Podcast · 653 episodes
This Week in Startups, page 2
by Jason Calacanis · English
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.
All episodes, page 2
A Startup Is Trying to Buy PayPal… Craziest Deal of 2026! | E2312Venture capital roundtable on (1) Stripe’s reported plan to buy PayPal for $50B+ and what it signals about private vs public markets, (2) AI’s next bottleneck and how startups build defensible…15 Jul 2026 · 1 h 14 min · 30 chapters
$100T is managed by "human duct tape" | E2308Hanover Park’s AI-native fund operations platform replaces legacy fund administration “human duct tape” (QuickBooks/Bill.com/Excel run by accountants, often in Kentucky) that forces funds to request…6 Jul 2026 · 58 min · 28 chapters
Why the VC Hype Cycle Always Gets It Wrong | VC Roundtable | E2307VC liquidity improving after a weak stretch, but the “VC hype cycle” and oversized early rounds (e.g., $100M+ Series A/huge seeds) are mispricing risk; AI has compressed business cycles, forcing…1 Jul 2026 · 1 h 14 min · 30 chapters
Chamath on why young people need more agency, risk, and adventureChamath Palihapitiya argues young people need more agency, risk, and adventure, and frames this as “economic mobility” via tools that let individuals and companies build and execute with less…29 Jun 2026 · 1 h 12 min · 26 chapters
Why F1 Teams are Replacing Wind Tunnels with Smart Tape | E2305The episode’s main guest segment explains Skin Systems’ “smart tape” approach to aerodynamics testing, aiming to replace or drastically reduce traditional wind-tunnel usage by collecting real-world…27 Jun 2026 · 1 h 30 min · 34 chapters
Why the Future of Video Games is Moving Back to the Dinner TableBoard (the “first face-to-face gaming console”) and how its tech and business model aim to bring video-game interactivity back to shared, physical play around a table.24 Jun 2026 · 1 h 9 min · 24 chapters
The hottest running app has nothing to do with speed | E2303Interval, a gamified running app that turns workouts into a live “turf war” on a global map; territory is claimed by running/walking around a perimeter and can be stolen by others.22 Jun 2026 · 1 h 3 min · 21 chapters
Why SpaceX Buying Cursor Changes EverythingThe episode centers on SpaceX’s planned acquisition of Cursor and what it signals for AI, venture, and M&A.18 Jun 2026 · 1 h 41 min · 36 chapters
The Startup Building the First Hotel on the Moon…Gru Space’s plan to build the first lunar hotel by using an on-site factory to turn lunar regolith (moon “soil”) into construction bricks, enabling off-Earth habitation and eventually Mars settlement.15 Jun 2026 · 1 h 41 min · 37 chapters
SpaceX IPO Day: What Wall St. and the media missed | E2300The episode centers on SpaceX’s IPO day and how Wall Street/media misunderstand what’s being valued, plus a guest segment on Pulsia’s “AI co-founder” and how it won investor attention.13 Jun 2026 · 1 h 20 min · 24 chapters
Why the most expensive Seed deals are the cheapest | E2299Venture capital and AI liquidity surge, anchored by IPO week (SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic) and how AI-driven growth is changing seed/Series A expectations, M&A dynamics, founder power, and VC value-add.10 Jun 2026 · 1 h 8 min · 29 chapters
The AI Tutor That Makes Kids Actually Think | E2298Brilliant.org’s new AI tutor “Koji” and why it’s designed to make kids think (Socratic, interactive, and adaptive), plus a discussion of consumer vs school sales, premium pricing, and “bad VC…8 Jun 2026 · 1 h · 27 chapters
Anthropic wants to slow AI down and Bernie wants 50%: JCal Reacts | E2297The episode mixes two main threads: (1) a debate over calls to slow or pause frontier AI (Anthropic’s policy/research blog post vs.6 Jun 2026 · 1 h 33 min · 35 chapters
The project SpaceX's first employee raised $500M forImpulse Space’s in-orbit logistics tech for moving payloads to higher orbits (including GEO and the moon), plus a second segment on Dusty Robotics automating construction site layout with a “printer…3 Jun 2026 · 1 h 2 min · 29 chapters
This Startup Fused Human Brain Cells with Silicon Chips | E2295Cortical Labs’ biological computing: fusing human neurons with silicon chips to create “biological computers” and running them in biological data centers (“Cortical Cloud”) for research and…1 Jun 2026 · 1 h 6 min · 24 chapters
How to Raise a Seed Round in 2026: Ask Jason | E2294Jason Calacanis answers community questions about raising seed rounds in 2026, investor-founder alignment, differentiating from frontier AI labs, and startup evaluation changes.29 May 2026 · 58 min · 25 chapters
The Drone Company Quietly Taking Over DeliveryManna, an Ireland-based drone delivery startup, scaling fast with drone economics, rapid 3-minute deliveries, and a US expansion enabled by clearer FAA rules; plus a brief second segment preview…27 May 2026 · 1 h 1 min · 28 chapters
From hypercars to cruise missiles: Lukas Czinger on the future of US defense | E2292Divergent Technologies’ shift from building hypercars to producing lightweight aerospace structures and cruise-missile airframes for the US military using AI-generated designs, in-house metal 3D…23 May 2026 · 1 h 47 min · 45 chapters
Avi Patel on the startup that copied Kled and why he called out General Catalyst by name | E2291Mercury Bank’s $200M raise and path to a bank charter; stablecoins/agentic payments; AI features for transaction insights and automated workflows.20 May 2026 · 1 h 34 min · 38 chapters
Why does Gen Z hate AI?Gen Z’s backlash against AI, framed as a mix of job insecurity, distrust of big-tech messaging, and cultural rejection of “toxic” AI seen through social media and targeted ads.18 May 2026 · 1 h 9 min · 28 chapters
The Self-Driving Startup Nobody Saw Coming | E2289Wave (UK) self-driving startup discusses end-to-end learning, world models (Gaia 2/3), sensor-agnostic autonomy, and the path from hands-off to eyes-off/driverless via integration, scaling, and…15 May 2026 · 1 h 13 min · 28 chapters
How Many Startups Will Survive OpenAI? | E2288The episode debates whether OpenAI/Anthropic-style liquidity events and AI-era hype will let most startups survive, and how secondary-share trading via SPVs is being cracked down on.13 May 2026 · 1 h 25 min · 32 chapters
How the 1% Will Own Compute (and What It Means for You)AI compute will become polarized: persistent “interaction” models (always listening/watching) and massive infrastructure buildouts could concentrate power in the 1% via private (possibly space-based)…13 May 2026 · 1 h 8 min · 30 chapters
Cerebras's IPO goes vertical, and the death of OpenClaw? | E2287The episode covers (1) Cerebras’s IPO repricing and the stakes of large compute/inference contracts with OpenAI, including whether revenue is guaranteed; (2) AI21’s enterprise AI orchestration…11 May 2026 · 1 h 23 min · 31 chapters