More or Less Podcast

Sam Lessin — Selected Quotes

That's actually maybe that's what it'll be is that your 2025 prediction is that with work from home and the end of Chinese imports, we're going back to the putting out system where some man will come by with thread and we'll like weave Ewok hats and then they'll pick it up later.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 78

Fifty million is like TechCrunch 500K of, like, the aughts, you know? And, like, this is where we're at. The, the... Here's the movie trailer thing. I actually love this. I think it's one of the best things I've seen. I've now, to Dave's point, seen several startups, some of them which I really like, who literally... I mean, I've been in this 100K documentary thing, like, why don't we produce more, like, video, high quality vid- They're starting to make really good storytelling videos about what it is their startups do. I love it. I think it's great for investors. I think it's great for narrative development. I think it's consumable. I think it's hard for bots to make it well. Like, you can't, you... A bot can make a deck. Like, I don't care. Someone sends me, like, an awesome fucking movie trailer for their business, like, I'm gonna watch it, right? And so, like, I'm actually very along this trend, and, like, I'm annoyed that I haven't been further out ahead of it. The people investing in, like, mini docs and high quality video production to tell stories of their startups. Like, I think it's great. I've seen... Or just for the wor- for anyone. Like, I just think it's like, I know there's one-

— Sam Lessin, Episode 151

we'll find like new whatever like that's just i'm bored of it it's like we understand how this works it's like you know you'll do it's it's too it's too easy to make a hat so you fucking print them upside down because that's cool or something like it's not like whatever

— Sam Lessin, Episode 122

But V2 is good. And I assume V3 and V4 will be great. I don't really understand what the 5 % thing is. Is that just like a blocking move?

— Sam Lessin, Episode 57

Well, no, no, I'm just like, I've actually had legit and I will say that the big thing for me is I like building these things every once in a while with the newest, you know, and really like refreshing them because you see how far the tools have come. And the answer is from a production, make something good perspective. The last year has been good. Like modern Gemini is like quite good, right? In terms of like what's ability to do modern Gemini. Well, two, two five is like.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 105

And like, that's great PR, like reef install 101. And like, you know, then you got Lauren Sanchez going over the top in lingerie. She looked great. And she just messed up his images.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 83

The thing I was gonna also say is, in that conversation yesterday with this founder Dave's talking about, what it came down to at the end too, you know, he's trying to recruit his like founding engineer. Everyone's a great e- a lot of people are great engineers. You know, of course some are better than others, fine. But cultural fit I think matters way more now than ever before, when like the, the ability to be a, a great engineer is like much easier than ever before. And so it's like teaching these people how to be human, maybe a little throwback to etiquette school, but also like having street smarts, being a cool person, high integrity, like vibing with the team, I think is, is going to matter more than ever over the next few years for teams.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 156

Well, would they even be developers though, job Dave is like a different way to describe what it is. Cause I think like, to me, it's like, there's an interesting thing. I see two things going on specifically with open claw in this moment. One is look, there's a lot of people whose jobs require a bunch of repetitive work that they don't really want to do, but they have to do. And it's really funny cause it's kind of like being in college again, where like the procrastination gene, we were like,

— Sam Lessin, Episode 136

If Airbnb experiences had like actors you could hire to play roles, I'd buy that. I've always wanted, like I've always wanted this, I've always wanted a service called Uncle Moneybags. And the idea is you'd pay like $10,000 a year and this person would be inserted into your life that was a hilarious character. You'd like a charity benefit. Like who am I sitting next to? He's like, oh my God, it's Uncle Moneybags. And he's just like a hilarious character that's an actor that makes your life spicier.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 99

It's outperformed in video. It's killing. Here's the thing. I think it's an AI company. And let me explain why. You don't want them. Here's the thing. I think that Build-A-Bear is the ultimate sneaky AI company. And that's why this doc is actually probably going to continue to rip. It's like, who do you want cleaning your house? Do you want a sterile, crazy Elon Killbot? Or do you want your Build-A-Bear to clean your house? Do you want? Yeah. It's crushing it.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 102

It feels very unstable. But also to Jessica's point, like every step is logical enough, right? And like that the party will probably continue, you know? The key is you just don't want to be like a company in the middle.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 135

We are getting back to business realities and not fancy, fancy, fancy, fanciful stuff right now. And like, that's, think we'd have to look for. No.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 126

Amen, and s- and communities have to do this. Like, this is why I don't, I don't think putting the blame or regulating at this level makes sense.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 164

No, we're not. We're not. There's like, we're getting there. But like, there's just like all these opportunities in the NSFW world where like people have dabbled with AI, but I actually think it's not really that mainstream yet. I think it's about to go super

— Sam Lessin, Episode 130

It's fine. We've got enough. Oh no, just because we gotta do the rest of our podcast and like this is more than enough content we got. So thank you. I appreciate you doing it. We'll make it work. It'll be awesome. Thanks so much. All right, bye. Thanks. Bye.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 100

They kept they kept Chrome and Google. They saved TikTok. There's like six things that because there's like this wave of anticipation and hope and excitement around this stuff. These other conversations just get people just move on. Right. And that's the honest reality of TikTok. It's like I think it's just as dangerous as ever and huge and whatever else. But like the world just doesn't have the mental capacity to care.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 118

Well, they're, you know, they still, um, that's going to be the jobs of people in the future is to work at lemons clusters, teaching people how to use technology. Uh, um, but it is funny. I mean, I literally did try to do it. Yup. I just want to say again, lens clatters, lens clackers, sunglass hut, Ray band. can apparently there's.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 118

Well, that's here's what you know what they are. Let's be honest. Let's be honest. The AI. Let's be honest, the AI boyfriends are actually AI girlfriends called boyfriends because they'll talk to you right and like text you back. So like that's the that's the hack. That's the hack. Right? Because no actual no actual male can do those things. Right? So it's really like, it's just not possible.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 58

stay like the experience travel and experiences and like it turns out that like on a relative basis what's really played out box.net every you know dropbox has not become what people thought it would become doesn't mean it's a bad company it's actually prince money but it's like eh right box.net which people thought was a complete fucking zero because it was not the cool kids has done well because aaron levy just for whatever reason actually likes selling shitty stuff to big enterprise

— Sam Lessin, Episode 99

Look, Dave is taller. Dave is taller. I'd wager I'm more fit. NOISE But Dave is taller and Dave, you've got a lot fitter. He's got a lot fitter. I think that the real question, the thing for me is I played tennis, I think I played tennis too long. I played tennis my whole life and I still think I'm as good as I was when I was 18 and then I get angry at myself. It's all a mental game.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 54

Everyone's stressed out all the time more and candidly with AIs and bots running around, you're just gonna be stressed out more, not less, right? Like, but you know.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 104

Well, then that that's a bigger market strategy problem, right? Which is like, if it turns out that like, there's no half life to any of this shit, and everyone just catches up, and you're gonna burn all this money and resources for like six weeks of advantage is that no one wins, then it's just everyone pissing in. And I think

— Sam Lessin, Episode 103

father son few days of just chatting and we're walking down the street and I said something well you know a lot of your friends are all gonna vote for Kamala but there are other people a lot of them who are not gonna vote for her and this woman in know Western Pennsylvania who's in a car driving by through an intersection just started yelling Kamala Kamala Kamala so I don't know I mean there's you know there's something going on so because she overheard me in the intersection

— Sam Lessin, Episode 59

I don't wanna keep harping here. I wanna ask Peter one more thing, and then I wanna pivot to a few other people before we close. Peter, and I, I have not... He's a friend, but I haven't spoken to him in, about this in months. Is the Airtable Howie story, "I wanna work on AI," or what happened?

— Sam Lessin, Episode 162

No, bad joke. Well, it's a commentary about the state of the world that is important to actually execute. And so here's the reality. Why is it offensive?

— Sam Lessin, Episode 117

Right? And movies as a format as the middle. I still, don't know. I think the two hour movie is just like a great format for storytelling. I hope it doesn't go away.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 66

And then what you basically do is you start building up an index, which is not universal because parents obviously disagree about what is an okay and things like that. But like you basically can fill the graph. Yeah. Around your community. And then you have like this kind of layer, but I think it all starts from this idea of like, can you, is it basically reasonable to tell a kid if you click on a video, you need to wait an extra three seconds because a parent, if it hasn't been already approved is going to approve it. And you basically get rid of the algorithm.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 49

No. No, they did that with Threads maybe, but, like, with this, j- keep in mind the fact that Snap is now about two Box.nets. That's how important and big a company it is, right? Like, it's about two Box.net. We love Aaron. We don't understand that company. We love Aaron. There's a-

— Sam Lessin, Episode 155

Well, in the end of the day, just think the clarity has to come on you have a communication platform. Crypto is a communication platform with certain very key properties. And in the end of the day, I think there are two things that really matter in terms of moving it forward. One is gonna be, it makes total sense that you want a very high trust institution, which the SEC can be, to be like, if you're representing people, that this made up thing you are trading around represents this real world asset, right?

— Sam Lessin, Episode #85 - Take 01_67a508fc24f2a63a2b06e1af

You know what's hot? Grit. It's very simple. There's one thing that's hot to all men. Confidence. Confidence. And that is a confident woman, right? That's what it comes down to. It has nothing to do with what she looks like. It's just that she's confident.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 83

Episodes