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Today’s show:
A beanie that reads your thoughts and turns them into text — no surgery required? Jason grills the Sabi co-founders on their noninvasive brain-computer interface, backed by Vinod Khosla, and calls a cap on the whole thing (until he doesn't).
This episode of This Week in Startups covers a lot of ground: Jason's tactical tip of the day on making everyone the CEO of their domain, a deep dive into Sabi's thought-to-text beanie, a live demo of AI-powered podcast sidebars built by the TWiST audience, the announcement of a new $5K bounty for an annotation tool, and Jason's big five wellness framework.
Guests:
Sabi: Website, Wired article
Co-founder and CEO Rahul Chhabra: LinkedIn, X
Companies and people discussed:
Matt Coffin, founder of LowerMyBills.com
Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures
Neuralink, a leading BCI company
ElevenLabs, a leading voice AI startup
Calm, the popular meditation app
Timestamps:
Intro & tactical tip: Make everyone the CEO of their domain
Matt Coffin's "CEO of X" management philosophy
Community ownership: Deputizing Ricky, Lawn, Bianca, Maddie, Kabir
Building the Noti Gang: X group chats and community flywheels
Founder takeaways: Activate your top 1%, make someone the CEO of it
The streamer trick, parasocial dynamics, and creator ethics
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Guest intro: Rahul Chhabra of Sabi
What is Sabi? Noninvasive BCI in a beanie with 100,000 sensors
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How it works: From fMRI to EEG, from hospital to hat
The brain foundation model and thought-to-text decoding
Vetting the founders: BITS Pilani, Stanford, athlete fatigue AI
Vinod Khosla's investment thesis: BCI must be noninvasive
Jason's challenge: Say "Calacanis," or it doesn't count
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Sabi.com: Reserve your device, release by end of 2026
Privacy concerns: Does the beanie read everything?
Bounty #1: AI live sidebar contest — demos from the TWiST audience
Oliver's breakdown: What's easy vs. hard about live AI commentary
Demo #1: Armchair (by Mark Colebrook) — fact-checker + troll personas, live
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Live political violence test: The sidebar in real time on the WHCD shooting
Demo #2: Pod Commentators / SideCast — browser-based, Gemini-powered
Jason's revised Bounty #1 spec: Fact-checker + cynic, public stream or Zoom
Timeline: check-ins May 1, May 8; final winner May 15
Demo #3: BMD Pat (by Patrick Hughes) — instant URL, all-snarky personas
Bounty #2 announced: Annotated.com — a fair-use multimedia annotation tool
Annotated: the delicious.com of media commentary
Contest rules: Jason owns the domain, winner gets $5K + potential ongoing work
Wrap-up: Bounty 1 = AI sidebar, Bounty 2 = Annotated
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