This Week in Startups

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Today’s show:

Nvidia’s board is investigating CEO Jensen Huang after he admitted to an affair with Alice Huang (no relation), the leader of Singapore cloud computing and data center interest Megaspeed. US officials now believe that Alice Huang may have been recruited by Chinese intelligence to spy on the Nvidia chief or use him as an asset.

Jason’s take: benching Jensen would be the wrong move, and play precisely into the Chinese government’s hands.

On a Monday all-news special, Jason and Lon dig into the unfolding Nvidia scandal: what it means about Jensen’s past statements regarding Chinese AI, the seemingly intractable chip diversion problem, and whether or not the China hawks were actually right all along on the issue of GPU exports.

Plus: is Sequoia vs. Roelof Botha really happening, or is it just a media narrative? Why Apple CEO John Ternus wants to get more aggressive about using Siri as an agent. And why Jason thinks Democrat will focus more on slowing the spread of self-driving cars and humanoid robots rather than stalling new data centers.

Relevant Links

Nvidia investigates Jensen Huang's relationship with alleged Chinese spy (CNBC): https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/08/nvidia-jensen-huang-investigation-china-spy.html

What is Megaspeed? The Nvidia chip buyer at the center of the story (CNBC): https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/09/megaspeed-nvidia-jensen-huang-alice-huang.html

What the Nvidia board's probe could look at (Fortune): https://fortune.com/2026/11/09/nvidia-board-probe-jensen-huang-affair-suspected-china-spy-statements/

Shaun Maguire on nation-state kompromat: https://x.com/shaunmmaguire/status/2119582151985574371

Sequoia hits rewind, undoing 20 years of expansion (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/04/sequoia-hits-rewind-undoing-20-years-of-expansion/

FT: Sequoia partners blindsided by Botha's SpaceX board seat (summary): https://mlq.ai/news/sequoia-partners-were-blindsided-when-roelof-botha-joined-spacexs-board-ft-reports/

Ternus presses Federighi to move faster on an agentic Siri (The Next Web, via Bloomberg): https://thenextweb.com/news/ternus-federighi-agentic-siri-apple-ai-bloomberg

Siri chief Mike Rockwell may step down (MacRumors): https://www.macrumors.com/2026/11/09/apple-siri-boss-may-leave/

Introducing Inkling 2 Small (Thinking Machines): https://thinkingmachines.ai/news/inkling-2-small/

Thinking Machines nears a $5B round at a $40B valuation (Dealroom): https://dealroom.co/news/170334-thinking-machines-lab-nears-5b-round-at-40b-valuation-led-by-accel/

Nous Research introduces Arete-27B (X): https://x.com/NousResearch/status/2118822925445050435

Trump says deportations were "too tough" and hurt him in the midterms (NBC News): https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-says-deportations-tough-hurt-midterms-rcna608208

Democratic wave has the robotaxi industry sweating (Axios): https://www.axios.com/2026/11/05/democrat-election-robotaxi-industry

Musk bet big on keeping Texas red. What now for his companies? (CNN): https://www.cnn.com/2026/11/05/business/musk-texas-donations-midterms-spacex-tesla

ARK Autonomous Technology & Robotics ETF (ARKQ): https://www.ark-funds.com/funds/arkq

Tesla to wind down Cybertruck production to make room for Cybercab (Fox Business): https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/tesla-wind-down-cybertruck-production-texas-factory-next-year-make-room-cybercab

Bring a Trailer: https://bringatrailer.com

Peterson Automotive Museum: https://www.petersen.org

Julian Wasser's 1968 photo of Joan Didion with her Corvette Stingray (Danziger Gallery): https://danzigergallery.com/exhibitions/julian-wasser-joan-didion

Dueling proofs from OpenAI and Anthropic astound scientists (Scientific American): https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dueling-proofs-from-openai-and-anthropic-astound-scientists/

Timestamps:

0:00 Jason's in his Jay Gatsby era

2:05 Plaud - If your work depends on conversations - interviews, meetings, calls - you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://Plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off!

3:22 How much damage does this scandal do to Nvidia?

5:57 Corporate espionage and Shaun Maguire's thread

10:49 Stripe - Stripe Startups offers early-stage, venture-backed startups access to Stripe fee credits and more. Apply today on https://stripe.com/startups.

15:20 Winning the superintelligence race

17:43 Time to buy the Nvidia dip? (Not investment advice)

22:55 Northwest Registered Agent - Got a new business idea? Northwest Registered Agent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more - with no purchase required! Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain

23:44 Sequoia closes London office, but why?

27:45 Why Roelof's SpaceX board seat matters.

31:13 GoDaddy - GoDaddy helps founders seek out the perfect domain and will work through brokers if the name you want is already owned by someone else. Find out more at https://GoDaddy.com.

33:38 Deel - Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, get visas handled fast, and get back to building. Visit https://deel.com/twist to learn more.

34:15 Apple CEO wants Siri to get more agentic

38:25 Lon got a new iMac!

41:56 Upwork - Upwork helps businesses find highly skilled freelance professionals for specialized work. Post your job for free at https://www.upwork.com

43:08 New models from Thinking Machines + Nous

48:12 Local first, then on the cloud: how agent should run

53:12 Gov. Gina Hinojosa and robotaxi rules

57:42 Where to put the new data centers

1:12:18 Refusing the "exponential time hypothesis"

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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:

Democrats swept the midterms, and a lot of their candidates ran explicitly against AI data centers. Then on Thursday, the Nasdaq fell 5%. But fear not: Jason says the panic is overblown. Back in August, he predicted that the anti-data center rhetoric on the campaign trail would transform into cutting a deal once the voters were counted.

On TWiST, Jason and Lon discuss the route to compromise that could define the next year of AI discourse. Find out why Jason still gives President Trump an A+ on AI, even as he lost touch with the country’s mood on other issues.

Plus we’re checking out some highlights from the archive, as the show followed the decline of Trump 2.0 in real time, and Jason explains his simple method for staying informed and in touch with everyday reality. (Talk to lots of different people!)

Plus: OpenAI’s post-election pledge, Anthropic’s first content licensing deal, Apple cuts engineer AI budgets, Lon’s latest This Week in AI demo, and the guys get mega-hyped for “Godzilla Minus Zero.”

Relevant Links

Voters rebuff data centers in every ballot measure except one (CNBC): https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/04/data-center-ballot-measures-2026-midterm.html

Hinojosa's call for a data center moratorium until the legislature acts (campaign): https://ginafortexas.com/2026/07/new-hinojosa-calls-on-greg-abbott-to-put-moratorium-on-data-centers-until-a-legislative-session-that-puts-texans-first/

Talarico defeats Ken Paxton (Texas Tribune): https://www.texastribune.org/2026/11/03/texas-ken-paxton-james-talarico-us-senate-elections-2026/

Microsoft pulls out of its UK data center deal with Nscale (Computing): https://computing.co.uk/news/2026/ai/microsoft-exits-nscale-deal-ipo-at-risk

Gavin Baker on TX data center rules: https://x.com/GavinSBaker/status/2118420042283102604

California's billionaire tax (Prop 40) goes down (Bloomberg): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-11-05/california-voters-poised-to-reject-first-ever-billionaire-tax

TWiST E2113 w/ Steven Borrelli of Cuts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qxDoJvzSiY

TWiST E2332 w/ Jason’s data center prediction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojSmG6xHCdI

OpenAI pledges to pay for its data centers' power and halt NDAs (CNBC): https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/05/openai-to-pay-for-data-center-power-after-election-shows-ai-concern.html

Anthropic strikes its first licensing deal, with the AP, for election coverage (Adweek): https://www.adweek.com/media/anthropic-licensing-deal-ap-election/

The New York Times v. OpenAI discovery fight (Bloomberg Law): https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/new-york-times-wants-access-to-top-openai-executives-documents

Apple's first touchscreen MacBook Pro, from $2,899 (Tom's Guide): https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/macbooks/apple-reveals-oled-touchscreen-macbook-pro

Lon’s Plaud demo post: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/p/record-your-ideas-with-plaud-then

Plaud MCP for ChatGPT and Claude: https://in.plaud.ai/blogs/news/plaud-mcp-for-chatgpt-and-claude

Terry Black's Barbecue: https://terryblacksbbq.com

P. Terry's: https://www.pterrys.com

Torchy's Tacos: https://torchystacos.com

Velvet Taco: https://www.velvettaco.com

”Godzilla Minus Zero” trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu0pH5BuCPM

“Hope” trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYRc2Gl7geY

“Dark Matter” Season 2 trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhB6_1UbR7s

“House of the Dragon” Season 3 trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JlMjgqduVw

Timestamps:

0:00 Jason’s initial take on the Blue Wave
6:40 The data center pause was about appeasing voters
10:55 Odoo - The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at https://Odoo.com/twist
11:56 Corruption, Iran, and the cost of living brought down Republicans
16:18 How the Cuts CEO shifted Jason’s tariff take
21:12 Sentry - New users can get $240 in free credits when they go to https://sentry.io/twist and use the code TWIST26
29:06 Plaud - If your work depends on conversations - interviews, meetings, calls - you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://Plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off!
29:15 Lon’s Plaud Agent demo
33:40 Stripe - Stripe Startups offers early-stage, venture-backed startups access to Stripe fee credits and more. Apply today on https://stripe.com/startups.
34:48 Leadership is repetition
40:19 Why AI labs should revenue share with publishers
50:16 Pricing out the new touchscreen MacBook Pro
56:46 Income taxes, capital gains, and margin loans
1:01:17 Godzilla returns in “Minus Zero”

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This Week In Startups is made possible by:

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Today’s show:

Democrats took the House and Senate, and overnight trading suggested a huge market drop. But in the morning, the markets went another way, and D.A. Wallach thinks he knows why. A Congress that can’t get anything done can’t do anything BAD, like start a war or a tariff fight. The only thing markets hate than gridlock is uncertainty.

On the first post-midterm This Week in VC roundtable, Jason is joined by Wallach (Time BioVentures), Elana Gold (Two Roads Capital), and Tomasz Tunguz (Theory Ventures).

Together, they work out what a split government could mean for tech and venture. Data centers are now a political target for both parties. 2027 might be the last major window for big M&A. Plus, D.A. worries that an intergenerational war could be brewing, between the people who own AI’s upside, and the young workers who fear getting replaced.

Plus thoughts on Cava’s 22% layoffs, Sequoia shutting down its Scouts and Arc program, the SPV “boiler room,” and more.

Guests

D.A. Wallach on X: https://x.com/dawallach

Time BioVentures: https://www.timebioventures.com/

Elana Gold on X: https://x.com/ItsElanaGold

Two Roads Capital: https://tworoads.vc/

Tomasz Tunguz on X: https://x.com/ttunguz

Theory Ventures: https://theoryvc.com/

Relevant Links:

NBC exit poll: 56% say AI and data centers were a crucial or major factor (DCD): https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/nbc-exit-poll-56-say-ai-data-centers-were-a-crucial-or-major-factor-in-congressional-vote-decision/

How AI backlash shaped the 2026 midterms (TIME): https://time.com/article/2026/11/04/midterm-elections-results-ai-industry-data-centers/

Musk on chips outrunning electricity in 2026, with Elon's reply: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2117649850644705591

Panthalassa raises $140M for wave-powered AI compute at sea (Tom's Hardware): https://tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/palantir-co-founder-peter-thiel-backs-usd140m-wave-powered-ai-data-center-startup-panthalassa-aims-to-run-offshore-compute-nodes-using-ocean-energy

Marvell to buy Lumentum in a $115B deal (The Next Web): https://thenextweb.com/news/marvell-lumentum-acquisition-115bn-all-stock

San Francisco mourns bodega cat killed by a Waymo (CBS SF): https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/sf-mission-district-mourns-store-cat-killed-by-waymo

Meta launches $115M program to train workers for data center jobs (Axios): https://www.axios.com/2026/06/08/meta-data-center-workforce-academy-job-guarantee

Keep track of the value you're getting from AI (TWiST): https://twistartups.substack.com/p/keep-track-of-the-value-youre-getting-da4

Meta's Muse hits 10.9M downloads (Yahoo Finance): https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/article/metas-muse-ai-agent-hits-109-million-downloads-as-chatgpt-slides-25-153532560.html

Curbie (Revere Robotics): https://www.revererobotics.com/

Canva lays off over 1,200 people amid slowing growth (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/04/canva-lays-off-over-1200-people-amid-slowing-growth/

Ollama raises $65M as it nears 9M developers (Startup Fortune): https://startupfortune.com/ollama-raises-65-million-as-it-grows-to-nearly-9-million-developers/

Sequoia hits rewind, undoing 20 years of expansion (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/04/sequoia-hits-rewind-undoing-20-years-of-expansion/

"The Sequoia of Tomorrow" (Sequoia): https://x.com/sequoia/status/2117961312143855764

Travis Kalanick's Atoms raises $1.7B (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/22/travis-kalanicks-robotics-company-raises-1-7b-led-by-a16z/

Vast: https://www.vastspace.com

SEC accredited investor exam could expand private-market access (CNBC): https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/01/sec-accredited-investor-exam-private-markets.html

General Compute raises a $100M Series A (DCD): https://datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/neocloud-general-compute-raises-100m-in-series-a-funding-round

Hyperliquid CEO Jeff Yan on democratizing pre-IPO access (Motley Fool): https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/10/19/hyperliquid-ceo-jeff-yan-says-perpetual-futures-ma/

Kalshi Perps: https://kalshi.com/perps

Aalo Atomics: https://www.aalo.com

Exowatt: https://www.exowatt.com

Timestamps:

0:00 The Blue Wave: Dems take Congress

0:10 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations - interviews, meetings, calls - you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off!

6:42 What a split gov’t means for defense tech

9:21 Is 2027 the last big window for tech M&A?

11:04 Every.io: For all of your incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, accounting, taxes or other back-office administration needs, visit https://every.io.

13:44 Are anti-robotaxi laws coming?

18:51 The need for positive AI stories

24:12 Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://www.vanta.com/twist

25:59 How AI can make voters smarter

31:22 Self-driving and the future of car insurance

40:17 G2i has been recruiting software engineers for over a decade. Go to https://g2i.co/twist to find out how G2i vets engineers, and can help you hire them in days, not weeks.

45:00 Jason’s $12K Mac Studio

50:12 Sequoia retires its Scouts and Arc programs

58:21 Jason’s barbell: Zipline, Atoms, and Vast

1:01:19 When VC firms go public

1:08:42 Scrap the accredited investor rule

1:14:26 Hyperliquid and permissionless synthetic markets

1:17:17 Kalshi perps and Anthropic price discovery

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Follow Jason:

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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

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Today’s show:

Odyssey co-founder and CEO Oliver Cameron builds simulated worlds for a living, so we asked him the obvious question: are we all living in one, right now? He says he’s 90% certain that, yes, we are.

To help make the case (and show off their world model technology), Oliver’s team dropped a simulated fruit fly brain into an AI world, that’s being rendered and created in real time. So far, on X, 6.2 million people have watched the virtual fly navigate an imaginary world.

On TWiST, we’re digging into how world models learn about physics, gravity, and causality just by watching videos, what make Odyssey-3 an ideal trainig ground for AI agents, and why a world model only renders the parts of the world that are currently being experienced.

It’s a peek inside the technology that may, one day, allow us to enslave people in The Matrix and turn them into batteries. Or train self-driving cars more effectively! One of those.

Plus: SpaceX throttles Grok Bot over unsustainably high costs, but Jason says it’s worth every penny. And will OpenAI’s suggested name change from data centers to “compute campuses,” and Meta’s efforts to improve El Paso, help turn around American attitudes? Or is blasting them into space the only remaining viable option?

Guest

Oliver Cameron on X: https://x.com/olivercameron

Odyssey: https://odyssey.systems/

Relevant Links

The fruit fly brain flying inside Odyssey-3 (6.2M views): https://x.com/odysseyml/status/2111589148146749616

Meet Odyssey-3, Odyssey's foundation world model: https://odyssey.systems/meet-odyssey-3

FlyWire: https://flywire.ai/

Nick Bostrom, "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?”: https://simulation-argument.com/simulation.pdf

Do we live in a simulation? Chances are about 50-50 (Scientific American): https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-live-in-a-simulation-chances-are-about-50-50/

"Beyond Perception: Proposing Our Reality as an ASI Alignment Simulation" (Ali Eslami, IPI Letters): https://ipipublishing.org/index.php/ipil/article/view/350

The double-slit experiment explained (Royal Institution, Jim Al-Khalili): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9tKncAdlHQ

“A Glitch in the Matrix” trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au8eT79WUJ0

Elon Musk throttles Grok Bot limits over "unsustainably high" costs (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2026/11/02/elon-musk-throttles-grok-bot-limits-due-to-unsustainably-high-costs/

Elon's post: "The cost of serving Grok Bot was unsustainably high relative to revenue”: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2116992258520064397

Jason's post: "< $40k a year on tokens… getting $2m+ in value": https://x.com/Jason/status/2117126320962351277

Grok Bot: https://x.ai/bot

Plaud Web: https://web.plaud.ai

Founder University Japan: https://japan.founder.university/

Most Americans say AI is bad for society and oppose more data centers (ABC/WaPo/Ipsos): https://abc7ny.com/story/most-americans-say-ai-is-bad-society-oppose-more-data-centers-abcpostipsos-poll/19964027/

Chris Lehane's memo: AI will be the issue in 2028 (TNW): https://thenextweb.com/news/chris-lehane-memo-openai-2028-ai-election

Meta touts El Paso water and grid pledges as council weighs incentives (KFOX): https://kfoxtv.com/news/local/meta-touts-10b-el-paso-data-center-water-and-grid-pledges-as-council-weighs-incentives

UT Austin's Texas Advance Commitment (free tuition under $100K): https://admissions.utexas.edu/cost-aid/financial-aid/texas-advance-commitment/

Andrej Karpathy's HackerTube post: https://x.com/karpathy/status/2116957135661945283

Jason's "Unsponsored" Chrome extension for Amazon: https://x.com/Jason/status/2116380861167714594

Google's first data center satellite is online and writing poetry (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/30/googles-first-data-center-satellite-is-online-and-writing-poetry/

What is low Earth orbit? (Universe Today): https://www.universetoday.com/articles/what-is-low-earth-orbit

Timestamps:

0:00 Grok Bot users are at their limit

3:36 How Jason and LAUNCH get $2M+ in value out of AI

5:46 Jason’s Grok-made jacket lookbook

10:35 Paper is the legal backbone for thousands of startup founders and fund managers - including Jason. Use https://getpaper.ai/twist to get your cap table free for a year - or two years if you're leaving Carta.

14:12 Everything changed in AI over the last 90 days

20:41 G2i has been recruiting software engineers for over a decade. Go to https://g2i.co/twist to find out how G2i vets engineers, and can help you hire them in days, not weeks.

22:06 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations - interviews, meetings, calls - you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off!

22:37 Wiring our Plaud into our Grok Bot

23:24 Odyssey’s fruit fly video zooms to 6.2M views

27:32 All About Simulation Theory

34:34 Got a new business idea? Northwest Registered Agent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more - with no purchase required! Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain

38:33 What is the double slit experiment?

40:47 How to teach a robot about physics

50:01 OpenAI’s plan to make Americans love data centers

56:53 Meta’s El Paso data center pitch

1:02:26 AI companies should overfund local schools

1:06:27 Karpathy’s HackerTube project

1:13:02 Google’s first space data center goes online

1:17:51 How much room is there in low Earth orbit?

Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack:

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TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/

Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp

Follow Lon:

X: https://x.com/lons

Follow Jason:

X: https://twitter.com/Jason

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis

Thank you to our partners:

Paper is the legal backbone for thousands of startup founders and fund managers - including Jason. Use https://getpaper.ai/twist to get your cap table free for a year - or two years if you're leaving Carta.

G2i has been recruiting software engineers for over a decade. Go to G2i.co/twist to find out how G2i vets engineers, and can help you hire them in days, not weeks.

Got a new business idea? Northwest Registered Agent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more - with no purchase required! Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain

Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://Plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off!

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

Follow TWiST:

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Today’s show:

Binance lost an estimated $6.3 billion in the biggest crypto hack ever, and Jason proposes a radical solution. The entire tech industry should stop shipping new features for one month a year, and do nothing but patch. (Call it No App November?)

On a busy Friday show, Jason and Lon dig into the. Binance breach and look back at Jason’s prescient 2021 warning about leaving your money in crypto exchanges. (He recommends spreading your wealth around various different banks!) Plus, why he’s giving CZ credit for backstopping customer losses out of his own fortune.

Plus, DoorDash’s $17B acquisition of Instacart… Did DoorDash overpay? And is this happening now to avoid the harsher regulatory climate should Democrats regain power in the midterms?

Then we’ve got Hermetiq co-founder and CEO Jake Newfield, who has twice won the LAUNCH Accelerator’s pitch competition. Hear the celebrated two-minute pitch for an AI build engineer, and find out why Jason thinks having a “lighthouse customer” makes such a huge difference.

Finally, we’re awarding the Grand Prize in our $5K bounty competition to create Jason’s Annotated app, and remembering the legendary film and TV actor Sir Patrick Stewart.

Guest

Jake Newfield on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakenewfield/

Hermetiq: https://www.hermetiq.com/

Bazel: https://bazel.build

Apply to the LAUNCH Accelerator: https://www.launch.co/apply

Relevant Links

Binance links the $6.3B theft to a compromised DevOps laptop (BleepingComputer): https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/binance-links-63-billion-crypto-theft-to-compromised-devops-laptop/

The 1978 Lufthansa heist (History.com): https://www.history.com/articles/1978-lufthansa-heist-jfk-henry-hill-goodfellas

Trump pardons Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (KWTX/AP): https://www.kwtx.com/2025/10/23/trump-pardons-binance-founder-changpeng-zhao

CrowdStrike: https://www.crowdstrike.com/en-us/

Palo Alto Networks: https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/

Grant Cardone challenges Jason to $1M Bitcoin bet: https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/markets/grant-cardone-challenges-bitcoin-bear-to-1-million-bet

DoorDash to acquire Instacart for $17B (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/29/doordash-to-acquire-instacart-for-17b/

Economic Liberties calls on the FTC to block the deal: https://www.economicliberties.us/press-release/economic-liberties-calls-on-ftc-to-block-doordash-instacart-merger/

Central Market, H-E-B's upscale banner, expands home delivery (Supermarket News): https://www.supermarketnews.com/foodservice-retail/central-market-expands-curbside-and-home-delivery

People are using AI to make their smart TVs dumb again (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/19/people-are-using-ai-to-make-their-smart-tvs-dumb-again/

TWiST $5K Bounties: https://bounty.thisweekinstartups.com/

Founder University: https://founder.university/

Founder University x Japan: https://japan.founder.university/

Inside.com domain auction: https://inside.com/

Yank Sing: https://yanksing.com/

Cafe du Monde coffee and chicory: https://shop.cafedumonde.com/product/coffee-beignets/cafe-du-monde-coffee-and-chicory

Patrick Stewart, "Star Trek" and "X-Men" actor, dead at 86 (CNN): https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/29/entertainment/patrick-stewart-death

“Time Squared” (Star Trek: TNG S2E13): https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Time_Squared_(episode)

“Green Room” trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8XSARX3DQg

“X-Men: Days of Future Past” trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK2zYHWDZKo

Timestamps:

0:00 The largest crypto hack or theft in history

5:45 Jason gives CZ credit for backstopping losses

7:34 Jason’s cybersecurity proposals

11:48 Stripe Startups - Stripe Startups offers early-stage, venture-backed startups access to Stripe fee credits and more. Apply today on https://stripe.com/startups.

14:49 DoorDash buys Instacart for $17B

18:48 Is DoorDash overpaying?

24:28 Thanks to our partners at Rippling! Head to https://rippling.ai/twist and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business.

26:26 Vibecoding your smart TV

27:20 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations - interviews, meetings, calls - you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off!

30:04 Jake Newfield (Hermetiq) gives a perfect pitch

34:13 Got a new business idea? Northwest Registered Agent helps you bring it to life. Get a free domain, email, phone number, and more - with no purchase required! - Learn more at https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain

37:12 Lead with your lighthouse customer

43:14 The Cafe Du Monde branding lesson

51:10 The Annotated Bounty finals begin

1:04:00 Jason announces the grand prize winner

1:07:34 RIP Sir Patrick Stewart

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