More or Less Podcast

Sam Lessin — Selected Quotes

what you're seeing, I think so much is explained by this because I think what you see is one, people can't find meaning because they've lost that easy access, right? Where they're the best in their local loop. And then two, the natural response, which is exactly what we're seeing is people go for weirder and weirder, neesher and neesher shit in an effort to reestablish a community in which case they can have meaningful purpose in place. So it's like very obvious, like what's happening. It's like, you get like Reddit is a good example. It's like,

— Sam Lessin, Episode #38: Hartz & Minds_66cc4b089d6d7a010022af1a

there's going to be an error rate. And if you're the person in front of all the services, it's your problem, right? It doesn't matter if someone makes an error downstream, a car doesn't show up, whatever, it's your problem, right? And so you have to be able in an economic position to pay for the errors, right? And if you're booking first class tickets, good luck, right? You know, and you know, you kind of go down the chain, but I just, I think that's thing people don't understand about these agents is, yeah, you could probably get it to like calendar for you. You there's some basic low risk digital tasks they can do.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 77

Can I share my favorite? So what I do, this is, we talked about this like two episodes ago because of mine. Well, I'm a super, I'm a super, uh, a log outer where I just delete the app when I've done posting. Um, but here's the funny part. Well, here's the really funny part, which I actually, deeply, I deeply appreciate, which is you talk about like optimization and great product management. Um, I do this, but they.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 71

I mean, this is all the negotiated stuff that actually is bad. Like I think that's a give you a mouse a cookie thing. I'm going to end in tears long -term, but I don't know right now we're in the, in the power gameplay.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 62

No, matters much. I actually think if you did, if you did the analysis, think if you did the analysis, I think if you, I would love to see someone do it.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 86

I, guys, I unfortunately, there's a few too many things going on in my life right now, but I 100 % would be into this challenge at some point in the next decade if we just set aside a year for maximum credentials.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 105

Well, yeah. So to that point, since Jess has done my job of being bullish on meta, which I actually legitimately deeply am, I think they're incredibly well positioned given just the history of the world. I'll do the other obvious one that is the company of the year. You ready? Twitter.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 78

Lots of people play and there's lots of reps to get good. Whereas the market for selling, mean, for years it was just hold for the IPO for your winners, never sell anything, don't sell Facebook and that's all that matters. But that's a load of horseshit. So.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 99

If you think about it, like you just walk into a crowded room and there's like thousand models, like, I don't know where to spend my time and who to spend, to chat with. Like, I do think there's like something going on around an identity problem and like reputation and that becoming more of like a who's using what and who's, yeah, obviously there's a bunch of people doing benchmarking and like trying to do this at like a very professional way, but I think there's something that is missing.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 100

we I think lived in a particularly interesting era, because the thing that we got to claim was the internet, right? Because of our age, we're like all the old people, they've been to the dot com bubble, they're like, we're like, the internet's kind of cool, we're not that in. And so we got to claim this thing that turned out to be like, unbelievably economically valuable, right? Just because of our age, right? We just were like born at the right time. And then what happened was a very important piece of this is like,

— Sam Lessin, Episode 60

Can I go back to, can I go back to the snark for one second and we'll move on, which is Google has not had a high performance culture.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 60

And like, look, I think, look, AI, look, AI is just Zerp 2.0, right? Meaning it's like, what do you do with tons and tons of cheap money? Right? This is like the last death knell of Zerp, where people are like, fuck, we need to stuff a bunch of cash somewhere, right? Ideally with downside protection, which is nice, because we're buying like fucking real estate and servers and power. So that seems somewhat downside protected with some upside, right? And like they look the the hawkers of AI have done a really good job selling that narrative. I just

— Sam Lessin, Episode 93

like the Death Star plans, stealing secret plans is clearly valuable. And I'm sure it's happening all the time. This like, I am actually curious as to what the value you're getting from like, yeah, exactly. It's like, what are you stealing? Like what, I guess the best you could do is like.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 91

Yeah, even worse. that's the part. I actually that's a funny. That's funny. The ultimate rebuttal is, is people being like part time founder mode is the way to go. Outsourced founder instead of an outsourced CFO is outsourced founder mode.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 63

Tiger Globo has done some great investing. Tiger Globo has done some terrible tech investing. But they've done some good tech investing and like on net probably works for them because it's asymmetric. Maybe.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 87

Well, so I was in the camp of saying sell, sell, sell, sell, as much as, and, um, didn't get, didn't get my way in most places in terms of sell, sell. I will say there is one interesting thing going on, which is I do think the cycle of, there was this thing of like the big money wins are coming. Right. And so I was like, cool. Like, we should like, hold on. Right. And like now I'm like, oh, fuck, this is not coming. So like, we're to have to take our licks and move on. This is from a lot of the offer funding of like.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 90

So I'm not saying there won't be some innovation around this, but I do think like either you just accept the fact that any startup is gonna launch it and version one will be the severed four doing the narrative severed floor thing with no connection to reality, which will always go like this. It's like a breaking wave no matter what. And then there's some residual that has some benefit to the startup from a financing perspective or that creates a floor with all these things.

— Sam Lessin, Episode #85 - Take 01_67a508fc24f2a63a2b06e1af

And just wait, just to be clear, I want to go back in the history of Apple and the whole relationship between design um and marketing, right? And product a little bit. No, no, no, no. I'm not, I'm not. I actually want to hear these guys talk about this. One of the interesting things about Apple, we talk about, it marketing or is it product is Apple is the rare tech company where marketing is super freaking powerful and way more powerful than like the product managers on teams, right? Like Apple is driven by the marketing department.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 127

So I don't think Elon, but here's the problem, Dave, with the Elon thing is Elon has no pull with the voters that matter in this, right? Because Elon's community, this is the thing about the right creators is Elon, those people are gonna probably vote for Trump anyway, right? The people that he speaks to, like the question is who do the cottage core suburban moms? That's probably more relevant. Probably, I don't know, but like.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 71

I am too much of a frady cat to short things. Even things that I wish I would. This is going to be my next evolution is I'm going to learn how to be an adult trader of the public markets.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 127

So I will say this first, observation one, $23 full meal, including a beer for me and my son. then the other day today I had a $6 .75 soft serve ice cream at a nondescript place on Cape Cod. And it me realize that inflation is highly localized because that $23 meal was unbelievable. So I think that's part of the confusion. That's insight one. Insight two, Maverick was asking me about the election and Donald Trump, he's five, we had a

— Sam Lessin, Episode 59

You know what it sounds like? It sounds like there's two versions of the world. a pre-Trumpian era, what you'd say is, actually, if you're in video, you kind of need one or two legit serious competitors, or you're to get antitrusted. And so you're like, okay, I actually want someone to fast follow me pretty closely so that I can point to them and be like, see, I'm not a monopoly. And so that would be the old way of thinking. I think the new way of thinking is they're like, I don't know, they need new marketing people.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 127

I will say in closing, terms of law stuff, I incepted on Twitter a few days ago. I was like, I really want people to build me an AI service where I can just sue people constantly, like small lawsuits, like my coffee was cold type stuff. And I was like, this is the perfect AI use case, right? Cause it's like, have to know how to draft it well. You got to know what court to submit it to. You got to figure out how to serve it. It's like all the things that AI is good at. It's

— Sam Lessin, Episode 115

Well, no, I'm saying, you should talk about, there's an interesting internet story to this that I think is worth actually exploring for a

— Sam Lessin, Episode 111

What it really is going to do is limit our willingness to interact with people we don't know or aren't vetted because you're just like, can't. Well, and just like, actually think the return of like this weird, um, like medieval style of living, right? Where like everything is about fiefdoms and like, relationships because you can't, you can't trust the unwashed masses, right? Like you can't interact in the open

— Sam Lessin, Episode 58

Well, well, no, but to that point, mean, like, Jess, that's a great point. Cause like, look, if you think about it, like AI, the current model of people building AI are a bunch of people like us, right? Who like hired a bunch of super young people and like raise a shitload of money. And then what we're building is like anti -loneliness technology. We're building like fake friends and all this shit, which is basically just Russian, more Russian bots, but like better ones. Right. And like, that's probably the wrong application.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 60

All right, guys, I gotta run. I gotta run because I have a meeting I'm late for, but I will certainly leave you with this, which is pretty funny, which is I just got an email about Emily Post. I think we have some big things afoot for Attic at School.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 125

so that we could translate far faster than if we had tried to hire people to do this content, right? Like if we had tried to hire...

— Sam Lessin, Episode 81

If you told me that ICE has a recruitment problem, which is like the message they have, the comp structure, like the appeal of who wants to do that job is a set of people where like, let's put it this way, you need to do a lot of training and screening. I believe that. And I think business executives can understand how that would play out. Right. And so the question for me is like, how do you take ICE or the mission and inject the right people into the culture and the community where they're doing their job, but they're not ending up in really bad places and situations.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 134

No, I just think it's like, it's a business that like, is very interesting, but it's just it's gonna be hard. And there's just a demonstration. It's kind of like you just demonstrate seriousness, all being in the same place, and willingness. Like, in some ways, there are things in life kind of like Chinese foot binding, where like, the value is the signaling, right, as much as anything else. And I do think there's just a signal to being like, yeah, we're five days a week in the office or more, you know, like that there's a important signal.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 86

Episodes