Sam Lessin is a founding partner at Slow Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital firm with $770M+ in assets under management and 550+ portfolio companies. Before Slow, Sam was VP of Product at Facebook and founded two companies: Drop.io (acquired by Facebook) and Fin.
AI Is Not a Labor Crisis. It Is a Meaning Crisis. "Civilizations are not mainly threatened by discomfort; they are threatened by superfluity" People are worried about all sorts of things when it comes to AI… killer robots / AGI deciding to dispose of humanity (on purpose or by accident), a modern Tower of Babel where AI makes it impossible to know truth or coordinate, etc… But what people are n...
More or Less - Twitter Was Elon’s Ultimate Vibe Buy & Holy SpaceX The world is moving so fast this big news feels already old… but we break down more Elon world… The ‘vibe buy’ of X (remember when he tried to back out) as a HUGELY positive move for shaping the narrative through the elites & degens on twitter (not the biggest, but the most powerful) — it is great to have infinite lives in the narr...
More or Less — Have Secret or Own Narrative Jess is in Davos… we are left behind with the riffraff… fun conversation around Clawdbot, Ralph — mercenary AI ‘founders’ … I was personally interested in some of the conversation we got into re: how to support hardware businesses in a world where your 8-sleep or Whoop can’t make money on the software / let alone John Deere. Hot Takes Be Retarded to...
More or Less — Predictions for 2026 We grade ourselves on our 2025 predictions and talk 2026… upshot — we did ‘ok’ on 2025, on 2026 we have a few you can actually hold us accountable for & a bunch you probably can’t. 2025 Predictions: Bitcoin Price, Solana ETFs, Crypto Regulation, Amazon Marketplace, Elon’s “TITS,” Swift Engagement, Data Centers, Material Flow Robotics, Crypto… TikTok U.S., Ver...
More or Less — Code Red Realities We start non-Ai with an ode to Daniel Lurie’s social media game (excellent…) — and then go deep discussing OpenAI ‘code red’ realities… When the leader says ‘hard left’ but then can only shake free 5 engineers, how hard it is to hard pivot a bunch of expensive designers, PMs, and engineers off of the mandates you sold them to come work on, etc. Also can founder l...
WEEKLY More or Less - Long Google, People Don’t Like AI This week on MOL the topic was basically how bad a public markets trader I am… for a while now I have been very publicly saying that while Meta is the safest long-term AI bet (all ads upside, no risk surface)… I wished I owned a bunch of google stock. Well… this is the week my lack of publics trading prowess / balls really hurts — cuz GOOG ...
More or Less - Reflections from Etiquette School This week we at slow ventures hosted our first ever etiquette finishing school for YC founders in the Four Seasons in SF — The rare business formal event in SF — We had fifty people in attendance and a long long wait list we couldn’t fulfill (next time bigger room). There was some good fun — how to dress with several models showing off different lo...
Orizaba Climb & Reflections This week Aaron, Dan and I went to Mexico to climb Orizaba — the third highest peak in North America at 18,500. Great food, great adventure, beautiful. 18K+ when you have been at sea level for months is pretty brutal to hot lap but worth it. Apparently Orizaba has become a pretty popular weekend hot-lap from Mexico City … which honestly sounds crazy given that it is le...
A double header after a week off in Paris being fancy with my wife and celebrating friends… because we all know no one does work in Paris. More or Less: AI Wars of Attrition A $170B Anthropic… what does it mean for the public market to be locked out of investing in these crazy companies (and it would be super communist to force companies to go public at a certain valuation)?… the ‘right call’ o...
More or Less :: Top?Hit the breaks, they fly right by... now that the whole More or Less team is calling top-of-hype-cycle into AI trough of server-melting computer-v-computer SLOP... it is time for me to be the contrarian optimist. Sure the AI AGI mania is that, mania -- but people need something to be manic about or this whole house of cards starts to look really shaky. We can only bully rate c...
More or Less :: “You Know Who Would Love to Hear About This? Our Mutual Good Friend ChatGPT” You know when that one friend starts telling you a long and boring story… and you say ‘you know, bill would LOVE to hear this to get yourself out of listening” — as the AI business model wars ramps up (google rips on the quarter, OAI re-opens their round, etc.) — we talk about how hilarious it would be if ...
The Launch of TITVI joked on Monday it was like watching the crazy one-shot movie Saturday Night … about getting SNL on air… and it turned out to basically be that this week! Day one technical issues made for a wild ride, but proud of Jess and team for what they have accomplished here… Jessica’s Interview with Mark was Great… and I did a little first song and dance on Thursday — it has been fun t...
More or Less Pod: Creators / Creator Businesses & AI Hardware ( https://moreorlesspod.com/ ) conversation is about the future of creator businesses — some thinking on how Slow is investing in people, how AI extends the bounds of what creators can ‘build’ trust, etc. Riffing on AI hardware forms. Also fun that I am doing a proton-modified fast, sitting, hitting ketones and on beta-blockers post a ...
More or Less - The Ruck Rock & Why OpenAI should buy Snap ( https://moreorlesspod.com/ ) I had fun pitching the gang on buying founders edition of my Ruck Rock (by Chiseled) ( http://theruckrock.com/ ) … and before OpenAI tries to build a social network for proprietary data (which all these bots need to matter long-term / if they do) … they really should just buy Snap ( https://x.com/lessin/status...
The State of VC in 2025 (an updated opus) ( https://x.com/lessin/status/1914450043425427506 ) In 2023 I did this version -- updated (finally) 2 years later. The biggest points / TLDR is here -- but the really really short version is that the capital 'factory' model of VC is broken forever, ‘zombicorns’ abound, there is no longer one capital market, there are several that operate independently wi...
More or Less: Spies (and Wiz) ( https://moreorlesspod.com/ ) This Deel / Rippling spies situation is so so so fun…. On the pod we discuss the state of corporate espionage ... from stealing tech the old fashioned way (back to Americans lifting power-loom IP from the British sewn into suitcases), to stealing customer info in the low-differentiation world of SaaS. We are bummed that Ripple didn’t tu...
More or Less: Betting on Space (Literally) ( https://moreorlesspod.com/ ) In which Brit and Sam make a $1M bet about whether a human will have set foot on the surface of Mars by 2040 (guess which side of the bet I am on)… and I say that as someone who invested in SpaceX, thinks that is the good Elon company — so, one way to read this? Brit just funded a nice hedge for me on my SpaceX position :),...
More or Less: Elon’s $97B Bid & More on Memes ( https://moreorlesspod.com/ ) We discuss Elon’s $97B bid for the OpenAI nonprofit and the Altman clap-backs as cultural moments / new style all out lols-warfare… some thoughts on how broken google maps is, and some discussion of slow creator fund 1 $64M - Slow Creator Fund I ( https://x.com/lessin/status/1889819849532272645 ) We announced our first ...
More or Less ( https://moreorlesspod.com/ ) Deepseek madness shows even more how ‘meme’ dominated investing is… (and how hilarious it is for ai companies to be mad about ‘distillation’ after distilling the entire web)… We also go further exploring how memes with liabilities in the real world and competition are highly volatile (vs. pure ‘messianic’ memes outside of reality) Some Other Hot Takes: ...
More or Less ( https://moreorlesspod.com/ ) Our first episode of 2025. We discuss CES, the Meta changes to content moderation (of course), Florence Marine and Landman. Some Other Hot Takes: * Personal 2024 Wrap Up and 2025 Gameplan ( https://x.com/lessin/status/1870878441547149753 ) — I feel pretty good about the green checks on 2024 goals… 2025 here we come. Glad folks liked the format… here we...
More or Less ( https://moreorlesspod.com/ ) Listen in for hot takes / debates on (1) Sora won’t help creators, just another war-of-attrition tool for attention (2) AI digital drugs (3) Lessons from Fin (artificial artificial intelligence from a decade ago) about the economics of agents / why the real dream of real world actions on your behalf won’t happen for business model reasons. Some Other Ho...
More or Less ( https://moreorlesspod.com/ ) with Aaron Levie… on AI, Crypto, and Politics… Aaron is one of the great internet shit-posters and I had particular fun having him on MoL — he is great to bullshit with. This one is actually the rare podcast worth a 1x speed listen — The big debate really is if AI is massively deflationary / crushes the value of software businesses (my bet) or a huge pro...
More or Less ( https://moreorlesspod.com/ ): Winding Down Forward Health with Adrian Aoun — I missed this MOL because I was in NYC for Slow’s AGM, but our friend Adrian joined to talk about the Forward Health journey.. and ‘big shots on goal’ — personally I am in the camp of deeply deeply appreciating the US in general and SF specifically, where you can take $400M dollar shots on goal and miss… an...
More or Less ( https://moreorlesspod.com/ ): The World Between Catching Flying Skyscrapers with Toothpicks and Borderline Security Fraud — What an Elon Week. This week we go back and forth on how to emotionally and practically deal with a guy representing innovation & US tech who simultaneously delivers space internet and catches flying buildings with toothpicks, but also has no problem running an...
More or Less ( https://moreorlesspod.com/ ): Google Antitrust, and is AI really like Biotech investing? — I was at a secret conference and missed this week’s more or less… but listing to it my take away is that perhaps if I say less, then my co-hosts will be more ‘less-es’ than ‘mores’ ??… great conversation with Jess, Brit, and Dave about google breakup path & the realities of ‘who knows’ when it...
More or Less ( https://moreorlesspod.com/ ): OpenAI 'VC' monster money (but big tech co chump change), Apple, Japan, and VCs congratulating themselves — We talk about this OpenAI bananas fundraise (because how could we not)… and run through a variety of arguments about if Japan is cool or not, if Apple intelligence / AI matters, and several notes on the pop-culture corner including the fact that o...
Things I spent time thinking about this week / talking about: More or Less ( https://linktr.ee/moreorlesspod ): Pavel & Telegram - WTF…. The story here is that in 2024 no matter how strong or principled a person you are, if you are human you aren’t strong enough to fight the state(s) — if you want to talk a game of privacy and security you better be able to technically back it up (encrypt and thr...
What a beautiful business... zero venture capital, most successful creator platform by a mile ... https://t.co/eDyEkT4mZJ
September 08, 2024 · 3726 likes · link
Required Reading for All VC Jobs — You Will Fail at Capitalism if You Haven’t Digested This Media https://t.co/5ehBL1L95c
March 21, 2025 · 2307 likes · link
What happens to Seed Investing in Next 18 Months… https://t.co/HA1NX1fxij
May 23, 2022 · 1974 likes · link
The Fundamental Rationality of Young People Engaged in Yolo Capitalism - if you can’t earn your way into ‘the good life’ you might as well put it all on black… https://t.co/hgqBFQVOVn
December 19, 2022 · 1954 likes · link
It is nearly impossible to convince a VC of a thesis they don’t already believe, so the key in fundraising is to ‘discover’ the right partners, not try to educate and convince… https://t.co/t91w1Y1pPQ
August 05, 2022 · 1780 likes · link
The state of VC in 2023. Where we are, where we are going, and where to invest - here is the whole thing... https://t.co/dux39L3ODH https://t.co/SWs7rCa1sB
October 16, 2023 · 1376 likes · link
I have to say, I can't find a single 'web 3' company that @balajis is not listed as an angel investor in... and I have been looking.
November 11, 2021 · 1346 likes · link
Proud to have made the list someone made of pro-Israel VCs to "boycott" lol - one of the best list of investors i have seen... https://t.co/6AXA2w4BIV
October 28, 2023 · 1293 likes · link
Seed investing isn't coming back... at least not as it existed in the last decade. https://t.co/GeiVvk4cP2
July 26, 2023 · 1148 likes · link
The investing behaviors of young ‘degens’ is far less irrational than you might think… (and why It matters in 2025) https://t.co/rZE70ZV5Tz
January 04, 2025 · 1112 likes · link
Getting fined by San Francisco for not removing crack head graffiti on our office door is the most on brand slow ventures thing ever. I love it... and guess what, we aren't gonna pay it just to see what happens... ;) https://t.co/FHrNHHwuAj
August 27, 2024 · 1093 likes · link
I am legit curious what will happen to tech culture if this LK-99 thing plays out and the entire GPU supply pivots to be only focused on fusion power plants, space rail guns, and batteries instead of whatever stupid applications startups are working on now.
August 03, 2023 · 1068 likes · link
Is @elonmusk's relationship with twitter that different than tesla in his own mind? sure he owns more of tesla (17% vs 9%) but not dramatically. in both cases he comes in non-founder investor, & then leads by making a bunch of product oriented claims on the internet ;)
April 10, 2022 · 1029 likes · link
Why you should be ‘default out’ on investing in ‘Generative AI’ companies for the next few years. https://t.co/FhFlJjLefZ
October 24, 2022 · 995 likes · link
1/ People who believe in 'citizen journalism' fundamentally don't understand is that the 'cost' of real information is very high. Finding new facts, and validating their truth, and carrying liability is structurally much more costly than citizens can afford alone.
July 10, 2020 · 995 likes · link
Lake Tahoe the new capital of venture capital.
October 14, 2020 · 987 likes · link
We need to stop calling financing all software startups ‘venture capital’ when it is just plain old ‘private equity’... https://t.co/FTMybu2xf3
June 14, 2021 · 941 likes · link
The Truly Best Seed Investments Never Raise a ‘Series-A’ https://t.co/j6Rmm5FRTU
October 04, 2023 · 840 likes · link
The state of VC in 2025. Where we are, where we are going, and where to invest ... https://t.co/NvOOYzeEpG https://t.co/cbXha8w19L
April 21, 2025 · 787 likes · link
You Should Always Fund Revenge Companies… https://t.co/bZfodr7P8Z
November 23, 2024 · 661 likes · link
Getting the most out of your seed stage investors…. https://t.co/tP7qQsGDJZ
April 11, 2022 · 640 likes · link
Always Tell Investors Exactly Why They Shouldn’t Invest In Your Company… https://t.co/QYfxHaffPd
January 14, 2021 · 586 likes · link
Too expensive or too cheap - why AI continues to reveal itself as a terrible VC bet https://t.co/ZpGTmMDvcX
May 23, 2023 · 585 likes · link
The Index Fund Cult / Self Fulfilling Prophecy…. If you are in to ETFs, you too are a meme investor…. https://t.co/pWcPNcaQ7F
January 05, 2025 · 536 likes · link
This is why the public market doesn't trust VC backed IPOs anymore... a whole generation of dumping trash to public market and keeping the best companies forever private. Some serious lorax s** right here https://t.co/hiUZmv3unB
September 30, 2023 · 534 likes · link