The AI Tutor That Makes Kids Actually Think | E2298

**Jason Calacanis** (0:00)
A lot of VCs, behaving badly stories, trending all week. Matthew Prince from Cloudflare, I think started this all off. I keep presenting my Series A slides to an unconscious man in a Herman Miller chair. Oh, I was on the other side of the table raising money myself. I'll give you a couple stories. This other mother****** bags a friend of mine to give him the meeting. I'm finding out that the meeting's been canceled, that instead of just letting me pitch, you're so dumb that you would cancel on me when you knew I was flying up from Los Angeles. You're going to be the worst venture capitalist of all time.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:31)
This Week in Startups is brought to you by Shopify. Turn those what-ifs into sales with the e-commerce platform powering millions of businesses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com/twist.
LinkedIn. Thanks to our partners at LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com/twist, then promote it to get access to LinkedIn jobs new AI assistant and Northwest Registered Agent. Get more when you start your business with Northwest. In 10 clicks in 10 minutes, you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity. Learn more at northwestregisteredagent.com/twist.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:09)
All right, everybody, welcome back to Twist This Week in Startups for June 8th, 2026 Got a big doc today. There's a bit in the news. A lot of VCs, behaving badly stories, trending all week on Twitter. I'm going to get into that at the end of the show when I go off duty and talk about the social media buzz.
And today, I have two amazing guests. One, an old friend and an incredible entrepreneur who has, gosh, been running an incredible company called brilliant.org. We'll get into that. And before I do anything, I like to just take my plod. I turn it on. Boom. I press it. A little haptic. Now I'm recording everything I say. And I can take notes. I can say, hey, action item, catch up with Lon about the launch of this new This Week in Show we're doing. Let's make a strategy session. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, ABCD.
I do that when I'm rucking. That's like a hike with weights or I'm skiing around the mountains. And it's just been amazing. Even when I'm in the airport.
This product, plod, has got millions of users now. It is the perfect product. When you get home and you're on your desk, you just plug it in. It syncs. And now you've got all your notes. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. It'll make a mind map for you, a template. All the great ways to just summarize information and then use it and never lose one of your great ideas or one of your to-do list items. You never have to take your phone out of your pocket. That's the best part. You're just ambiently recording stuff. And you know me. I was like, hey, I don't know if I want this stuff in my life. You know what? Everybody's doing it. Everybody's recording everything. Everybody's making summaries out of everything. So the horse has left the barn. This technology is here. Everybody's using it. So I have to adopt and adapt. And I've adopted Plaud. If you would like to get on the Plaud train with me, hey, very simple, go to plaud.ai/twist, plaud.ai/twist, you'll get 10% off. I am so excited to have Sue Khim, the CEO and co-founder of Brilliant, back on the program. She's been on this program. Gosh, she's got to be in the five-timer club. She's an incredible founder. I met her when she launched a little company called Alltuition. Alltuition? I think that was the name. Then she pivoted it to something called brilliant.org. My bestie, Chamath and I have been investors in the company for over a decade and they are crushing it. Welcome back to This Week in Startups, Sue Khim.

**Sue Khim** (3:36)
Hey, Jason. You're so famous now.

**Jason Calacanis** (3:38)
I know. I was like micro famous and then now I'm like somewhere between micro and whatever the next level of podcast famous. But it is true. I go through an airport or I go to a next game and people want to take a selfie.

**Sue Khim** (3:51)
It's number one podcast.

**Jason Calacanis** (3:52)
I mean, it's kind of weird. We're manifesting here, but you're on the OG podcast, This Week in Startups. Was it Alltuition? Was that the original name?

**Sue Khim** (3:59)
Yeah, Alltuition was the original name. Three nerdy kids out of Chicago trying to fix student loans.

**Jason Calacanis** (4:06)
That was like 12 years ago, I think. I think my first investment is when I was a Sequoia Scout, so it had to be 12 years ago before I had a fund. It was a great idea. What was the original idea for Alltuition?