The blue wave isn’t going to go for data centers… they’re going to go for self-driving. @jason: “The biggest outcome of this midterm election is not data centers…I think it’s autonomy. I think they’re going to block autonomy.” Here’s what Jason thinks regulation could look like: “I don’t want self-driving cars on the road without safety drivers in them.” “Here’s your new cap. You can have like 300 in each city.” “If there are any accidents, we’re going to take you out of commission.” “If you can find people at 25 bucks an hour, you've got to hire them until there are no more.” “You have to pay $10,000 per year in tax for each robot.”

Jason says America needs to keep Jensen as CEO no matter what. @jason: “Whatever price he has to pay, there’s going to be many here… But I can tell you benching him is what the Chinese want.” “I don’t think Jensen gets fired. He’s too valuable to the company.” “No Jensen, no super intelligence.” “We have to think strategically, not vindictively.” “As hard as it is to go through this with his family and is a family guy and, you know, divorce is terrible. And the public shaming, the mocking, all of this is got to be incredibly hard for him to deal with.” “But also he has obligations to the company and as an American to America.”

Sam Lessin says if there’s zero fraud in your seed portfolio, you’re not taking enough swings. His fund runs about a 1% “oops, it was fraud” rate, and he’s fine with it. Healthy risk or excuse for lazy diligence? @lessin @Jason

According to Sam Lessin, about 1% of Slow Ventures’ bets turn out to be fraud. His take: if your seed portfolio has no fraud whatsoever, you’re probably not being creative enough. Jason, Sam, and fellow VC roundtable experts Paige Doherty and Jenny Fielding argue that diligence has to scale with the check. If you’re giving out $25K or $100K, you don’t have the time or funds for deep diligence. But if you’re writing a $100M check, you can’t afford to skip it. Hear the panel discuss when a little diligence is good enough and what went wrong with Theranos, FTX, and other infamous disasters on TWiST 2353. @jason, @lessin, @paigefinnn, @jefielding, @slow, @behind_genius, @EverywhereVC, @Lons 0:00 Our new “This Week in VC” newsletter 2:57 Panel intro: Sam Lessin, Paige Doherty, Jenny Fielding 8:51 Why gambling loses appeal for VCs 11:44 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations - interviews, meetings, calls - you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at and use code TWIST for 10% off! 17:00 DigitalOcean - Head to to start building on DigitalOcean's AI-Native Cloud today - and cut your AI workload costs by up to 50% 18:17 Best moments from “You Can See Everything” 22:24 Unreliable narrators and unknowable situations 25:23 Living in a post-truth moment 30:44 Due diligence horror stories 33:27 Odoo: The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at 35:32 The VCs remember their fraud investments 39:21 How LAUNCH trains founders to prep for diligence 45:13 How Elizabeth Holmes kept raising money 55:36 Would you invest in an Elizabeth Holmes company? 58:09 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. 1:03:10 Why seed funds need pro rata rights 1:09:44 When “founder friendly” means rolling over 1:17:07 The three investor relationships: team, founders, LPs 1:21:44 ElevenLabs “Archer” voice controversy 1:27:58 How NIL deals reshaped college sports 1:34:36 Cameo for Business and long-tail celeb endorsements 1:36:33 Portfolio company shoutouts 🎥 Watch the full episode here 👇

We’re LIVE in 35 minutes with Paige Doherty, Founding Partner of Behind Genius Ventures! She raised her first fund at 22 as a college CS major, with checks from angels who followed her online. By 25 she’d closed Fund II at $8.9M, making her one of the youngest solo GPs in venture. Come hang out with her LIVE. Link in comments.

We’re going LIVE in 30 minutes with @lessin, GP of @slow, for today’s VC roundtable! He sold to his Harvard classmate Mark Zuckerberg, ran product at Facebook, and Slow famously bought Solana at a nickel a coin. See you at 12 PM Central! Live link in comments.

This startup pulls rare-earth metals from old electronics using… orange peels? It’s one of 11 startups that pitched Jason and Yuki Shirato of Techstars Tokyo in Osaka, and they give their TRULY honest feedback. They also discuss why everyone in Japan works like a founder, how young talent is choosing startups over lifetime jobs, and why Japan already understands product-market fit. PLUS, AssetHub makes 3D characters that pass the IP owner’s strict rules, and Jason tells them to dream BIGGER than a tool. @jason @Techstars 0:00 Jason's first trip to Japan and the food crawl 3:49 Why everyone in Japan acts like a founder 4:24 Founder University comes to Japan 9:26 Techstars Tokyo and Japan's push for global founders 11:10 Why Japanese startups stay on the island 13:26 Parents, lifetime jobs, and the fear of failure 15:55 How Japan mastered product market fit 19:25 Lightfield: Name one person who's ever enjoyed updating a CRM. Exactly. Lightfield's AI agent does it for you - it even prospects and books your meetings. Used by thousands of startups. Free at 20:52 The white lab coat and the man who named his daughter Cinnamon 25:47 Seekr: centimeter-precise indoor navigation 28:20 Why investors want the business case, not the press 29:03 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. 35:36 Arabat: recovering rare earths with orange peels 39:08 Getting from free pilots to paid pilots 39:20 Upwork: Upwork helps businesses find highly skilled freelance professionals for specialized work. Post your job for free at 44:39 AssetHub: AI 3D models for anime and game IP 53:22 Come for the tool, stay for the marketplace 55:17 CRAZIA: turning customer conversations into growth 57:24 JuJuJuu: giving alternative protein the structure of steak 59:44 JAPANMEDIA: AI manga and anime at a fifth of the cost 1:02:06 Tsuin AI: AI twins that think and act like you 1:03:57 Picking the layup and the wild card 1:10:11 Rumi Light: faster data paths inside AI servers 1:12:22 GENCHI: a local avatar that shops Japan for you 1:14:33 TattvaSilicon: analog circuit design in a day 1:16:18 Mimi AI: learning to actually speak Japanese 1:18:33 Why a live shopping avatar is Jason's wild card 🎥 Watch the full episode here 👇

We're LIVE at 12 PM central with @KanuGulati, Partner at @khoslaventures. She went from research scientist at Cadence and Intel to leading Khosla's bets on PolyAI, Waabi, and Sarvam. Come learn from her LIVE in 25 minutes. Link in comments.

We're going LIVE at 12 PM central with @pitdesi, Co-Founder & GP of @BTVvc. He sold FeeFighters to Groupon, ran 500 Startups' fintech fund, then started his own seed firm for fintech and vertical AI. Come learn from the best at 12 PM Central. Watch link in comments.

We're LIVE at 12 PM central with @chriswfarmer, Founder & CEO of @SignalFire. He started SignalFire in 2013 on a simple idea: use data to find startups before everyone else does. Now it manages about $3B with titans such as Grammarly and Alchemy in the portfolio. Catch him at 12 PM central! Live link to watch in comments.

In August of 2025, FieldAI raised $405 million across two funding rounds, at a $2 billion valuation. (Investors included Nvidia’s venture arm and Jeff Bezos’ family office.) Dive into the details in our Substack. Link in comments.

AI won't kill the billable hour. It'll just make the work better. @jason: "Maybe it takes an hour, or they still bill you for ten hours, and you just get a better report with better results."

Abliteration founder @founderengineer says Chinese open source models are catching up to the frontier. "Maybe before it was a year, they were a year behind. I would say today they're maybe around three months behind." @abliteration_ai @Jason

Justin Kan tells @jason why a failed Google acquisition led to the creation of Twitch. @justinkan: "They interviewed our entire team. We let them, which you should never, ever do… they interviewed our team, and then they were like, your team's not good enough. Goodbye.”

Video editors, wanna come work with @Jason on @twistartups? We're hiring a podcast video editor to help us expand our content engine our venture firm, @LAUNCH. This role will edit short-form content for TikTok, X, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube Shorts. If you're a highly driven video editor, fascinated with tech, AI, and venture capital, and always trying to up your editing game with the latest AI trends, this position could be a fit. Apply at

Jason’s advice to founders showing off new products @jason: “Never apologize, just release it… Just let it rip. That's what Reid Hoffman said: if you're not embarrassed by your 1.0, you waited too long.” @lons