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Key people at This Week in Startups.
This Week in Startups produces a leading weekly podcast focused on the global startup and technology sectors. Hosted by Jason Calacanis, the program explores current market trends, technological advancements, and business strategies. It features candid interviews with successful founders, offering direct perspectives on the challenges of building new ventures.
Jason Calacanis founded This Week in Startups in 2009, driven by an insight into the necessity of an authentic platform for discussing startup realities. An accomplished angel investor and entrepreneur, Calacanis aimed to provide an unvarnished view of building and growing businesses, beyond conventional industry narratives.
The podcast primarily serves aspiring and established startup founders, along with angel and venture capital investors. It equips this audience with practical knowledge and strategic understanding crucial for navigating the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The company's vision is to foster a highly informed, globally connected community of innovators.
This Week in Startups (TWiST) is a media company producing a weekly podcast hosted by Jason Calacanis, focusing on startups, technology, markets, media, and business trends, often featuring interviews with founders, operators, investors, and innovators.[1][2][3][5] It generates $7 million in annual revenue with 6-11 employees based in Culver City, California, and serves a global audience of entrepreneurs, investors, and tech enthusiasts seeking insights into emerging companies and industry news.[1][5]
The podcast solves the problem of fragmented startup information by synthesizing news, founder stories, and expert analysis into digestible episodes, including segments like TWiST 500 for promising startups and discussions on AI, crypto, and market shifts, fostering education and networking in the tech ecosystem.[3][4][5]
This Week in Startups was founded in 2009 by Jason Calacanis, a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and podcaster with a background in the dot-com era, including co-founding Weblogs, Inc. (sold to AOL) and early investments like Uber via Sequoia Capital.[1][2] Calacanis launched TWiST as a weekly show reviewing new technology startups and featuring founders, evolving from his ThisWeekIn.com network, which shut down in 2012 but relaunched as the podcast.[2][5]
Key milestones include co-hosting with Molly Wood from 2021-2023, Calacanis's advisory role at Twitter post-2022 acquisition, and consistent growth through high-profile guests and timely topics like AI and robotaxis, building on Calacanis's reporter roots covering internet news in the 1990s.[2][4][5]
TWiST rides the wave of podcasting's dominance in tech education amid AI, crypto, and autonomous vehicle booms, timing perfectly with remote work and founder-led content demands post-2020.[3][5] Market forces like venture funding shifts (e.g., Sequoia's funds, Klarna down rounds) and viral tech news (TikTok marketing, robotaxi protests) amplify its relevance, as it democratizes access to insider views otherwise siloed in paid networks.[4][5]
It influences the ecosystem by spotlighting under-the-radar startups (TWiST 500), shaping narratives on trends like real-time AI data pipelines or personalized imagery, and connecting listeners to opportunities, much like competitors Y Combinator or TechCrunch but with Calacanis's operator edge.[1][3]
TWiST is poised for expansion with AI-driven content personalization and live events, capitalizing on Calacanis's Inside.com newsletter model and growing clips channel.[2][6] Trends like multimodal AI agents, robotaxi scaling, and crypto resurgence will fuel episodes, potentially boosting revenue through premium subs or TWiST-backed investments.[3][5]
Its influence may evolve into a full media empire, mentoring the next wave of founders while navigating podcast saturation—expect deeper AI hiring roundtables and global expansions to sustain its edge as the go-to startup pulse.[5] This cements TWiST's role from news reviewer to ecosystem catalyst, echoing its founding mission.
Key people at This Week in Startups.
