Today on This Week in Startups, we're joined by @bryantchou, Founder of @ployai. He spent 12 years as Co-founder and CTO of Webflow. Now he's the founder (Chief Ployee) of Ploy, an AI platform that builds your site, writes your copy, and runs your campaigns while you sleep. They just emerged from stealth with a $27M seed round led by First Round Capital and Y Combinator. Come tune in at 11PM CT.

Anthropic and OpenAI released cheaper models on the same day with Claude Opus 5.5 and GPT-6. Dave McClure of Practical Venture Capital, Jeff Clavier of Uncork Capital, and Jenny Fielding of Everywhere Ventures join Jason to debate what that means for open-weight models. They also get into why fintech and healthcare are suddenly on the VC sideline, whether Meta's Muse leaves any room for Instinct, why it's a buyer's market for secondaries, and why median seed valuations have more than tripled since 2017. @jason @davemcclure @jeff @jefielding 0:00 What seed rounds looked like then: Fitbit's $2M seed 3:15 Jenny's Techstars NYC years and the two-unicorn mug 7:51 All-In Summit: Trump calls Jensen Huang onstage. Staged or not? 8:56 P(doom) roundtable + Dave's AI sovereign wealth fund prediction 10:08 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 13:35 The AI intel error that nearly triggered a US-China incident 17:44 "McClure's Law": a human with AI is the real risk 19:59 Odoo - The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at 21:37 Stripe + OpenRouter: an anti-fraud play, not a routing play? 23:07 Seed valuations: median $8M (2017) to $28M today 23:58 Instinct: $2.5B to a reported $10B in weeks 29:49 Rippling - Thanks to our partners at Rippling! Head to and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business. 44:01 Opus 5.5 vs. GPT-6 Sol: the same-day price war 46:51 Gun to your head: open-weight models or frontier labs? 51:00 Secondaries: the top 30 names vs. everyone else 52:30 Why fintech and healthcare are unloved (and Jason's Robinhood bet) 🎥 Watch the full episode here 👇

Today on TWiST, we're joined by @jeff, Founder of @uncorkcap. Over 20+ years he's made 290+ seed investments, including early bets on Fitbit and SendGrid (later acquired by Twilio). This year, on Uncork's 21st anniversary, he just closed $300M across two new funds. Come tune in at 12pm CT. Link in comments.

Fun question to start the week: Which suite of acquired companies would make the best line-up for Apple? @Lons said Sony. Apple TV (and other electronics), PStation becomes Apple Gaming, Apple Pictures Entertainment, even Crunchyroll becomes Apple Anime 10

Today on TWiST, we're joined by Stacy Salvi, Co-Founder & CEO of The90. She spent 8 years building wearables at Fitbit (through Google's $2.1B acquisition) and is now betting on a new stat: UV exposure. Her answer is The90 Gem, a piece of smart jewelry that tracks your real UV exposure and tells you exactly when to reapply. See you at 11 AM central! Live details in comments. Company: LinkedIn:

How does @huggingface make money if everything’s free? “The main source of revenue right now is around storage.” “You want your storage to be very close to your GPU.” @Thom_wolf @jason @lons

$HOOD launched with no idea how they would make any money. Co-founder Vlad Tenev told Jason on stage that he just wanted to make customers happy. It wasn't a very good answer. @vladtenev, @jason

Temporal just raised $550M at a $12.55B valuation. On this week’s AI Basics, Co-founder & CEO @SamarAtTemporal tells @Jason that agents are stuck in the MS-DOS era, and need to upgrade to a real cloud environment before enterprises will embrace them. @temporalio , @GoogleStartups 0:00 Why every startup needs an AI harness 2:12 Why 90% of AI prototypes never reach production 4:16 What happens when an agent crashes mid-task 7:00 A look at Temporal's dashboard 13:02 OK but what is a "harness" exactly? 15:30 When to graduate an agent from laptop to production 17:44 Organizing agents into teams 🎥 Watch the full episode here 👇

“They’re not acting like people who are scared of their invention.” “Frankenstein wasn't like, maybe I shouldn't have created a monster… He tried to burn the guy down and ran away.” -@lons @jason

We want you to ask Jason questions DIRECTLY today at 10am CT! If you have a question: - be ready to ask it in podcast recording - email jordan@launch.co - if selected, Jordan will reply with a zoom link for initial screening - AND then you'll hop in live with @Jason #askjcal#

"If you get paid hourly, you probably hate AI. If you care about the outputs of an industry or a company, you love AI." Recursive co-founder (and author) Richard Socher on why AI opinions are split so hard. It's about who owns the upside. @RichardSocher, @Recursive_SI, @mattturck, @FirstMarkCap, @jason

Some say all the talk about dangerous "threat to human civilization" AI is just pre-IPO hype. Back in May on TWiAI Ep 12, he argued that the team at Anthropic really believe they are Jedi monks and humanity's last hope. Maybe it's both? They are Jedi monks hyping an IPO?

We are looking for some great Ask Jason questions for an all-Ask-Jason episode. If you have any questions about any startup, technology, business, the pods or life, please send us an audio or video so we can feature you You can send your video or audio file via DM, give a little plug for your company, or give us your link so we can shout you out via DM Send to: @twistartups via DM Can also obviously be anonymous