More or Less: Spies (and Wiz)
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 turn the Deel spy into a double agent, but props to the GC on an epic honey pot. And shoutout to The Information for featuring centrally in how this played out!…
Hot Takes:
- Where is the AI for corporate spies? Another great use of 101 billboard…. As a funny aside to this — the content moderators at the billboard company has started trying to censor us. I can’t believe the outdoor advertising platforms would have the balls to try to limit our free speech in 2025 :) / they must have missed the memo.
- Solana Ad Imbroglio — this was another great hilarious moment on the week (deleted ad here)— wherein someone at Solana completely failed to understand the PR moment / putting super right wing words in exactly the wrong overly polished inauthentic packaging…. this was real egg on someone’s face… but also quite funny, and I would say Toly and team Solana handled well in the end.
- Theme and Team is All That Matters — I have been thinking a lot about what I actually care about / what actually matters in seed investing — and I keep coming back to all that matters is the ‘theme’ someone is working on being actually important AND that the team needs to be sick. Too often when I look at mistakes in seed, it is because the business is overly clever / tempting because it is so ‘smart’ but fundamentally the operators / team just isn’t good enough (the opposite also happens when great people work on things that don’t matter) - but I am really back to a point of KISS — great people, important themes (and cheap price of course) and I am sold — the rest is just commentary.
- Memetic Finance —— I gave a talk a few weeks ago about evolutions in crypto in the last decade, focused on the mainstreamification of crypto and the memeification of finance — here is a sanitized version for broader consumption.
- Required VC Reading — we had a terrible revelation this week … associates at slow had not seen the TV show Silicon Valley and turn out to have major educational gaps… we talked to our large stuffed compliance bear and realized we can’t fire them for their educational shortcomings — but they now have a required media list …
- Build Economies not Technology - technology isn’t longterm edge — best case it can shuffle some cards / opens some new opportunities… but code is commodity — and once someone runs a 4 min mile everyone can — the value is building and owning economies.
- Go Columbia — very happy to see Columbia move in a good direction as the week comes to a close. It sucks that it takes the federal government threats to get the will / create the operating space for the school to do what it should be able to do on its own… but if it is too weak on its own, then fine - thanks government for creating the opening.
- Jelly my Jelly — I am having just a blast working on this with Iqram… I do love social products… and it is fun to be at the moment where we have a new interesting format of media, the economy around tipping is building / novel / great use of crypto … AND there is real usage / a new index into the lives of norm-core people…. My early life messing with consumer products coming back around :) — also I really appreciate whoever described me as ‘a man from the future constantly annoyed with the present’ — I feel seen.
- Money doesn’t make much money …really — in this debate about 20 year olds getting NIL deals being ‘set for life’ I opened excel — honestly when you plug in 7% returns, 2.5% inflation, 35% tax rate, and 4% spending — you realize over 30 years you really get nowhere. I am not sneezing at $1M but it is good to just remind yourself that at best the ‘market’ keeps you trading water… you don’t just magically compound yourself to anywhere great with. Normal returns and normal inflation.
Sam Lessin
P.S. Tasti is coming along nicely — in the ‘Web 1.0 revival moment we are having, I am excited to be playing with bringing back social bookmarking — not done-done, but def worth playing with.
P.P.S. my goal for this week really is to finally put out my 2025 update of WTF VC — it is a classic accountability problem shipping it for me / because I can’t generate a real real deadline for myself!
P.P.P.S. this dude is right -- the idea that Insight invested 213M into Wiz, made $2.6B dollars and only returned 1/3rd of their fund... I don't get how LPs fund these mega-platforms, or why anyone works on them / total bummer to be the partner who makes this deal and gets... no carry?.. you must really love fees!
sam lessin | @lessin | want to talk | podcast | stop | to get added to the mailing list email [email protected]