This Week in Startups

Vlad Tenev, Robinhood co-founder and CEO, joins for a sharp look at how a fintech giant scaled fast. He gets into free trading as a growth engine. He talks about relaunching products again and again. There’s also startup survival through bad press, hiring and design taste, and how AI could reshape products, support, and competition.

Matt Angle, Paradromics founder building implantable brain-computer tech, talks thought-to-text, first human implants, and what comes after restoring speech and movement. Tom O'Leary, JetZero CEO rethinking aircraft design, dives into all-wing jets, airport compatibility, and fuel savings. Dan Zavorotny, Nutrisense CEO in metabolic health, explores glucose tracking, personalized food responses, and AI-powered coaching.

Tom Noble, a website and content builder who amplified the Flat White or F Off vibe, and Charlie Hurst, a graphic designer who crafted the brand visuals and pop-up merch. They chat about turning a viral slogan into a real brand. Short takes cover going from social posts to pop-up cafés, choosing a single-product coffee concept, merch and visuals, and the logistics of scaling a stunt into business.

Nathan Parker, Head at EdgeCase, helps AV teams find and resolve rare failure modes. Ming Maa, executive at Moove, scales and operates city fleets. Ben Seidl, founder of Autolane, builds orchestration software and hardware for autonomous commerce. They discuss mapping vs generalization, operational design domains and city-specific scaling, fleet safety and observability, and which vehicle form factors will win in autonomous delivery.

Suresh Ramamurthy, founder of NetXD and builder of a cryptographically secured banking ledger, talks about agent-driven banking with user-approved workflows. He demos how agents can move money, queue approvals, and enforce rules like savings sweeps. Short, tech-forward conversation about secure open-banking APIs and automation reshaping how people interact with banks.

Mark Jeffrey, investor and Stillcore Capital co-founder focused on BitTensor and decentralized AI. He walks through BitTensor’s TAO-powered subnets, token-driven incentives, and his favorite subnet projects. Short takes on mining agents, wallet allocation, and how tokens reward contributors. Fast-paced tour of programmable mining and what decentralization unlocks.

George Pickett, builder of OpenClaw Studio making agent UIs accessible to non-technical users. Logan Allin, operator-turned-VC at Fin Capital focused on crypto and agentic investing. Erik Voorhees, crypto-native founder of Venice AI building privacy-first, tokenized chat AI. They discuss OpenClaw demos, how agents interact with finance, privacy risks of centralized AI, token economics, enterprise revenue tradeoffs, and analytics for agent traffic.

Dave Morin, entrepreneur and investor who helped launch the OpenClaw Foundation, explains why he joined to protect and steward an open-source AI project. He recounts the platform moments that hooked him and outlines foundation governance, sponsorships, and maintainer support. Demos and demos-adjacent talks show agent orchestration, tooling, and cost tradeoffs for builders.

Ben Broca, founder of Pulsia, a maker of autonomous agentic companies. He demos Pulsia running and growing businesses, discusses product capabilities and pricing, and explains how teams use it at scale. Short, sharp conversation about deploying swarms, automation for startups, and real-world usage scenarios.

Louis Tam, founder of Foundry and creator of Unbrowse, shows how web UIs become callable APIs. Tyler Yust, early OpenClaw contributor and indie dev, discusses integrations, sub-agents, and running agents locally. Deedy Das, Menlo Ventures investor, analyzes AI product trends and market impacts. They dive into OpenClaw governance, iMessage and bookkeeping integrations, agent architecture, and Unbrowse demos.