2024 TWISTY Awards | E2066

This Week in Startups is brought to you by… Squarespace. TWiST listeners: use code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain: https://www. Squarespace.com/TWIST OpenPhone. TWiST listeners can get 20% off your first 6 months at https://openphone.com/twist Notion: TWiST listeners can try it for free at https://notion.com/twist Todays show: The 2024 TWISTY Awards are here! Jason and Alex look back at the year and dole out awards for Best CEO, Bag Securer of the Year, and more; plus a look back at the best TWIST moments. (0:00) Jason and Alex kick off the episode (1:36) Twisty Awards 2024 Overview (2:06) Breakout Startup of the Year Nominations and Winner (5:53) Pre IPO Startup of the Year Nominations and Winner (10:03) Squarespace. TWiST listeners: use code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain: https://www. Squarespace.com/TWIST (15:06) Main Character of the Year Nominations and Winner (19:10) Bag Secure of the Year Nominations and Winner (20:07) OpenPhone. TWiST listeners can get 20% off your first 6 months at https://openphone.com/twist (22:05) CEO of the Year Discussion (not Elon Musk) (24:43) Twist Interview of the Year Highlight (29:34) Notion: TWiST listeners can try it for free at https://notion.com/twist (31:07) Best Venture Capital Guest Feature (33:32) Defunct Startup of the Year Category (35:46) News Topic of the Year Debate (43:00) Best Tech Product of the Year Nominations (45:07) Funniest Twist Moment of the Year (48:05) Episode of the Year Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Alex: X: https://x.com/alex LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Thank you to our partners: (10:03) Squarespace. TWiST listeners: use code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain: https://www. Squarespace.com/TWIST (20:07) OpenPhone. TWiST listeners can get 20% off your first 6 months at https://openphone.com/twist (29:34) Notion: TWiST listeners can try it for free at https://notion.com/twist Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@founderuniversity1916

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jason Calacanis?

  And bench, oh my God, that just happened last week and that's a big blowout and they did it in spectacular fashion by screwing over all of their customers, apparently, allegedly, according to reports. I gotta put all these caveats in here so I don't create another Palmer Lucky situation. But if that's true, I gotta give it to bench because my God, what a flame out. And in vision, what a great product that was. Everybody loved it. They were up against Figma, they were up against Adobe, really hard to make it work. I'm not sure exactly how that one went out, but I gotta give it to bench, man. And they just blew up in spectacular fashion this past week. So at the end of the year, people doing their taxes, taxes, God, end of the year,

• 0:42Jason Calacanis?

  bookkeeping company went up in flames. And then the founder went on like a tweet storm about his ousting. And now people are trying to figure out which VC took him for the death walk. Somebody took him for a Fredo walk.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  This Week in Startups is brought to you by Squarespace. Turn your idea into a new website. Go to Squarespace.com/twist for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Openphone. Create business phone numbers for you and your team that work through an app on your smartphone or desktop. Twist listeners can get an extra 20% off any plan for your first six months at openphone.com/twist. And Notion. Notion combines your notes, docs, and projects into one beautifully designed space with AI built right in. Try it for free today at notion.com/twist.

• 1:36Jason Calacanis?

  All right, everybody. Welcome back to This Week in Startups. I'm Jason Calacanis, he's Alex Wilhelm, and it is the end of the year. So we're doing our annual Twisty Award.

• 1:55Jason Calacanis?

  These are the Twisty Awards for 2024. We've done this in the past and we're doing it again. Let's get started. Breakout Startup of the Year is our first category. Who are our nominations? Alex.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  All right. So in the nominations for Breakout Startup of the Year, first on the list is Perplexity. This is an AI search engine that we have all heard of, we have all used. It raised tons of money. It grew quickly. It got embroiled in controversies about plagiarism and publishing and rights. It has been on everyone's lips. It has been, I think, a company that's been impossible to ignore. So Perplexity is the first one for our Breakout Startup of the Year. Next up is Blue Sky. Now, Jason, I know you're a big fan of X. I know a lot of people love it. I know some other people in my life who are on the other side of that coin. Blue Sky, I think, did a reasonable job of capitalizing on some people's disagreement with X's owner

• 2:47Speaker 02

  and has grown very rapidly, especially since the election. So I think they really have broken out this year.

• 2:53Jason Calacanis?

  They did break out, yeah. Who else we got?

• 2:56Speaker 02

  Codium. Recently had them on the show. I picked Codium amongst all of the companies in the market that are doing AI programming assistant work because I think their new IDE called Windsurf, which is the place you actually do the programming on your computer in, is so awesome that they have really pushed the state of the art forward and they grew a lot this year. So I think it kind of fits all those buckets at once.

• 3:17Jason Calacanis?

  All right.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  And then finally, Harvey. It's the only vertical AI company on the list, but I was going back through a list of them and Harvey said that it had tripled ARR in like the first couple of quarters of this year. So to me, that is indicative of a company that has managed to take a new technology to an old vertical and crack the ARR code.

• 3:37Jason Calacanis?

  All right. And who do you have as your winner, Alex?

• 3:40Speaker 02

  My winner is Perplexity.

• 3:44Jason Calacanis?

  I think that's a great choice. They did break out. I'm gonna go with Codium. I think these code thing, you know, these code helping stuff is, you know, these co-pilots are gonna change the world, have many downstream effects. I do like perplexity. It reminds me a lot of what I tried to do with Mahalo before AI was really available in doing like these more rich search results. And I kind of got a lot of my ideas from a company called Naver, which is the search engine in Korea. That was really the innovator in what we called, you know, at the time is this like dynamic search results. So I think perplexity, I'm not like a long-term fan of it because I think that,

• 4:25Jason Calacanis?

  you know, a lot of the UI interface stuff that they're creating is going to be easily copable. And I don't think that they have like a lot of proprietary data there. So I do think they did break out, but I don't think they're gonna have a lasting effect, but I could be wrong. So I'm willing to hold it. And you know, there's another one I want to add to this space, which is Kalshi and Polymarket, I want to add here as pencils as nominations. And so then for me, it would be Codium and Polymarket or Kalshi. If I edit those two, would that change your thing?

• 4:58Speaker 02

  No. So I thought a lot about the prediction markets because, I mean, we've all been watching them, especially the last six months. The problem that I have with them is that people, I think, misread the data. They look at a Polymarket chart and they say, oh, 77% chance that Jason has more than 19 sips of coffee on Twist today. And that's actually not true. It's the current market consensus is that there is a 77% chance. That does not mean that it is actually reality. And so I think people-

• 5:25Jason Calacanis?

  That's true. People don't understand. Yeah, people don't understand it. I agree 100%. But it's serving a different purpose. It's just another data point. So I'm gonna stick with Codium, but I just want to put as my second nomination, those two prediction markets.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, look, other names that I didn't put on the list because they're too small. I think Tolbit and Human Native, the AI media copyright marketplaces are gonna be huge.

• 5:50Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, they'll be huge too. So maybe next year.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe. Exactly. Maybe next year.

• 5:54Jason Calacanis?

  All right. Here we go. The next category is pre-IPO startup of the year. So this is a startup that's been around for a while, but it's before it's IPO. So these are private market companies. Oh, and look at this, a little graphic, pre-IPO startup of the year. Who do we got, Alex?

• 6:10Speaker 02

  Beautiful. Well, coming up in this list are names that everyone knows and loved. CoreWeave, Wiz, Scale AI, Databricks, Android and SpaceX.

• 6:21Jason Calacanis?

  Wow, wow, wow.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  This is like everyone's favorite list of companies.

• 6:23Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, my lord. Yeah, just looking at these, um, CoreWeave, if people don't know, that's like what they call a NeoCloud, right? A new cloud made of GPUs. They have been bought, they really got lucky to have bought a bunch of these H100s early. There's a bunch of financing, you know, uniqueness to this company. I'll just put it that way.

• 6:47Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. And then you have Databricks, which just raised the largest private.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  Round ever.

• 6:53Jason Calacanis?

  Round ever. Uh, Android and SpaceX obviously crushing it. So this one could go anywhere. Um, you know, I, it's obvious to me that SpaceX is the biggest winner here because they're the largest, they're doing the most important work. So for me, this is an easy one. I'm going to just call it SpaceX. But I'm going to give my honorable mention to Android. Now I know that's a little spicy because Palmer Lucky and I have had some differences in the past.

• 7:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, you guys get along about as well as two rats in the same sack.

• 7:23Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I'll just put it out here right now. The disagreement I had with Palmer Lucky was because we had a podcast. There was a bunch of journalists reporting that he had been fired from Facebook to because he had funded a bunch of trolls to do anti-Hillary stuff. He denies that ever happened. He did get fired from Facebook. We know that because there's been a bunch of information since that actually the people at Facebook regret doing it.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:52Jason Calacanis?

  They regret bowing to the pressure and firing him. He told me he doesn't believe that these reports in the press were accurate. I said to him, well, why don't you sue them? He says, well, it won't make a difference. I actually think it would, but I'm going to put it out here right now. Consider this, a formal apology, two Palmer lucky, people can clip it, they can dunk on me. If those stories are wrong, and there's a significant chance they were. My hot take on it was you should never covertly fund these political trolling things. Because it'll blow back on you, your family, your employees, et cetera. And as a leader, just own it. And if you want to host a Trump fundraiser like Sacks did and Chomoff did, they took the bullets.

• 8:36Jason Calacanis?

  In this case, the idea was he was doing it covertly. But that may not be true. And if it's not true, then I made a mistake for which I apologize unequivocally for my hot take. And my hot take would be the opposite, which is if you didn't do it, my hot takes wrong. And since that time, I am always very careful now because we know we do have some bias in the press at times. It's just the nature of the press today. They pick sides, whether it's Fox News picking a side or Rachel Maddow picking a side.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  Pirate lawyers versus think progress.

• 9:06Jason Calacanis?

  Sure. This is a different journalistic world than it was when I made those comments. People do pick sides and at that time they pick a side, well, just put it out there. I now am super cautious to caveat my hot takes with.

• 9:22Jason Calacanis?

  If it's true, if it's true.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  Allegedly.

• 9:25Jason Calacanis?

  That he did this allegedly. Like I really lean into that. You've, you can look at my early stories where I might just take a press story and say, oh my God, Palmer's an idiot for doing this. I regret saying it that way. I should have said, if this is true.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 9:39Jason Calacanis?

  It's idiotic to do that and make it a little less personal because he obviously took it very personal. And I said it in a very personal way. So I apologize for saying it in a personal way. If it's not true, obviously my take is a hundred percent wrong. I do wish he would dunk and sue those publications to make force a correction. Those publications still are holding their position that he was fired for doing that. He says he didn't.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  You go to discovery. And then I think no one wants to go to discovery and have.

• 10:06Jason Calacanis?

  But even if he wrote a legal letter, I mean, he's a billionaire. He could write a couple of letters, put a lot of pressure on them, and then they would have to, you know, put up or shut up.

• 10:16Jason Calacanis?

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• 10:57Jason Calacanis?

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• 11:41Speaker 02

  Depending on anti-slap losses. But anyways, Andrel is on the list.

• 11:45Jason Calacanis?

  So, I put the Andrel there. I mean, I know this is going to get clipped, and some people are going to dunk on me. Some people are going to say I'm not apologizing. I'm explaining a nuanced situation. I have, over the years, realized that some of the stuff in the press, I don't trust as much as I did back in the day. And the the press is has taken sides. It's just the nature of the press today. It's more opinionated. It's more taking sides. So that's that. SpaceX is my obvious winner and Andrew's my number two.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  All right. So I want to add a little bit on these companies just to provide people context. Why, why we thought they were.

• 12:17Jason Calacanis?

  And then you're who do you?

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I'm going to work my way there. So CoreWeave, the reason why of the GPU clouds, Jason, this one was, I think, the pre-IPO one to put in. It's because the latest reporting, oops, after that spiel, was that it could target up to a $35 billion valuation next year, which is such a large number for an IPO, even now in the unicorn era, that to me, it's a sit up and take notes kind of moment. So shout out to CoreWeave if they pull it off. Wiz, don't forget, is the company that turned down that buyout offer from Google. And they have cybersecurity, I think with some Israeli roots, and it is growing so fast. And if they're targeting a billion dollars in ARR next year, then they just, they have to be on an IPO cadence and they're just so impressive. Love them.

• 13:04Speaker 02

  Scale AI, I read that they, I think it was tripled or quadrupled their revenue in the first half of this year. Just a super impressive company, was early in the AI thing, clearly an IPO candidate. And I didn't pick Databricks because I'm convinced that Ali Ghazi is going to die as the CEO of a private company. He's never going to take it out. And I'm saying this to jinx it. I'm saying this to deliberately anti-knock on wood to get the company to eventually go out. I picked CoreWeave and then I changed my notes to Andrew because we talked before the show.

• 13:37Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, so Andrew's your number one. Okay. And CoreWeave's number two.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  No, I meant CoreWeave. I changed it because I thought we were doing one for the two of us. I'm picking CoreWeave. I think it's going to be such a hot IPO and I can't wait to see the gross margins.

• 13:48Jason Calacanis?

  Who's your number two? If I were to give you a number two?

• 13:51Speaker 02

  Uh, so SpaceX is probably it, but to me.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  I guess the bias I had in this list was who might go public next year, right? Who is there a chance that we'll see them list in 2025? And to me, I don't see SpaceX doing that. I haven't heard rumblings about that.

• 14:09Jason Calacanis?

  Imagine if Androl did with Palmer's profile and the cool videos they're putting out. I mean, Androl would be like the IPO of all meme stocks. That would be the meme IPO of all time because it's just like people you say like new military technology. You just think Androl, you know, it's kind of like Uber or Stripe or SpaceX in that regard. You say space, you say finance, you say transportation, like one name comes to mind. So I mean, I don't want to be like, yeah, they are the Xerox. They are the Uber, they are the verb.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Also, they're part of a consortium, Jason. SpaceX and Androl and several companies are working.

• 14:47Jason Calacanis?

  A reported consortium, a reported. It hasn't been, nobody has.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  Allegedly, if it's true.

• 14:54Jason Calacanis?

  If it's true.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  The lack of pushback, I think, indicates that there is, there's enough.

• 15:00Jason Calacanis?

  Conversations are occurring, probably. I don't know who's driving it, but I love competition. We love competition. Main character of the year. This is something we've talked about as the main character every week on This Week in Service. We try to think who's the main character this week and get him on the program. Could be a minor character or whatever, but we love the main character. This is the person who takes up a lot of the energy in the room. Look at the beautiful graphic. Who do we got?

• 15:23Speaker 02

  So first of all, the PayPal mafia, this is several names in one, a little bit of a cheat. But let's be honest, it's the same crew we've been talking about for a while, all in one bucket. Then just because I know Jason is her number one fan, we made sure to nominate Lena Khan as the main character of the year. Then also the CEO of TikTok, Xiao Chu. I think that he has flown more under the radar this year than he should have. There's so much else going on. We forgot that TikTok has been on this countdown to destruction for so long. And now Trump's weighed in, the Supreme Court's involved, an easy candidate for, for main character of the year. Even if we didn't talk about him quite as much as our last candidate, Sam Altman, who has been, I don't know, Jason, ubiquitous for.

• 16:05Jason Calacanis?

  Crazy, yeah. I mean, well, I mean, he's the dealmaker of all dealmakers, maybe a strength, maybe even like in terms of superpower, maybe even sometimes your superpower can work against you too much dealmaking to create a bit of chaos, right? So this is a hard one because main character of the year is not necessarily correlated with like success or whatever. It's just kind of like you're talked about, it could be infamy, it could be praise, it could be any of those. Who did you pick? Ladies first, give it a shot, Alex.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  I'd pick PayPal Mafia because I think, I think that, yeah, I felt a little bad. Going back to the broadcasters takes being spicy, I now understand exactly why award shows will take a big category and give it to someone random because then it gets the people talking. Like, I could, I could have picked Lena Kahn here and pushed your buttons and made you do a reaction, but I really do think that the PayPal kids have been so inescapable that nothing else makes sense.

• 17:03Jason Calacanis?

  On all sides, I mean, even, you know, Keith Raboy, Reid Hoffman on the other side of the aisle politically, I mean, they're just everywhere. And so it's pretty obvious that the main character of the year was the PayPal Mafia, obviously Elon, Teal, Sacks, Musk.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 17:19Jason Calacanis?

  Keith Raboy, it's obvious that they're the main characters for 2024, but I'm going to give a shout out to Lena Kahn as my runner up and my favorite because, my lord, the wrath of terror and suffering and pain and anti-capitalism that she put into our industry has caused complete chaos. I am so glad that she is going to be a partner at Y Combinator, that congratulations on her securing the bag at YC.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  We need to have buttons on the show. One button that I can push that says Alex does not entirely endorse this view and then. And then one for you entitled, I'm currently joking. She's not, she's not yet been hired by, by a commentator or

• 18:01Jason Calacanis?

  She will be guaranteed.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  Yep, yep, yep, yep.

• 18:04Jason Calacanis?

  You know how I know? She spoke there like three or four times.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:07Jason Calacanis?

  Like, what is she doing going there pandering to startups? The only way she can justify her anti-capitalistic, anti-free markets, you know, approach is to say, I'm doing it on behalf of the tiny startups. When in fact, she has damaged tiny startups by not allowing there to be exits, which then would allow VCs and LPs to recirculate capital and allow founders to secure mini to modest bags that would then let them create a diaspora of people who were part of the Figma purchase, or this purchase, or that purchase. So I will give her zero credit. She did not help tiny startups.

• 18:47Jason Calacanis?

  Her reign of terror is over, but I guarantee you she will be, Gary Tan will offer her a position. I'm guaranteeing it right here.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  I'm just laughing because every time I bring this up, I'm like, Jason, you do know that I have a, I have a blog post from early 2023 all about this exact topic.

• 19:02Jason Calacanis?

  Well, everybody can look that up on cautious optimism. Here we go.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  I'll, I'll throw a link to it. All right. Let's move on to our next category. This is fun. Um, okay. Bag secure of the year. Let's see who got nominated.

• 19:16Jason Calacanis?

  Okay. Bag secure of the year. The bag secure of the year.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  Effect is great. I love the snow.

• 19:20Jason Calacanis?

  It's pretty great. Yeah. Here we go.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  All right. So Tabular, Hashicorp, Asteralats and XAI. Now I'm going to explain these categories because not everyone's going to know what I'm talking about. Tabular sold to Databricks for reported, reported allegedly, we've heard $2 billion. But the reason why I think they are a candidate for bag secure of the year is that I, there was a bidding war. I think it was Snowflake and Databricks. And I think they got a, a exit valuation that was insane, but Databricks is rich. So I think Tabular made off with the bag and they are absolutely laughing on their pile of gold. Uh, also people behind them, Andreessen Horowitz, Altimeter and Zetovic partners probably did very, very, very well.

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• 20:49Jason Calacanis?

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• 21:07Speaker 02

  Cash Corp, I picked this one because it exited 42% premium, $6.4 billion exit to IBM, great IPO, great technology company. And then Astera Labs from the very small IPO classic 2024, went public at about 36 a share. Now it's at 140, 150, riding that wave. And then Jason, one company that we talked about at the Liquidity Summit and recently XAI, which raised like 12 billion in one year.

• 21:32Jason Calacanis?

  Wow, I'm going with XAI. I'm just going to put my winner out there because this is a massive amount of money to raise and they built Colossus in like under 60 days. It was like unbelievable. It's so clear, but who did you have? Who did you have?

• 21:46Speaker 02

  I picked Tabular because everyone's complained about exits. Everyone has said, there's not enough money recirculating. And here's an example of a multi-billion dollar exit of an early-stage company that still had growth potential ahead of it. And it was turned into Databricks stock, I presume, which is liquid because they have secondaries. So there you go, VCs, you're welcome.

• 22:05Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, our next category, I always like to call this one CEO of the year, who is not Elon Musk. Because every year Elon does such amazing things across so many companies that he kind of runs the table. So we'll update the graphic to say CEO of the year, and then in parentheses, that's not named Elon Musk. Elon Musk kind of gets it as a default because of all this crazy stuff he's doing.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:31Jason Calacanis?

  But, you know, here, look at this list. I mean.

• 22:35Speaker 02

  So Jensen and Nvidia has been talked about ad nauseam, an amazing CEO. There's a great book that just came out called The Nvidia Way that I'm going to get a copy of. People are raving about. I can't wait to learn more about how he runs the company.

• 22:46Jason Calacanis?

  Let's do, um, let's do like an acquired episode where we just do like that book. We'll both read it to a book club. Maybe Elon will come on and do book club with us. That'd be great.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  I can get the author to come on, probably. We're Twitter friends.

• 22:56Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, fantastic. Yes. I like having authors on only because as an author myself, it's kind of a nice thing to do. To have read the book, have meditated on it and really talk about it. So, you know.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  I'll see if I can get us some copies and we'll do that in January.

• 23:08Jason Calacanis?

  No, no, I'll just buy it. I never take free copies. Always.

• 23:11Speaker 02

  Oh, no. I, I, yes, I was gonna buy us some copies.

• 23:14Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, okay, okay. I'll buy, I'll buy it on Audible. Just send me the link. I'll buy, listen to it when I'm speaking.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. And by the way, if you have a written book, I'll buy it. Jensen, of course, Alex Karp-Palantir. Jason, you had on the show just a couple of days ago. We went through Palantir's amazing appreciation this year. And talk about being right and being early. Palantir's been beating the same drum for a long time and now they're reaping the rewards.

• 23:34Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. Steve Huffman over at Reddit, Reddit, we talked about it on the show, an insane run in the stock market this year. And we talked about Reddit Answers recently, how they're gonna bring back that search market share. Love that. Fiji Simo from Instacart. Instacart is not growing as fast as these other companies. But I think she's been very impressive because the company has found a new, better footing as a public company, not as a startup. So she's done the thing that people say you struggle to do if you're public, which is go through layoffs, retool some stuff, build out a secondary business. And I've known her since the IPO and I'm very impressed with her.

• 24:10Jason Calacanis?

  Let's get her on the pod. Invite her to come on the pod, yeah.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Consider it done. And then Lisa Su, she was the Time CEO of the year. And that made me look more into AMD and what she's done with that company. I think Lisa probably deserves like CEO of the last five years because she's really saved that that company. But that's the list of CEOs of the year. Jason, apart from Mr. Elon, who is your winner?

• 24:37Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, listen, you could say so many nice things about each of these candidates. They've all had incredible, they've done an incredible job. And obviously, as you know, public CEOs, you can just see how amazing they've done. But as much as I respect what Steve and Alex Scarp did at Palantir and Reddit, man, and then Instacart. Yeah, you know, that's like an AMD, we're kind of like comeback stories. You gotta go Jensen, because we've just never seen somebody dump this amount of revenue. Quarter after quarter, year over year. I mean, it just doesn't exist as a precedent to see a company doubling and tripling revenue, you know, at that kind of scale.

• 25:22Jason Calacanis?

  So it's gotta be Jensen. It's gotta be Jensen.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  It's gotta be Jensen.

• 25:26Jason Calacanis?

  Was that your pick as well?

• 25:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, once again, I could pick someone who is, you know, a silly pick that isn't true just to gin up some controversy. But Jensen has so earned it. And again, it's a success story that is decades in the making that looks like an overnight success. But certainly wasn't.

• 25:43Jason Calacanis?

  Twist interview of the year. This is a great category. My Lord, look at all these great folks on the list.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  So what we're gonna do here is we're gonna run through the list and then play a short montage of little clips from each of these interviews. Because we like to get fancy here at Twist. So we have Alexis Ohanian from episode 1893. We have Mr. McKay from Intercom, episode 1962, a very recent one. Shashir Mahotra from Coda and Grammarly, episode 2063. That was last week, but we loved it. And then Josh Silverman at the episode 1985.

• 26:16Jason Calacanis?

  Wow. I mean, these all brought the thunder. Let's play our little montage.

• 26:22Speaker 03

  Was able to sustain Reddit after the sale to Conde Nast. In those four or five years when it was just a part of Conde.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:30Speaker 03

  They didn't know what to do with it. It kind of just languished. But the community kept it alive. The community kept growing and engaging. And there aren't many products that should get away with basically doing nothing for five years and still succeed year after year after year. And Reddit managed to, and I think it's a testament to the community of those users.

• 26:48Speaker 04

  Say if you think about the customer world, it's like, hey, it's all one customer. Let's provide one seamless, beautiful flow and one incredible platform to do all the above. And that's actually not wrong thinking if all you're doing is having a fun academic tech strategy conversation.

• 27:04Speaker 05

  And this was definitely a case of us saying, we're going to build this together. We have these two vision memos that are that are quite similar. And we came up with what we felt was a reasonable split between them that I think is appropriately fair for everybody. But I think that's it's much more looking to the future than it is looking to the past.

• 27:21Speaker 06

  It's about 30,000 sellers in Ukraine selling about $200 million worth of goods to the Etsy community. That's a lot of hard currency going into Ukraine. When the war broke out, we had all these people come to Etsy and just start searching for Ukrainian sellers because they wanted a way to to connect and they wanted a way to support people. It's those kinds of stories that are happening every day on Etsy that would never happen anywhere else.

• 27:49Jason Calacanis?

  Jason. Tough one for me because I enjoyed all of those conversations and thank you for creating the clip because God, it brought me back to those great discussions.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  I find it very funny how good money looks on Alexis. Did you see how stylish that guy is?

• 28:05Jason Calacanis?

  He looks good.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  He looks good. He looks like a billion bucks.

• 28:08Jason Calacanis?

  That was also outside at the Eye Connections Conference in Miami, so it was quite nice. You know, this is a tough one for me, but looking back on it, Josh Silverman from Etsy. I didn't know a lot about Etsy and I do know a lot about these other three companies. And so I'm going to base it on how much I learned. I enjoyed all of these. I enjoyed all of these immensely. But I learned a lot because I didn't know the history of Etsy. I didn't understand. There's a lot of controversial topics that he took on head on as a public CEO. I'm going to give to Josh Silverman, but I enjoyed them all equally.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  Okay, I really respect that. And the Ukrainian element of that interview, the reason why we clipped it is it hit me because it shows how our technology platform can also be a vehicle for everyday folks to try to make an impact on the world somewhere else in a positive sense. I loved that. I'm going to go with Shashir Merotra and the Koda Grammarly interview because that came together, people don't know, but behind the scenes, that came together pretty quickly. And a lot of people who are CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies will send their team out to kind of try to jawbone you down. What are the topics? What are the questions? You can't ask this. What? He just kind of came on and just riffed with us and it was a no BS, no holds barred. Let's just talk about what's going on.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  And I, it's rare. I respect it. And the fact that it came to us so quickly and was so useful, that's my choice. Loved it.

• 29:32Jason Calacanis?

  Okay. All right. Listen, if you're a startup, you need to sign up for Notion right now. Just head to notion.com/twist. That's T W I S T and sign up for free right now. Here at This Week in Startups, we run the entire podcast off of Notion. And we run our entire investment business where we invest in 100 companies a year on Notion. Why do we use Notion? Well, because it's a single source of truth inside of our organization. Everybody's learned how to use it and everybody can contribute to the same documents, but it also has a database built into it. And we use it for everything from taking notes to document sharing. It's kind of like a wiki or project management, but so much more.

• 30:14Jason Calacanis?

  So when I want to see, hey, what are these associates doing at my venture firm? How many meetings have they done? Who are they meeting with? I can go into Notion and see all their meetings and it becomes like a living, breathing version of our whole organization. And I watch documents get updated and best practices get recorded, just like Amazon does this great thing where they write first, they call it a write first culture. Well, Notion allows you. Have a right first culture. We're on my phone. When I want to start a document, I write a best practice. Hey, here's how we do first meetings with our founders. Hey, here's how we prepare for a podcast episode. Here's a checklist, right? You've heard me read about that checklist manifesto book. I put those checklists right into Notion. We do them for every episode. We do them for every

• 30:58Jason Calacanis?

  deal that we're doing, and it works so well. Your workspace is going to be totally customizable. There are templates everywhere, and it's got amazing AI features now. So here is your call to action. Get started for free at notion.com/twist. That's notion.com/twist to start for free. Best VC guest. This is not founders or CEOs. These are the VCs who came on this week in startups. And what a collection we have here. My pal Sarah Tavell, she is great. I love having her on the program from Benchmark. That was episode 1983.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 31:31Jason Calacanis?

  Alien Lee, she is podcast shy. She very rarely does speaking gigs. We got her to come on finally from Cowboy Ventures, episode 1997. And then you can read the next two.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, then we had Jam and Ball, Altimeter, episode 2045, previously of Redpoint. I did that one, had an absolute blast. And then we had the $97 billion VC pal from episode 1987 with Dana Johns and Tom Lovero. I fricking loved that one. That was fantastic. But you first.

• 32:00Jason Calacanis?

  Gotta pick one. You gotta pick one. I am going, you know, I really enjoyed my conversations with Alien and Sarah. These are two of the sharpest minds. Sarah is so aggressive and no bullshit. And Alien's got like this Obi-Wan Kenobi wisdom, you know, Yoda. She's been at it for a long time and she's really thoughtful. She'll take a little time to think about her answer, you know, and it's really like, she might say less words, but there's going to be a density in those words. Just two great, great interviews. But Jam and Ball, your interview, for me, was the most enjoyable because I didn't do it, but I learned a ton. So I'm picking yours. Jam and Ball from Altimeter is so smart.

• 32:45Jason Calacanis?

  For me, my runner up will be, you know, Um, uh, probably Aileen Lee, because I get to have Sarah on all the time. So Sarah's kind of like, she's, she, she comes every six, friend of the pod, she'll do it every six months for me. Awesome. But I'll give my runner up to Aileen, just because I get her once every 10 years. I think she's been on, I think I've gotten her to speak twice at events in 15 years of trying. So I'll, uh, I'll give you the big win here with Jammin' Ball.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, I appreciate that. I'm going to give you the win right back and say Aileen Lee. Um, uh, you know, A- Aileen is, I think the, the Obi-Wan Kenobi kind of vibe is, is pretty accurate with her. She always seems to know about twice as much as me when she answers a question. And that is the exact type of person that I want to sit as close to as possible and go, so what you think about? Because I would love to learn. So I thought that was fantastic. Now let's move on to the sad category. Uh, sad trombone moment. This is defunct startup of the year. Who made the cut? Let's take a look at the list of nominations. I'm just going to queue up all these graphics because I'm so happy we made them. They gave me so much joy.

• 33:51Jason Calacanis?

  These are great. Best ever. Nicely done. Whoever did these.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  Oof. This is a, this is a big list of names. Uh, for folks who don't know, Envision raised, I think more than 350 million. Bowe raised more than 600 million. Caffeine Jason, nearly 300 million. These, these are some big, big names that have all joined the startup graveyard.

• 34:13Jason Calacanis?

  And Bench, oh my God, that just happened last week and that's a big blowout. And they did it in spectacular fashion by screwing over all of their customers. Apparently, allegedly, according to reports, I gotta have all these caveats in here. So I don't create another Palmer Lucky situation. But, um, if that's true, I gotta give it to Bench because my God, what a flame out. And Envision, what a great product that was. Everybody loved it. They were up against Figma, they were up against Adobe, really hard to make it work. I'm not sure exactly how that one went out, but I gotta give it to Bench, man. And they just blew up in spectacular fashion this past week. At the end of the year, people doing their

• 34:52Speaker 02

  Taxes.

• 34:52Jason Calacanis?

  Taxes, god damn it. End of the year, bookkeeping company went up in flames. And then the founder went on like a tweet storm about his ousting. And now people are trying to figure out which VC took him for the death walk. Somebody took him for a Fredo walk.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  We're, by the way, we're trying to book him for an upcoming show. So hopefully we'll get him to come on. Maddie and I are working on that. So I first, I was gonna pick Envision here because as you said, beloved product, all of that. But I was prepping and I learned that they had sold one of their products to Mira, Mira? M I R A in late 23. So it wasn't a complete failure. They had sold part of it off before shutting down. So I'm gonna go with Bowery because Bowery raised 600 million, multi-billion dollar valuation. I believed in the idea of vertical farming and to see that much capital go up in

• 35:43Jason Calacanis?

  Hard space, man. Real world, bits versus atoms. Adams are hard. All right. So there you have it, folks. Bench and Bowery. Next up, news topic of the year. This is like the theme of the year. My lord. And you know, I try to name these so that's memorable. The race to superintelligence is obviously taken over a lot of the discourse. But nobody's really gotten there yet, right? The superintelligence, we're still waiting to see how super intelligent these things are. I was out in the mountain trying to get Siri to change my music and didn't work. I bought an Android phone in frustration. I bought their Pixel Fold. What an incredible bizarre device. I might be addicted to it or never use it.

• 36:27Jason Calacanis?

  I'm like really in the middle of opening up this fan fold Pixel mine. But I will say, when you ask it to turn off the phone and you do your okay, Google, it works so much better than Siri because it goes right to Gemini. So I literally am not going to change from one operating system to the other. My iOS is going to say the same, but boy, do I think Gemini is coming on strong. The data say it's center scramble. Do you own it? Do you build it? How do you power it? And the data center scrambles, a big topic. What else do we got?

• 36:56Speaker 02

  No exits. This is a rephrase of your theme, distribution dire straits.

• 37:00Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, Wrath of Lena Khan.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  Wrath of Lena Khan. I knew she was gonna make at least one or two appearances on this list. And then almost a reprise of the PayPal mafia, which is tech goes to Washington.

• 37:10Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  Just take several of our themes together about regulation and different, you know, different nations and blocks and put it into one bucket of, it seems that tech really did get its political boots on this year.

• 37:20Jason Calacanis?

  Crypto, a lot of the crypto guys giving massive donations. I read that the guy from XRP, Chris Larson, not a fan of mine because I've been so critical of XRP, but they, he gave like 10 million to the Democrats and then you got Uber and Apple giving a million dollars each, I believe, to the inauguration funds. So this is, which I think is just super, just a payoff, right? To Trump for his library or whatever. That's just like kissing the ring and handing, it's like handing the matriarch a million bucks in the palm of their hand, right? Like, hey, spend it and have a good time spending this on your library. I don't know where those inauguration funds go.

• 38:01Speaker 02

  I think, I think they, they slowly disappear is what, is what they do. They all end up in, I think, Trump property coffers. So, um, all of these are kind of an amalgamation of themes we've really explored this year on the show. If I had to pick just one of these, I'm going to go with no exits, AKA distribution dire straits because it has been the slow poison that has been spreading throughout the venture capital and startup world, causing pain around the world, causing people like Jason to pull out their hair. And so I think for the news topic for this show, I'm going to go with no exits.

• 38:35Jason Calacanis?

  Clearly, these were major themes. They came up over and over and over again. I will go with the race to superintelligence. Because yeah, as much as the distribution dire straits and the no exits are a bummer, I think for humanity, we will work out the venture business in 25, 26, 27, 28, under Trump, freewheeling, less regulations, I predict, and a lot more M and A and a lot more fluidity there. Maybe even some rethinking of the accredited investor laws allow people to become sophisticated investors. So as bad as that's been for the last four years and has caused pain and suffering, it's caused pain and suffering for a bunch of elite rich folks who will figure it out and catch up

• 39:19Jason Calacanis?

  over the next four years. But the race to superintelligence is going to affect every single human being on this planet, from the richest to the poorest, everybody in between. So I'll go with the race to superintelligence.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  But I wanna, I wanna say that's brilliant because I, in my mind, I put your favorite theme, which is static team size underneath the race for superintelligence because it fits directly into that.

• 39:36Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, yes. Static team size is an incredible theme. I mean, listen, it's going to be the reality that if you want your company to grow, you know, revenue 20% year over year, you can do it with the same size team because your team is going to become 30 or 40% more efficient every year.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 39:54Jason Calacanis?

  So I, I believe we are going to see people just default to hire slow. If somebody quits, don't replace them. Look at what they're doing. Figure out how to automate it. Do the ADD process, automate, deprecate, delegate. Figure out if you can get an Athena assistant, go to Athena Wow to get a month off, athenawow.com. You know, see if you can offshore it, see if you can automate it, see if you really need to be doing that work anymore. A lot of times people have 100 employees at a company and 10 of them are doing stuff that is making no impact on the business. But it's also having no negative impact. So they

• 40:34Jason Calacanis?

  don't bother firing them because that would be bad for morale and people are compassionate.

• 40:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think.

• 40:41Jason Calacanis?

  As much as we're talking about cutthroatness, I think people are compassionate. So they're like, okay, those 10 people, their work is not mission critical, but it's also not.

• 40:51Jason Calacanis?

  Hurting the mission, so we'll just let it meander.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I think Klarna has shown the power of of not doing, um, cutting half your company, but simply not hiring to replace people and using AI to fill in because they've seen their headcount slowly just decline as their profitability, flockingly, has slowly improved. But taking this all the way back to our discussion in the pre-show about about visas and immigration and so forth, uh, if we do manage to find a way to import global talent and then automate away all the jobs, it's gonna be, uh,

• 41:22Jason Calacanis?

  That could be dangerous.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  I know.

• 41:23Jason Calacanis?

  Because now you got a lot of unemployed people, right? Yeah, so that is, uh, and importing people with the idea that they would become voters as people allege the Democrats are doing, that could also blow up in your lap because the people who immigrated tend to be conservative, people like think, uh, you know, Latinos or Latinx or Mexican folks are gonna just by default be Democratic. What we saw on this last election is they're more populist and the populist party is not the Democrats anymore.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  Where where is the apologies for people who are blaming the Democrats and claiming that they were trying to change the entire electorate when the people that they people said they were importing to vote for them didn't? I would love to see some public apologies.

• 42:05Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I think it's more like they, what they did may have worked in the past, but just might not work now. So I think it's a TBD, what's gonna happen in 10 years? If of if the 10 million, 15 million people who came in during this last administration, allegedly, these numbers are so hard to pin down. But if those millions of people wind up voting Republican in 10 years and get amnesty, now I wonder if the Republicans are gonna just say, you know what? Hey, they brought all these people in, but we we have a 10% edge with those folks. Maybe instead of deporting them like Steve Bannon wants to, we should keep them here because they're gonna be on our side to give us an edge in swing states.

• 42:46Jason Calacanis?

  So, man, the political arena is so bizarre and hard to actually handicap.

• 42:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I don't disagree with that last sentiment. It's gonna be a, it's gonna be a busy couple of years, I think, is maybe the way I'd phrase that. All right, let's keep going, though. Let's talk about the best tech product. I'm gonna run you through the nominations, Jason, and then we have a little montage to show off what we're talking about. So first off, Gecko Robotics, I think that their cantilever drone AI system is absolutely brilliant.

• 43:15Speaker 02

  I also love the true anomaly jackal AOV or autonomous orbital vehicle. We also had Udio's AI music generator on the show. We had Udio come by and talk about it. Notebook LM has been

• 43:29Jason Calacanis?

  Very cool.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  unavoidable this year. And because you and I both travel and we both would like to do less of it in terms of total hours in the sky. I'm saying not Boom Supersonics future passenger jet that their current one third size tester that they've been pushing faster and faster and faster this year. Is incredibly impressive. So let's take a look at these and then we'll pick our winner.

• 43:52Jason Calacanis?

  Here's the Gecko Robotics.

• 43:56Jason Calacanis?

  We've got some stock music blaring. I like it.

• 44:06Jason Calacanis?

  There's Boom. Of these groups, uh, I think the Booms XB1, the baby boom and the concept of being able to fly those over land, not just because he says he's going to be able to mute them. I think that for me, the ability to fly from New York to LA in, you know, three hours or two hours or whatever it warrants it being cutting that time in half would or flying to Japan. I mean, my Lord, this could open up a lot for me because sometimes, you know, again, this is going to sound like a 1% problem. I get offers to do things and being, you know, in the air for 12 hours, going to the Middle East or to Asia.

• 44:50Jason Calacanis?

  It's just like, I can't, I gotta be with my kids. But if you cut it to six hours, you know, or seven hours and I could do it, you know, and do a two day turnaround without killing myself, you know, I might actually do a couple of more trips a year. So I'm going to go Boom.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  Uh, wait, I need to pick.

• 45:05Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 45:05Speaker 02

  Boom. Okay, move on.

• 45:07Jason Calacanis?

  There you go. All right. Funniest twist moment of the year.

• 45:10Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. I'm sorry. This is my favorite thing we have. So there's three nominations here. The first one is Mr. David Sacks during episode 2000. Then we have a CEO of a public company called Amplitude. I did this interview. I know this. I know Spencer. Talking about private equity and venture capital. And then there is a riff with Mr. Charles Doug about an embarrassing moment that Jason had on a plane. So let's play some clips and take a look at the funniest moments from Twist this year. J Cal 2000.

• 45:42Speaker 03

  Of twists. What a monumental waste of time. Let's get on you, though. Congrats.

• 45:55Speaker 07

  Sorry, I was gonna rant on private equity for a second. I love that.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  This is so much fun.

• 45:58Speaker 07

  They make tremendous amounts of money, you know, one of the, one of the great players in, in modern capitalism. But one of my rules is never be on the other side of a transaction for private equity, because they have a spreadsheet about how to take all of your surplus away during that transaction. So, you know, you can either do a transaction and get no surplus, or not do a transaction. So you might as well not do a transaction. But I love them. I love them. They're great. They're great capitalists. So I have tremendous respect. Just don't do transactions.

• 46:25Speaker 03

  What's you? What's the most embarrassing thing you can, you can remember?

• 46:28Jason Calacanis?

  Everybody's flying out from LA to Sundance. But I said, you know what, guys? I'm gonna meet you there. I get on the flight. I got a middle seat, put my bag up. I sit down in my middle seat. And I feel a weird sensation, like a crunching sound. Then I feel wetness. And then I feel heat. And then I jump up and I look down. And there is a giant Starbucks cup and black coffee steaming in my seat. Oh, my God. And the woman in the window seat looks at me and goes, oh, were you sitting there? And I said, where your coffee was? In my seat? And then I feel my ass is on fire, girls.

• 47:08Jason Calacanis?

  But the plane is taxiing, like now, at this point. I run to the bathroom. I drop my drawers. I see out of the corner of my eye, my pasty, white, Irish ass is red. This is hot coffee ass. Is the name of this story.

• 47:24Speaker 02

  So I have to, I have to add, I have to add something. The reason why the second clip is funny, the private equity one, is because the, the CEO who got purchased by the other company used to work in private equity. We spent the entire show ragging on him.

• 47:37Jason Calacanis?

  So good. I remember. Yes.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 47:39Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, I gotta go with hot coffee ass. I think it's a story for that legends. But both the other two were pretty funny moments, I think.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  Oh, dude. So I was gonna pick the David Saxblond, because I recall when you, when we prepared episode 2000, we got all these clips piecemeal, as we were looking at them as they were coming in. And we thought that was the funniest thing. But then today, I watched the hot coffee moment prepping for this, and I was literally falling on the floor laughing. So I'm going with that as well. Just, just. Incredible. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we have come to the very end of the 2024 Twist Awards in which we have to talk about the episode of the year. And there are a number of options. We are of a total of, I think it's six. So quickly, we had Owen McKay, once again from Intercom, episode 1,962, beloved show from this year.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  Once again, the Charles interview we just saw, when Jason had hot coffee ass, that's episode 1938. Episode 2000, the biggest lift of the year in which the team put together so many clips for Jason that he finally decides, that's enough clips, please stop. Then we have Will Guidara. You did top out, it's fine. Will Guidara, Unreasonable Hospitality, 1966. You had a blast on that one. Rahul Vora, Superhuman, Jason's favorite piece of software, episode 2002. And then finally, Brian Singerman, Founders Fund, 1896. Jason, I feel like you should pick the episode of the year because you were here all year. I joined late.

• 49:09Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, these are so many great episodes. Tell me who you picked, which one of the six you picked? Because all six of these are just legendary episodes. You can watch them twice. You can watch it with your team, take notes, put it into a summary, take the transcript, make a summary out of it and learn so much. Did you, did you have one that you particularly liked?

• 49:26Speaker 02

  Torn between Rahul and episode 2000. Episode 2000, because it was, it sent us the archives and Rahul was very interesting. I just like him.

• 49:35Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, so pick your first and your second.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  All right, episode 2000, Rahul.

• 49:40Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, perfect. You know, for me, these were all just very special episodes. Brian Singerman retired just last week or two weeks ago from Founders Fund. So I feel like, I'm, I kind of feel like maybe there's an argument to give it to him after a great run and career there. But I also love the Will episode on Reasonable Hospitality is one of my favorites. So on my personal enjoyment basis, on a personal enjoyment basis, I go with Will and Charles Duhigg, because those are like, I love those big thinking authors. They get me really stimulated. And then on a founder basis, Raul and Mr. McCabe was so great. And then, but I'm gonna give it to Bryan Singerman because he had a great run.

• 50:23Jason Calacanis?

  He had a great career and picking 2000 is a little self-serving. Thank you for doing it for me, but I'm gonna give it to Bryan Singerman strictly because he had a great career and he's done now. I'll give him the episode of the year. I don't know what he's gonna do next, but I might go skiing with him at some point. So congratulations to Bryan Singerman. I'll give him the episode of the year. But I'm gonna give the runners up to Will and Raul, two other great episodes.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  That means of Jason's favorite episodes, episode 2000 barely cracks number four.

• 50:51Jason Calacanis?

  No, it's, it was obviously my favorite because it was so nice to have so many people say so much amazing things to me and then sacks break my chops, but it's self-serving, so I can't pick it. I can't pick it. You can pick it. Smart move. Smart move.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  No, I think the Will Guidara one, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna love it with you. Will Guidara is a very interesting person. He did a great job at his restaurant and has some good ideas. But I feel like he needs to write like a new book.

• 51:20Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 51:20Speaker 02

  Because I'm prepping for that. I watched several of his interviews and like dudes hitting his talking points. It's kind of like a stump speech. So come on, Will, new things. That's what I want.

• 51:28Jason Calacanis?

  New things. Yeah, okay. That's a good challenge for him. All right, everybody. This has been the Twisty Awards for 2024. We will see you on?

• 51:36Speaker 02

  Friday.

• 51:37Jason Calacanis?

  Friday. This Friday. What's the date on Friday?

• 51:41Speaker 02

  Uh, second, I believe.

• 51:45Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, so we will see you on Friday for our first live episode of the new year. And we got a lot of topics to talk about. I think we'll maybe. We do?

• 51:54Speaker 02

  It's the third.

• 51:55Jason Calacanis?

  The third, okay, January 3rd, this Friday. I think what we'll do is maybe we'll lean into this immigration. We'll do an immigration issue.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  Good.

• 52:02Jason Calacanis?

  Episode, if we want to put something on the books to maybe just really deep dive into it. We had a little talk about it on this episode, but only for the live audience when we did our little live thing. If you want to watch us live, you get about 20% more show. Go to youtube.com slash TWI startups or slash startups. Can't remember, but just search for this week's startups.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  We are at startups on YouTube.

• 52:21Jason Calacanis?

  So just youtube.com slash at startups. Ah, slash at startups. So thank you for giving us at startups. I appreciate that. We'll see you all next time. Bye bye.