More or Less Podcast

Sam Lessin — Selected Quotes

I mean, there's been a bunch of the story has been like the big business stories has been thing you don't know about that everyone's now using is going to become a big company. And maybe there's an IPO, right? The real but the real game, right, is going to be like the princely states effectively and like how they the backroom, which by the way, if you go into the history of information businesses was literally the original paid newsletters, right? We're like the Italian newsletters covering princely states for high priced

— Sam Lessin, Episode 118

Yeah, absolutely. In my new product, it's like summarize this, which is here, say dot email going very well by way, lots of signups. I take all the emails that I get us and I tell chat GPT summarize them and do a meta summary of the summaries and send it out to anyone who wants it. NOISE It's terrible. It's just an art project, but it does actually work quite well. But I'm like, it's like chat GPT summarize morning bruise news, brother. And if it's not good, I'll kill you. And then I'm like,

— Sam Lessin, Episode 54

There'll be lots of dealers of intelligence. And then the question is, like, if there is, and if intelligence keeps getting cheaper and the cost of tokens keeps getting cheaper, like, I don't understand how anyone can hold each other ransom effectively over terms of use. Cause just like buy it from someone else.

— Sam Lessin, Episode Brit, Jessica, Dave_69964fac564c4d362f5c52cd

Didn't they, didn't they used to, when HBO was early, didn't they used to have like HBO after dark that was all softcore porn? Do I remember that from like high school? Yeah, that was great. And like, that's what we want. That was awesome.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 111

Well, it turns out GitHub, it turns out Git's really good. But yes, I I think like, I'll give you an example of of Gen. It's like, why can't these, so like, I was setting up as like a Flask app to like do stuff, because that's like the easiest way to use some things. And like, it's just basically these chat bots, all of them, chat GPT, you know, using Gen. Whatever. There's like hammering everything into one file. And like, please don't do that. Like, can we please like split this up into like a little bit more service? Like, I don't want to go crazy, but like, you need to like give me...

— Sam Lessin, Episode 100

... for her AI agent loving-ness. So I guess we, there's nothing to say 'cause we say it right to their face. But we are glad you are all here, and there's lots of news to talk about, so you are in luck. We've got the SpaceX IPO. We have the dra- uh, chapter number 10,000 in Anthropic's drama with the US government escalating quickly. Sam, you get to pick where we start. Where would you like to start?

— Sam Lessin, Episode 154

Which is not including like, look, it's... No, no, no, the business model clearly matters. But like, again, you know, again, I just go back to the first Prince William's. The productivity use cases of AI, right? Which are real, like for sure. They're definitely real in coding. Like, and by the way, that shows you the whole world because it's coding down really fun again, right? Because you have to write a gajillion tests. It's so fun. It's so fun, right? Like, so that stuff's for sure true. The productivity stuff...

— Sam Lessin, Episode 108

It's like, it's like, would I, it's like, given the amount of smack I talk about Elon Musk, am I going to like own a car where like, Elon can hit a button and like drive me into the side of the road? No, totally. Well, the Chinese, I'm sure they would just upload all the data, right? It's like, I just, it's like, it's kind of like the second Elon starts changing people's Twitter profiles, like the next logical step is for him to like have the app where he's like crashed their car.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 37

And you walk in through nondescript, nothing warehouses, you know, like, oh my God, like there's a f****g startup gate machine in here. Right. And like, that's one of the coolest things that I think people forget about Silicon Valley, especially our part of it is like, you know, you go open some random doors and there's crazy Stanford professors, ex Stanford professors doing like wild stuff in hardware and all this type of stuff that isn't the stuff we talk about on more or less, but it's super cool. And like people are doing amazing stuff with that.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 66

If the wheel ends on one billion dollars, you get one billion dollars. But otherwise, you have to keep working another year to get another turn at the wheel. And that way, basically give them, and every once in while, someone hits the billion and they're gone. But you to keep them in the game. You basically say your comp is, oh you paid fine, but it's all about wheel rolls.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 111

Fair enough. Well, on that uplifting note, anyone else have anything else, a jump ball they wanna throw out before we call it?

— Sam Lessin, Episode 162

Wait a minute, let's not turn this into a gender thing. I made pancakes and eggs this morning and woke up with the kids. So.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 87

Yeah, but that stuff's all stupid anyway. like, digital collectibles. mean, this is like one of the things I'm yes. Look, this is something I've actually so I'm happy to say I feel like slow ventures, you know, we've gotten a lot right about the L1 game, I'm going to keep victory laughing because I have to because that's marketing what VCs do like we crushed it. Sorry, I'm gonna keep victory laughing that one for a long fucking time.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 66

think that's like he is he is I'll give him like Elon incredible credit as a master storyteller he understands the economy right if it was Hey, I need 100 gajillion dollars for dancing cat videos or some shit right like that's the end game the problem is it's one of those great like Silicon Valley style lines is like like never ever have revenue like never have metrics that get in the way of the story right and so like you can't say I need 100 gajillion dollars for the dancing cats at the same time the science stuff is all

— Sam Lessin, Episode 119

And I was kind of making fun of him and laughing about it. Cause like, one hand, he totally should do that because I want him to go through the whole process of experiencing it. I need him to like understand the ecosystem. I also candidly want him to write guides for the rest of the team that might be less motivated, unfortunately. like, so I mean, he should do it, but I'm also like, yeah, of course you'd rather play with open call than do your job. It's like way more fun. Right. And like, so there's like, there's one spit of people like that. Right. And then there's another spit of like,

— Sam Lessin, Episode 136

Or it's just like, that's the thing about technology in general is like, it's just, it is accelerant to everything and everything that is true in a frictionless environment becomes instantly and more true, right? So there's no, there's no like friction in the system that like protects anything, right? So you just end up with these extremes.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 115

No, no, this is like, because the whole problem is they don't have the robotics data set. So you need the humans with claws, like folding sheets, they can fold the sheet with 80 % certainty. If it's not Daniel Gross, it's someone like Daniel Gross. I thought it was Daniel Gross's thing.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 104

What was the only headline I saw with that is something about how like this is why family owned businesses are bad. What is going on with the sale of Paramount?

— Sam Lessin, Episode 54

Well, and also fact check, Facebook bought WhatsApp for an announced 19, and then it, when it closed it was about 21. So we're, we're in the same ballpark. We're in the same ballpark, right?

— Sam Lessin, Episode 154

I don't have any idea but my my bet my bet is I'm spending my bet is my full like AI tinker budget of things running around doing things for me is on the order of like 2500 or $3,000 a month.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 136

The internet's like so fun. It's kind of like this blaze of glory of maximum fun until it fucking collapses into a black hole. And like we're all gonna like...

— Sam Lessin, Episode 135

This is great. listen to Carolyn Hyde, some anchor on Bloomberg TV's video thing, and publish like a long rebuttal to it. This is great. This is great. I love this.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 135

I'm not gonna do CNBC anymore, but my bot will, right? Um, and then the second thing which was a real unlock, which in some ways I will say the more is you kinda prompted me on, is like you guys have been all obsessed with this. I want to build iOS apps fully, and like, I was like, "Blah," like whatever. I mean, like, I've done this, built a bunch of my own personal apps. But it's always been annoying 'cause I had it set up where, like, it would build the app, but then I had to, like, actually, like go and install it on my phone and, like plug it into a computer. It's the worst. So I actually just gave my Cloud Claude, this thing's full control of a Mac Mini down to screen. Like full, full, full control so that it can deploy through TestFlight all its own apps from single commands.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 165

Or like dealing with, you know, my favorite whipping boy Instacart, which is like a very complicated business and subscale it's like, why bother as an investor?

— Sam Lessin, Episode 44

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

Oh, I launched two pro, well, yeah, yeah, we've got a lot of stuff going on. So, so rock rock by chiseled, um, is an idea I've been incubating a long time, um, actually almost a year. And it just seemed like time to launch it, which is, you know, you're seeing more and more of these fitness vests, people like, you know, put a weighted vest on or things like that. But I actually think like the future I want is just, I want people just like walking around town carrying rocks to be stronger. You know, you like walking to a coffee shop, you have a rock.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 97

It's unbelievable. If you try to map the market of only fans models, you are fucked. It's like, you're going to need AI for that problem because there are too many to follow. NOISE

— Sam Lessin, Episode 49

First of all, but calling something a consent, something says incredible marketing, right? Cause you're like, I'm just asserting it's the consensus is great, but he's a great, he's a great marketer. And so this is my point is like, is.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 127

You'd need like some like it would need to be like aliens like you need some sort of like because you need something that like like warp drives. Maybe about text really hard. I mean, the problem is that that is the thing is like they've come up with the perfect but like it doesn't need that much money. The problem is like the

— Sam Lessin, Episode 115

Because people, that's well done. News is expensive. Truth is expensive. Here's a question. How long do you think it'll be before we're like shooting boats full of H200s offshore? Like smuggling those.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 129

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