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Today in startups: ChatGPT’s learning to gossip, the cloud caught the flu, and a random neck pillow made $12K.
Somewhere between AI rants and therapy bots, Caya and Kevin are trying to make sense of it all in our weekly podcast. Good luck to them (and us).
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Six bullets of updates
🔍 OpenAI now shares user queries with Google and other sites, raising fresh privacy questions for 70% of AI-powered searches.
🛑 Cloud chaos as an outage cost companies $11B, sparking debate on cloud resilience with better orchestration.
🛒 New AI aims to automate shopping and save users up to 15% on purchases, thanks to Phia’s YC-backed founders.
💬 Creators can now review and filter replies before they go public, giving more control over conversations.
🛒 A forgotten neck pillow brought in $12K on Amazon in 2 weeks after revamping the pitch and product.
💌 YC to send W26 hopefuls an email this week, nudging them to push their ideas forward ahead of interviews.
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The Startup That Wants ChatGPT to Name-Drop You
Photo by: The Prompting Company
Google who? Shoppers are asking AI for gifts/deals; a holiday report forecasts a 520% traffic spike from chatbots in 2025 vs. 2024.
YC’s The Prompting Company is betting on GEO, pages/actions built for agents, not humans; and just raised $6.5M seed to scale. Customers include Rippling, Rho, Motion, Vapi, Fondo, Kernel, Traceloop; a Fortune 10 is live.
Playbook for brands: ship AI‑facing sites (clean markup, structured specs, price/inventory endpoints), expose purchase/returns APIs, and track model citations. As Agent2Agent frameworks and Stripe x OpenAI commerce mature, discovery collapses into checkout; expect budgets to tilt toward GEO while SEO becomes support. The moat moves to proprietary data and actions agents can reliably invoke.
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Podcast: Robots, Grokpedia & Therapy Bots Lose the Plot.
🎙️ This Week on the Slidebean Stand-up Podcast: Slidebean’s CEO Caya and comedian Kevin break down the week’s startup chaos with sharp takes, sarcasm, and zero corporate filters.
Watch our most recent live shoot: it’s equal parts news, therapy, and stand-up.
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Are Your IT Costs Scaling Too Fast?
IT costs scale fast without standards. Deel’s free IT Policy Template helps reduce unnecessary spend, enforce best practices, and support compliance globally. Download it now to take control of your IT operations.
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🌍 Local-only hiring loses; going global helps offset an 85M talent shortfall by 2030 and unlocks 24/7 ops.
🚀 Emergent Labs launches Vibecon to help builders secure a YC interview, a rare fast‑track from demo to decision.
🛍️ Graham brothers turned a post‑2008 gap into a $100M marketplace, connecting 2,000+ indie brands worldwide
Investor Data Room Checklist
An investor data room is a storage space, digital or physical, where companies store information relevant to due diligence. We've compiled a FREE Template/Checklist of all the items your data room should include and resources and tools for obtaining them.
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Debate Over AI Data Center Emissions Standards and Big Tech Influence
Photo by Geoffrey Moffett on Unsplash
Big Tech’s carbon math fight just spilled out of the group chat. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol advanced mandatory hourly matching for electricity emissions (think: time-and-place-aligned power), while sidelining an emissions-first method that leans on broader renewable credits. Cue accusations of bias, funding drama, and even a rival standard forming.
If hourly wins, expect tighter disclosure, pricier “24/7 CFE” contracts, region-aware workload placement, and new demand for granular energy orchestration and carbon-accounting tools. If the flexible approach survives, compliance stays easier but climate impact looks squishier. Either way, the rulebook that investors and policymakers reference is shifting, and AI data centers are the test case.
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WhatsApp Business Calls, Now in Synthflow
Billions of customers already use WhatsApp to reach businesses they trust. But here’s the gap: 65% still prefer voice for urgent issues, while 40% of calls go unanswered — costing $100–$200 in lost revenue each time. That’s trust and revenue walking out the door.
With Synthflow, Voice AI Agents can now answer WhatsApp calls directly, combining support, booking, routing, and follow-ups in one conversation.
It’s not just answering calls — it’s protecting revenue and trust where your customers already are.
One channel, zero missed calls.
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Startup Events and Deadlines
Crash Course in Financial Modeling l Nov 3 l Online
Crash Course on Startup Fundraising with Caya (Slidebean CEO) l Nov 17 l Online