This Week in Startups@twistartups
Today on TWIST: General Partner at @naval's USVC, @ankurnagpal joins @jason and @alex to chat through the investment vehicles’ structure, fees, and where it intends to invest. Spoiler: It is backing major AI labs.
Next, @jon_durbin joined the show to discuss Chutes, a decentralized computing project built on Bittensor Subnet 64. Then, @humworkai’s @theyashgoenka stopped by to explain why agents need humans. The show wraps with a new lightning round and a little Off Duty as a treat!
0:00 Intro + Plaud AI sponsor read (Jason demos the NotePin S)
2:06 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin. You can check it out at Plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off!
3:50 Episode overview: USVC, Chutes, Humwork
4:55 Ankur Nagpal on USVC — What is a closed-end fund?
7:41 USVC structure: $500 min, no accreditation, quarterly redemptions
10:28 Northwest Registered Agent - Get more when you start your business with Northwest. In 10 clicks and 10 minutes, you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity — Learn more at northwestregisteredagent.com/twist
11:39 Fee structure breakdown: 1% mgmt fee, ~2.5% net expense ratio
14:11 Incentive alignment
15:41 USVC portfolio: xAI, Anthropic, OpenAI, Crusoe, Vercel
16:17 Strategy: 1/3 emerging managers, 1/3 growth, 1/3 secondaries
19:00 $1B cap and path to expanding the fund
20:33 Vanta - Compliance and security shouldn't be a deal-breaker for startups to win new business. Vanta makes it easy for companies to get a SOC 2 reports fast. Get $1,000 off for a limited time at vanta.com/twist
21:00 How everyday investors should think about VC allocation
27:00 Jon Durbin, core contributor at Chutes (Bittensor Subnet 64)
28:00 What is sovereign compute? Permissionless GPU networks explained
30:10 Render - Find out why 5 million developers are already using the all-in-one cloud platform, Render. Go to render.com/twist and apply for the Render Startup Program to get $500-$100,000 in free credits, depending on your stage and backers.
35:34 Trusted Execution Environments (TEE)
36:23 How Chutes uses end-to-end encryption and open-source attestation
44:53 Usage history: 160B tokens/day peak, free-to-paid transition
46:41 GPU pricing: from $0.77/hr to $3.50/hr as shortage bites
49:13 DeepSeek censorship demo: Taiwan test on DeepSeek chat
49:39 Chutes token economics: TAO, subnet emissions, burn mechanism
57:27 Permissionless supply curves: Uber/Airbnb analogy for induced demand
59:20 Yash Goenka, co-founder of Humwork (YC S26)
1:00:49 Lightning Round: Ryan Cohen wants to buy eBay — Jason's hot take
1:08:18 Lightning Round: Amazon launches third-party fulfillment (takes on FedEx/UPS)
1:12:36 Lightning Round: Cerebras IPO update ($27–36B valuation range)
1:14:05 Lightning Round: Spirit Airlines / JetBlue / M&A regulation debate
1:19:10 OFF-DUTY: Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord
1:22:17 AI-generated Star Wars fan films via Seedance
1:27:15 Annotated.com $5,000 bounty challenge
1:32:57 Alex's OFF-DUTY: Captain of Industry
🎥 Watch the full episode here 👇
