How to Make Billions from Exposing Fraud | E2234
This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis
4.2 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 13 January 2026
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This Week In Startups is made possible by:
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Today’s show:
Government fraud and waste has become a prominent issue in the last month.
That’s what we are looking at.
On Today’s episode of TWiST, Jason interviews Alex Shieh of the The Antifraud Company.
Under the False Claims Act, enterprising Americans, like Alex, can receive up to 30% of fraud dollars they uncover! Jason digs into the business of fraud with Alex Shieh and how a generational company could be built around it!
PLUS Alex Wilhelm and Marcus Brotman take a look at the history of BOOM, $1.5 Billion dollar startup bringing back supersonic commercial travel!
Jason first interviewed Blake Scholl almost 10 years ago in 2016. Back then, BOOM was a dream to bringing back supersonic travel. The Concorde’s failure, and why BOOM is different, is central to Blake’s thinking. What is fascinating is Blake’s mindset and vision for the early stages of this future unicorn startup.
THEN, Jason answers live Q/A at Founder University Tokyo! In partnership with JETRO, Jason and the LAUNCH team are bringing Founder University to 35 Japanese startups over the next 9 weeks!
Timestamps:
(00:00) Why the Concorde failed and how BOOM Supersonic is bringing back faster than light travel
(08:34) The 30% efficiency rule for Mach 2 flights
(11:46) Netsuite - Get the free business guide Demystifying AI at https://www.netsuite.com/twist
(17:12) Building million dollar planes on a startup budget
(20:22) Luma AI - Stop guessing and start directing with Ray3 Modify from Luma AI, the AI-powered post production tool. Explore it at: https://lumalabs.ai/twist
(24:11) The Checklist Manifesto: Lessons for pilots and founders!
(26:02) How to build a team that can go supersonic
(32:49) Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://squarespace.com/twist
(33:55) Private Sector Doge: The Anti Fraud Company
(38:48) The $500B in Fraud uncovered
(48:34) How Alex Shieh’s team uses AI to hunt down fraud
(52:48) How you can win 30% of exposed fraud with the false claims Act
(56:27) Founder University Tokyo Q&A
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Follow Alex:
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm/
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Follow Jason:
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis/
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Thank you to our partners:
(11:46) Netsuite - Get the free business guide Demystifying AI at https://www.netsuite.com/twist
(20:22) Luma AI - Stop guessing and start directing with Ray3 Modify from Luma AI, the AI-powered post production tool. Explore it at: https://lumalabs.ai/twist
(32:49) Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://squarespace.com/twist
Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Well, now he's built a company that wants to do exactly what you just said, use investigative |
| 0:03.3 | journalism and also the power of AI to uncover fraud and collect fat penalties from the |
| 0:07.2 | government for saving us all some money. |
| 0:08.9 | And we talked about investigative journalism and how important it is. |
| 0:11.4 | It turns out there are whistleblower laws. |
| 0:13.1 | Whistleblower laws allow you to get 50% a third of the money recovered. |
| 0:18.6 | I think that we're probably not like any other company that is in the world because we don't |
| 0:25.2 | have any customer. |
| 0:26.0 | So this, it turns out, is a way that you can monetize information, investigative journalism |
| 0:32.3 | about frauds that haven't been previously reported. |
| 0:36.2 | We're not a law firm representing the whistleblower. |
| 0:38.2 | We're not a law firm at all. We are the whistleblower. This week in startups is brought to you by |
| 0:42.5 | Squarespace. Use offer code twist to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at |
| 0:48.3 | Squarespace.com slash twist. Luma AI. Stop guessing and start directing with Ray 3 modify from Luma AI, the first AI powered post-production tool. |
| 0:57.7 | Explore it at Luma Labs.A.I.Slust. |
| 1:00.9 | NetSuite. Get the free business guide demystifying AI at netsuite.com slash twist. |
| 1:08.5 | Welcome back to Twist. This is Alex. And today we're going back in time. One of my favorite |
| 1:13.3 | founders in the world is Blake Scholl. He's the founder and CEO over at Boom, had him on the show |
| 1:18.2 | a couple of times. I got to catch up with him in late 2025. And if you want to learn more about |
| 1:22.5 | that, go check out episode 2168. But we've talked to him through the years. And I don't just mean a couple |
| 1:28.2 | years back, Jason actually had Blake on the show back in 2016. This is when boom was more |
| 1:34.7 | idea than product. It hadn't put a test aircraft into the sky yet. It had only raised a few |
... |
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