The $10M+ Bet on a Beanie That Reads Your Brain | Sabi & the Future of BCI | E2282
This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis
4.2 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 29 April 2026
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This Week In Startups is made possible by:
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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
53:13 Wrap-up: Bounty 1 = AI sidebar, Bounty 2 = Annotated
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're staking your entire reputations on a cap that allows me to dictate my words. It does not work. There's no way to put a beanie on and then have it do transcription. Come on. It is real. You would not believe the amount of engineering and effort that has gone into it to make it work, but it does work. This doesn't work. I'm calling cap. How can satellites understand what is it terrain on the earth, even through going through |
| 0:22.5 | atmosphere? Exactly what we're trying to do is building a GPS for the brain. |
| 0:26.0 | You got metaphors. You've got a killer idea. |
| 0:29.2 | Congratulations, Robo. This is this week in startups. Do you have a demo? |
| 0:35.3 | This weekend startups is brought to you by Render. |
| 0:38.5 | Find out why 5 million developers are already using the all-in-one cloud platform Render. |
| 0:43.9 | Go to Render.com slash twist and apply for the Render Startup Program to get $500 to $100,000 |
| 0:51.1 | in free credits, depending on your stage and backers. |
| 0:54.9 | Northwest Registered Agent. Get more when you start your business with Northwest. |
| 0:59.6 | In 10 clicks in 10 minutes, you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity. |
| 1:05.2 | Learn more at Northwest Registeredagent.com slash twist. And LinkedIn jobs. Higher right the first time. |
| 1:13.8 | Post your first job and get $100 off towards your job post at LinkedIn.com slash twist. |
| 1:20.1 | All right, everybody, welcome back to Twist. That's right. It's Monday, April 27th. We are here in Austin, Texas, the great state of Texas, and we've got a full docket here. |
| 1:33.2 | Things are growing so vibrantly, whether it's this week in startups, our new show, |
| 1:39.1 | this week in AI, founder university, now on three continents in Japan, Saudi, in the Middle East, and in the U.S. |
| 1:46.7 | We have so much community opportunity in a startup. |
| 1:49.9 | And this is my tactical, practical, practical tip of the day long. |
| 1:52.5 | So we need to get these tactical practical practicals in here for people. |
| 1:55.0 | Yeah. |
| 1:55.4 | Tactical and practical. |
| 1:56.5 | One person, one job. |
| 1:58.2 | One person is the CEO of X. |
... |
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