The $10M+ Bet on a Beanie That Reads Your Brain | Sabi & the Future of BCI

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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:

0:00 Intro & tactical tip: Make everyone the CEO of their domain

1:49 Matt Coffin's "CEO of X" management philosophy

3:04 Community ownership: Deputizing Ricky, Lawn, Bianca, Maddie, Kabir

4:02 Building the Noti Gang: X group chats and community flywheels

5:08 Founder takeaways: Activate your top 1%, make someone the CEO of it

6:18 The streamer trick, parasocial dynamics, and creator ethics

7:59 Plaud: If your work depends on conversations — interviews, meetings, calls — you need a Plaud NotePin. You can check it out at https://Plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off!

9:34 Guest intro: Rahul Chhabra of Sabi

10:01 What is Sabi? Noninvasive BCI in a beanie with 100,000 sensors

10:13 LinkedIn Jobs - Hire right, the first time. Post your first job and get $100 off towards your job post at https://LinkedIn.com/TWIST

11:02 How it works: From fMRI to EEG, from hospital to hat

13:46 The brain foundation model and thought-to-text decoding

15:55 Vetting the founders: BITS Pilani, Stanford, athlete fatigue AI

17:22 Vinod Khosla's investment thesis: BCI must be noninvasive

19:30 Jason's challenge: Say "Calacanis," or it doesn't count

20:11 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 https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist

21:30 Sabi.com: Reserve your device, release by end of 2026

22:26 Privacy concerns: Does the beanie read everything?

25:41 Bounty #1: AI live sidebar contest — demos from the TWiST audience

27:04 Oliver's breakdown: What's easy vs. hard about live AI commentary

28:40 Demo #1: Armchair (by Mark Colebrook) — fact-checker + troll personas, live

30:59 Render: Find out why 5 million developers are already using the all-in-one cloud platform, Render. Go to https://render.com/twist and apply for the Render Startup Program to get $500-$100,000 in free credits, depending on your stage and backers.

35:30 Live political violence test: The sidebar in real time on the WHCD shooting

38:45 Demo #2: Pod Commentators / SideCast — browser-based, Gemini-powered

40:35 Jason's revised Bounty #1 spec: Fact-checker + cynic, public stream or Zoom

42:41 Timeline: check-ins May 1, May 8; final winner May 15

44:51 Demo #3: BMD Pat (by Patrick Hughes) — instant URL, all-snarky personas

46:52 Bounty #2 announced: Annotated.com — a fair-use multimedia annotation tool

49:31 Annotated: the delicious.com of media commentary

51:11 Contest rules: Jason owns the domain, winner gets $5K + potential ongoing work

The $10M+ Bet on a Beanie That Reads Your Brain | Sabi & the Future of BCI | E2282

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