How Founders Are Building the Next Great Startups | Paid.ai, iTruckr & Tenax AI | E2175

This Week in Startups

Today’s show:

In this TWiST founder triple-shot, Alex digs into the real-world rollout of AI agents: Paid.ai’s Manny Medina explains agent economics and value-based pricing, iTruckr’s Camilo Ramirez shows agents booking loads and coordinating drivers, and Tenax’s Elise Myrans demos computer vision + drones that score a single home’s wildfire/flood risk for smarter underwriting—plus live office-hours on winning enterprise pilots without getting stuck in PoC purgatory.

Timestamps:

(00:00) Brainstorming hacks for sales cycles in regulated industries — castles, moats & alligators!

(03:50) Meet Paid.ai: tracking costs & monetization for AI agents

(04:35) Paid.ai’s Manny Medina on the “year of agents” & early enterprise traction

(09:04) Netsuite - Download the ebook CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at https://www.netsuite.com/twist

(11:06) The tough economics of AI agents vs SaaS — margins squeezed by tokens

(18:20) How Paid.ai gets granular: tracking signals & agent activity with OpenTelemetry

(21:20) Coda - Empower your startup with Coda’s Team plan for free—get 6 months at https://www.Coda.io/twist

(29:16) Enter iTruckr: Camilo Ramirez brings AI dispatch to the freight industry

(31:43) .TECH: Say it without saying it. Head to get.tech/twist or your favorite registrar to get a clean, sharp .tech domain today.

(39:02) Scaling from small fleets to mid-sized trucking companies — lessons from AI Trucker

(55:59) Tenax ai helps homeowners & insurers manage wildfire, flood & climate risk

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Follow Lon:

X: https://x.com/lons

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Follow Alex:

X: https://x.com/alex

LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm

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Follow Jason:

X: https://twitter.com/Jason

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis

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Thank you to our partners:

(09:04) Netsuite - Download the ebook CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at https://www.netsuite.com/twist

(21:20) Coda - Empower your startup with Coda’s Team plan for free—get 6 months at https://www.Coda.io/twist

(31:43) .TECH: Say it without saying it. Head to get.tech/twist or your favorite registrar to get a clean, sharp .tech domain today.

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Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland

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Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis

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Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com

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