Episode 2328 · This Week in Startups
Open source is going to win it all: Harvey proves it | E2328
21 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 9 min
Episode 2328 · This Week in Startups
21 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 9 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Superhuman https://Superhuman.com Sentry https://sentry.io/twist Lightfield https://lightfield.app Today's show: Jason's been saying it for years now (and we've got an All In clip from 2023 to prove it). Open source will win the AI race. This week gives us a major evidence point, as $11B legal AI company Harvey released its own in-house model, trained on an open-weight Kimi K3 base. Harvey made a proprietary specialized solution without having to risk sharing its precious expert-compiled data with the major frontier labs. PLUS we're checking out the…
by Jason Calacanis · English · Business
Jason Calacanis covers startups, tech, markets, media, and all the hottest topics in business and technology. He also interviews the world's greatest founders, operators, investors, and innovators.
E2330 · 26 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 31 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Lightfield https://lightfield.app Northwest Registered Agent https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain Rippling https://Rippling.ai/twist Today's show: *Bill Gates dropped a 6,000 word warning: AI will be "the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst sort of injustice." The Microsoft icon has an AI agenda for the US: new national institutions, AI use taxes, and jobs legally reserved for humans only. Our VC roundtable guests — Sheel Mohnot (Better Tomorrow Ventures), Dave McClure (Practical Venture Capital), and Hussein Kanji — push…
25 Aug 2026 · 25 min
Today's show: Can a founder actually fire a board member? Short answer: almost never. And the reason why may surprise a lot of founders. On this edition of Legal Basics, Wilson Sonsini partner Becki DeGraw joins Jason for a deep dive into who really controls your board, when investors start earning seats, and the differences between a board member and a board observer. Check out an episode that might just save your cab table someday. PLUS they walk through the full lifecycle of your startup's board, exploring what it actually controls, when founders should start adding their own board…
E2329 · 25 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 20 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Odoo https://Odoo.com/twist Quo https://quo.com/TWiST Conservation Fund https://conservationfund.org how old a movie has to be for me to be able to show a part of it on youtube Generally 10 seconds or less of a film clip can fall under fair use for commentary or criticism — which is how most podcasts and talk shows use clips without issue. But there's no hard legal rule based on age. What actually matters more than age is fair use, which considers: Purpose — commentary, criticism, education = stronger fair use case Amount used — shorter = safer; a…
20 Aug 2026 · 21 min
The TWiST AI Basics series is made possible by Google Cloud! Build context-aware AI workflows using DeepMind models and orchestration tools with Google for Startups' new Startup technical guide on generative media. Get the guide here: https://goo.gle/technical_guide Astrocade is building super-intelligence for the interactive world. Build the future of fun: https://www.astrocade.com/careers Today's show: *Making a video game once required a studio, an engine, and a team of five or more people working for six months. But with Astrocade, users just describe the game they'd like to play and…
E2327 · 19 Aug 2026 · 54 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Vanta https://www.vanta.com/twist Agree https://agree.com YSecurity https://YSecurity.io/TWIST Today's show: Frontier AI models can ace PhD-level exams, but it's still bad at tracking down the product you want in the style that suits you. Onton's Zach Hudson tell us that the problem is that models are a black box. His solution? A neurosymbolic model, Ontology 1, that learns about your taste and preferred aesthetic over time, then produces product searches tailored specifically to you, rather than just using keywords and relevant tags. How do…
E2326 · 17 Aug 2026 · 1 hr 25 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Northwest Registered Agent https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist DigitalOcean https://do.co/twist Odoo https://Odoo.com/twist Today's show: We've been going deep on Bittensor and how it works all year on TWiST, meeting with the creators of some of our favorite subnets, and exploring how the system decentralizes inference, compute, and storage. Now, on this very special episode, Jason and Lon welcome Bittensor co-founder Jason Steeves (aka "Const") to the show. He gives us a quick tour of the project's first principles, before diving into how…
8 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 19 minNew
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Plaud: http://Plaud.ai/twist Odoo: http://Odoo.com/twist Northwest Registered Agent: http://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain Quo: https://www.quo.com/perks/twist Today’s show: A personal AI agent that’s still invite-only just hit a $10 billion valuation. Guest host Deedy Das of Menlo Ventures is joined by Kanu Gulati of Khosla Ventures, Chris Farmer of SignalFire, and Sheel Mohnot of Better Tomorrow Ventures to debate whether Instinct can beat Meta’s Muse, what they actually use their own agents for, and what breaks when everyone’s agent…
7 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 11 minNew
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Vanta: https://www.vanta.com/twist DigitalOcean: https://do.co/twist Sentry: http://sentry.io/twist Plaud: http://Plaud.ai/twist Today’s show: The smarter AI gets, the more it just does the work for you, and the less helpful it becomes as a tutor. Shan Reddy of Aristotle joins Jason to demo a voice-first tutor built to run a session the way a $200-an-hour human tutor would. We also dive into why frontier models are trained to hand you answers rather than build real understanding. PLUS, in Ask Jason, an incoming Fordham student (Jason’s alma mater!)…
3 Oct 2026 · 53 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Every.io: http://every.io/ Northwest Registered Agent: https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/twistdomain Odoo: http://Odoo.com/twist Plaud: http://Plaud.ai/twist Today’s show: What can AI do with the guardrails OFF? Devon Thomas of Abliteration.ai thinks defenders should have access to the same kinds of tools, rather than having one hand tied behind their backs. Then, on Ask Jason, learn what AI means for the billable hour from a legal-tech founder. PLUS, are AI microdramas a real ecosystem or a fad, and does AI finally make solo founders…
1 Oct 2026 · 1 hr 18 min
This Week In Startups is made possible by: Plaud: http://Plaud.ai/twist CLA: https://claconnect.com/tech Sentry: http://sentry.io/twist Lightfield: http://sentry.io/twist Today’s show: Google once interviewed the entire Justin.tv (now Twitch) team and then walked away from an acquisition deal, saying they weren’t good enough. Seven investors passed on buying 10% of Airbnb for $150,000, a stake pegged at roughly $9.25 billion today. Lon Harris and Alex Wilhelm revisit classic TWiST interviews with Justin Kan of Twitch and Brian Chesky of Airbnb to find out what those founders understood that…