Get the Check

In this episode of Get the Check, Halloween is in the air and Anika makes her return. The pod breaks down the largest crypto hack ever, the Google and Amazon earnings that dragged down the market, and Thrive’s $7.6B bet on a 150-year-old security company.They start with the Binance hack that shook crypto last week. North Korean hacking group TraderTraitor, the same crew behind the $1.5B Bybit hack in February 2025, drained about $6.3B from Binance’s “Binance 14” wallet. They compromised one engineer’s laptop and sent around 50 requests to the signing machine until one went through. The worst part was Binance’s hot wallet kept refilling itself from cold storage, so the hackers could keep draining it for an hour before anyone noticed. About $3.5B in stablecoins got frozen, which is a little ironic for an industry built on nobody being in control. To fix this, Binance says it will make every customer whole using its $1B SAFU emergency fund plus corporate cash, with no third-party insurer. And if that’s not enough theft for this week, Polymarket also got hacked for $2.6M. Long Kalshi.Next, the pod gets into Google and Amazon earnings. Google dropped about 12%, its biggest fall since 2004, after search slipped below 50% of total revenue for the first time. While AI searches are growing, they are monetizing worse than traditional ones. Google Cloud doubled to around $30B, closing in on AWS at $45B, leaving questions on why exactly Google is winning. Meanwhile capex hit $51B for the quarter, the hyperscalers have sold $218B in bonds this year, and advertisers are furious that Google quietly stopped running fair ad auctions. The conversation spirals into the K-shaped economy and a revisit to why Maya theory on the timing of Anthropic’s IPO.Finally, Thrive Holdings is taking ADT private for $7.6B ($15.3B with debt) at a 46% premium. They are betting that AI can cut the $433M ADT spent on customer service last year while keeping its 6 million customers. The pod walks through the AI roll-up playbook, debates whether engineering at a holdco is the future or just a well-paid detour, and reminds viewers they called roll-ups before anyone else did. Which raises the real question: are the three of them one roll-up away from a med spa empire?Tune in to find out if Thrive is quietly building the surveillance state.00:00 Landon Barker, Heidi Klum, and Maya’s iconic Halloween costumes02:06 Maya relearning how to say the intro03:28 North Korean hackers steal $6.3B from Binance05:16 How one laptop drained Binance’s hot wallet13:30 Will Binance be able to fix this?17:57 Google and Amazon earnings tank the market28:46 The K-shaped economy and shorting the Anthropic IPO33:34 Thrive Holdings takes ADT private for $7.6B38:30 AI Roll-Up Playbook43:01 Should we have started Holdings Co?This episode is brought to you byKalshi, where you can trade on whether the Anthropic IPO actually happens on November 16th. Sign up at kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck and get $10 when you trade using our code.Known, if you’re tired of swiping, Known is for you. Use code GETTHECHECK at known.com to skip the waitlist and get a free date.Follow the pod on Instagram and X @getthecheckpod.

In this episode of Get the Check, Maya and Priya hold down the fort (RIP Anika) to cover Anthropic finally filing its S-1, AI uncovering a 14-year-old flaw in the code behind ~70% of the internet, and OpenAI acquiring Orchestra Bio.They start with the long-awaited Anthropic S-1, filed the day of recording, with projections putting the IPO at a $1.5–2T valuation as early as the week of November 16th. The pod walks through how the filing likely saved the market from another “margin call Monday”: a 10% operating margin, compute spend down from $2 to about 55 cents per dollar of revenue, and enough cash after the IPO to have more net cash than any tech company except Berkshire Hathaway. They also point out what’s missing. 80% of revenue comes from models released in the last six months, and Q3 isn’t in the filing.Next, the cyber segment, always Priya’s favorite. Wiz and Calif independently used AI to find PHP-to-Shell, an exploit that lets attackers take over the servers behind websites. The pod covers how responsible disclosure fell apart, from the first exploit attempt Amazon spotted on October 17th to government sites going dark. Finally, they get into OpenAI acquiring Orchestra Bio, which builds agentic workflows that coordinate all the vendors behind getting a drug to market. The pod explains why every day a trial slips can cost a GLP-1 maker around $100M, why tech people overlook pharma (hi, Veeva), and how this fits into OpenAI’s push to deploy its own engineers inside enterprises. Would Orchestra Bio have gotten the pod’s check before the acquisition? Listen to find out why top-down selling in pharma is everything.00:00 Anika leaves the pod (sort of)00:24 Maya’s F1 weekend in Austin01:40 Nicki Minaj at a Trump rally02:22 Welcome and headlines04:01 Breaking down Anthropic’s S-111:51 Cloud marketplaces, AI spend, and bubble talk15:12 Token budgets and $6.6M revenue per employee17:34 AI finds PHP flaws and sites go dark23:25 Another cert disaster26:38 OpenAI buys Orchestra Bio29:49 Why pharma software is a goldmine34:52 Would Orchestra Bio get our check?If the Anthropic IPO has you wanting to call the market, you can trade on it on Kalshi. Sign up at kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck and get $10 when you trade using our code.Follow the pod on Instagram and X @getthecheckpod.

In this episode of Get the Check, the pod talks about everyone panicking over the market, Bumble going private for roughly a tenth of its peak valuation, and Modal hitting a $15.75B valuation. A really fun lineup, assuming you haven’t checked your portfolio…They start with the rumored “Black Monday” that thankfully didn’t pan out, but the underlying concerns go deeper than AI companies signing contracts with each other. The pod breaks down how higher energy prices feed into inflation and Treasury yields, making future borrowing more expensive for companies like CoreWeave. Its data center buildout depends on debt, so higher financing costs eat into margins, which makes the business riskier to lend to, which can push borrowing costs even higher (not the kind of flywheel you want). CoreWeave’s CEO points to $100B+ in contracted revenue, but delivering on those commitments requires more GPUs, more data centers, and more financing. Maya, Anika, and Priya get into what hedge funds buying insurance on CoreWeave’s debt are betting on, and whether another big model drop could turn the mood around.Next, the pod gets into Bumble’s $1.3B take-private deal by Ithaca Holdings and whether new ownership can make people excited about downloading Bumble again. The conversation covers Ithaca co-CEOs, former Meta executive John Hegeman and former Instacart COO and CFO Ravi Gupta, plus why Conviction backing this deal is an interesting departure from its usual AI bets. With paying users down 16%, the question is whether an AI concierge can fix the experience or whether the brand itself is the problem. The pod debates the advantage of an existing user base, whether ads could improve dating-app incentives, and a $10K success fee for finding love. Naturally, this comes with a few personal case studies because apparently SF has about seven single people (and two are on the podcast…).Finally, they cover Modal going from $60M in annualized revenue to over $1B as its valuation climbed from $1B to $15.75B. The pod explains why coding agents need sandboxes, why running 20 agents on small tasks can beat giving one agent 20 tasks, and why labs don’t want to pay for idle compute between reinforcement learning runs. They also get into Modal’s cold-start optimizations and why paying only for the compute you use can make more sense than reserving GPUs around the clock. Modal gets the pod’s check, and GTC helps recruit for them if you’re interested in joining.00:00 Maya and Priya hang out with Anika’s ex00:57 OpenAI’s spy drama03:39 101 episodes in and still scheming07:27 Why everyone’s portfolio is down09:31 CoreWeave’s debt is making everyone nervous17:36 Anthropic’s growth, neo clouds, and the private credit boom21:58 Bumble’s $1.3B reset37:01 Why Modal gets our check even at $15BIf reading the CoreWeave news makes you want to track compute markets you can on Kalshi. Sign up at kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck and get $10 when you trade using our code.Follow the pod on Instagram and X @getthecheckpod.

Nadya Okamoto has built an audience of more than 6 million followers, founded the period care company August, and spent over a decade turning social media audiences into real communities. Now she’s co-founder and CMO of Pie, the social app bringing online communities into real life. We sat down only 30 minutes after a bird pooped on her but in typical Nadya fashion she still made the podcast and filmed the whole experience, which you can find on her socials (@nadyaokamoto).Nadya originally joined Pie as a user. She started a run club in New York, wanted one place to manage its events and members, and became one of the app’s early power users. That eventually turned into a co-founder gig alongside Bonobos founder Andy Dunn…we wish our app addictions turned into co-founder offers!She tells the pod about starting the role weeks before her wedding, leading her to work from her honeymoon in Switzerland (TikTok was NOT happy about this). She also learned that employees need to tell someone before leaving the country. In her defense, it’s her first time ever having a boss.Nadya also explains why creators can bring early-stage companies both capital and distribution. She began writing $10K to $25K angel checks after raising for August. She talks about why equity, SAFEs, stock options, and advisor grants remain unnecessarily gatekept. She also shares what she’s building at Cherub to help more creators become investors.Finally, the pod talks hustle culture and capitalism. Nadya responds to criticism over working until 1 AM, explains why ambition often overrides her anxiety, and shares how she handles feedback from millions of people. She also discusses losing 8,000 followers after a Meta partnership, whether creators can authentically use AI while criticizing the industry, and why opting out of imperfect systems rarely changes them.00:00 Why Nadya posts every day01:34 From political organizing to content creation02:38 Building August and moving from CPG into tech04:20 Unconventional way Nadya became Pie’s co-founder05:42 Why creators should become angel investors08:20 The gatekeeping of startup equity11:38 Why the IRL economy is growing15:05 Nadya has a boss for the first time18:03 How she manages multiple companies and 6M followers20:05 Getting over the fear of posting online21:30 A bird poops on Nadya before the podcast??22:20 Compartmentalizing stress25:10 Hiring Pie’s marketing team27:15 Why influencing is viewed differently in New York and SF30:00 Using technology to fight the loneliness it helped create32:00 Pie is the matcha of social media??34:00 Capitalism, nonprofits, and changing systems from within38:05 Nadya responds to the hustle culture criticism45:25 Why TikTok hates AI46:15 Losing 8,000 followers after working with Meta

The first time Vivek ever flew internationally, he asked the flight attendant before takeoff, "This is going to San Francisco, right?" He was on his way to a 10-minute Y Combinator interview with PG, Sam, Jessica, Paul Buchheit, and Harj. His co-founder Hari couldn't come because his visa was denied. They got into YC, and started HackerRank which later became the template of how to hire engineering talent efficiently.Vivek started the company in 2010 as Interview Street, a mock interview service. The idea came from his time interviewing engineers at Amazon, where he saw that resumes didn't say much about skill. HackerRank went on to create the online assessment which every engineer has grown to know and well, hate. Now, in what Vivek calls a "refounding moment," they're tearing it down and rebuilding it to match how the job of an engineer has changed in the era of AI.Vivek walks through how tech interviews have always copied whoever the hottest company was. First it was Microsoft's "how many golf balls fit in a 747." Then Google's data structures and algorithms. Then Stripe's API integration rounds, which Maya had to grind through as a new grad in 2022. Now the job is orchestrating agents, so how do you tell a vibe coder from a real production engineer?Vivek's answer is Chakra, HackerRank's agentic interviewer. Candidates work on real-world problems with whatever frontier model and harness they want, and Chakra watches the process. Vivek's take is that anyone can produce an output with AI, so the signal is in how you got there.Chakra is now live and you can try it free at hackerrank.com/chakra.This episode is brought to you by Kalshi. Sign up at kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck and get $10 when you trade using our code GETTHECHECK.Follow the pod on Instagram and X @getthecheckpod.00:00 Meet Vivek, Founder of HackerRank02:15 From counting Golf Balls in a 747 to LeetCode05:55 Refounding HackerRank With Chakra08:56 Process vs. Output and why partial credit matters12:31 Who Adopted Online Assessments First14:20 Why Hiring Is a Lagging Indicator17:38 What Candidates Like About Chakra18:20 How to Remove the Incentive to Cheat22:44 The Three Ways People Cheat26:59 Why Hiring Is a Hard Problem and Build-Your-Own Is Overrated28:11 First Indian YC Company and a First International Flight

One of Sam Kececi's investors never got pitched by Sam. They found a link to his Sentience, talked to his digital twin over several days, and by the end the investor asked to write a check. Sam (the real version) just had to send the SAFE.Sam is the founder of Sentience, which builds digital twins of founders, operators, and execs that write, think, and communicate like them. Get the Check co-host Anika tried it over the last couple of weeks, and it actually writes exactly like her.Sam’s hot take is that AI does have taste. It's just one taste, and it's Claude's. Sam's mission comes from a Naval one-liner: no one can compete with you at being you. He can't out-dunk LeBron, but nobody can out-Sam Sam at building his company.They get into what converging on the mean has meant practically. Sam shares the YC startup idea that he’s pretty sure was just Claude slop.Anika also asks about their moat against Anthropic (as any good podcaster or investor does). Sam explains why writing likely isn’t key to unlocking RSI. In fact, if you’re “dumb” your Sentience would be too.They also discuss the technical evolution of agent memory and how to build a harness that remembers relevant context vs. all context. Sentience compresses older memories the way the brain does. And if you ask Sam’s Sentience to write you a poem, it should say "I'm good" instead of generating a haiku about digital twins. Anika also asks if down the line everyone will have their own model.Sam runs his company on his product: nearly every email goes one shot through Sentience, engineering standup is just Sentiences talking to each other, and candidates chat with his twin late into the night after interviews. He also floats a future where you pay to talk to someone's twin, Cameo style.Finally, a speed round where Anika asks about his favorite investor, what a post-AI high school should look like, and where he'd work if he weren't a founder.Sentience is hiring across engineering and growth and you can try it here: https://sentience.com/.This episode is brought to you by Kalshi. Sign up at kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck and get $10 when you trade using our code GETTHECHECK.Follow the pod on Instagram and X @getthecheckpod.00:00 What’s the difference between a personal assistant and a digital twin03:25 Wildest Sentience use case: it made someone invest in his company06:54 Is taste actually a moat, or will AI catch up08:36 The reason there are so many AI dentistry companies12:39 Would Sam follow an AI-generated Anika on X13:48 The answer to people who are anti-AI14:39 Is AI replacing human relationships17:31 Why is Anthropic bad at creative writing18:24 Will Sentience be a dumb product if you’re dumb20:42 Memory from a technical POV for AI assistants and digital twins23:05 AI’s emergent behavior is anthropological25:15 Why Sam doesn’t believe in engineering standups26:30 How to monetize consumer AI agents29:01 Sam’s favorite investor30:16 Are we all going to have our own models, or will agent harnesses be durable?33:12 Is the biggest business bottleneck compute34:14 If you could talk to one digital twin, who would you pick?36:00 What should a post-AI high school look like?37:50 Where would you work if you weren’t a founder39:37 What roles are they hiring for? DM us if you’re interested!

This week the pod covers one of the fastest companies ever to $1B ARR, the real reason Anthropic and OpenAI are delaying IPOs, and the data center company that started out mining Bitcoin.They start with Cognition. Devin the “first AI software engineer” launched in March 2024 and was a meme. Now there are ads around SF that say "Remember Devin. It's good now". Turns out the target audience just wasn’t in SF it was huge enterprises like Nvidia, Mercedes, the Army, the Navy, and Citi, which has 40,000 developers on the platform. One mystery customer is 10% of revenue and the pod has theories on who it is. Comeback of the century!Next, token economics. Anthropic dropped Opus 5.5, OpenAI dropped GPT-6 Sol and Luna, and both cut prices in half because nobody's paying for the fancy models anymore. Vercel's data shows Fable 5 lost two-thirds of its spend share in one month, and open source went from 7% to 56%. OpenAI pushed its IPO to 2027, Anthropic is rumored to follow, and the pod gets into what the labs will do now (hint: there’s a reason Anthropic just opened a wet lab). Maya predicts that in the future frontier coding spend is just talent spend — so lower growth rate companies will spend less.Then comes Crusoe, the story the pod had the most fun researching. Two high school best friends started it in 2018 by sticking data centers on oil wells to turn flared gas into Bitcoin, with a seed deck that said basically "we're a Bitcoin business, but we believe in this AI thing" before ChatGPT existed. They chase energy nobody else wants. In Abilene, Texas, there was so much wind power that prices went negative, so they said "we'll take free energy" and that's now OpenAI's 1.2 gigawatt Stargate campus. They sold the crypto business, raised a $3.9B Series F at $30.9B, and are now building data centers in factories and shipping them on trucks. The hosts also go into the data center backlash and why Americans hate data centers.00:00 Weekend recap02:40 Cognition hits $1B ARR faster than anyone06:38 The four eras of AI coding14:30 Anthropic and OpenAI cut token prices 50% and push their IPOs21:20 Why frontier coding spend is going to become talent spend23:27 Crusoe: from Bitcoin mining to a $30.9B Series F31:10 Why data center backlash is the one bipartisan issue33:33 The Boom Supersonic deal that fell apart, and does Crusoe get the checkThis episode is brought to you by Kalshi, where the pod is watching the odds on whether Anthropic IPOs this year or gets pushed to 2027. Sign up at kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck and get $10 when you trade using our code.

In this episode of Get the Check, the pod breaks down the three launches taking over the timeline: Jev, the new System 1 model from typesafe.ai, Muse, Meta's personal AI assistant, and Spec, Snapchat's big AR glasses keynote.They start with Jev, whose launch video pulled 36 million views on X. Founded by Diogo Almeida, one of the co-creators of ChatGPT, the pitch is a model that's 200x faster and 400x cheaper than a frontier LLM because it doesn't generate text at all — it makes decisions. Maya breaks down how it works under the hood, and why its sweet spot is high decision volume with bounded answers. The pod debates if trading bots will be a killer use case or purely hype. Priya explains how she used Jev to sort candidates in GTC's recruiting inbox.Next, the pod gets into Muse, Meta's Instinct competitor that hit 900K users in its first week. Priya's already sold because it connects to iMessage, which Instinct can't do. Anika is mid-switch after Instinct got slow, stopped being proactive, and can't even check out a cart anymore. The girls debate whether it's worse to hand your data to Meta or a startup — they end up agreeing tune in to hear what they pick. Meanwhile, Instinct is raising at a $10 billion valuation with around 100K active users. During the Sunday recording the hosts say they’re long Meta and woke up Monday to the stock up 11%.Then comes Spec. Maya watched the entire keynote and calls it objectively the best AR glasses out there, but she still wouldn't buy them. Snap popped 2% on the news but is still down about 93% over five years, and Evan's control of the company has kept activist investors locked out.Finally, the pod announces its SF Tech Week event with Brown Girl Angels on October 10th at the AngelList office, featuring Jaya Gupta of Foundation Capital, and Brown Girl Angels founder Bhargavi, with Anika moderating.Also, the pod ate dinner next to Taylor Swift?! Tune in for the full story.This episode is brought to you by Kalshi, whose market calibration data the pod literally cites mid-episode to explain how Jev might be trained. Sign up at kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck and get $10 when you trade using our code.Follow the pod on Instagram and X @getthecheckpod.00:00 Marc Benioff moggs at Dreamforce00:22 Why your husband should be ‘pre-economic’05:12 Jev is 200x faster and 400x cheaper than LLMs22:16 Muse vs Instinct: AI assistant wars29:42 Is Snapchat back with the Spec launch

In this episode of Get the Check, the pod breaks down the week AI safety took over the timeline: Dario's "We Must Pace the Frontier" essay, OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra, and Apple's foldable iPhone Duo.They start with the resignation tweet that hit 171 million views in six days, with Anthropic's own head of alignment publicly agreeing there's a 10% chance we're all dead within a decade uhhh what. The pod runs through every theory: regulatory capture, an IPO-timed cover story for businesses no longer paying frontier prices, and Anika's theory that the whole rollout, Dwarkesh essay included, was coordinated between Sam, Elon, and Dario. Next they debrief Dario's essay itself on RSI and his three step plan. The Nasdaq dropped 1.5% this morning on the news.Next, GPT-6 Astra: OpenAI's biggest training run ever, 98.6 on ARC-AGI 3, a 10,000-agent swarm taking a swing at Navier-Stokes, and computer use that's finally good. It's also the first OpenAI model classified as a critical cybersecurity capability, which has Maya wanting to change all her passwords. The pod agrees OpenAI is so back, and chat about ChatGPT trying to looksmaxx Anika during a glasses run in New York.Finally, Apple's September event: the $1,999 iPhone Duo arrives seven years after Samsung's foldable, in a market that only moves 20 million units a year, aka just one month of iPhone sales. Maya has been waiting years for this phone and now isn't sure she wants it. Classic Maya haha.Tune in to find out if the pod would give the Duo their check.This episode is brought to you by Kalshi, where the pod checks the odds on AI milestones and market swings in real time. Sign up at kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck and get $10 when you trade using our code.Follow the pod on Instagram and X @getthecheckpod.00:00 Debriefing NYC07:29 The AI researcher tweet that hit 171M views09:46 Does Anthropic have an incentive to over blow AI doomerism11:49 Why didn't Sundar and Zuck comment publicly13:05 Dario's essay on pacing the frontier17:06 Anika's hot take that the doomer takes were coordinated19:34 The China problem25:13 The nuclear weapons parallel26:15 Our take on how serious AI safety risks are26:41 Bernie's corporate death penalty for superintelligence27:58 The market reaction28:59 GPT-6 Astra29:22 Is it AGI31:28 Why AI's computer use was so bad for so long33:07 The startups Astra killed33:40 Astra and cybersecurity35:11 Astra on the benchmarks39:25 Loop transformers are more efficient but a safety risk40:24 Maya still loves Googling41:02 ChatGPT tries to looksmaxx Anika41:51 Apple's September event42:42 iPhone prices keep creeping up43:20 Maya wants a Duo (or does she??)46:13 How big is the foldable phone market actually48:01 Coding from your phone is here

Years ago Michelle Lim posted an essay about Marxism and startups. This year it landed Flint a Fortune 500 customer. This week Get the Check sat down with Michelle to talk about writing online as a founder, running a third of Robinhood's app at 19, joining Warp when the company was a slide deck, and of course scaling Flint.Maya and Anika get into how a founding engineer becomes a head of growth. Michelle ran Warp's launch back when nobody did launch videos, built the referral flows and lifecycle emails herself, and kept hiring until the board asked her to step into the role. Michelle’s experience at Warp turned into Flint, the first self-improving system for performance marketing: AI agents that run your ads and optimize your landing pages for you.The hosts also get into her startup hot takes like why you should reference check your manager and hold out for great hires even if it means moving your own office furniture.00:00 How many agents do you run at once?02:05 Singapore’s culture around careers04:01 The class at Yale that changed her life04:43 Learning to code in her 20s05:19 Interning at Slack and Robinhood when they were early07:12 Why Robinhood put a news feed in the app08:56 Meeting Ali Partovi changed her life10:13 Joining Warp off a slide deck16:34 Moving from eng to growth17:31 Making the first launch video on X (we think…pls don’t fact check this)20:28 Hiring social media creators at tech companies23:14 Hot take, developer marketing is the most valuable job in tech right now28:17 Reference check your manager29:28 Why Michelle still hires new grads when many of her friends don't30:30 The one resume tell that a candidate will be good30:59 What Flint does34:30 Landing a Fortune 10 customer41:09 Michelle's writing on Marxism45:19 How to get hired at FlintThis episode is brought to you by Kalshi, the prediction market where you can trade on the stories the pod covers every week. Sign up at kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck and get $10 when you trade using our code.Follow the pod on Instagram and X @getthecheckpod.