Host: @twistartups @theallinpod @thisweeknai; I invest in 100 startups a year @launch & @founderuni [email protected] for life
austin
Joined August 2006
- Tweets73.6K
- Following6.2K
- Followers1.8M
- Likes127K
@jason retweeted
Kev made joining Discord the last step of onboarding, so he sees every message, and he now has a full-time community manager. It works because the platform is already a vibrant community.
The payoff: feedback on new features within an hour.
One user asked for a Linux client near midnight, and 40 minutes later, he sent a screenshot of it running, built with Claude Code.
@jason retweeted
You want your cat sitter to be accommodating, but Meowtel has spent 11 years saying no.
No dogs (“we’re Meowtel, not Wooftel”). No grooming. No Canadians. And no hawking products to cat owners.
Founder Sonia’s reasoning: U.S. cat sitting alone is a $6B market, and so far they’ve only reached 1% of it.
@Meowtel
@jason retweeted
Don’t assume you know where your customers are. If you listen, they’ll tell you.
Lauft founder Jay Contino suggests what he calls “Signal GTM.” Run ads on every channel, including some you know will fail. Let the market tell you where the signal is.
@jcjcontino, @Jason
@jason retweeted
BIG happy birthday shout-out to @andrewmason
We've got a blast from the past here with him on TWiST E784 from 2017 and an excellent critique of ad-funded media!
The episode is linked in the comments
@jason retweeted
Come work with us! You get to try out all the latest AI tools, meet interesting founders, and sometimes there are tacos. xitter.cf/Jason/status/211306763…
We've doubled the number of deals we are syndicating while tightening who can be a member of thesyndicate.com
We have too many members and are oversubscribed on many deals. We only want to syndicate the best founders, so we've got some new rules:
1. You have to do an onboarding call. Right now, it's a three-week wait for a Zoom.
2. We are also removing members who haven't participated in a deal — so no more lurking.
3. We've moved the minimum investment size to $10k for most deals (some OG members we still allow to do as little at $1-5k if we have room).
Follow @thesyndicate415, where we will be more active soon.
100% correct from @lessin -- in startups, we have a 1-2% fraud rate, and THAT'S OK!!!
It's like credit card fraud... You fight it, of course, but you accept it as part of doing business so you can move fast and take risks.
YAXEL AND @Money23Green is my new favorite trash talking duo!
no more crying to the refs @lukadoncic and @KingJames! 😂
i love this game
Yaxel Lenderborg on his NBA debut and guarding Luka: "I got to see what the NBA is like, man. Lot of flopping, lot of foul baiting, lot of praying to the ref. Interesting first game for me... Being in there firsthand, just watching all the whining and complaining, I lost all respect. That was awful"
Transcript of this soundbite:
"Yeah, it was interesting. I got to see what the NBA is like, man. Lot of flopping, lot of foul baiting, lot of praying to the ref. Interesting first game for me, for sure.
I had a lot of respect for him (Luka). You know, just watching. I didn't really watch the NBA much, I just watched highlights. Seeing him, you know, kill people all the time. But then being in there firsthand, just watching all the whining and complaining, I lost all respect, man. Like that was awful.
Like me getting frustrated, it's not about the foul being called, it's about him complaining the entire game. And then you get the foul call, congratulations bro. And then you talk to me like you did something great, bro? Come on, dog. That's just weak. It kinda threw me off for a little while, cause you know, like I said, I had so much respect for him. Gone man, gone.
I was telling him he sucks, he can't score on me. You talking and you can't score on me. I said it the whole game. I said a couple cuss words obviously, you know, that's why I got the technical and all that. But I was letting him know, because he was laughing and talking all this because of that one foul call.
His only bucket on me was a banker from half court. Like I know that it's a team sport. You know, he had 28pts on us as a team. Me, I took my matchup personally. Tried not to get caught on the fouls. Tried my best. I was thinking about playing him with my hands behind my back to see if that worked, probably would've still got a foul call."
Transcript via:
reddit.com/r/nba/comments/1x…
Do php and nodejs now?
Cybersecurity moving to top issue in crazy world
Gonna buy more ammo and chickens
🔐 Node.js security updates are now available!
New releases for Node.js 22.x, 24.x & 26.x address multiple vulnerabilities, including high-severity issues.
Review the details and update your systems to stay secure.
🔗 nodejs.org/en/blog/vulnerabi…
#NodeJS #Security
@jason retweeted
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 plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off!
17:00 DigitalOcean - Head to do.co/twist 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 odoo.com/twist
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 rippling.ai/twist 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 👇
@jason retweeted
Wisdom through experience
Be extremely intentional with your friendships — not acquaintances, not business partners, actual friends
Try to pick high-integrity people — the right people
Invest time in those relationships
Cut or downgrade folks who are transactional or who don’t show up for you
Reallocate that time and energy to the right people who do
It's ok to be cutthroat about this, as life is the memories you create with your friends and family.
Invest in making moments.
Exceptional guest… pod drops shortly @twistartups and YouTube
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.
@jason retweeted
“Keep your eye out for the people who've created nothing and risked nothing, but who are attacking the people who risk everything to create Something.”
Let me explain reality… if you have but sixty seconds:
They were targeting Elon
They were targeting him with fake charges because the socialist-industrial complex is terrified that he would expose their long grift.
They came after him for the Model 3 and Elon’s claims around its potential.
That potential was realized, and it became, along with the Model Y, the best-selling electric vehicle ever created.
These were fake charges to try to stop somebody from building the best category-defining product.
Let that sink in: that's how evil these motherfuckers are.
The loooooong grift has been exposed: socialist grifters are stealing our tax dollars to fund fringe lunacy, NGOs and government programs without oversight or audits.
They’re parasites incapable of creating any product or service that has to compete in the open market.
Elon creates a couple of cutting-edge products each year, and half of them succeed.
Some of them actually change the world. Some of them fail brutally.
It's called capitalism. It's called creation.
This is what moves the human condition forward: trying things.
Trying really hard things.
Socialists come for the people building valuable products and services — that’s the tell
Keep your eye out for the people who've created nothing and risked nothing, but who are attacking the people who risk everything to create Something.
That's the tell.
In the roaring 90s and into early 2000s the industry did this with Public Relations executives; was widely commented on at the time.
SF’s dating pool was once, as an Egyptian founder put it to us, “drier than the desert in my homeland.”
Now, gorgeous women are flocking to the city.
Why? As AI gets cheaper to build, companies flush with venture cash are hiring beautiful women to charm investors and clients.
Enjoy it while it lasts, gentlemen. As @nicolewizman1 writes: paying hotties 6 figures to get drunk with your business prospects feels like a pretty good sign we’re in a bubble. 👇
We need many more white hats with many more tokens having unrestricted access to the frontier models
Effective Immediately, all organizations using PHP for their systems are advised to be prepared for an update addressing two critical vulnerabilities. PHP is widely used for web applications. These vulnerabilities often provide a direct path to the server's file system or database. If an immediate update is not feasible, it is recommend that organizations take the system offline until it can be fully mitigated. NSA will follow up shortly with more specific guidance.
This is our most amazing event — so excited to collab with @chamath on it!
If you’re a capital allocator it’s a must attend
We only have room for ~500, so please don’t wait… it will be sold out shortly
At Liquidity Summit, the dining experiences are part of the program. Enjoy food from exclusive vendors and wine poured in the valley it came from, alongside the people you want to be in the room with. Apply today: allinliquidity.com
#LiquiditySummit #AllInPodcast
@jason retweeted
At Liquidity Summit, the dining experiences are part of the program. Enjoy food from exclusive vendors and wine poured in the valley it came from, alongside the people you want to be in the room with. Apply today: allinliquidity.com
#LiquiditySummit #AllInPodcast – at Yountville, CA