This Week in Startups

@thisweekinstartups · Podcast

Latest segments

• Patrick Stewart dies at 86, 2026-10-30
  Remembers Stewart's roles and McKellen's tribute
  Closes the episode on Patrick Stewart's death at 86, trading favorite roles: the dual-Picard Next Generation episode, Green Room's Nazi leader, Days of Future Past and Logan. Notes Ian McKellen's tribute post. A fond remembrance with no reporting beyond the death itself.
• DoorDash buys Instacart, 2026-10-30
  Walks through the deal terms and antitrust objection
  Walks through the deal terms and the antitrust objection, then argues the merger clears under Trump, that DoorDash is overpaying with an overvalued stock, and that Instacart's flat growth and ad business made it the seller.
• Binance's $6.3B heist, 2026-10-30
  Replays the 2021 warning and fills in CZ's history
  Plays Jason's July 2021 clip urging listeners to pull money off Binance, then fills in the CZ backstory - the Bank Secrecy Act plea, the four-month sentence at Lompoc, the 2025 pardon, his 90% stake - and credits him for backstopping the losses. Reaction and history, not new reporting on the hack.
• Binance's $6.3B heist, 2026-10-30
  Opens with the heist and the frozen funds
  Opens the episode with the Binance heist: the $6.3 billion estimate, the suspended deposits and withdrawals, the compromised engineer's laptop, and the roughly $3 billion frozen on chain by Tether, Circle, Ripple and World Liberty Financial. The hosts spend the first minutes joking about how the hack might have started.
• Anthropic's $2T IPO slip, 2026-10-29
  Breaks down the convertible-note charge mechanics
  Walks through the mechanics of the $72.4 billion convertible-note charge: fair-value election, remeasurement each period, expense on the income statement, add-back on the cash flow statement. The panel then argues over how public markets will read it. A clear explanation, but it stays inside numbers already on the record.
• Anthropic's $2T IPO slip, 2026-10-29
  Compares revenue to Big Tech and unpacks retention
  Puts Anthropic's roughly $100 billion yearly revenue next to Alphabet, Microsoft and Apple, then unpacks the 900% net revenue retention. The panel debates whether that growth and pricing power survive commoditization; the figures are already on the record.
• Anthropic's $2T IPO slip, 2026-10-29
  Debates the 0.1% AI spend figure
  Panel riff on AI as the new cigarettes and land on the S-1's 0.1% figure: customers spend about a tenth of a percent of operating expenditures on AI. Reads it as either headroom or a utility problem, then argues the real constraint is people, not price.
• Anthropic's $2T IPO slip, 2026-10-29
  Argues Anthropic is the greatest business ever
  Jason's case for Anthropic as the greatest business ever built: revenue surging, profitable, barely touched its cash. D.A. needles him about last month's SpaceX pick. Opinion and framing on the S-1 numbers, no new development.
• Anthropic's $2T IPO slip, 2026-10-29
  Adds the WSJ listing timeline and pricing
  Opens the episode on the public S-1 and works through the headline numbers, then adds a WSJ-sourced timeline: pricing the week of November 16 at $1.5 to $2 trillion. The panel argues over whether the filing's framing holds, with the hosts split on valuation.
• Meta Q3 earnings, 2026-10-24
  Walks through the Founder Alignment Agreement
  Walks through the Founder Alignment Agreement: a new share class letting Zuckerberg sell quarterly without losing control, tied to eight years of California residency, and notes it appears to apply even if the tax fails. Then argues the deal will be weaponized to pass Prop 40.
• SpaceX's 80,000-tower talks, 2026-10-24
  Sketches a Starlink mesh from the report
  Takes the Bloomberg report on Starlink Mobile and runs it forward: Jason sketches a mesh of Starlink-connected cars and phones and predicts family bills falling from about $400 to $200, while conceding fiber to the home stays hard to beat. Speculation, not new reporting.
• OpenAI's $30B round, 2026-10-24
  Recaps the round and runs the math
  Recaps the CNBC report on the $30 billion round at a $1.25 trillion pre-money valuation, then spends most of the segment on Jason's price-to-sales math and his list of headwinds: Anthropic, agents, open source, compute and regulation. Ends on a portfolio-allocation hypothetical.
• Valar Atomics pro rata feud, 2026-10-22
  Reads the lawsuit over the spring-back amendment
  Reads out the Valar Atomics lawsuit against Day One Ventures: the seed and Series A checks, the sub-5 percent stake, the amendment stripping spring-back rights the day before Sequoia's $1 billion round closed, and Bucher's response on X.
• Theranos documentary backlash, 2026-10-22
  Asks the VCs about backing a new Holmes
  Hypothetical segment: the VCs are asked whether they would invest in a new Holmes company. Lessin and Fielding say they would take a quick secondary flip, Doherty would take the meeting but not invest. Calacanis sketches a halfway-house timeline and a Trump-era sentence cut; the substance stays inside the documentary backlash discussion.
• Anthropic's public benefit fund, 2026-10-20
  Calls the fund a possible slush fund
  Pivots from Trump accounts to a riff on Anthropic's public benefit fund, calling it a possible slush fund and arguing the money should go straight to the public. Opinion and framing, with no new development in the fund itself.
• Anthropic's public benefit fund, 2026-10-20
  Walks through the pledge mechanics and math
  Walks through the mechanics of the pledge - stockholder approval still pending, board discretion to add 2% per 50% valuation gain - and puts a dollar figure on the initial 5% at a $2 trillion valuation. Then pivots to Musk's counter-proposal and a long argument about distributing equity directly.
• Fielder's Holmes documentary, 2026-10-20
  Reviews Fielder's Holmes film and its access
  Spoiler-free review of Fielder's Holmes film: the pre-prison access, Fielder's Nathan For You and Rehearsal lineage, the mid-film jail turn and the third-act meta layers. Praise and framing, with no new reporting on the film or the case.
• Eight states sue OpenAI, 2026-10-17
  Recaps the eight-state child safety suits
  Recaps the eight-state suits against OpenAI over child safety, listing the states and the allegations that ChatGPT was marketed as safe for under-13s and coached self-harm. Adds OpenAI's response that it has age-specific protections and wants industry-wide rules, but stays inside the week's coverage.
• OpenAI office bugging arrest, 2026-10-17
  Recaps the bugging arrest and honeypot detail
  Recaps the bugging arrest - the toilet-paper-wrapped device, the wife's ChatGPT prompts, the one-way ticket - and adds the Wall Street Journal detail on honeypot training. Jason's financial-espionage theory is opinion, and the hidden camera is already on the record.
• OpenAI office bugging arrest, 2026-10-17
  Retells the recorder arrest and honeypot training
  Recaps the arrest of Abdul Rahman Al-Fazan and the toilet-paper-wrapped recorder behind the conference-room TV, plus the wife's ChatGPT prompts and the one-way ticket. Stays inside the week's reporting, adding only that OpenAI trains staff to spot honeypots.