Niraj Kothawade

[Niraj Kothawade @TheRiverCard]

Speaking at @Queensland_AI on 6 May about why speech-to-speech APIs (Gemini Live, Realtime API) break down when voice AI needs to evaluate a human — not just chat with one.

The post-mortem: what broke when I tried the obvious architecture for MasterPrep, and why I rejected speech-to-speech in favour of a server-side orchestration pipeline.

If you're building voice AI for evaluation use cases, this might save you weeks.
Brisbane, free, hosted by @Queensland_AI 🇦🇺

https://t.co/Rzag2Ompwy

[Paul Graham @paulg]

The best predictor of success for tech companies, at every stage from during the YC batch to public company with billions in revenue, is the rate of shipping new stuff.

[Niraj Kothawade @TheRiverCard]

Miss Fable 5 so much

[Pauline Hanson 🇦🇺 @PaulineHansonOz]

One of the best ways to support families and new parents is income splitting.

Allow couples with at least 1 dependent child to file joint tax returns, significantly reducing their joint taxable income if one partner earns significantly more than the other.

[Niraj Kothawade @TheRiverCard]

@shreyas Linkedin sells gratification received by virtue signalling.

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

NEW: Anthropic says it is confident Mythos & Fable 5 will be restored “in the coming days” despite U.S. security restrictions.

[Naval @naval]

It's the Age of Builders.

(sorry financiers and talkers)

[No context Hazz ⛩ @HazzimIO]

No comments.

[Niraj Kothawade @TheRiverCard]

@lennysan @evanspiegel Even hardware may get commoditized. But physical devices, that can definitely be a moat.

[Niraj Kothawade @TheRiverCard]

Quiet here for a month. We were building. Today: video interviews are live on MasterPrep AI

500+ candidates have already completed one. Not a beta waitlist — real interviews.

Here's how it works:
-- Candidates take a full AI-led interview on their own time
-- Recruiters & hiring managers watch the recording later, with feedback alongside it

What I underestimated going in - a video interview platform is barely about the AI. The hard part is everything around it. Every interview runs as its own isolated process — audio captured, transcoded, and transcribed in real time while the model decides the next question on the fly. The candidate's video and the AI's voice get stitched back into a single recording a manager can replay. And every external call has a fallback, because the one thing you can't do to a candidate mid-interview is freeze on them.

All of it built as a PM, using Claude and agents — no engineering team. That part still surprises me more than anything.

If you're drowning in applicants and can't possibly interview them all, that's exactly the problem this solves. I'd love to show you how it works — DMs are open.

https://t.co/U4zu9V1aAD

[Niraj Kothawade @TheRiverCard]

@gregisenberg Amazing.

Is there a similar episode for B2B SMB ideas (mainly around distribution)?

[Niraj Kothawade @TheRiverCard]

First few hours and Fable 5 looks goooood

[Niraj Kothawade @TheRiverCard]

@reidhoffman It assumes people being asked also deep thinker on same subject.

[Niraj Kothawade @TheRiverCard]

@alojoh TLDR - what would be impact to TESLA shareholders? Net positive or negative?

[Niraj Kothawade @TheRiverCard]

@championswimmer Its probably less to do with founder mode, but wrong focus.

Airbnb's definition of user experience is limited to digital interactions. Real pain happens at physical interactions and relatively less efforts are put there to solve that.

[Niraj Kothawade @TheRiverCard]

@SpachusAus Rents went up massively during ZIRP and when there was negative gearing. So all the posturing of rent going up is greed and/or fear mongering.

Its all demand-supply.

[Niraj Kothawade @TheRiverCard]

If budget changes are restricted to residential properties and exclude other asset classes such as shares, ETFs etc, there will be significant population that will support changes.

[Niraj Kothawade @TheRiverCard]

💯 Tech startups just making noise, every small business is equally impacted

[christopher joye @cjoye]

The start-up and tech focus is BS - the budget hammers every single business and its employee owners. The incentive to work hard is being destroyed at all businesses in the name of Labor expanding the public service by 25% and paying for a government sector that is the largest share of the overall economy since WWII. It is highly regressive, stealth socialism. It is making once extraordinary Aussies very, very ordinary by global standards. We are rapidly going from world-class to cattle-class. From the Wonder Down Under to Asia’s Ibiza

[Niraj Kothawade @TheRiverCard]

@ryu_tay Cash grab

[Niraj Kothawade @TheRiverCard]

@cjoye This is stupidest thing any govt can do.

[Niraj Kothawade @TheRiverCard]

@MattyDontheGC @bowtiedstocks By law, they cannot until end of lease.

Lot of fear mongering