% gross margin. The episode also includes an archival 2017 TWiST interview with Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, discussed in the context of Amazon's later acquisition of Ring and the debate over neighborhood license-plate cameras.