25 Jan 2026Davos 2026 Reactions, EU INC goes Mainstream, Nihilist Penguin, Ryanair Vs
Bar (Wonderful): Preempted $100M Series A & Founding Story
Bar, founder and CEO of Wonderful, introduces himself — previously founder/CEO of approve.com, founded 2019 and sold in 2021 — and recounts his $100M Series A, preempted by Index Ventures just months after the seed. He explains the founding story: after OpenAI's October 2024 real-time voice models, he and co-founder Rory built a Hebrew voice agent and quickly won pilots with Maccabi HMO and Bezeq, revealing that non-English voice support was unsolved while enterprises spent hundreds of millions on contact centers.
Wonderful's Global Sprint: 20 Sites, Hiring Bars & Guilds
Bar details Wonderful's expansion to 20 open sites — Israel, Greece, Romania, Italy, the Adriatics, UAE, Colombia, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the Nordics and France — moving at roughly a site a week out of belief that first-mover advantage cannot be overstated. He explains that retaining quality while scaling comes down to obsessive hiring and 'guilds,' where a head of each profession signs off on every hire and owns training and quality across all sites, targeting 40 sites by year end.
Palantirization, Anthropic & Why AI Pilots Fail
Reacting to A16Z's 'palantirization of everything' article, Bar argues the delivery-heavy model only works with an enormous TAM and work that is core to the enterprise, and says Wonderful moves agent knowledge in-house rather than charging success-based fees. He confirms Wonderful's agent builder uses Anthropic among other model providers but declines to give details. He then argues many failed enterprise AI pilots reflect a technology, product and delivery overlay that only recently came together, and that teams who failed are likely to be the first to succeed.
Lock In Penguin Video & Ad Breaks
After a Polymarket ad read, the hosts watch the viral 'lock in penguin' video of a penguin that left its colony and set off some 70km toward the mountains, calling it the best edit they have ever seen and quoting 'he who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.' The segment closes with an Airwallex sponsor read.
Jeff Morris Jr. on Getting a Win Early in Your Career
Jeff Morris Jr., founder and GP of Chapter One and former VP of Product at Tinder (employee 50 through its hypergrowth and top-grossing years), joins from Los Angeles. He breaks down his tweet that the people doing best from his cohort got a win early — defined as being a key member of an important company people respect — likening it to being drafted by the Patriots in the Tom Brady era or joining Uber in 2010 or Airbnb in 2012. He advises acting as 'the talent manager of your own career' and says a failed startup is best followed by a stint at a company like Stripe.