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Startup Bios

Startup Bios

By: Brian McCullough
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Summary
Startup Bios is the show about the newest startups coming out of stealth and raising their first rounds.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

@ Brian McCullough
Economics Leadership Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • Ghost
    3 Nov 2026

    Ghost, a startup run by a 19-year-old CEO, just came out of stealth with an $11 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Its product, Core, is a $3,499 screenless computer that runs your personal AI agents at home, with the models, memory and your data kept on the device. Here's what's inside the box, what the privacy fine print actually says, and how it stacks up against the Mac Mini, Apple and the big AI labs.


    Chapters

    0:00 Ghost in 30 seconds

    0:27 A 19-year-old CEO

    0:57 The $11M seed

    1:29 Core: a computer for AI agents

    2:41 $3,499, and sold out

    4:35 Ownership and the privacy fine print

    7:51 Brian's Take


    Startup Bios is the show about the newest startups coming out of stealth, hosted by Brian McCullough. Like and subscribe, and get the audio version on the Startup Bios podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Show more Show less
    13 min
  • Mithrl
    3 Nov 2026

    Mithrl, the San Francisco startup behind a Scientific Decision Engine for drug discovery, just raised a $20 million Series A led by Obvious Ventures. Co-founder Vivek Adarsh came out of NVIDIA's CUDA compiler team, and his pitch is triage: AI has made drug hypotheses cheap, lab experiments are still expensive, so Mithrl's biomedical world model helps decide which ideas are worth testing. Here's how it works, who it's up against, and why patents are the number Adarsh cares about most.


    Chapters

    0:00 Mithrl in 30 seconds

    0:24 Why Mithrl exists

    1:01 The $20M Series A

    1:59 Ideas got cheap, testing didn't

    3:20 The biomedical world model

    5:41 Benchmarks, customers and patents

    8:42 Brian's Take


    Startup Bios is the show about the newest startups coming out of stealth, hosted by Brian McCullough. Like and subscribe, and get the audio version on the Startup Bios podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Show more Show less
    12 min
  • HIFI
    3 Nov 2026

    HIFI, the New York startup wiring bank rails, stablecoins and Wall Street's tokenized securities into one API, just raised a $37 million Series A led by Left Lane Capital. The company says it moves more than $7 billion a year, counts Sumitomo as a customer, and was in DTCC's tokenized production trades alongside BlackRock and Goldman. Here's how it works, who it's up against, from Stripe's Bridge to Circle, and the risks worth watching.


    Chapters

    0:00 HIFI in 30 seconds

    0:19 1968: when Wall Street closed on Wednesdays

    0:59 The $37M Series A

    2:05 One API, three sets of pipes

    4:11 DTCC, tokenized repo and Visa

    7:10 The stablecoin market

    8:53 Brian's Take


    Startup Bios is the show about the newest startups coming out of stealth, hosted by Brian McCullough. Like and subscribe, and get the audio version on the Startup Bios podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    Show more Show less
    12 min
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