iPhone Air is "inspiring," and a first step toward Apple Glasses (w/ Zach Handshoe of SpatialGen) | E2200

Today's show: Jason's been skeptical on Apple lately, but he's BLOWN AWAY by his new iPhone Air. Hear why JCal thinks Cupertino's latest release is "completely inspiring," and why he's sure it's the next step on the road to Apple Glasses. We're chatting with LAUNCH founder Zach Handshoe of spacial video startup SpatialGen about designing products for Cupertino AND the intense pressure of performing a Steve Jobs-level keynote. PLUS Raiza Martin of Huxe stops by to tell us why they're using audio to make AI assistants more personalized AND proactive, and how they're already getting noticed in an increasingly crowded App Store. AND we've got another Gamma Pitch Competition entrant! Chess Grandmaster Vasif Durarbayli presents his expert-focused app, ChessEver. Timestamps: (2:05) Friend of the pod @ZacharyHandshoe stops by to talk about supporting Apple Immersive Video (and staying up during the AWS outage) (9:37) Enterpret - Turn feedback noise into Customer Intelligence, so your team knows exactly what to fix and build next. Head to Enterpret.com/twist to book a demo and see it in action. (15:55) The iPhone Air can already shoot spatial video! Just part of why Jason calls it a "completely inspiring" product. (21:25) Crusoe Cloud - Crusoe is the AI factory company. Reliable infrastructure and expert support. Visit crusoe.ai/startup to reserve your capacity for the latest GPUs today. (24:30) Jason offers viewers a peek inside LAUNCH's Whisper Network (32:09) Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/twist (33:10) Huxe co-founder (and NotebookLM vet) Raiza Martin wants to make your AI assistant more personalized and proactive. (37:14) Why Raiza and her team went with an audio-forward interface instead of a chatbot. (43:25) How Huxe is getting noticed in the App Store as a brand new arrival. (50:25) The big LLMs still aren't great at writing engaging content for humans, so Huxe is doing it themselves. (52:41) Chess Grandmaster Vasif Durarbayli from ChessEver joins us for his Gamma pitch! (54:26) Why Vasif is focusing on very serious players FIRST before appealing to more casual chess fans (1:05:28) Jason thinks ChessEver is at the moment of "triangulation" in their journey to finding Product Market Fit… what do Grandmasters really want? 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 Lon: X: https://x.com/lons 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: Enterpret - Turn feedback noise into Customer Intelligence, so your team knows exactly what to fix and build next. Head to Enterpret.com/twist to book a demo and see it in action. Crusoe Cloud - Crusoe is the AI factory company. Reliable infrastructure and expert support. Visit crusoe.ai/startup to reserve your capacity for the latest GPUs today. Lemon.io - Get 15% off your first 4 weeks of developer time at https://Lemon.io/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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey everybody, welcome back to Twist. This is Alex and today's show is all about founders, what they're building, what they're learning, and how cool they really are. So first up, Jason and I talked to a company called Spatial Gen. This is from Launch Accelerator 35, and the company wants to make it possible and easy to both make and distribute spatial video. And during this chat, we also got to learn what it takes to go on stage at an Apple event and how casual Apple is when it comes to public relations. Then we're talking to the founder behind Hux. It's a personal voice AI experience that operates a bit like radio and a bit like a podcast, kind of merger between the two. Now, if you know Notebook Ellen from Google and like it, a lot of the folks that built that are now building Hux.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  So stay tuned, it's a really fun chat. Then to wrap up, Chess Ever from our Gamma Pitch Competition, it's one founders' plan to shake up the growing chess market and make it better for both broadcasts and better for your friendly local grandmaster. As a longtime advocate of esports, I love this idea, though I do need to work on my chess game. All right, let's learn, let's talk to some founders, let's have some fun. This Week in Startups is brought to you by lemon.io. Hire pre-vetted remote developers and get 15% off your first four weeks of developer time at lemon.io/twist. This Week in Startups is brought to you by Crusoe. Crusoe is the AI factory company, reliable infrastructure and expert support.

• 1:29Speaker 00

  Visit crusoe.ai/startup to reserve your capacity for the latest GPUs today. That's C-R-U-S-O-E dot AI slash startup. Interpret. Interpret turns feedback noise into customer intelligence so your team knows exactly what to fix and build next. Head to interpret.com/twist to book a demo and see it in action. That's E-N-T-E-R-P-R-E-T dot com slash twist.

• 1:57Speaker 00

  I have a riddle for you. Who, who is this gentleman here standing up at an Apple event the other day? I think you know this guy.

• 2:07Jason Calacanis?

  Spatial Gen. Yum, yum, yum, yum for J Cal in our accelerator. This is a great founder. When we saw this product, we were like, man, AR and VR and all this stuff is gonna eventually land and you're gonna need tools, picks, shovels and partners, speaking of partners, to do stuff. And you can go further with partners. So let's bring on, I guess, well, let's play the clip and then we'll bring on our guest.

• 2:30Speaker 00

  Next up, Jason, we have a company called Spatial Gen, which you can see here, all about building spatial video for different contexts. What's the thesis here?

• 2:38Jason Calacanis?

  So people will want immersive content eventually. And so imagine exploring, you know, sports is probably the one where people get a lot of, it's easy to imagine wanting to watch sports in an immersive way and being able to stream that is highly technical. Okay, yeah. Welcome to the program, Zach from Spatial Gen. You went through our accelerator, yeah?

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. Thanks for having us on. Loved the talks about cloud providers. One thing I, I tried not to say publicly at the time was we were not down during the AWS outage, but we try not to, you know, make some enemies because we're certain there's gonna be a time in the future where we may go down.

• 3:26Jason Calacanis?

  Not good for karma to poke the bear.

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly.

• 3:29Jason Calacanis?

  This AWS thing is more a compliment than anything. The fact that they went down for 12 hours, like once every two or three years is totally, you know, expected. All these clouds go down once every two or three years. It's just the nature of it. But hey, welcome back to the program and you gave this great talk. Let's play your other clip, which is you at some Apple event. What's the name of this Apple event?

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this was about immersive video experiences and how to create them. And they brought on, Apple brought on a lot of third parties near the end, like Black Magic Design that does the camera system for this and Colorfront, which does your onset dailies, which is Really something that a lot of production teams need. And then we were brought on near the end of that about how to distribute your content and get it in the hands of your customers. So, so we gave, I believe, like a eight-minute or so presentation on the Apple stage live. And, um, yeah, I mean, there's, there's a certain level of precision that they require. And, um, there's days of prep. So it's

• 4:30Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, I've heard about this. Like you get called down to Cupertino or the mothership and you practice, practice, practice.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:37Jason Calacanis?

  And they give you tips and you have to basically try to hit, uh, rest in peace, Steve Jobs levels of presentation. Which is like presentation god level.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. On the stage. Go ahead, go ahead, Alex. Sorry.

• 4:51Speaker 00

  Oh, I was gonna say, why don't, why don't we watch it while you guys talk over it? Cause I had the talking right here. All right.

• 4:55Speaker 02

  Sweet.

• 4:56Speaker 00

  Here it is from day two of the Create Immersive Media Experiences for Vision OS event. Here we go.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Zachary Hanchu, co-founder of Facial Gen. I'm honored to have been invited to speak today. Yeah. So we're here yourself talk. About how to host and distribute Apple immersive video. That's how it is. They, uh, they scrutinize everything you do, which is, is really cool. Where you put your feet on the stage, the punctuation in your slides.

• 5:21Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, let's pause the video.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  The story. Yeah. So where you, where you put your feet on the stage. So like this, this was something we had to do where if there was a, a transition where logos start showing up, you have to kind of walk with the transition and try and get out of the, the text view. So it, it's pretty complex. Uh, there's two teleprompters actually that if, if you need it, you can write in your own stage positioning.

• 5:45Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, wow. So now you're walking to stage left.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:49Jason Calacanis?

  And is stage left when you're in the audience left or when you're on the stage left? I don't know.

• 5:55Speaker 02

  I, I don't know either. I just looked at the, the slide on the teleprompter and I was like, I should be over here, over here.

• 6:02Jason Calacanis?

  It's the audience POV. I'm going with editorial director Lon, not producer Oliver. I think it's the audience POV. So you went from state, center stage to center right, then center left as the text moved across. Now, when I see that presentation, it looks twice as wide as my laptop screen. Is it two, is it a different presentation spec for that?

• 6:24Speaker 02

  It is. It is.

• 6:25Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, wait. Producer Juan was wrong. Okay. It's the actor's point of view. Uh, Oliver was right. So I take it back.

• 6:31Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  Five demerits, Lon.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  But yeah, they they send you a a template, basically, and it's it's their own stuff with their own styles, their own fonts and everything, the San Francisco font group. And then you have to build your presentation to spec and have all these review calls with them. And then you go in person and you do dry runs.

• 6:51Jason Calacanis?

  Is it wider, though? Is it a double wide screen?

• 6:53Speaker 02

  It's it's super wide. The total screen resolution is actually very close to what the Vision Pro is. So if you can think of that, that entire screen shrunk down and put in front of your your eyes, that's that's the level of resolution and fidelity you get inside of Apple products. So.

• 7:10Jason Calacanis?

  And so.

• 7:11Speaker 00

  Excellent segue, Jason, into what Spatial Gen does.

• 7:13Jason Calacanis?

  I was about to ask that question. So explain in plain English what you do for the NBA or for tennis or for whoever uses your product or service.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course. So we're building the Spatial Cloud. And what I mean by Spatial is really 3D media. So 3D videos, Apple Immersive Videos, 3D models, Gaussian splats for the US Air Force, really things that that live inside the 3D space. There need to be tools that handle these type of uploads that are sophisticated enough to process them and cheap enough to stream. Because going back to old cloud costs, if you are a developer setting up a Apple Immersive Video, the cost of just storing your video inside AWS will eclipse a total Spatial Gen monthly plan to just get it up. So there there need to

• 8:05Speaker 02

  be affordable solutions that have the technical resources to pull it off. And and that's what we provide.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  What's the demand like for Spatial Video? Because when I think about it, I'm only thinking about it through the context of the Apple Vision Pro. And I know you can watch this stuff on Oculus headsets and so forth. But to me, it sounds like a very much a like a champagne customer base, as in small and rich.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, I mean, you can think back to the the first Mac. I think it's like $7,000 in today's dollars, right? I mean, this is a a flagship real product that's pushing the industry forward. But yeah, we we cross stream. There's a lot of demand in Spatial Video. Enterprise is is really where it's at. So making sure that there's live Apple Immersive Video, which is that 16K ingest is is a huge priority.

• 8:51Jason Calacanis?

  16K?

• 8:52Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah.

• 8:53Jason Calacanis?

  So it's four 4K televisions worth of data?

• 8:57Speaker 02

  About. About that much. Yeah. So, so if you think of that and the bit rates are higher too. So the, the level of the data coming out is actually over thirty gigabits a second. So you have to, you just can't, can't send that over the public internet. So like you can imagine.

• 9:14Jason Calacanis?

  How does it get sent if it's not the public internet?

• 9:16Speaker 02

  You have a direct fiber line and that does the encoding onsite and that is then sent out to the CDN where it is streamed from.

• 9:28Jason Calacanis?

  If you're not listening to your customers and iterating based on their feedback, your startup will fail. So if you're drowning in feedback from support, reviews, calls, it's time for ENTERTET. ENTERTET is the customer intelligence platform that helps you turn random comments and feedback into actionable insights that help grow your company. Their AI system is already trained on your business and your product. It then reads all your support tickets. It reads all your reviews, call transcripts and surveys. Then their agents actually update your team in Jira, Linear, Zendesk and Slack. So this feedback doesn't just sit in some email or messaging thread, but it actually helps keep your team moving the ball forward.

• 10:08Jason Calacanis?

  Find out why Canva, Notion and Perplexity are already using ENTERTET to stay on top of what they need to fix or build next. So if you're ready to turn feedback chaos into customer intelligence, head to interpret.com/twist to book a demo and see it in action. That's E N T E R P R E T dot com slash twist.

• 10:31Jason Calacanis?

  So this is not a cheap thing to do. If people are going to do this, it's not going to be cheap. Yeah, if they're going to do it live, it's not going to be cheap. It's going to be expensive. And you're also going to need one of these Ursa Sin immersive cameras from Blackmagic, I believe.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  That's right. Yeah. So they presented right before us about forty thousand dollars for that guy. So.

• 10:51Jason Calacanis?

  So I'm showing the camera here and just to describe this camera, it's got two, I guess those are lenses that look like eyes. So to the best you can, I know this isn't your product, but this is part of the stack.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  It is.

• 11:06Jason Calacanis?

  What is this camera? It's cost forty thousand dollars. Obviously people rent these, but how does it work? And how does your system get this information and then get it to the customer?

• 11:17Speaker 02

  So this, this. This camera is a Apple versus video approved camera, which is, we should, we should be very clear about because there's a lot more to it than just a video feed. There's what, what Apple will call it dynamic metadata that comes with every single shot. And this will tell the, the viewer how to unwrap the lens according to the, uh, the lens out of the manufacturing. So each one of these cameras, regardless of, of, um, of unit have a different lens calibration. So you need this dynamic metadata to be live streamed or passed through the system. It's, it's a completely different video workflow on the encoding side.

• 11:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it's, um, it's, it's quite a beefy guy as well, big camera, but.

• 12:05Jason Calacanis?

  You're basically with your company skating to where the puck is going, which is exactly where I like to invest. You had a heck of a time, I think, getting investors or people to understand what you're doing over the last couple of years. We met, I was like, yeah, this is the kind of crazy I'm in for. How long is this going to take to build this into a business, do you think? You know, you got a modest amount of funding from us. I know you've got a lot of investors who've been interested. But how do you think about being cutting edge technology? And, um.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  On the hardware side, right?

• 12:40Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  And, yeah.

• 12:41Jason Calacanis?

  You know, you, you have to figure out how to

• 12:45Jason Calacanis?

  get to the puck, puck being revenue and consumer adoption. How far out are we from, you know, non-developer weirdos wearing Vision Pro prototypes on planes? Which I've seen twice in whatever the year or two, I literally saw two people in first class over the last couple of years wearing these. And I think they were working, uh, but when will consumers be watching NBA games? Or, you know, one battle after the next, or who knows what immersive, uh, content on this?

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, well, we can jump straight to NBA. Apple and Spectrum announced that there's going to be live NBA games early next year in 2026. So that, that's super exciting. Development, along with the the past few weeks, there was the new Vision Pro that came out with the M5 chip, along with Samsung and Google's headset, Galaxy XR. And on top of that, there were, you know, spatial glasses, smart glasses with Meta. And those are gaining a lot of traction. So, you know, our our vision is to be the the backbone in the cloud infrastructure for all of these devices and and all of the the apps people want to make, both on the the regular uh video side to Apple Immersive Video, this like top of the line product,

• 14:01Speaker 02

  and to 3D models, meshes and Gaussians. So, what we're doing with the Air Force is is uh not necessarily always deployed on a uh a Vision Pro or XR headset, but actually around laptops. It just has to do with spatial data. And

• 14:18Jason Calacanis?

  I'm showing here the um the Galaxy XR, which is available to buy now as well.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, much cheaper. Yeah.

• 14:25Jason Calacanis?

  Uh, yeah, it's only eighteen hundred dollars.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  Only eighteen hundred dollars, yeah.

• 14:29Jason Calacanis?

  It's not for consumers yet. We're getting there.

• 14:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're getting there. We're getting there.

• 14:35Jason Calacanis?

  Compare and contrast uh Apples and this one. Uh, they're they're, you know, they're they're both two or three grand. But uh when will these become um, let's say, you know, the Christmas present for, you know, the holiday present for, you know, the Vanguard.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:56Jason Calacanis?

  Technology early adopters. When will they be buying this for Christmas? Because they've been buying Oculus's and

• 15:01Speaker 02

  Well, what were uh, what was your first experience with the Quest? Because before the Vision Pro, I thought it was kind of a gimmick in a sense. I didn't, I didn't like the resolution of the image. It was very fuzzy, but you know, when you try this on, it it's a whole different experience.

• 15:17Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, interesting. You know, my experience with it years ago was every Thanksgiving or Christmas, you know, somebody in the family would buy one of these. And I coined it, try, oh my, goodbye. They would try it. Everybody like, oh my, this is really interesting. I'm in Jurassic Park and there's a Raptor or a T-Rex chasing me. And then it would go in the closet and nobody ever took it out again. So, what's going to be the killer app in your mind?

• 15:42Speaker 02

  Absolutely media, hundred percent. Percent media, so.

• 15:46Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, double click on that.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  So you, you have, uh, I think I saw an iPhone Air earlier today.

• 15:52Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I just got it and I have to say, the iPhone Air is completely inspiring. Um, I'm putting it here between my glasses and it literally, you can see both sides of my nose. The battery life is obviously not fantastic, but it's not terrible. It's so thin and the only really, I think, bad decision is they went with this, um, very fancy camera that juts out. I would have just put a regular camera in and just made it totally flat. But it is the first time I held an Apple product since maybe iPhone four. And said, holy cow, this is incredible.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:32Jason Calacanis?

  Or maybe the original MacBook Airs. I haven't said, oh my God, this is incredible in years for Apple. And this is insane how thin and lightweight it is. Continue.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, well, that, that's a great, um, product, let's say, right? So the iPhones can take spatial videos and they can take spatial photos right now. So you have the capability to already start capturing the media you want. Cause you can, instead of just looking at it on a screen later, a photo of a family member, you can step back into that scene. With the Vision Pro and, you know, I, I brought up some of the, the media's concerns about the Vision Pro being dead, actually. When I was in the green room, some of the engineers, and they just looked at me with this blank face like I was stupid. And they said, we just released another headset, Zach. So, so I don't, I don't know if it'll be this year, maybe not necessarily next year, but it's coming.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  And there is no lack of energy on the engineering side from Apple. They are on top of things.

• 17:34Jason Calacanis?

  So the Vision Pro two is coming.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  They won't tell me if that's the case, but I'm certain.

• 17:41Speaker 00

  You don't get the free inside information when you show up to do all of, all the demos?

• 17:45Speaker 02

  No, no, no, they tell me what to do. Yeah. So it's their stage. It's their stage. Yeah.

• 17:50Jason Calacanis?

  I, I, I just pulled this up. Um, this is what people are expecting is an M5 chip in instead of the M2. And, um, two and a half hours.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:00Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, was this the actual announcement? So they, they.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. So this is, this is a refresh really to give it some extra power, especially. Ahead of their their deal with Spectrum on the on the NBA side earlier next year. And the people have been talking about the weight. This is actually increased, but that's because of that dual knit band on the back. So a more comfortable experience. They actually have some metal inside the band this time to help counteract that balance on your head.

• 18:28Jason Calacanis?

  Somebody was telling me that they had on a crane their Vision Pro that had attached something to the top of it to take the strain off of it. But this would, because there's a strap going over your head, like, um, what are the things that people wear on the top of their heads to push their hair back? I don't know.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Headbands? Oh, headbands. Well, Jason, you could.

• 18:48Jason Calacanis?

  And headband would go across your forehead. I'm thinking about the one that I, you know, uh, my daughters might wear to, if they have long hair to, you know, just push it back. I forgot what they call that. But then there's, so there's a strap on the top. There's a strap on the back of your head. This would balance out the weight.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  It does, yeah.

• 19:02Jason Calacanis?

  Apple has basically, if I'm interpreting it correctly, you tell me if I'm wrong here, Zach. They've said, this is a developer kit. We're going to make it, it's going to weigh a little bit more. Obviously, components come down like the, um, iPhone Air. So for now, we want you to get as much resolution, as much of the power, as much of the experience. We're not optimizing for weight. We're not optimizing for battery life right now, correct?

• 19:27Speaker 02

  It seems like.

• 19:28Jason Calacanis?

  Interpretation?

• 19:29Speaker 02

  I would, I would modify the, your interpretation a little bit. I say they're optimizing for comfort in this latest release, comfort and performance. So even though that weight has gone up, the distribution of it is much more comfortable to the wearer. So you're going to be able to sit through a full NBA game. And I think that's really what they're, they're going for in the upcoming year.

• 19:50Jason Calacanis?

  I think I'm going to buy this. I think it's time for me to really start to embrace this and understand it. And if there was actually contact, I love the NBA. So I think.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:59Jason Calacanis?

  Doing that would be fun. And I also am a little jealous of people using it as their desktop when they're.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  Ah, yeah, yeah.

• 20:05Jason Calacanis?

  You know, when they're, um. You know, on a plane or something like that, I can imagine like sitting there in first class and you know, I was in a business class seat. I just went to Palm Beach to give a keynote at Morgan Stanley and I, you know, have my laptop open. I'm going over some sensitive stuff. The guy next to me goes, I'm freaking out right now. I'm your biggest fan. I said, let's take the selfie and get it over with and let's be normal. And he laughed. I said, it's just a podcast. And but sure enough, I then had to get in my head, oh, my God, what was on my screen that this person saw, you know, who was I DMing with? And I think the privacy aspect of having these is also kind of rad because you could be watching,

• 20:48Jason Calacanis?

  you know, sometimes I'm watching a show, you know, if it's an HBO show, you know, I was watching Industry, great show. I think it's HBO. I was watching HBO Industry and this is a spicy show and all of a sudden, you know, it goes, you know, from PG 13 to R. And I'm like, oh, my God, are people thinking I'm a creep watching the show? I didn't know there was going to be a sex scene in the middle of it. And what if there's a kid who's looking over my shoulder? I was like, I can't watch this show on the plane. I like it for that reason, too. It's like your own world. You've heard me talk so much on the pod about the importance of renewable energy. That's why I'm so excited to talk to you about Crusoe today. Most AI infrastructure is still powered by fossil fuels, but Crusoe has an innovative energy-first approach.

• 21:31Jason Calacanis?

  They've actually built a high-performance AI cloud platform that's powered by wind, hydro, and geothermal energy in Iceland. Right now, they're using 100% geothermal and hydroelectric power to deploy the latest Nvidia Blackwell GPUs on Crusoe Cloud. This is the future, folks, and it's here today. That's how Crusoe is making energy and compute easier to access than ever before. So spend less time worrying about infrastructure and more time building. Visit crusoe.ai/startup to apply for $100,000 in credits for virtualized Nvidia GB200, NVL 72 on Crusoe Cloud, pending availability. That's C-R-U-S-O-E dot AI

• 22:14Jason Calacanis?

  slash startup to apply for your $100,000 in credits.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  There's a lot of of use cases to it. We have gotten a lot of traction on the media side just for the videos, Apple immersive video and so on. But you know, like a fun, fun fact about it that you just kind of gives you some shock factor is your passwords. When you're entering them in the Vision Pro are actually in plain text. They don't have the password blocked out though, because you're the only person that can see it.

• 22:41Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, that makes total sense.

• 22:42Speaker 00

  Oh, right. Why bother? Yeah.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it's very shocking when you're first typing in your password in the Vision Pro and and you just see it in plain text out and there's no like blurred field or anything. It's it's pretty funny. But it's like, oh, wait, who's gonna see it? Nobody.

• 22:56Jason Calacanis?

  Is this going to um in at some point intersect with my Insta three sixty and my GoPro cameras that do three hundred sixty degree, like my Insta three sixty does three hundred sixty degrees. When I'm skiing and I I I record these ski videos, I never look at them because I I look at them and I'm like, it's it doesn't look very good. I don't have time to edit it, but I mean, maybe if you had this immersive experience, it'd be kind of cool.

• 23:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, with the with recent announcements on our end, we're automating support for those, actually. So you can upload those types of videos that don't have to come from that forty thousand dollar camera can come from an Insta three sixty or a GoPro. And you can have a what they call a unique field of view. So we will handle all that complexity for you and you can just get a video file or stream that works right out of the box and.

• 23:43Jason Calacanis?

  How can people find you and learn more about Spatial Gen?

• 23:46Speaker 02

  Yes, you can. You can send us an email at contact at spatialgen.com or you can go to our website and even just book a call directly there.

• 23:55Jason Calacanis?

  I wonder if you got first name at spatialgen.com as the CEO and founder.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  We do. We do. It's a Zach at spatialgen.com, but.

• 24:02Jason Calacanis?

  You know, I try. Are you hiring now? Anything you need that we can be helpful with as investor, early investors in the company or a shout out we can do right now? Do you need any particular positions filled?

• 24:12Speaker 02

  We're currently raising. We're currently raising, but we're not hiring just yet. We will after the raise, but I'm gonna stay pretty lean, just the two. Of us right now.

• 24:22Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:23Speaker 00

  Good man.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:24Jason Calacanis?

  Well, this is when we like to invest in startups when they're in year zero or year one. Because we feel like if we're involved, we can really help hopefully with our Whisper Network. Introduce you to the right people. People don't know about the Whisper Network, Alex.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  It's been helpful. Been using it.

• 24:39Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, you've been using it?

• 24:40Speaker 02

  We have, yeah.

• 24:41Jason Calacanis?

  Describe for people what we built and how it's helped you and anything we could add to it.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, basically, you can go into the Whisper Network and you can look at investors that you may potentially want a connection with. And you can find out if someone on the launch team has, you know, a relationship with that person. And then you can reach out to that individual on the launch team and ask for an introduction and, you know, give your reasoning behind it. And hopefully, they introduce you.

• 25:09Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  Um, I have been a little aggressive with it. There's a warning not to send too many. So I sent quite a bit last week or the week before, but I think they've been sending them out. So it's been cool.

• 25:19Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. So what we did was, Alex, just to help founders, because of our track record in the industry, investors like when we send a warm intro, but

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 25:32Jason Calacanis?

  You know, we, we needed to have a way to track this and process it and build systems. So I've been building software internally. We built this Whisper Network software. So when someone like Zach is looking through our database, it's probably got, it's getting close to with

• 25:46Speaker 02

  Hundreds and hundreds.

• 25:47Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I think it's getting close to a thousand. I set a goal of getting to a thousand for the team. We don't want everybody. We want people we have relationships with. So I told the 12 members of the investment team, if you each have 50 people in the Whisper Network that you've built relationships with, I want you to email them and just say, hey, you know, here's where we invest. Would love to understand where you invest or we're co-investors in this company. So if, let's say Spatial Gen were to have Sequoia and the partner at Sequoia was Stephanie, and I was the contact with Stephanie because I have the best relationship with her. When the next Spatial Gen comes out and, you know, this other firm, oh, we have a thousand ninety in there. Great. Um, so we broke a thousand. Good job. New goal, fifteen hundred. Let's go.

• 26:32Jason Calacanis?

  Then instead of having somebody email Stephanie at Sequoia cold, I would say, Stephanie, you know, congratulations on the SpatialGen announcement at the, you know, Apple thing. By the way, we have another company in our portfolio. They're doing something in AR, and they would love to meet you. Would it be okay for us to, here's the capsule from the founder. If you'd like to take the meeting, we can introduce you. Click here, or you can just reach out to them. Here's their contact information. Here's their mobile phone number. Here's their email. So we're just trying to creep that velocity. But the other important thing is something Alexis Ohanian inspired me to do. He built a software system where they keep track of everything they're doing for their founders, so that they can say to other founders, hey, you know, for Zach,

• 27:17Jason Calacanis?

  we did these 17 things. Here's the evidence of it. You know, Alexis retweeted something for him. He came on, you know, in our case, he came on This Week in Startups, on these two dates. Oh, they spoke at this event, and we introduced you to 72 investors through the Whisper Network. Kind of keeping track of all the work we try to do for founders. Because sometimes founders, Zach, you're not going to believe this, but if they become incredibly successful, they're like, what have you done for me? And quite helpful to have the dossier and say, well, we did all of these things. We would like an allocation in the next round. We have our Pro Rata, but we want to go super Pro Rata. We want to increase our ownership from 4% to 7. Would that be okay with you? And by the way, here's everything we've done for you. Maybe you could compare that to your other investors when you become outrageously successful,

• 28:01Jason Calacanis?

  and you are oversubscribed. We want to make our case to you for, you know, a little extra investment. So we're building those systems. Zach, it's great to be on the cap table. If you ever need anything, you have my mobile phone number. Text me anytime.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  One last note is the Whisper Network is also a really great resource for investor discovery as well, because the database is so large, and you can Filter by sector and thesis and focus.

• 28:25Jason Calacanis?

  Ah, yes.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  You can find people who you may not know of that are already in that network. So.

• 28:31Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me on. Yeah.

• 28:33Jason Calacanis?

  Zach, it's been great. I'm really rooting for you. Again, if you ever need anything from us, the firm Launch, Launch.co, you let us know immediately. And if my team takes more than seven minutes to get back to you, just CC me.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  We'll do. I'll help test them at like 3 a.m. for you.

• 28:51Jason Calacanis?

  Well, you know, I've been trying to explain to the team that we need to match the work effort. Speaking of 996, we have to match the effort and the responsiveness of our founders. When our founder, when we ask our founders for something, they get back to us in minutes. When they ask us for stuff, are we getting back to them in minutes? Or are we getting back to them in hours or days? You know, like if it, once you get into like days to get back to somebody, I just think it's disgrazia. You got to get back to people at the pace they get back to you. Zach, continued success.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  Thank you. All right.

• 29:26Jason Calacanis?

  I'm so excited about this startup. I'm so excited. I mean, the crop of startups we're hitting right now is telling you before we got on air that, you know, things are firing on all cylinders. Our Founder University program where we work with, you know, companies like Zach before they're even incorporated. You don't even have to be incorporated to come to Founder dot University. We do it three times a year here in the U.S. It's a virtual program, but we do have some in-person components. And the first week in November, November 3rd, 4th, and 5th, I will be in Riyadh. Mina dot Launch.co. This is the Founder University website. We've had thousands of people go through the program. And then if you go to Mina dot Launch.co, you'll see that we partnered with the PIF, Sanable specifically,

• 30:10Jason Calacanis?

  which is their venture arm to bring Founder University to the city of Riyadh. I will be there for three days and we're going to host it at Sanable's offices. I'll be doing three dinners, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night with different.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 30:24Jason Calacanis?

  You know, so many fascinating, interesting people in the region doing great work. So I'm very proud of that. And just this week, we signed another city.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 30:37Jason Calacanis?

  Two.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  Congratulations.

• 30:38Jason Calacanis?

  We're not going to announce it yet, but.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  It's Providence, Rhode Island.

• 30:41Jason Calacanis?

  Yes. No, it's another international city. So the Founder University program continues in the empire. The sun will never set.

• 30:51Jason Calacanis?

  On the Founder University Launch Empire. And we're also going to be announcing another city for This Week in Startups. So there'll be a regional weekly version of This Week in Startups in another city soon. So we're going to take This Week in Startups, the franchise, and have it in, hopefully, there's like four regions I really want to do. So there'll be an Alex and Jason, not us, in each of these different regions. You can imagine maybe one in the Middle East, one in Asia, one in Europe, et cetera. So we'll franchise, in a way, This Week in Startups. And then we'll have those Alex and Jasons come on the program, Alex. This is my grand vision.

• 31:27Speaker 00

  I love it.

• 31:28Jason Calacanis?

  You know, there'll be like an Alex and Jason pairing, or Jason and Molly, or Molly and Alex, pick it. And they'll come on the show with us, and we'll do a little promo for who's on their episode this week, and what's going on in, let's say, China, Japan, Singapore.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:46Jason Calacanis?

  What's going on in Europe? What's going on in South America? So we're looking for those type of partnerships. Typically, we partner with a government agency that's trying to grow the region, or a top sovereign wealth fund that's looking to increase deal flow. Founders, let's be real, finding the right developers is really hard when you're trying to run and scale your startup. But lemon.io can save you time, money, and a ton of headaches. They've pre-vetted high-quality developers, and they've ensured that they're experienced, result-oriented, and that they're seeking competitive rates. These are handpicked devs with a minimum of three years of on-the-job experience, and only 1% of applications to lemon.io are accepted into their program. So forget the long, drawn-out hiring process.

• 32:31Jason Calacanis?

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• 33:04Speaker 00

  If you're a listener of the show, you know that we are big fans of Notebook LM here at the show. It's Google's research assistant. And as it turns out, three of the folks behind that app actually left Google, spun out, and decided to build something for themselves. So what did they come up with? It's an app called Hux. It's essentially an audio-forward personal AI app that I've played with, and I really, really like. To tell us more about Hux and the company behind it, please welcome to the show its co-founder, Raiza Martin. Hey, how you doing?

• 33:32Speaker 03

  Hi, Alex. Thanks for having me.

• 33:34Speaker 00

  I'm so glad that you're here because I love playing with new apps and I got to play with Hux. And frankly, I really like it. But instead of me butchering an explanation of what it is and what it does, why don't we just ask the expert, what have you built?

• 33:46Speaker 03

  Oh, amazing. Well, again, thank you for having me. Really excited to talk about Hux. It's super new. But what it is, is it's personalized and proactive audio. And so it's a little bit of a mouthful. But the way that we think about it is instead of writing prompts to try to get value out of AI.

• 34:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:03Speaker 03

  What if we could just generate interesting and thoughtful content for you automatically, without you having to do anything?

• 34:11Speaker 00

  So one thing I have noticed when I'm talking to AI with typing is that it does feel kind of slow at times, even though, not to brag, but I can type pretty quick. And so, well, I mean, I get paid to type for a living. So you'd think I'd be good at it. But but people who aren't us type more slowly. So they're probably dealing with quite a lot of lag in their chats. So moving to voice allows people to have a more reactive experience or a more personalized one.

• 34:36Speaker 03

  That's right. And I think there's also a little bit more there where, you know, we talk about sort of how we use AI today, and it's a chat. And it's almost like I can only get as much as I can based on how much I'm willing to type, right? And it feels like this is sort of like clunky thing we're describing, which is like, I have to write a prompt, I have to ask the right questions, I have to do this sort of like back and forth with chat GPT before it's actually like truly useful. And so I think your mileage really varies. But with Hux, we're trying to see how do we standardize that for everyone?

• 35:07Speaker 00

  So when I signed up for Hux, it said, hey, can you connect your calendar? Can you connect your email? And then what are your major interests? And then from there, it started to essentially tell me about things that I'm interested in. We're talking about Apple and stock market and startups. And I was like, okay, well, fair enough. That's pretty much dead on. Why do you need the information? And how much can you personalize this for the average user to make it feel like their own corner of the AI internet?

• 35:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, I love this question because we started from a really simple place, which was we tried to imagine if you could wake up in the morning and there was a friend that was ready to get you caught up. Right? Because we realized, like, especially when you work in tech, I feel like everybody has this funny habit where you wake up, you grab your phone, you check your email, you check your Slack, oh, what's going on Twitter? And it doesn't always feel great, but we all do it. So we were like, why don't we do this like really small, simple thing? Which is have a friend just do this pre-read for you. And then just read it out to you when you're brushing your teeth, when you're driving to work, when you're having your coffee. And it's such a small, like, little experiment, but when we've talked to the people who use Hux, people love it. Right? It's like truly different.

• 36:15Speaker 00

  And Hux came out in September out of kind of early access or beta. How has the market response been to it?

• 36:22Speaker 03

  I, I think it's been really exciting. I was actually, I was bragging to some of my friends recently, which I don't do too often, but I was like, guys.

• 36:29Speaker 00

  Oh, go for it. You made a product that everyone knows. I'd actually, like, no joke. Notebook LM is in our circles, a smash hit. So I really do feel like you could, you know, brush a little dust off and be proud of it.

• 36:40Speaker 03

  Well, thank you. Thanks for saying that. And I, and I did, the thing I was telling my friends is I was like, it feels like early notebook. Right? Where it feels like the next stage, the next chapter, where people are really turning the page, you know, more or less, people have heard about AI at this point. But now we're getting to this place where it's like, okay, what can it really do? Right? Aside from me, just sort of like trying it out one time, how does it become an actual habit? And so it feels like we're actually getting there.

• 37:07Speaker 00

  On the habit point, you guys had to make a choice between text and, and audio. And you made the decision to have Hux talk to you. And not only in one voice, but one thing I noticed was there was a back and forth between a male voice and a female voice on my end. And that did make it pretty darn engaging. But I can also read faster than I can listen. So I'm kind of curious about the trade-offs between those two mediums in the case of Hux.

• 37:32Speaker 03

  I, I love this question because I think one of the things we really considered was like, what is most effective for the user? And when you read something really quickly, like it feels really productive, right? It feels like, okay, I got a lot done. I went through it. Now I can go do this 10 more times. Right? And I'm like, super smart. I'm super charged. But for the most part, what we realized about audio is that even though the throughput feels a little bit slower, it actually is a passive medium, which means I can actually do something else. Whereas like reading is a thing I have to sort of sit down and do, and it's the only thing I'm doing.

• 38:08Speaker 00

  So then therefore Hux really is uh something you take with you as you drive, as you cook, as you eat. So it's designed to be an additive to your daily life. So it can fit into time that you already have. You don't have to make room for it. I quite like that. Okay. One thing you guys talked about, though, was this uh this this live element to it. They sort of like, almost like, almost like a live radio station for you. What does that mean? Does that mean that it's constantly finding new stuff to bring to me? And there's no end to my stream?

• 38:36Speaker 03

  Yes. Well, half of that is true, which is always live. We're experimenting with like how we describe some of these concepts and we're borrowing from a lot of stuff that we might recognize, right? So the concept of live, I feel like people understand really well, which is if something is live, it's happening right now. And we use this concept because what we're doing is when you first play this station, you know, based on your your topic, it will research right now to get the latest for you, right? And, you know, does the stream end? It does end because it can run out of info and say, well, that's all there is on the topic. Let's move on to the next thing. And so I think it's just like how we think about information.

• 39:15Speaker 00

  So i- in early usage, and I know it's only been a couple of weeks, so I'm really asking an unfair question here. But when people use Hux, let's say in the morning, what's the average session length? Is it five minutes? Is it two hours? I I have no idea how long they're sticking around.

• 39:28Speaker 03

  I mean, I feel really good that I know the answer, right? But the the average, so the average daily is about fifteen minutes. So the average Hux user listens for fifteen minutes.

• 39:39Speaker 00

  That is a quarter of an hour, which is a quarter of twenty five. So it's like one percent of their day?

• 39:45Speaker 03

  Wow, that's great math, but yeah.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  I think, I think I'm pretty tired, so I could be wrong, but I think that's right.

• 39:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's not bad. And we discovered that most people listen to a combination of their daily brief, which usually happens in the morning. And then later on in the day, they do a little bit of exploration into like a topic that they care about, which to me is like super cool, because you imagine you start your day with this, but then later on, when you have downtime, you're like, I don't know, I want to hear about the history of porcelain, like totally random thing I did yesterday, but it was amazing.

• 40:15Speaker 00

  I mean, I too like to read Wikipedia late at night. So yeah, I'm with you. My wife once called me looking at like the list of largest ships by gross tonnage. And she's like, what are you doing? I'm like, important research. You don't know. Don't judge me.

• 40:29Speaker 00

  So what I'm trying to figure out, Theresa, is just, and I do not mean this in a mean way, but but what it is, it's almost like an AM radio station for your mornings. It's almost like a podcast for your interests. It's almost like an AI chat buddy, but it does seem to kind of meld all of those together into like my personal chatty research assistant, maybe?

• 40:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it's so funny that you mention this, because this is the thing that even when we were building Notebook, this was true, right? The executives would come to me, they would say, well, what is it? What is this thing? And I'd be like, you know, I don't know, but I'm sure we'll find out if we keep going long enough. And that was not a sufficient answer at any point in time.

• 41:11Speaker 00

  Really? The the Google execs didn't appreciate that?

• 41:13Speaker 03

  I don't think anybody does, but I do. But it is, I think, one of the things that when you were building something new, like I could give you an answer, like I have a real answer, which is like, I think it's.

• 41:25Speaker 00

  I like to agree with that.

• 41:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think in reality, when new things are being invented, we don't really have the words for them. I think we try our best so that somebody will hear it and then they will try it and they'll be like, oh, okay, I kind of get it, right? But in real life, I think it's exactly what you're describing. Like when you first try it, you're like, oh, I don't know what that is, but I kind of like it. And I think that's the type of thing you should be building. It's cool. It's weird.

• 41:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, pushing the boundaries means you're outside of normal definitions or normal taxonomies. You can't be the Uber for ramp. If you're doing something actually new, right?

• 41:58Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 41:59Speaker 00

  We've all watched Y C Demo Day. You know what I'm talking about. Okay. So there are some competing offerings out there. There are voice AI tools and I haven't actually gotten to play with this yet, but I know that OpenAI put out ChatGPT Pulse. So where does Hux fit into the competitive landscape and how are you worried at all that OpenAI might kind of come along and step on you?

• 42:20Speaker 03

  I mean, I think that's probably one of the things that could keep me up at night and not just OpenAI. I think OpenAI, Google, Apple, perplexity, right? Anybody who's like big and is looking to turn the page on AI. And I think this is because more and more people are saying it, right? The next wave of AI is personalization. It's proactivity. And I think that Pulse is one example of a product that is trying to do that for the user. And so I think about it two ways. I think on one hand, like that's super exciting because it's about like they have a tremendous user base. It will certainly help me validate whether or not people really want that.

• 42:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:57Speaker 03

  And on the, on the other hand, I also think about it as how different can we make our product, right? Not, not out of principle, like I don't want to be different, like for the sake of it, but it's like, it is interesting to think about what, what things could we learn that OpenAI is not learning? And so I, I think about it very simply. I try not to lose any sleep about it and just keep going.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  So one thing I've heard from a lot of founders that are building anything consumer facing that is distributed to the app store is that it's just super hard to break through. I'm curious what you guys have done to try to, apart from, I saw your coverage in TechCrunch and so forth, then coming on the show, but like, how are you breaking through to the, the mass market on the app store? Because it's fine to evangelize to us in the tech world, but we're already all tweeds who love to try things.

• 43:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I, I do think of it sequentially, which is. Hey, if you can win some of the early adopter audience and you can really understand what's resonating with these people. I think what that allows us to do is to lower the bar more and more and more and more. Right? Because I think that's what early adopters are really great at is really saying, hey, this was great for this reason, and it was really terrible for this reason. And that helps us think about, well, for the every next user that uses it, how do we make it easier for that person? And ultimately, if the product is good, I think it will just spread, right? Like, we all know normies. And so imagine as we meet these people in our lives, we're like, hey, have you heard of Hox yet? Have you tried Hox yet? And I think that if you can accomplish that organically, then I think you think about, okay, how do I break through and amplify it?

• 44:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Actually, when you put it that way, my spouse, who is not a technology first person, she's in the medical world. I could see her actually using this on her commutes because she does like to listen to podcasts here and there, and often she runs out of episodes of the shows that she likes to commute to. And she's also, I mean, she's got more advanced degrees than I do, so she's very smart. And so probably tickling her brain would be a great way to spend her time in the drive. So, yeah, I can see it spreading that way. But is word of mouth enough? Is that enough in 2025? Or is that?

• 44:53Speaker 03

  I mean, that to me, it's a great question, but I think it also speaks to where we're at. And I experienced this on Notebook Alum, which was like, especially at Google, where I feel like the urge to pour money on something is like, right? There's there, I certainly could, you know, and you just like go and you say, I need marketing budget. That's the thing I need. But I think you need to have a lot of discipline in the super, super early days. Because it's easy to sort of artificially grow your product, but I think the question is, why would you? I think that ultimately you do need to put some gasoline behind it when you feel like you're on to something. But I think you need to have a lot of conviction about what that loop looks like before you do it. And so for me, I think definitely need to spend money, but for us, not yet.

• 45:37Speaker 00

  Totally. So then I guess, what are the signals that you are looking for to confirm to you in the next, I don't know, two, three, four quarters that you have reached sufficient product market fit that you do want to put marketing behind it, maybe raise more capital and so forth?

• 45:53Speaker 03

  I mean, to me, the only thing I really care about is retention. You know, I think of all the metrics that I look at, I only really look at retention. Like, everything else is sort of a supporting metric that explains it, you know, or the lack thereof.

• 46:05Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 46:05Speaker 03

  And I think once you have retention, you organically have the next thing, which is you start to have organic growth, which is every new user you onboard creates, whatever, two new users, right? And so I think you just want to make sure you have both of those things. And hopefully, it doesn't take us, you know, two, three quarters to get there, hopefully a lot sooner.

• 46:23Speaker 00

  I was trying to give you a lot, a lot of room to experiment and play. And I mean, I mean, I mean, two quarters in AI time is like five years in the SaaS era. So it's a fair point. It's a fair point. What's going to come next in the app? Because I know that I can talk to it. I know that it can read my email on my calendar. What other data might you bring into play? And then does it ever start to ping me without me going into it to say, I would like my, my personal live briefing now?

• 46:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, I actually feel like that's a, that's a bit of a read into our roadmap. And so there's a couple of things that we're going to start doing. I think one is just applying overall polish on the experience, because we've hit this interesting milestone where we have really good retention now, but people-

• 47:05Speaker 00

  Is that a 30-day number or 60 days that are daily usage? How do you guys measure that?

• 47:09Speaker 03

  I look at it at the daily, weekly, and monthly retention periods. But the, the funny part is we're now at a point where the people are sticking around, but they're angry. You know, when people write to you every day and they're like, hey, what's the deal? Did you fix this yet? It starts to feel quite different, right? Where you're like, wow, these people are, are the loyal core users. We better start fixing some of this stuff. And so that's the first thing. The second thing is exactly what you described, which is, okay, now that we've had an opportunity to really understand sort of the timeliness that people expect from this type of data, now we can start doing notifications in a not so annoying way.

• 47:44Speaker 00

  Ah, so essentially prove that you're, that you're delivering what people want. And then if you send it to them, they won't be annoyed. Unlike, for example, the Uber Eats team. By the way, Uber Eats team, back the fuck off.

• 47:55Speaker 03

  Uber Eats sends me a notification like every hour and I'm like, guys, I'm not that hungry.

• 48:00Speaker 00

  Dude, sometimes I order dinner on Uber Eats guilty and then like an hour later it's like, hey, did you know KFC has 10 for one? And I'm like, I can't move right now. I'm full.

• 48:10Speaker 03

  I'm glad that it's not just me. I was starting to feel a little sensitive. I was like, no, I do not need a BOGO on wings. Like I'm about to go to bed.

• 48:17Speaker 00

  Or my favorite is as a recovering alcoholic, they're like, hey, hey, hey, alcohol delivery 21 plus 50% off. And I'm like, guys, you do know I don't want to go back to rehab.

• 48:26Speaker 03

  It's rough.

• 48:27Speaker 00

  Jesus. Uh, where were we? Oh, right. Okay. So thinking about the company, I know you guys raised, uh, 4.6 million conviction, Genius Ventures, Dylan, who I like, and Jeff Dean from Google, solid set of folks, good amount of money, lots of runway to experiment, I presume. Um, how long does that capital last, do you guys?

• 48:44Speaker 03

  Well, we still have, uh, as my investors call it, pretty much all of it.

• 48:51Speaker 03

  So I, I think, you know, as we start to turn the wheel on maybe more complicated things we want to do, maybe we'll eat more of this, this capital. Um, but yeah, I mean, the, the way that I think about fundraising is really just as a function of like, do you know how to deploy it? Right? Do you have a plan for how to deploy it? And so I think that will coincide with sort of the next phase of like, once I feel like we've squarely got a loop, we've got great retention, that's when we'll do it. We'll raise more money.

• 49:15Speaker 00

  All right. One last question for you, which is about the underlying models that power Hux. I couldn't find anything about this. So I'm curious, uh, what technology are you using? You better say Gemini or your, your shares will invest. And, and also, um, through your time at Notebook LM and through into Hux, how quickly have the models that you've leaned on to power the underlying intelligence improved? Because from where I sit, they seem to be improving pretty quickly, but I'm curious in a more real world application, if that holds up.

• 49:44Speaker 03

  I, I really appreciate this question and it's a keen eye in terms of like how we never talk about the models that we use. The main reason is because we probably use most of them, most of the commercial models. We, we've discovered that they're really great at individual workflows in the app, but not all. So not one of them is great at all of the workflows that we run. Um, and that to me sort of speaks to your next question, which was, you know, are, are the models really getting better? And I think the answer is yes, but they're sort of not, um, kind of uniformly getting better across all the things that we do. So one, one big, you know, thing we do in the app, for example, is writing content.

• 50:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:23Speaker 03

  Right? And trying to write really good, engaging, interesting content that humans are willing to listen to. Like, I don't think even humans have figured that out. And so it's, it's quite funny to try to be like, oh yeah, right? I'm gonna go get a machine to do this. Uh, but it's, it's really quite difficult. And we spent a very long time trying to do that across all the things. And what we discovered was we kind of have this sort of like hodgepodge approach. And so I would just say that the models are getting really good, but it still requires a lot of engineering.

• 50:52Speaker 00

  Okay. Well, there's also an implied point in which you still have most of the capital that you raised, and you're using a bunch of models from different providers, and you haven't torched all of your money, which implies that not only are the models getting better in certain places, but they're actually cost effective to run as a, as a group. Do you guys ever make model selections based on cost? Or is it currently more predicated on, uh, quality as you see it?

• 51:15Speaker 03

  So right now, we over index on quality. Like super, super strongly. We almost, I would say like the top two things we index on are quality and latency because of the, of the live component, right? And so those are the two things, but cost is real, especially as we, you know, have higher and higher retention. The cost goes up and up and up. And we were like, okay, now we have to try to optimize this and make it a little cheaper.

• 51:38Speaker 00

  All right. Actually, I got, I'm gonna squeeze in one more here. How long until I can pay for HUX? Or are you going to charge me in a different way?

• 51:45Speaker 03

  We've thought about it. I think there's definitely a subscription model that we could probably deploy in, in the very near future. I really would like to hold out for something that allows it to be free, like better ads for everyone. That's not annoying. Um, I would really like to, because I think we have the, a really, really good foundation for that.

• 52:03Speaker 00

  Okay. One request then. If you do go the advertising route, please allow me to give you money and not listen to insurance advertisements.

• 52:11Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, for sure. For sure. I think we will do it.

• 52:14Speaker 00

  As long as I have the option to opt out of State Farm and Allstate telling me that I should swap my car insurance. We're good. Uh, folks, if you're listening to this and you want to check it out, it's H U X E dot com. Riza, thank you so much and, uh, congrats on leaving Mountain View and going off on your own.

• 52:29Speaker 03

  Amazing. Thank you, Alex. Thanks for having me.

• 52:33Speaker 00

  So today, taking part in our ongoing Gamma Pitch Deck Competition is our dear friend. It's Vasif Durarbayli. He is a chess grandmaster and he's building something called Chess Ever. And it's actually, I gotta look at the deck, Jason, pretty frickin' awesome. So Vasif, are you here?

• 52:51Speaker 04

  I'm happy to be in the show. I have been watching you guys and first time to be here. Nice, nice feeling.

• 52:59Jason Calacanis?

  All right. So you have your deck. You built a beautiful deck using Gamma. Visit gamma.app and let's hear a quick pitch from Chess Ever. And remember, most people are listening. So Vasif, if you can describe what you're seeing, that'd be great.

• 53:15Speaker 04

  All right. So I am showing the, my pitch at the beginning. This is my app, Chess Ever. Our motto is follow chess better. I am a chess grandmaster and I think the pitch, yeah, whatever is on the pitch, I should say something about that soon. It will be clear, whoever listens.

• 53:36Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, keep going.

• 53:38Speaker 04

  Hello, everyone. I'm grandmaster Vasif Durarbayli. If you are not deep in chess, grandmaster is the highest title. In other words, I have beaten a lot of people. Today, I'm here to talk about Chess Ever, a platform redefining the online chess experience. Chess is a 1500 years old game, but the way people experience it has changed dramatically. Since the pandemic and Queen's Gambit, millions of new players, who have never touched a physical chessboard, play and follow chess entirely online. The global chess market is booming. It was 3.3 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach 7.6 billion by 2032, nearly 11% annual growth rate.

• 54:19Speaker 04

  Here's the problem. Since pursuing the big market is enticing, every major player does it. This means serious players, about 70,000 worldwide, are underserved. They are a small but very influential group. That's the weak link and our opportunity.

• 54:37Speaker 04

  They need complete event coverage with no missing tournaments, pro analysis tools, searchable archives and more. Chessever solves this. We are building a pro-grade broadcasting platform designed for serious players. Without entering too deep into chess, let me illustrate simple flow of our beta app.

• 54:59Speaker 04

  So in this video, I am searching for the latest event where my country participated. I type the event name, open it, and my countrymen are already auto-pinned at the top. I can swipe between their games to see what they did. This is the core function, simple and effective. I can do the same for any player and instantly find their games. Interestingly, what I am showing in our beta app either cannot be done or is very hard to do in the established apps.

• 55:30Speaker 04

  Our MVP release is in Q4. Chessever will outperform current platforms in event coverage and pro tools. Our AI features will come soon. Our vision does not end with serious players, it starts with them. Where they show up, casual players follow. We add AI that makes broadcasts truly engaging. Blunder prediction, position-aware pools, instant highlights. From there, we build it brick by brick into content, community and education.

• 56:01Speaker 04

  With over 350 early sign-ups, including world number 5 Arne Skirje, and having 4 grandmasters and 3 masters as our early investors, we are proving that demand is real. As a grandmaster, I know my audience firsthand. My co-founder Henning, an AI specialist, brings our vision to life with his technical expertise. Together with our team, we are building the platform the chess world has been waiting for, starting with serious players and growing from there. We are Chessever. Follow chess better. Thank you.

• 56:34Jason Calacanis?

  Okay. The pitch here is that chess.com, which is an incredible app, which I use and everybody I know uses. And people rave about being able to get matches really quick and being able to get trained. All the amateurs I know absolutely love it. I was literally over the weekend with, in a group of CEOs and VCs. And people were raving about paying for it, using it, and getting their scores up. But it turns out the experts, the grandmasters like yourself, they want something more than what chess.com provides. Do I have the pitch correct?

• 57:13Speaker 04

  Yes, you do. So Chesscom is a huge company and they are a very successful one. But they focus on everything, especially for casual players. And their main product is play zone. So here we are bringing a different angle that chess players were looking for. It is like over the board games when we play, serious players. It is getting broadcasted and you want to follow those broadcasts. And Chesscom platform-

• 57:43Jason Calacanis?

  I understand. So the number one thing missing from chess.com for the top 1% of the audience, for experts, is that they don't do commentary on live chess matches in a way that a grandmaster would want to receive it. Am I correct?

• 58:01Speaker 04

  Yes, you are overall correct, but not commentary, but they don't have tools for serious players.

• 58:08Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, so there's the commentary on live events and the coverage of live events is one aspect that chess.com do. But tools for experts are different. What is the tool? Just describe it to us in plain English as non-grandmasters. What are they trying to get out of their tool that you don't get out of the chess.com tools?

• 58:28Speaker 04

  So for instance, even a simple function that I showed, I cannot just enter chess.com and search name of a player and find their games and easily go-

• 58:37Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, so the archive of important games is one, got it?

• 58:42Speaker 04

  So their engine tools are basic and you, I mean, I'm talking about the broadcasting function. So let's make a distinguishment. And also we are entering through- App, so there is a website and there is app. So app, I'm talking about the app part. So you cannot easily analyze and save and go between the games. So chess players are like professionals or serious players. They will go one game after another. We added for instance, swiping function. We are gonna make it

• 59:13Jason Calacanis?

  Okay. So where your pitch breaks down is that you set it up really great, but you don't explain for the layperson, the investor, uh, who might want to invest in the company. There are three things missing from chess.com. Let me show you what they are. You need to slow down during that part. One, the archive of important matches. They simply are not optimizing for these legendary matches. That's what I'm looking for as a grandmaster. I want to look at every time Magnus Carlsen has played this opening. I want to sort by those openings and then I want to take notes on them and I want to watch all of them in succession.

• 59:57Jason Calacanis?

  And I want that database to be available to me and really easy. This would be the equivalent of the elite poker players wanting to see all the hands with the opponents they might face in their next cash tournament or their cash game or in a giant 100K tournament at the World Series of Poker. Great, now we've established that. Number two, when they're doing a live broadcast, they're broadcasting to the lowest common denominator. What we want to see is the experts who are not explaining things for the average chess player. We want to have broadcasting tools and commentary that's really elite level. So this is where the pitch could be greatly, um, greatly improved. You're talking about like all types of different features that are done,

• 1:00:41Jason Calacanis?

  but you have to step back and big picture it. Big picture and eventually all the people who are, uh, we want to build this into a community. We believe that they will pay not just a hundred dollars a year. We believe they'll pay 500 dollars a year. Is that true? Will these folks pay more money than the average chess.com person? Or are they cheaper?

• 1:01:04Speaker 04

  Thank you for the feedback. So I think one of the goals we are trying is not to have a much higher than chess own price, monthly fee. And yeah, mainly you have a good point that we are gonna target serious players and we will offer them tools that are not offered right now. Additionally, we are gonna add, since my co-founder is AI specialist and currently you cannot find AI in any broadcasting, we are gonna make also very engaging. But our goal is not charge a very high fees, no, it's not. So our goal is simple, we will make our free version is better than anyone else and our premium version will be better.

• 1:01:49Speaker 04

  This is basically freemium, a model that we are doing.

• 1:01:52Jason Calacanis?

  So the challenge with this then becomes if chess.com is making 100 million a year, you're going to take the top 10% of the market and make 10 million a year. If you're gonna raise venture capital, that's a challenge because you've basically said we want less customers at least to start and then we're gonna go to the other customers. I think you should, I think you're on to something with getting the elite people. I wonder if there is a way, once you have the elite people hanging out here, to figure out a way. So just think this through for a second. I was talking about a company called Tonebase we have, that we've invested in, and we've invested in the company four times, I think, we're so enamored by it.

• 1:02:34Jason Calacanis?

  Pull up Tonebase, Alex, this is a really good corollary for you. Tonebase is not for people looking to learn to play guitar or piano, that's another one called musician. We are investors in musician as well. One of them is for, it's like chess.com and one of them is like chess ever. And as you can see here, learn from the world's best musicians. And so if we scroll down here, or actually just pick an instrument and let's see who picked the most interesting guitar or piano, yeah, sure. Now let's go down here and see who they have. I wonder if they'll show you the actual, yeah, here we go. So if you look here, they now have very famous People from legendary pianists, and I think you could scroll to the right and see more of them.

• 1:03:18Jason Calacanis?

  And you can go to training with them. If you click on one of those and you did Claire Delune, you picked the right one. Now they've made these. So they've made masterclass, Vasiv, as you can see. And this, for the person who is a serious musician, has never existed before. This is what you're building. I wonder if you could say, here are the greats, and here are their classes. And then you could split where like live classes or tutoring, once you have all them on it, instead of trying to make a hundred bucks, you could let them in for free. And you have to be approved to be part of the community. And the way you get approved is you apply. And the way you apply is you have to play three games and you have to beat

• 1:04:02Jason Calacanis?

  at least one of the people who are in the community already. Now, it's like it's hard to get into. You have to be invited or, you know, each grandmaster can invite two players. You build this community and then if people like myself want to come, I can buy my daughters a chess lesson if they really got into it with Magnus or whoever the great one is. What do you think of this idea of win the elite, the top 10% of the audience, and then bring everybody else in to have access to the elite?

• 1:04:32Speaker 04

  Uh, that's, uh, so when I, I mean, we, our goal is just the beginning. It is, uh, it's our beachhead. But at the, at some point, we will enter the market for education that which you are talking about, uh, to have access to elite players that they can. So right now we have other platforms on the market that sells, um, some stuff that amateurs want to have access, even talk to them, et cetera. Yeah, that's a, um, that's in our roadmap at some point. But as a beginning, you know, it is easier to start where there is no competition. So that's, that's my goal with this broadcasting future is that there is almost no competition

• 1:05:15Speaker 04

  because no one builds for serious players. Uh, and

• 1:05:20Jason Calacanis?

  Okay. I love your, yeah, I, I love that you're going after the high end. I think you haven't figured out what the killer app is yet, and that'll take a little time. So you're in the phase we call triangulation and finding product-market fit. So when you're triangulating this and trying to get to product-market fit, it's good to try a couple of different things and see which one actually clicks. One of the things I noticed when I just typed into Producer Claude, Claude AI, how, what do grandmasters want to know when they are watching grandmasters play live? One of the things it said is they want to understand their tactical strategies, etc., their emotional control, all that kind of stuff. But one of

• 1:06:05Jason Calacanis?

  the things it said is they want to guess the next move and compare their move to what the grandmasters were doing. Here's an interesting idea. If you watched it on time delay and the live person, instead of watching them play this, you know, 10-minute match, I don't know, what's the, what is the average match where Magnus plays? What is the time that they typically play?

• 1:06:28Speaker 04

  Magnus, Magnus recently is against classical control, which is a gold standard in chess. We play five, six hours, basically.

• 1:06:40Jason Calacanis?

  Perfect.

• 1:06:41Speaker 04

  With that classical one.

• 1:06:42Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, so he likes the speed chess, classical, it's a five-hour match. But let's say it is a five-hour match. I think, or if it's, even if it's a 15, pausing the telecast and then allowing the community to talk about, like, if you had five people and the five people each gave what the next move should be, what they, what they would play and what they believe Magnus will play. And then they lock it in, and then you actually play the hand. And you see if there's consensus. There is a version of this, which is when you're watching poker commentary, they'll be like, well, this is obvious. There's two choices here. One is they could slow play this hand, they've already got the nuts. The other one is they could put a small bet out, but that might look suspicious. So I think what you

• 1:07:27Jason Calacanis?

  want to put out here is a, you know, 50% of the pot bet and hope the other person raises. Then you can call, and now It's going to maximize whatever. I love that idea of being able to watch a group of experts and then reveal it. So I'm thinking like a TV producer here to make it even more exciting and unique in the world. This has been amazing. Alex, what are your thoughts here? You've seen this great pitch. And you've got this great founder, lots of energy.

• 1:07:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:55Jason Calacanis?

  You have anything that would be an interesting question for him or a note about, you know, given your startup experience that would be helpful to you?

• 1:08:03Speaker 00

  Well, I was curious about the overall market's growth because one of the earliest slides in the pitch deck was how much chess is going to grow by 2032. My question though is if we're focusing very much on the the top end, the you know, the 1%, the grandmasters like yourself. How much does the aggregate growth in the chess market matter to chess ever's success?

• 1:08:24Speaker 04

  Um, that's overall showing the interest growth and it will matter eventually when we are targeting the bigger group casual players. At the beginning, it doesn't matter as a stage one. Our group, for us, it doesn't matter right now.

• 1:08:41Speaker 00

  Okay. And then the other thing that I wanted to just throw at you, Jason's making a lot of poker analogies. He and I are both big fans of card games. Have you ever seen, I can't believe I'm going to say this. Have you ever seen Hustler Casino Live? It's a poker live stream. You might want to take a look at it because they've managed to take poker, which is sometimes a slow and boring game to watch, and turn it into an absolute circus by bringing some of the world's best players and throwing them at one another. And they've really made something that's streamable, watchable and enjoyable. So given the focus that you have on observability and so forth, you might want to take a page out of that kind of proven book.

• 1:09:18Speaker 04

  Thank you for the video. By the way, I want to add that what Jason said, the idea of guessing, it's called guess the move. And we do want to have that. We want, so right now I've, that's one of the things that it comes also from my frustration that our broadcasts are. Quite basic and not enough entertainment for me like you know guess the move compete with others there is pools of we I I passed very fast so we want to have like a imagine the two grandmasters playing and there will be a blunder alert we are gonna predict blunders are coming and ask the community like what's the chance of the blunder uh this kind of stuff we are gonna

• 1:09:59Speaker 04

  try to make gamifying it is gonna come uh it is on our roadmap and yeah we will we will follow some ideas that you talked about.

• 1:10:08Jason Calacanis?

  I have one I have one suggestion when you do this just hire the Botes sisters Botes sisters came to all in summit played the four of us they smashed us although I think she ran out of time.

• 1:10:19Speaker 04

  David tax gone I think I think they've.

• 1:10:20Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah well she ran out of time play because she played on a clock versus four of us I think I was the first out um and the video is out there but people love that so I think there's another one here which is celebrities you know the schmoes versus the pros is also very exciting and I just played in the NBC heads up telecast as one of the celebrities that's how hard up they are for celebrities I guess to play in these things now but I was one of the top five celebrities there I guess maybe I'm a micro celebrity in podcast land and amongst poker people maybe um but I think you just hire the Botes sisters you do a deal with them I know them they're awesome they're entertaining they're spicy they get into it um they're they're just great like youtubers so I

• 1:11:04Jason Calacanis?

  would try to find those type of folks to build this you did a great job uh you went to founder university you went to our founder university is that true?

• 1:11:10Speaker 04

  Yes I am learning and uh it was a great opportunity I have already learned quite a lot and still learning.

• 1:11:17Jason Calacanis?

  When did you go are you in the current class?

• 1:11:19Speaker 04

  Yes in the current one in the current.

• 1:11:21Jason Calacanis?

  You're in the current class F11 fantastic who's pod are you in who's pod are you in?

• 1:11:25Speaker 04

  Maddie Maddie's.

• 1:11:26Jason Calacanis?

  Oh Maddie's awesome Maddie's in the HQ and she is running the syndicate for me just so you know so we have our syndicate I think if you can get this tightened up into like one really great device that you can ride to sustainability which would be 500k a year in revenue a thousand dollars a day in revenue. If you can get to that sort of level, coming to our accelerator and then we can help you with the pitch to really try to get VCs to understand it. And it's the reason we started Found University, Alex, is because we meet founders like Vasiv all the time. They know the market. They know, you know, what people want.

• 1:12:05Jason Calacanis?

  But they have to get product market fit. They have to build a team. They've got to get their first couple of customers and they also have to understand how to pitch VCs to bring them along. And that's where you're at. That's where we can be super helpful. Where are you based, Vasiv?

• 1:12:18Speaker 04

  Illinois.

• 1:12:20Jason Calacanis?

  Illinois. Fantastic. I think you got something here. Tell me about your team. Is there your solo founder? You got?

• 1:12:26Speaker 04

  No, I have my co-founder Henning. He's AI specialist and chess enthusiast. Actually, he sounded to me like he came during the pandemic boom. He learned chess. So that's another great things that it brought. Like, actually, another developer who also watched the Queen's Gambit and got into chess. So

• 1:12:44Jason Calacanis?

  Amazing.

• 1:12:45Speaker 04

  That helped us to build the team, actually.

• 1:12:48Jason Calacanis?

  So I want you to have another tip for you here, since we're going deep. If you pull up Fitbod for me, Alex, the Fitbod team.

• 1:12:58Jason Calacanis?

  I want to show you a picture of the Fitbod team retreat, which I don't know. It was in Austin. And I'm trying to find a picture of it. If they actually had a Fitbod, if they actually posted it, maybe one of the founders posted it to their

• 1:13:16Jason Calacanis?

  one of the Fitbod founders posted pictures of it to their social media. Anyway, the Fitbod team, and it's, I think it's Fitbod app. Let me find their, yeah, fitbod.me. This reminds me of you. This is another elite group that went after the top 1%. Do you see my screen?

• 1:13:38Speaker 04

  Yes, I do.

• 1:13:40Jason Calacanis?

  So like Tonebase, Fitbod, which also went to our accelerator, just like Tonebase went to our accelerator, we have, yeah, some great expertise and affinity for what you're doing. Fitbod. Is for people who are really into weightlifting and people who want to design their workouts and then see their progress. And they used AI, machine learning previously, five years ago, and they started saying, this company's on a tear. They're making lots of money, just like chess.com. They're very similar to chess.com in that way. Fifteen million downloads, one hundred and twenty million logged. You need to meet the founders of these two companies, Tonebase and Fitbot, because you're doing what they did, which is they said, this is not, Tonebase is not for people who want to learn how to play Dylan's songs on a guitar, or just play Brown Eyed Girl.

• 1:14:24Jason Calacanis?

  And Fitbot is not for people who just want to have great biceps. It's for people who are really into it. But the lesson, Vasiv, was one you've innately learned, which is, when you hire people, hire people who have the skills you need, great developer, great marketer, whatever, but also have passion for the topic. So if you made a four quadrant chart, and one of them was how qualified they are at their job, and the other one was how passionate they are about the topic, if you could find somebody who's a ten of ten developer and who is obsessed with chess, you don't have to motivate that person to do great things. That's why when we hire people here at the Launch Fund, we need people who are obsessed with entrepreneurship and technology and startups. Then I don't have to tell them, hey, use your work fifty, sixty hours a week

• 1:15:09Jason Calacanis?

  and make this your career. They're like, I want this as my career. I love startups. So when you meet somebody like Maddie, she's obsessed with entrepreneurship, she's obsessed with startups. I don't have to push her. I have to keep up with somebody like Maddie. I have to keep up with somebody like Lucas, or Oliver, or Marcus on my team, because they're so passionate about it. That's a key, key, you know, hidden skill you'll have. All right, great job. It's a lot of show today. We did a lot of show. We did too much show.

• 1:15:38Speaker 00

  We've been talking for some time. It is true.

• 1:15:40Jason Calacanis?

  I love doing too much show. Vasiv, congratulations. Enjoy your time in the Founder University. If anybody wants to come to Founder University, founderuniversity, if we do a good job, the only thing I'm going to ask of you, Vasiv, is two things. One, you write us a testimonial.

• 1:15:56Jason Calacanis?

  And two, you tell us what we could do better. Do we have a deal?

• 1:15:59Speaker 04

  Yes. Using the opportunity, I would like to thank you. I was listening your

• 1:16:07Speaker 04

  All in Podcast at the beginning for several years, I believe. And you keep advertising the twist. And then I was like, let me give a shout for twist. And I listen and then I was like, okay, Founder University, I should try. And since I joined, I have already exceeded my expectations. And I think everyone who is trying to learn business and creating a startup should try to apply, that's for sure. And I think, yeah, you overall, I don't have much to give a feedback. I am really enjoying and Maddie also, I think she was some, she did some volleyball in university.

• 1:16:51Jason Calacanis?

  She is, she is.

• 1:16:52Speaker 04

  Very competitive and this is also great.

• 1:16:55Jason Calacanis?

  Shukran, I'll give you the thank you in Arabic. Shukran is S U S H.

• 1:17:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, shukran, yeah. I, we have some similarities in my language from Arabic.

• 1:17:08Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, what's your language?

• 1:17:09Speaker 04

  It is, I'm from Azerbaijan originally and our language is Azerbaijan. It is in Turkish language group.

• 1:17:15Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:16Speaker 04

  But we got a lot of words from.

• 1:17:19Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I'm your Greek cousin. I, this is the thing, I'm so ashamed that I never learned a second language, Alex, that I've decided I'm going to try to learn the two hardest.

• 1:17:30Jason Calacanis?

  Arabic and Japanese, that's my goal.

• 1:17:32Speaker 00

  Oh, oh my God.

• 1:17:33Jason Calacanis?

  For the next five years.

• 1:17:35Speaker 00

  Five years, ad a zero, baby. You're going to be at that for a minute.

• 1:17:39Jason Calacanis?

  If I could just speak conversationally, those two languages, I would be so proud of myself.

• 1:17:43Speaker 00

  You'll see, you'll never come home. You would just live in north of Japan, skiing year round and I'd never see you again.

• 1:17:48Jason Calacanis?

  You would see me equally. I got a paper though, you know, it's expensive to ski. Catskiing is not expensive. It's 1200 a day. I need to do some ad reads in order to afford it.

• 1:17:58Speaker 00

  Speaking of which, if you're feeling inspired, head to gamma.app and start working on an idea of your own.

• 1:18:04Jason Calacanis?

  And we're going to give away, thanks to our friends at Gamma, who have the best presentation software I've ever seen. People love it, they're going crazy for it. Beautiful, beautiful presentations and it's so fast to make a gorgeous one. You're going to be like Steve Jobs on a nicotine pouch or two.

• 1:18:23Jason Calacanis?

  If you use Gamma Dot App, Gamma Dot App, I love it. And they gave us $25,000 to invest in one of the great companies. So as if you're in the running for a 25K check from your boy J Cal. Thanks to our friends at Gamma Dot App.

• 1:18:39Speaker 04

  I'm excited to have a chance. Thanks a lot for listening to me.

• 1:18:43Jason Calacanis?

  I appreciate you pitching us and yeah, you're doing great. Keep going.