Eric Bahn

This Week In Startups is made possible by: MongoDB - MongoDB.com/ai Rippling - Rippling.ai/twist Agree.com - agree.com Today's show: Hustle Fund's Eric Bahn and Chapter One's Jeff Morris Jr. join our venture capital roundtable directly following the news breaking that Stripe wants to buy PayPal. The possible transaction highlights how little interest today's leading startups have in going public any time soon. With host Alex Wilhelm, Bahn and Morris dug into when startups should burn the boats à la Fin, physical AI as the next frontier, the power of Silicon Valley groupthink, and how startups are approaching the first days of widespread, company-specific AI evals! Guest links: Eric Bahn https://x.com/ericbahn Hustle Fund https://www.hustlefund.vc Jeff Morris Jr. https://x.com/jmj Chapter One https://chapterone.com Show links: Stripe wants to buy PayPal https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/stripe-advent-offer-buy-paypal-more-than-53-billion-sources-say-2026-07-15/ Flex https://www.flex.one/ Webflow https://webflow.com/ Oak https://www.oak.id/ Fin selling to Salesforce https://www.salesforce.com/news/press-releases/2026/06/15/salesforce-signs-definitive-agreement-to-acquire-fin/ Erebor https://erebor.bank/ "Competition is for losers" https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-losers-1410535536 Chapter One piece on the value of software https://jamesin.substack.com/p/some-areas-weve-been-investing-in Timestamps: 0:00 Eric Bahn (Hustle Fund) & Jeff Morris Jr. (Chapter One) join the show! 1:35 Stripe's reported $53B offer for PayPal 6:29 Why founders don't want to go public 10:08 Agree.com - Stop chasing invoices and automate your entire contract-to-cash stack. Go to https://agree.com and tell them Jason sent you to get 50% off for life! 15:16 When is it time to burn the boats? 20:12 MongoDB - AI-assisted and agentic coding is helping you build faster than ever. Start building at https://MongoDB.com/ai 21:16 Does VC need an AI revolution? 30:50 Rippling - Thanks to our partners at Rippling! Head to https://Rippling.ai/twist and get the only AI built to give you full visibility across your startup and take complex actions across your entire business. 32:36 Custom evals, open source models, and avoiding vendor lock-in 36:37 Physical AI and robotics as the next frontier 37:42 Oak's $60M seed and startup clusters chasing agent infrastructure 40:43 Escaping the Silicon Valley "think tank" 48:28 Consumer AI's missing wave 1:00:18 AI regulation and how to get it right 1:12:01 Where to find our guests and wrap-up! 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

Eric Bahn

Co-founder and Partner

Hustle Fund

Jeff Morris Jr

Founder

Chapter OneTinder

On this episode, Ryan sits down with Eric Bahn from Hustle Fund in San Francisco. Hustle Fund invests in what they call “hilariously-early hustlers.” Prior to co-founding the fund, Eric worked in a number of operating roles, including as a product manager at Intuit, co-founder of a gaming company, founder of a startup to serve MBA students (that was later acquired), product manager at Facebook, co-founder of a media company called The Hustle, and EIR at 500 Startups (phew!). On this episode we take you behind the curtain to break down exactly how venture capital works. We talk about: Eric's advice on how to break into venture capital if you've never worked in the space before. Some of the common misconceptions about VC, including how much venture capitalists are actually paid (spoiler alert: unless you're at a big fund, it's not as much as you think). Hustle Fund's investing thesis, including their unique data-driven approach to investing in early stage companies. We also talk about the rise of “no code” and some of the best apps that are letting makers create amazing products without writing code. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Also, big thanks to AngelList and FreshBooks for their support. 😸 Quotes from This Episode “Fundamentally our jobs are the most blessed in the world because we just surround ourselves with people who have a worldview, have a product, have an idea, that they wholeheartedly believe in. They’ve taken all the sacrifices to make that happen and you and I may not agree all the time with whether their vision is the correct one to be successful but it only leaves you with optimism.” — Eric “Our thesis is driven by the notion that the single best leading indicator of success for a team — that is discernible at the pre-seed stage, is this characteristic called hustle. Whatever the core metrics that are relevant for your business, the teams that are growing aggressively against those metrics tend to grind out the best results over time.” — Eric “These folks will look amazing on paper — maybe they worked at Facebook or Google or something previously, went to Stanford or MIT, checks all the boxes, and then you watch them work and you realize that person who was successful in the context of a larger company with more resources doesn’t necessarily have the skills that translate to cold-starting a business from scratch in a world of entropy where there’s no rules and no structure.” — Eric Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode Bubble — Build a fully functional web app without any code. Retool — Build custom internal tools in minutes. Webflow — Build professional dynamic websites without any code. Articles Mentioned In This Episode Mark Suster, Both Sides: Invest in Lines, Not Dots Kate Clark, TechCrunch: This Is How Much VCs Are Paid

Eric Bahn

Co-founder and Partner

Hustle Fund