The Twin Project

Episode #159: After 17 years in private equity, Eric Bidinger switched sides of the table and became a founder.

And building companies turned out to be very different from analyzing them.

In this episode, we sit down with Eric, founder of Ask Luca, to talk about the role luck really plays in business, how entrepreneurs can increase their "luck surface area," and what years in private equity taught him — and failed to teach him — about actually building a company.

We also dive into the current AI boom: why Eric believes many of the flashiest AI use cases are overhyped, why some of the most boring applications are creating the most value, and how AI could eventually understand a business well enough to underwrite it better than a traditional bank.

We get into:

• Why great operators can still lose in bad markets
• AI hype vs. AI reality
• The boring AI applications that actually work
• Using AI to understand cash flow and business performance
• Why Ask Luca is moving toward business financing
• What private equity may be getting wrong about AI roll-ups
• Why clean data matters more than sophisticated AI
• Increasing your luck surface area
• Handling the extreme highs and lows of entrepreneurship
• Why Eric is proud he chose something hard

A conversation about AI, investing, entrepreneurship, luck, and what changes when you stop analyzing businesses and actually have to build one.

The Twin Project with Lucas & Marc.

Episode #158: If anyone can build an app, what happens to SaaS?

Melker Pasternak Ivarsson joins us to discuss what happens when AI makes software dramatically cheaper and easier to create.

We explore whether SaaS is actually dying, the rise of micro SaaS and one-person companies, and the three business moats Melker believes AI cannot easily reproduce: network effects, proprietary data and licenses or IP.

We also get into why the traditional hierarchical company might be badly structured for the AI era.

Melker explains Haier's “zero distance” model, where a huge organization operates more like a collection of autonomous startups, and we compare it with the flatter structures used by companies like Valve and Spotify.

We talk about AI implementation inside existing companies, why frontline employees often have better AI ideas than management, why bureaucracy can kill innovation and what happens when employees can suddenly build their own internal software.

Melker also explains what he's building with Ordana, why startup collaborations could become increasingly important as software markets fragment, and how one integration generated a 32% conversion rate before dropping when it began to look like a traditional affiliate offer.

Later, we get into founder psychology, obsession, failure, why people spend too much time preparing instead of starting and why entrepreneurship is mostly about sucking slightly less each time you try.

#AI #SaaS #Startups #Entrepreneurship #FutureOfWork

Episode #157: Why do we self-sabotage even when we know exactly what we should be doing?

Jenifer Merifield joins us to unpack the psychology behind self-sabotage, procrastination, identity and behaviour change.

We explore how your subconscious and nervous system can influence decisions before your conscious mind gets involved, why stepping outside your comfort zone can feel “wrong,” how childhood experiences and your environment shape your perception of the world, and how to tell the difference between genuine intuition and simple unfamiliarity.

Jenifer also explains why information alone rarely changes us, why becoming a different version of yourself may need to come before achieving different results, and why the other side of discomfort is often freedom.

We also somehow end up talking about identical twins, raisins, eating frogs, cold calling, “Can we talk?”, AI wombs and a few other places we definitely didn't expect the conversation to go.

Jenifer Merifield is an Excellence Mentor and Master Integration Coach and the creator of the Extraordinary Life Process™ and Extraordinary Edge Collective™.

#SelfSabotage #Psychology #Mindset #PersonalDevelopment

Episode #156: Adam Spector is back six months after our first conversation, so we decided to check which of his AI predictions actually came true.

We talk about why AI may make the best workers of the future look more like managers than specialists, with individuals potentially coordinating dozens of digital workers simultaneously.

Adam explains why generalists could become increasingly valuable, why AI is making creation dramatically cheaper while verification becomes more important, and why many software businesses could become increasingly difficult to defend.

We also explore one of the most interesting second-order effects of the AI boom: what happens if more and more of the world's capital starts flowing toward compute?

If companies like Meta, Anthropic and OpenAI can generate enormous returns from additional computing power, they may be willing to pay more for capital than homeowners, businesses and even governments — potentially reshaping the entire economy.

Then we get into the AI race itself: systems breaking out of intended constraints, why companies struggle to slow down even when they believe the technology is dangerous, AI regulation, job displacement, robotics, self-driving cars and whether society is actually prepared for what's coming.

We also discuss Chore, managing AI agents, Cursor, China, hardware startups, Waymo, Wispr Flow, venture capital, longevity and Adam's predictions for the next six to twelve months.

Adam Spector is a four-time founder, founder of Chore and an investor in more than 200 startups.

#AI #FutureOfWork #AIAgents #Startups #Technology

In this episode, we sit down with William Morgan, founder and CEO of Buoyant, to talk about how he turned Linkerd into a successful open source business and what it takes to build infrastructure for the next wave of AI. We cover the Twitter chaos that inspired Linkerd, why Rust was the right choice for a mission-critical system, and how Buoyant figured out the hard way which features companies will actually pay for.We also get into the future of AI infrastructure, including why running models inside company environments matters, how enterprises think about compliance and control, and what changes are coming as GPU costs shift. If you’re interested in open source, Kubernetes, AI infrastructure, or founder lessons from the trenches, this one is packed with insights.

#aiinfrastructure #opensource #buoyant #ai

Episode #154: Cory Blumenfeld has built five companies across industries he did not know going in, from driveway repair to healthtech, fintech, outsourcing, customer success, and LinkedIn personal branding.

He exited CoHealth to ACTO, co founded Caribou, raised over $3M, and now runs BlueMoso and Linked Agency remotely from Playa del Carmen.

In this episode, we talk about the big mistake many founders are making right now: thinking AI means they do not need a team.

Cory explains why AI can make founders faster, but also turns them into the bottleneck even quicker once traction hits. We discuss what founders should delegate first, how to build with virtual assistants, why outsourcing often fails, and why the real challenge is not operational. It is emotional.

We also cover founder ego, remote teams, personal brand, LinkedIn ghostwriting, building in unfamiliar industries, and what it actually means to build a company that does not depend on you doing everything yourself.

#AI #Startups #Entrepreneurship #Outsourcing #Delegation #FounderLife #RemoteTeams #BusinessPodcast #NFtwins

In this episode (153), the twins talk to Amanda Sima. Amanda Saima is a serial founder, inventor, and entrepreneur who has built businesses in collegiate apparel, consumer products, and now media.

In this episode, Amanda shares how a vintage Ohio State sweater inspired her first company, how she got into the complex world of collegiate licensing, and what she learned from sourcing products internationally.

Then the conversation turns into a full founder thriller: Amanda explains how she created a patented disposable kids’ cup lid, why she believed it could be a billion-dollar idea, and how a major corporation allegedly copied it after she shared the concept with a manufacturer.

We talk about patents, copycats, lawsuits, founder resilience, and why entrepreneurs have to turn pain into progress.

#founderstory #startup #patents

Most founders love building. Fewer love selling. And according to Vasyl “Vince” Soloshchuk, that’s exactly where many startups go wrong.

In this episode, we talk about why rejection is one of the most valuable forms of startup data, why founders need to talk to customers earlier, and why traction beats a smart-sounding idea every time.

We also dive into FinTech, AI, distribution, data infrastructure, investor red flags, burn rate mistakes, and why execution matters more than vision.

A practical episode for founders, operators, and anyone trying to build something real instead of just building something impressive-looking.

In this episode, we talk with Todd Persen, CTO of Hydrolix, about the invisible infrastructure behind modern software, AI systems, and the internet.

We break down what observability actually means, why startups should care about it earlier than they think, and how AI agents may soon rely on logs and telemetry to detect bugs, fix systems, and monitor infrastructure in real time.

We also get into massive data scale, the future of bot traffic, agentic commerce, software architecture, and why the real challenge in technology is often not just code, but getting people to work well together.

This is a fascinating conversation about AI, engineering, startups, and the systems quietly powering the digital world.

Why do most entrepreneurs fail?

In this episode, we talk with Mike Foster about what actually drives success in business.

We break down why execution matters more than ideas, why chasing revenue is often a mistake, and how most founders misunderstand pricing, margins, and growth.

Mike shares lessons from over a decade of coaching entrepreneurs, including how to:

• build better teams

• avoid bad clients

• improve decision making

• and define success on your own terms

We also explore mindset, resilience, hiring, AI, and the real psychology behind entrepreneurship.

If you want to build a business that actually works, this episode is for you.