This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis
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This 22-Year-Old Built TikTok for Mobile Games, and It’s Growing Fast | E2276
This Week In Startups is made possible by: LinkedIn Jobs - LinkedIn.com/twist Every.io - every.io Render - render.com/twist Today’s show: *Imagine scrolling through mobile games the way your flip through your TikTok feed. What if you could build your own game in 90 seconds and share it with the world? That’s what over 100,000 users are enjoying right now on Nanogram. On TWiST, we meet the co-founders: 22-year-old CEO Albert Brotherton and 24-year-old CTO Boris Radilov. They demo the app for us on the air, and Jason immediately spies the potential. Power users are playing 25+ games per session already. We’re digging into the co-founders future plans, including the potential for ads in your game feed, in this TWiST exclusive. PLUS domestic helper bots are here. NEO from 1X Technologies can do the laundry, open the door for guests, and even read and understand Post-It Note messages. Alex talks with CEO Bernt Børnich about building the safety-first 66-lb humanoid, why world models are so crucial for training robots in particular, and why homes are even tougher places for robots to navigate than factory floors. Timestamps:0:59 Nanogram co-creators Albert and Boris join the show 3:42 Nanogram is TikTok for casual AI-generated games 4:27 Building Nanogram with Google Gemini 5:49 Draper and Associates: https://www.draper.vc 6:11 Integrating ads into the game feed 7:36 Roblox: https://www.roblox.com World of Warcraft: https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com 8:25 Building in New York 9:07 Jason is obsessed with the Staples Baddie https://www.tiktok.com/@blivxx 10:12 LinkedIn Jobs - Hire right, the first time. Post your first job and get $100 off towards your job post at https://LinkedIn.com/twist 20:36 Every.io - For all of your incorporation, banking, payroll, benefits, accounting, taxes or other back-office administration needs, visit https://every.io 21:40 1X CEO and founder Bernt Børnich joins the show https://x.com/BerntBornich 22:31 Designing robots to actually live around people 26:30 Teaching NEO about movement in the physical world 29:00 TechCrunch coverage: https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/13/neo-humanoid-maker-1x-releases-world-model-to-help-bots-learn-what-they-see/ 29:58 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. 31:04 Moving beyond training data to true general intelligence 33:17 Ensuring NEO pursues the safest possible path 34:19 Why are world models so important? 41:51 1X World Model Challenge on GitHub: https://github.com/1x-technologies/1xgpt 45:14 Robots need to train on a lot of data… Where does it all come from? 50:14 Manufacturing NEO from raw materials in San Carlos 56:32 Robots building robots Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Alex: X: https://x.com/alex LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com
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