More or Less Podcast

Sam Lessin — Selected Quotes

what the hell it is. Like that's a creator, that's whatever. Turn it into structured data, you know, drop it into JSON blob, pull it into a database, extend it like with a bunch of extra research. So this is like a bunch of steps you do. And it's just kind of wild to me that like, in theory, this should be pretty straightforward to do. And it isn't that complicated to be clear, but the number of services I find myself setting up, it's like, okay, well, I'm using Cloudflare to like pull the email in and pushing it into, you know,

— Sam Lessin, Episode 100

Look, I think, honestly, I'm very pro... I mean, as a user, I've consistently used X since 2007, although admittedly when I was at Facebook, I didn't engage that much for a few years. But it's always been great. Um, I think Nikita's been doing a great job, and I think it's better now than it was before. I think the conversation's stronger there than it ever has been. It's also really funny. I mean, I also use Threads. I use Threads out of loyalty, and I will say that it's pretty funny.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 160

Sure. No, I think that is broadly, I think that's broadly sound logic and always has been. I think it's just more like clear and I think it's even more true now than it was before because like we just have very, there's no tolerance for like imprecision in this, right? Like it's kind of my view.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 115

Well, this guy emailed me. This is definitely getting paid for. This is actually very exciting, guys. I have a first ever on air ad. Someone wrote me back on my newsletter and had this whole thing and he said, Sam, I want to advertise on your podcast. So you ready? This is our ad. It's from getvictor.com.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 139

No, I don't need to. The Chinese take care of that for me with the Insta360. You do it in post. They have all the data. It's a fair trade.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 87

I'm not saying it's not happening. I agree, I just think it's all like, I mean, to me, this is why the image stuff is also boring or whatever. It's like, there are these fatty things, but like, it all just becomes black, because it's all just made up shit, right? Like, if anything, like, the use cases I find personal and interesting is reading all this shit and then distilling like the three things that matter out of it. Like, the letter meme thing I love.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 108

Yes, something is clearly really off. think something's clearly really off. mean, like, that's like, both things can be true at the same time, right? Like the, we're in like a major moment of disruption in like a bunch of different ways. And.

— Sam Lessin, Episode more_or_less_indian_wells_2026_03

I'm just picturing you Dave at this concert wearing Meta Ray Bands and your AirPod Pros in. You're just like covered in speaker.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 70

So, and for what it's worth, think he's trying to do both, right? But I actually, my actual answer would be a little bit different, which is not gonna be a popular answer, you would never actually do, which is, think that's the mistake, right? I think that's like, that's basically building onto infrastructure when like you're fundamentally mispositioned, you're putting like good equity after bad. I would actually do the opposite, which I'd be like, look, I'm one of the most famous people in the world, I've done a great job doing that, right?

— Sam Lessin, Episode 64

No, no, I got this. the point is, I think the real takeaway from this podcast is VC optimism, because everything's going to get cleaned up. Everyone's cleaning the cleaning house right now. It's a few years.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 61

I think the other thing to keep in mind though, which is like the new battleground is like everyone's just like a shiny object thing and like youth is the ultimate trump card to get people to care about things. And here's the reality, the new youth thing people care about is how like chat GPT is making kids kill themselves. And so people just moved on to the new battlefield, right? Which is like LLMs and like what they're telling people. And so I just also think there's like fatigue on like everyone's like this social media stuff is all shit and like brain rot. Let's argue about.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 117

Wait, before we do that, can I make one other ode to, to Waymo? Which is, here's the reason I like it, is the thing, I actually literally go to San Francisco more because of Waymo, right? Because-

— Sam Lessin, Episode 144

No, NOISE you know what it is? NOISE It is basically the polo of tennis. It's like if you needed a polo version of tennis that was more exclusive, you'd play padel.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 54

Well, it's, that I also think the healthy version of it in like capitalism is good world is it's just the cycle. It's like your home out competes your shitty office. So then your office has to get better. Right. And then you're like, cool. Now my office can outcompete. Like, oh shit. Now it's your home has to get better. And like people just ping pong generationally. And like, look, if you told me now, Hey, take out commuting. If you're like, Hey Sam, do you want to leave the pool house and go five minutes away by bicycle? I'm not going to go more than that. And there's like everything you need.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 59

In one hand, the social economy question, what's good content, people competing to create it. And the other hand, this idea that like the race to content, like high gloss content is important because I'm just not sure that it is.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 119

But this is also why like, don't like the whole thing is kind of fraught about being like, oh, like retail investors should invest in opening up because you're like, look, in the private markets, it's fucking cowboy time. Like a company company like, hey, you know, I know you own half my company, but I'd rather you own a third. You know, like I think that'd be better for me. I understand we signed a contract. I understand we did a

— Sam Lessin, Episode 104

in the places that I seem to be traveling. Well, I think, mean, what Dan and I were also talking about, is these are all, no measure is perfect, right? For anything, right? Like in terms of what you want, like there's a way you could drive a bunch of DPI and destroy a ton of value, right? If you just like sell out everything just to generate DPI, right? Or like you're wrong about that. Like you can be like pretty pissed about that. it's

— Sam Lessin, Episode 66

So Pavel, look, here's the lightning speed version. Pavel basically is a very interesting character, right? There's a positive narrative, if you believe in free speech, and there is a kind of weird narrative. The positive narrative is, Telegram and he has always had this very strong anti -content moderation, pro -freedom -of -speech type jam, and there is in particular in Russia,

— Sam Lessin, Episode 62

example of the two different communities like at scale. So I posted just being like socialism is like a mid-wit political theory, right? Like you have to be... Well, here's the thing. I like the mid-wit framework. That's a mid-wit framework. In X, hundreds of likes, like a few comments, whatever. This thing went viral on threads with people calling me like a billionaire cuck. And it was like wildly aggressive, right? And like...

— Sam Lessin, Episode 106

Right? It's like, might work for you, and if it does, it's a huge unlock. If it doesn't, it's fine. It's not for everyone, but like, it is a reasonable thing to question. Okay, you don't have to. I'm just saying, like...

— Sam Lessin, Episode 105

Right? Like that's just what it is. Right? Like that skill is no longer a thing. That doesn't mean you're a bad person. What I'm just saying is like, what's the most, what's the most visual... Well, that's actually, honestly, that's kind of the point, Jess, which is like, if it's too easy to make big boobs, then small boobs will become popular. Like if it's too easy... No, that's like how this works. If it's too easy, if it's too easy to like be skinny because of Ozempic,

— Sam Lessin, Episode 122

Right. Like, which means that there's going to be no margin in it for any of those players. Right. That's what I've seen, at least I do agree with you that there was a certain class of businesses that presuppose the non -existence of some of these tools and those guys are fucked. Right. And like anyone who comes in and patches a model that is, that's still like, that doesn't exist anymore when AI is 30 % better as a terrible investment, but that's just not, I mean, no smart operators. I think, I think people are smart enough to not do that at this point.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 47

That's true. Interestingly, we're not capturing... I haven't thought as much. I've thought about it as fandom, but I have thought about it very digitally. One of the beautiful parts about fandom is you can have these super fucking weird niches that almost no one cares about. But it turns out that on a global scale, the 1 % case is actually a huge community that can find each other and stitch together. That's very different than it being in person. In fact, I'd actually argue in some ways it's the opposite. Because the thing about virtual space...

— Sam Lessin, Episode 60

Well, look, when you have to, when your number one problem in life is how do you somehow hide like billions and tens and hundreds of billions of dollars of profit so the government doesn't get mad by investing in projects, like it's good.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 90

Yeah, I mean, actually think that the answer has to be full freedom of speech, but nothing's an autonomous, which is a whole other philosophical view of the future. like, the basic view is like the fact that the media, question is, the medium like air? Can you say whatever you want? And yeah, like someone should, you shouldn't do child porn. You want to have a law against it, raid my house. You know what I mean? Like you want to like build a case against me, but you can't just sit there in the middle and like argue that, well, I need to be able to listen to everything you're saying because you might say something bad.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 62

It was like an Elon Musk style overstatement of what was possible and all this crazy shit that was clearly not possible. Now they did launch a second version in ball. Anyway, it's a complicated story. And then on a personal level, it depends who you ask. There are plenty of people who really like Pavel. There are plenty of people who think he's super weird. And there's this whole story running around about how he's kind of donated his

— Sam Lessin, Episode 62

You know, we'd have to do is you have to make some sort of the steering wheel like some sort of necklace ornament for like MAGA people, you know, you wear Tesla steering wheels, sell them that like there's a lot of opportunities here.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 93

It's like, could you imagine like you go to the bank, the line's too long, sue. It's like salad. It's like a little overdressed, like sue. It's like if there was just a...

— Sam Lessin, Episode 115

But what else are they going to use? I mean, then you're back to like Wikipedia. I guess like, which by the way, it has its own incentive problems, right? Quora, no one, literally no one uses Quora.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 49

Yes, Dave and I had an excellent meeting. An excellent meeting. We had to disappear from the group to have a meeting. And then the meeting was a success.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 136

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