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

This Week In Startups is made possible by: Render - https://Render.com/TWIST Northwest Registered Agent - https://NorthwestRegisteredAgent.com/TWIST LinkedIn Jobs - https://LinkedIn.com/TWIST 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 53:13 Wrap-up: Bounty 1 = AI sidebar, Bounty 2 = Annotated Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis