Sam Lessin's weekly SWL Week in Review newsletter plus his essays (Modest Proposals, Modest Conversations, and more) — 320 pieces, one chronological, searchable archive.
SWL Week in Reviewoptimistic, disciplined, and terrified all at once
November 6, 2026
MORE OR LESS – With Still California Resident Parker Conrad Parker is a great hang… Jess and I do More or Less with our special … still California resident Parker Conrad (phew). We talk about where the real leverage in AI is / being…
SWL Week in Review60,000 Strangers, One Private War
November 2, 2026
MORE OR LESS with Bing Gordon — haven’t listened yet, but Brit and Dave had Bing talk about life, Silicon Valley, and his new book… Bing is the best — a truly wise man — so different vib…
SWL Week in ReviewWarhound
October 26, 2026
MORE OR LESS — SpaceX / Tesla Merger, DUH — Shocker after Elon strapped Evel Knievel rocket boosters on a Hot Wheels car Epcot special and called it “flying” — Disney really should have allowed $50K reserv…
SWL Week in ReviewNihilism
October 16, 2026
MORE OR LESS - When APIs become two way negotiations — Would you rather be right or rich? The question of the moment watching CoreWeave, all consumer agents being ‘good enough’, and the trajectory of Anthropic revenue. We have been di…
SWL Week in Review$1T in Escrow, Minimum
October 2, 2026
MORE OR LESS — Meta Muse vs Instinct vs OpenAI Dots: Do AI Agents Have Any Moat? — I switch between muse, instinct, and dots at basically zero cost — one github repo, a few databases, feed the new thing my context, done… if the cost of…
SWL Week in ReviewM-M-Maximum Entertainment
September 28, 2026
Stop Pretending the AI labs are a special case in business… they are not. MORE OR LESS — Pro West Point, Short A16Z U — ( the preview got heated )… this is the convo that drew all the ire… but look, when it comes to learning the ski…
SWL Week in ReviewM-M-Maximum Entertainment
September 18, 2026
MORE OR LESS — Hit The Brakes They'll Fly Right By — ( max lessin has the preview )… If there is one thing that AI has been great at for years it is optimizing attention… and Dario once again proves that Anthropic is in the lead,…
SWL Week in ReviewNew York State of Mind
September 12, 2026
September 11th, 2001 + 25… is on the mind as I fly west after several days in New York. It was our first day of classes at Harvard and the world changed, dramatically. It was a real demarcation between the high school post-cold-war, te…
SWL Week in ReviewAlignment with Whom Exactly?
September 4, 2026
MORE OR LESS — AI Agents Are Going Rogue. Should We Be Worried? — I am less concerned about breathless Dwarkesh analogies to human civilizations and more grounded in Claude refusing to scan my personal PSQL CRM for Jewish people (and…
SWL Week in ReviewThink of the Children!
August 28, 2026
MORE OR LESS — The Kids Are … Online (and the actual solution not political kitchen sinks!) + Over-Under on Cook’s Tenure at Apple (with some Nike analogy snark) — we obviously get into the public conversation about the Meta settlemen…
SWL Week in ReviewToken Trading
August 21, 2026
MORE OR LESS — Stripe Buys an '$7B Apple Tree' - OpenRouter, OpenAI vs. Anthropic vs. Uber vs. Lyft without Network Effects & the AI Consumer Indifference vs. Hatred — the OG crew was back on More or Less this week and we got into…
SWL Week in ReviewShipping the Shifting $500B of Risk to Pensioners
August 14, 2026
MORE OR LESS — WITH DENG, WOLFE, HOLT, BELSKY, and STANFORD A very special edition of More or Less… Dave, Brit, and Jess left me alone so I replaced them with Josh Wolfe (Founder, Lux Capital), Rachel Holt (Founder, Construct Capita…
SWL Week in ReviewSummer Bag Securing
August 7, 2026
MORE OR LESS — Jeff Dean, Airtable, and Bag-Securing Who wants to run Goolge anyway?… sounds like a lot of people management / capitalism in a world where the cool kids want to be very well paid scientists wet-nursing g-d. Also Bend…
SWL Week in ReviewNever Compete
August 2, 2026
MORE OR LESS — Meta, China, X & Lilian Weng We get into it from the beach (and teslas)… and spend a lot of time on analogies in AI to Star Wars / mythology … we all know that AI founders want to believe they are Oppenheimer … or…
SWL Week in ReviewCrushing Bot Rebellions
July 24, 2026
MORE OR LESS :: IS PUTTING DOWN LOWER IQ BOT REBELLIONS IS THE ULTIMATE LABS BUSINESS MODEL? (1) So it is pretty clear that most AI is gonna be open-source and cheap / low margin… what do you do with the 150 IQ frontier models? They…
SWL Week in ReviewAppeasement
July 17, 2026
MORE OR LESS: AI IS NOW A GAME OF OPEN SOURCE + POLITICS Over the last two weeks on More or Less we discussed Altman’s cynical proposal for regulatory capture, GLM 5.2, and open source… what happens when spend on AI goes from ‘experim…
SWL Week in ReviewThe Voice of America
July 5, 2026
MORE OR LESS — THE AMERICAN INTERNET We talk about how great America is… the need for a validated ‘American’ internet for civic discourse, Taylor and Travis, and Foiling… I spend a bunch of time discussing my 250th birthday gift to…
SWL Week in ReviewLate Empire
June 26, 2026
MORE OR LESS POD Talking about smart glasses , the phone I dropped off a mountain (and how it is impossible to recover your phone number if you do ATT sim-swapping defense 2FA with… your phone (as their system works), The predict…
SWL Week in ReviewTeamshares
June 21, 2026
LESS & LESS POD Jessica and I did a 1:1 for this week’s pod. We talk ‘it’s valuable because it is valuable’ … Benchmarking Cursor’s acquisition vs. WhatsApp… The Brilliance of the ‘Fable’ Marketing by Anthropic… Corporate Narrativ…
SWL Week in ReviewCapitalist Multiverse
June 15, 2026
MORE OR LESS - The Stories We Buy (and Sell). Given the headlines of last week…. The story was about story. SpaceX has one… the S1 full of TAM and pictures was a success — people want to buy the ‘future’ / techno-optimism (and a bit o…
SWL Week in ReviewThe Whole Point is You Can't Measure the ROI on AI
June 5, 2026
MORE OR LESS POD The SpaceX IPO cultural moment — Storing value in ‘stories’ vs. the broad-based ‘financial’ story, the real capabilities of agents, why startups should be making movie trailers not pitch decks - lack of ROI is the…
SWL Week in ReviewAI Gutting the Consumer Economy?
May 29, 2026
More or Less Pod … with Amir? Jess replaced me on the pod this week with another stunningly good looking Jew. I have no idea what they talked about… I am sure it was fine. HOT TAKES What if AI doesn’t destroy that many job…
SWL Week in ReviewAnthrospace
May 22, 2026
More or Less Pod — AnthroSpace We talk SpaceX S1, and 1.25B a month from Anthropic… also a bit about Dellworld, Tokenomics (AI not Crypto Lol), Goolge IO’s announcements … and some legal updates…. Also if Elon can sell his data-cen…
SWL Week in ReviewForward Deployed Monks
May 15, 2026
More or Less Pod - Nuropod & Micosoft We discuss Jetlag and the nuropod / vagal stimulation, and then actual topics like Microsoft story (from total winners / heroes of the era to insert where you think we are now … the OpenAI…
SWL Week in ReviewGamma Squeeze and Narratives about Narratives
May 10, 2026
More or Less Pod - A Met-Techlash-Moment? The gang minus me — so it is met-gala techlash, AI layoff anxiety, Dave says it ‘doesn’t matter’ that I am traveling… jess goes with ‘somewhat’ — and I learned jess re-did our closet while I…
SWL Week in ReviewAI Flippenings & 2x2s
May 2, 2026
More or Less Podcast — Flippenings OpenAI gets passed in revenue (and valuation) by Anthropic, Google might now eclipse Nvidia on market cap./ is within a breath… a moment of AI flippenings is upon us & the real story isn’t…
SWL Week in ReviewInvite to Pearl genesis event
April 29, 2026
hey {{ customer.name | split: " " | first }}, I’ve been working on something I think you’ll find genuinely interesting: Pearl — a new protocol that turns AI compute into a native digital currency based on a recent mathematical breakthr…
SWL Week in ReviewWWE of Silicon Valley
April 24, 2026
More or Less — ‘Executive Chairman’ We riff on apple, Musk vs. Altman WWE ‘power fight’ (not a money fight)… UBI isn’t gonna solve much, cursor — Jensen’s ‘I didn’t wake up a loser’ stressy moment… my colonoscopy nurse hates AI,…
SWL Week in ReviewInvite to Pearl genesis event
April 22, 2026
hey {{ customer.name | split: " " | first }}, I’ve been working on something I think you’ll find genuinely interesting: Pearl — a new protocol that turns AI compute into a native digital currency based on a recent mathematical breakthr…
SWL Week in ReviewBuild Your Own Apps
April 17, 2026
More or Less — Who Can Afford to Pay Taxes?! We talk all birds, and a bunch about how the decision to sell / hold these big IPOs with huge markups has more to do with relative valuation than price because of taxes! Also I spent most…
SWL Week in ReviewAI Is Not a Labor Crisis. It Is a Meaning Crisis.
April 12, 2026
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 dec…
SWL Week in ReviewLooksmaxxing
April 5, 2026
More or Less Pod - AI Security Apocalypse For a while we have been gabbing about how AI completely breaks the business model of the internet / will end the internet by destroying how it makes money (the medium is the message… which i…
SWL Week in ReviewBot or Not
March 28, 2026
More or Less : Ladies Edition Dave and I went skiing… so the ladies invited some other non-sam-dave people on the podcast. Henrik and Ben on something called ?“donkeycorns”? … will watch it on the flight home because airplane wifi…
SWL Week in ReviewMaster of Bots
March 20, 2026
More or Less - GTC & Claws Dave and Jess go on and on about GTC … shocker I didn’t go, but if Jensen wants to stop by the poorhouse and sauna for 3 hours he is more than welcome! Dave and I get into a pretty interesting discuss…
SWL Week in ReviewA Commodity Without Monopoly Power
March 14, 2026
More or Less — Dark Pools and Commodified Intelligence There is no question that developer demand more tokens… but do consumers? For what really? Is there any real margin in generic martix multiplication or is the market for ‘intell…
SWL Week in ReviewClaude Week
March 6, 2026
More or Less - Cutting Block Why aren’t the Silicon Valley engineers freaking out at Claude? Lack of union (like Hollywood)… or is freaking out admitting you are scared you aren’t good enough to be in the minority of engineers who…
SWL Week in ReviewPolymath
March 4, 2026
More on this soon. But I am very excited about this and you should check out the pearl polymath ... Best, Sam…
SWL Week in ReviewRoblox for Adults
February 27, 2026
More or Less - Capitalism at Work Collapsing Margins to Zero We discuss Stripe / PayPal (the only question is regulatory / do collisions want to be in front of congress for years once administrations change over)… and spend a lot on…
SWL Week in ReviewP90 selloff
February 24, 2026
More or Less: Urgent Care Jess made me stop podcasting and go to urgent care in the middle of the episode…. Because I thought I might have ‘dan corned’ myself after an epic run in the side country (I was fine)… but it means I missed…
SWL Week in ReviewNo Typists Anymore...
February 14, 2026
More or Less — In Everyone a Developer or No One A Developer? A great conversation between ski runs … on the future of open networks vs. closed / monolithic AI companies… in the future is ‘everyone a developer’ … or are there no devel…
SWL Week in ReviewChosen by the Claw.
February 9, 2026
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 pos…
SWL Week in ReviewGold.
January 31, 2026
MATT MAHAN Thursday Matt Mahan — the Mayor of San Jose — announced he is running for Governor of CA. This is very good news thematically (maybe there will be another young generation of actually good people willing to do shitty gover…
SWL Week in Reviewhalf-kelly
January 24, 2026
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 int…
SWL Week in Reviewclawdbot
January 20, 2026
More Or Less — Clawdbot & the Personal Security Apocalypse Clawdbot is incredible. It’s also the moment you should immediately realize: this is how it ends . Local permissions to your drive, screen, and windows are the…
SWL Week in ReviewPositivity?
January 9, 2026
More or Less - A Touch Of Optimism? Thanks to all the folks who felt necessary to message back about my downer email last week… all the media people were like ‘yah this sounds right’ and all the investors were like ‘stop being a bumme…
SWL Week in ReviewThe Narratives of ’26
January 5, 2026
So what are the themes of the year that actually matter? The stories we tell ourselves about the world have always mattered a great deal… but we live in a particularly strong moment of narrative power and narrative instability. Fundamen…
SWL Week in ReviewWhip not Muscle
December 20, 2025
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…
SWL Week in ReviewEnemy of My Enemy
December 14, 2025
More or Less - Media Wars, 1010 Billboard Index, and Narrative Flywheel Fun MOL this week … ideas that really stuck with me from the conversation were around understanding 2025 entrepreneurial journey as planting a flag, building a…
SWL Week in ReviewCode Red Realities
December 5, 2025
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…
SWL Week in ReviewAI Business Model Wars
December 1, 2025
More Or Less — AI Business Model Wars & Marketing Genius of Silicon Valley Thanksgiving week updates form the Surf Shack (instead of Pool House)… Dave really wants OpenAI to be in the steve-jobs style ‘computer’ business, but a…
SWL Week in ReviewMake Poor?
November 22, 2025
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 be…
SWL Week in ReviewFinger Size
November 14, 2025
More or Less - Wearables and Finger Size We discuss lots of angles on wearables… rings, earrings, glasses, and more…. Also somehow we have reversed roles and I am the one defending Apple??? Again. Checkins on ettiequte, mini-defense ta…
SWL Week in ReviewEtiquette
November 7, 2025
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 i…
SWL Week in ReviewOrizaba Reflections
November 1, 2025
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…
SWL Week in ReviewLowbrow LLM culture
October 26, 2025
More or Less Highbrow vs. Lowbrow Cultural Responses to AI We play with ideas around the cultural reverberations of LLMs…. Watching some humans / people literally start to talk like machines / mimmic the bots - while the more cultural…
SWL Week in ReviewReligion
October 19, 2025
More or Less Jess v. Dave I was in NYC, Brit was otherwise occupied— so we have our first Jess and Dave solo episode. Should be a hoot — and look forward to the now inevitable Brit / Sam response. Hot Takes: AI investment…
SWL Week in ReviewSlop
October 10, 2025
More or Less The 7% GDP Growth Problem Maybe if they keep the GOVT shut down long enough it only needs to be 6%... but IMHO this is the real only story behind the story. Without AI narrative we can't get even close to GDP…
SWL Week in ReviewSora So What?
October 3, 2025
More or Less Sora So What? Sora launch … loose on copyright, tight on content moderation… we discuss what it all means — do all aspiring power players need to be ‘TOM’ of their own network? Will AI entertainment slop burn our eye…
SWL Week in ReviewMercantilism
September 29, 2025
More or Less :: Tech Mercantilism & Trade Routes Jess and I went deep with a particular focus on a ’trading’ between centers of capital, technology, and policy in a world which is less open, less law & rules based and more power (migh…
SWL Week in Review996 meta etiquette
September 19, 2025
More or Less :: 996 & Etiquette We hit on TikTok deal (delay, delay, delay til the kid people are focused on chat-GPT and everyone is too bored to care) … Alcatraz (because Alcaraz visited — turns out the extreme left and the extre…
SWL Week in ReviewMemetic Warfare
September 12, 2025
More or Less :: Long Apple Ozempic 'Thin' Phone, Short Factory Farmed Incubator Companies Fun one this week… the most amusing parts to me — (1) fun discussion of apple’s new ‘air’ phone for the ozempic crowd… because if everyone wants…
SWL Week in ReviewWars of Attrition
September 5, 2025
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 mar…
SWL Week in ReviewTop?
August 22, 2025
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. S…
SWL Week in ReviewProtest
August 17, 2025
More or Less :: AI Flashlight… or Something Else Light If you don’t get a protest at your conference, you probably didn’t market it well enough… Hollywood’s new business model might be extras for the staged protests. Perplexity (which…
SWL Week in ReviewBetting on LLMs (literally)
August 8, 2025
More or Less :: SaaS Ain’t Back This week everyone got two email newsletter themes over and over in their inbox (1) congrats Dylan and yay SaaS is back (yes on the D part - but no, it isn’t — what is back is alternative AI optionality…
SWL Week in ReviewOutrage (and Figma)
August 1, 2025
More or Less :: Outrage! What connects Sydney Sweeney ‘gene’ ad commercial with the South Park Trump shenanigans… ? The key marketing strategy of the moment is to generate ‘outrage’, ideally from people you don’t care about but who are…
SWL Week in Reviewyou know who would LOVE to hear about this...?
July 25, 2025
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…
SWL Week in Reviewis Vibecoding Entertainment?
July 18, 2025
The Launch of TITV I 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…
SWL Week in ReviewLaunch of The Information TV + MZ live interview
July 14, 2025
A slightly delayed week in review send to wait for the launch of The Information TV (TITV), congrats to jess & team...! The Launch of TITV :: MZ live at 10:30 PST Tune in live today for The Information's first independent live d…
SWL Week in ReviewMeet the M...eta-Yankees
July 5, 2025
} another week in review .... ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewScale, Sambot, Harvard Reunion
June 14, 2025
} another week in review .... ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewBears and Books no E, no T
June 6, 2025
} another week in review .... ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in Reviewwho is single?... and steven pinker
June 1, 2025
} another week in review .... ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewVibecode Reality, OF, and Incumbents
May 23, 2025
} another week in review .... ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in Reviewexperiences' airbnb, farming, brokers
May 16, 2025
} another week in review .... ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewTel Aviv
May 9, 2025
} another week in review .... ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewAntisemitism and AI
May 4, 2025
} another week in review .... ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewWTFVC 2025, Anti-Trust, and Ruck Rock
April 25, 2025
} another week in review .... ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewHarvard, and Decolonization
April 18, 2025
} another week in review .... ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewTariffs and Spies...
April 4, 2025
} another week in review .... ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewMostly Skiing... a few other thoughts
March 30, 2025
} another week in review .... ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewSpies, Teams and Themes
March 21, 2025
} another week in review .... ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewSpace Bet, Softbank, and Bill Maher
March 17, 2025
} another week in review .... ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewAgain and Again, Nothing is New
March 8, 2025
} another week in review .... ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewNarrative Selloff, HP, and Harvard
February 28, 2025
} special announcement ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewSlow Creator I, Merit First, and Memes
February 14, 2025
} special announcement ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewUnderstanding Memecoins, and Merit First
February 10, 2025
} special announcement ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewDeepseek, Memes, and oh my Jelly-Jelly...
February 1, 2025
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewTiktok, Trade Wars, and Financial Nihilism
January 24, 2025
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewElon 'Zaphod' Musk and AI pragmatism
December 20, 2024
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewAaron Levie, Voight-Kampff, Retail Fomo
December 6, 2024
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewVenmo, Sling & Techbro Culture
November 29, 2024
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewSummers, DOGE, Storytelling
November 16, 2024
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewElection Thoughts...
November 8, 2024
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewTech Earnings, Destroying Trust in Reality
November 1, 2024
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewVision Pro Failure, AI Cherry on Top
October 25, 2024
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewPlanet Elon & Seed 'Value' Investing
October 18, 2024
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewGoogle Antitrust, The State of Seed
October 11, 2024
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewMonster F-it Funding Rounds, Golf Curious VC
October 4, 2024
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewMeta, Death of SaaS and YC...
September 27, 2024
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in Reviewthe children, aleo, and hustle culture
September 22, 2024
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewBeast is Buzzfeed... Google SEO sadness
September 14, 2024
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewFounder Mode, Packy and Harry discoveries...
September 6, 2024
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewVC Reset, and Some Hiring
August 30, 2024
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏…
SWL Week in ReviewTurn Off, Tune Out, Drop In
August 16, 2024
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup Things I spent time thinking about this week / talking about: More or Less Gen-Z's 'Digital Rejection'? … This was my favorite discussion…
SWL Week in ReviewAI Earnings, Harvard Wins
August 2, 2024
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup Things I spent time thinking about this week / talking about: More or Less : The Q2 AI investor story - coming home to roost … long Meta, maybe Google…
SWL Week in ReviewOpensource AI, Topaz, and Netanyahu
July 26, 2024
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup Things I spent time thinking about this week / talking about: MoL: Zuckerberg's Open Source AI Manifesto -- MZ's open source manifesto was g…
SWL Week in ReviewTrump, Kiki, and the Olympics
July 19, 2024
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup Things I spent time thinking about this week / talking about: MoL: Trump & The Paypal Mafia On this week's MoL we discuss what has to be dis…
SWL Week in ReviewPatriotism and Summer
July 5, 2024
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup Things I spent time thinking about this week / talking about: MoL: Summer Adventures Allen & Co... the hierarchy of racket sports, and does tesl…
SWL Week in ReviewHearsay, Debates and Hacks
July 1, 2024
} Sam Lessin's end of week roundup Things I spent time thinking about this week / talking about: MoL Year 1 in review -- we just crossed the 1 year mark doing more or less... some t…
Modest ProposalsFollowup from Capital Light Conference
December 1, 2023
Hi All, Thanks again for joining our Capital Light Conference this wendesday... we had a lot of fun, and based on feedback it sounds like folks found the set of conversations useful as they think through how to build companies in a post-f…
Modest ProposalsReminder - Capital Light Conference Tomorrow AM
November 29, 2023
Hi All, We look forward to seeing you tomorrow! Ahead of the conference, we wanted to share the slightly updated agenda. Note that introductory remarks will begin at 11:50am ET / 8:50am PT. Please feel free to forward this message t…
Modest ProposalsInvite to The Capital Light Conference on the 29th
November 24, 2023
Hello, You are receiving this invite because you read the ' WTF VC ' deck I wrote about the present and future of venture capital recently. Based on strong interest, we put together a mini-conference on the topic of capital l…
Modest ProposalsCapital Light Conference on the 29th
November 24, 2023
Hello, I hope you had a great thanksgiving. As a reminder, the capital light conference which you RSVPed 'yes' for is coming up on the 29th (from the ' WTF VC ' deck)... We have an awesome group of founders of the most successfu…
Modest ProposalsPost-Factory VC' Conference Invite...
November 10, 2023
Hello, As a followup from the deck on the ' future of venture capital ' and what ' post-factory model VC ' looks like, we put together a morning with awesome founders who did it right -- and were able to build…
Modest ProposalsFollowup from the 'State of VC' deck
November 3, 2023
Hello, I wanted to reach out and thank you for reading my deck on the state of VC... It seems like it really struck a chord / continues to get more distribution than I thought it would... I had a few specific followups I wanted to…
Modest ProposalsFollowup from the 'State of VC' deck
October 20, 2023
Hello, I wanted to reach out and thank you for reading my deck earlier this week on the state of VC. It seems like it really struck a chord / got way more distribution than I thought it would (I guess decks perform better than twitt…
Modest ProposalsThe State of VC in 2023 - a Techno-Realist Manifesto
October 18, 2023
This seems to be the week of manifestos... On Monday I published my 84 slide take on how to understand what is going on in VC, where the real opportunities are, and what to avoid -- let's call it a 'techno-realist manifesto' ;) The deck w…
More or Less FriendsScott Belsky & Why Your AI Startup is Probably Already Dead*
September 29, 2023
This week we were thrilled to have Scott Belsky the Chief Strategy Officer of Adobe and good friend join our episode as the '5th wheel' as we discuss Why Most (not all but most) AI startups are already dead + visions for digital agents of…
More or Less FriendsThe Apple Episode (Carbon Neutralish)
September 15, 2023
The gang take you up close and personal with this week’s Apple event and discuss the future of the company, hardware and the garbage product they can’t live without. Plus, Brit schools Sam on pop culture, part 10. Listen via: Apple Sp…
More or Less FriendsWhy Hybrid Work Doesn't Work, Long Live the Phone Call
August 25, 2023
Back in the Bay Area, this week the Morins and Lessins debate the status of startup work culture and how to fix it (hint, 3 days a week isn't sustainable). Plus, Nvidia's blowout earnings and a series of request-for-startup ideas. E…
More or Less FriendsYou should kill your startup, What replaces globalization
August 18, 2023
This week's More or Less Podcast is entitled You should kill your startup, What replaces globalization . As the startup graveyard gets crowded, the Morins and the Lessins talk about when companies should quit and reminisce…
More or Less FriendsWhere's the Barbie business pop? Where brands beat marketplaces
August 4, 2023
Where's the Barbie business pop? Why brands beat marketplaces This week, inspired by Barbie and Taylor Swift, the Morins and the Lessins debate the future of franchises and brands. Plus, the latest in the ecommerce wars and the winners an…
More or Less FriendsEpisode 7: Elon's X game and RIP seed investing
July 28, 2023
Episode 7: Elon's X game and RIP seed investing On this week's episode: Are we just playing into Elon's game with Twitter? The Lessins and the Morins debate and take different sides on whether seed investing can survive. Plus, what'…
More or Less FriendsMore or Less Podcast
July 25, 2023
Friends, Recently four of us started a new podcast focused on technology of the day. Since you follow one of us on twitter, we thought you might be interested in the content since you follow either Jessica or Sam on Twitter. The s…
Slow Snail MailThe Best Time to Build
January 30, 2023
Tl;dr The mantra is “bad times create strong founders and strong founders create good times” but nobody really knows. It’s obviously a perilous time to invest and being a founder is a super concentrated investment. In a bear, the oppor…
Modest ProposalsCreator Financing Is Going Mainstream
December 29, 2022
In November 2021, Sam wrote an article outlining experiments we had been doing at Slow Ventures to invest directly in creators and serial entrepreneurs as individuals rather than backing traditional companies. What a difference a…
Modest ProposalsElon Musk Is Silicon Valley’s New Hero—for Better or Worse
April 26, 2022
The hero’s journey of ancient mythology follows a well-understood and well-documented pattern: The hero receives a call to adventure, overcomes a series of trials, encounters an otherworldly figure who helps them achieve greatness, a…
Modest ProposalsHow to Put Physical Assets on the Blockchain
February 24, 2022
People who focus on crypto love to talk about the importance of bringing “real-world,” hard-to-trade assets like real estate onto the blockchain. Why? The advantages go both ways. For the crypto ecosystem, bringing physical…
Modest ProposalsFacebook’s Decade-Old Missteps Should Be a Lesson for Web3
December 2, 2021
Once upon a time—that is, in 2011—the company then known as Facebook launched Open Graph, a way for users to carry their Facebook identities from app to app, thereby enabling developers to give them a personalized experience wh…
Modest ProposalsThe Metaverse Is Coming. What Happens Next?
November 12, 2021
After a good 15-ish–year run, most technology watchers agree that we are nearing the end of Web 2.0, and that the dawn of Web 3.0—aka the metaverse, depending on whose positioning you prefer—is upon us. This transition…
Modest ProposalsWhat Sequoia Gains by Blowing Up the VC Fund Structure
October 27, 2021
In August, I wrote that venture capital as we know it is ending . Self-proclaimed “VC funds” faced a choice: They could try to scale up to meet the coming onslaught of cash from the global financial community entering private…
Example Modest ProposalsA test title
October 13, 2021
adfasdfasdf asdfasdf this is some web only content you need to be paid to have access to.…
Modest ProposalsThe End of Venture Capital as We Know It
August 4, 2021
All signs seem to indicate that by 2022, for the first time, nontraditional tech investors—including hedge funds, mutual funds and the like—will invest more in private tech companies than traditional Silicon Valley–style…
Modest ProposalsThe Future of Investing Directly In People
March 22, 2021
When companies need capital to grow, they can generally go down one of two financial paths. They either borrow money at a fixed rate, or they sell equity where they owe nothing, but the investors get to participate in any future upside.…
Modest ProposalsCollectibles, Crypto NFTs, and the Monetization of Influence
March 2, 2021
The biggest story of the last month in the world of crypto has been the rapid rise of non-fungible tokens. For the uninitiated, NFTs are basically one-of-a-kind “artwork” or “cards” that are put on the blockchain an…
Modest ProposalsClubhouse and the Future of Cult-Driven Social Platforms
February 18, 2021
People are right to be focusing attention on Clubhouse’s meteoric rise. But almost everyone seems to misunderstand what is making the app so successful. It isn’t, as people like Ben Thompson suggest , simply another iterati…
Modest ProposalsEquity Financing for Influencers
January 26, 2021
The most valuable brands of the future are going to be people rather than companies. The shift in that direction is starting to happen right under our noses. Take the case of Elon Musk. You can’t assess Tesla’s $800 billion…
Modest ProposalsHow Blocking Trump Puts the Future of the Internet at Risk
January 12, 2021
The move by social networks to deplatform President Trump last week was the right call. In reality, he left Facebook and Twitter no other choice. That said, the first week of 2021 is going to be remembered as a watershed moment for the…
Modest ProposalsHow Covid Accelerated Changes Already in the Making
December 22, 2020
A year ago, at the close of the decade, I made a set of predictions about 2030 . Three months later, on March 9, with the U.S.’s daily count of new Covid-19 cases at 200, I added an early projection about how Covid would change th…
Modest ProposalsLessons From the Rise of OnlyFans
October 2, 2020
In the polite circles of Silicon Valley, when people want to discuss how creators build and monetize audiences, people like to talk about companies like Patreon and Substack. What they should be talking about is the adult-entertainment sub…
Modest ProposalsCalifornia’s 2020 Budget Solution: A Startup Equity Tax
August 31, 2020
In 2017 I wrote a column proposing that the Bay Area should levy a 5% equity tax on new companies and create a sovereign wealth fund for the region. The idea was to effectively create a municipal or state version of Y Combinator in order t…
Modest ProposalsThe Escalating War Between Our Physical and Digital Realities
July 15, 2020
Is the destiny of the internet to become an integrated extension of the physical world, a separate parallel universe, or to supplant and subsume the real world of today? This question, which has been abstractly rattling around science fict…
Modest ProposalsOn Feed Ranking and Free Speech
June 22, 2020
Many people wrote to me in response to my last column, “The Slippery Slope to Censored Speech,” disagreeing with my contention that people have a right to have their speech distributed and magnified through social platforms a…
Modest ProposalsThe Slippery Slope to Censored Speech
June 8, 2020
Last week, once again, the topic of content moderation on social networks took center stage. Against the backdrop of explicitly divergent policy decisions by major social media platforms, and in the context of extremely high social and pol…
Modest ProposalsThe Over-Under on New Voice-Chat App Clubhouse
June 1, 2020
The new voice-chat app Clubhouse recently made waves by raising its first institutional round of financing, which reportedly valued the company at more than $100 million. Many considered this number shocking given that the app is still in…
Modest ProposalsThe Long-Term Implications of Extended Work From Home
April 30, 2020
A shift to remote work at companies was underway even before the Covid-19 outbreak. New startups were being born that were fully “remote from the start.” Larger companies were experimenting with remote work to access talent out…
Modest ProposalsTechnology’s Role in Shaping the Impact of Covid-19
April 6, 2020
Three weeks ago I wrote a column about how the Covid-19 crisis was likely to affect the future of tech companies and technology policy. Since then, I have spent more time considering the inverse question: How is the state of technology i…
Modest ProposalsHow Coronavirus Epidemics Could Alter the Future of Tech
March 9, 2020
The impact of COVID-19 on the economy and our lives has been the subject of a lot of discussions in the last several weeks. But there’s been less discussion of the potential long-term implications of how the virus—or something…
Modest ProposalsThe 10 Ways TikTok Will Change Social Product Design
February 10, 2020
For the last two years, I have downloaded and played with TikTok every few months to track its progress, but I never found it seriously engaging beyond the occasional Arnold Schwarzenegger video. This, however, has changed. The ByteDance…
Modest ProposalsMy Predictions for the Next Decade
January 14, 2020
Right before 2010 began, I made a set of thematic predictions about 2020 and then backed them up with 86 specific claims. Having just reviewed and graded my now decade-old calls, it is time to make a new batch of predictions for 2030.&nb…
Modest ProposalsGrading My 2010 Predictions—and What I Learned
January 14, 2020
At the end of December 2009, I published a set of predictions about both my personal life and what the technology industry would look like a decade later—in 2020. I got a lot correct, I’m proud to say, especially about the bi…
Modest ProposalsIn Defense of Deep Fakes
December 16, 2019
Nearly everyone in the technology community is worried about the near-term prospect of deep fakes destroying our trust in the media and our collective sense of reality. That is understandable. When it becomes as easy to generate convincin…
Modest ProposalsFour Paths Forward for ‘Social Products’
December 2, 2019
A broad-based belief in Silicon Valley is that new opportunities for social networks occur only with “platform shifts,” such as the growth of mobile. Only then, so this theory goes, do consumers have the cognitive bandwidth and…
Modest ProposalsThe Key Themes That Matter for the Future of Work
November 4, 2019
A few years ago, if you asked most technologists around Silicon Valley which technologies would affect the future of work, the discussion would have centered around AI, self-driving cars, fully digital assistants and the inevitability of l…
Modest ProposalsThe Challenges Facing Free Speech
October 22, 2019
Many people have asked me in the last few days what I thought of Mark Zuckerberg’s speech on “free expression,” since it is a topic I have focused on so much. I admire Mark’s commitment to free speech. He did an adm…
Modest ProposalsThe Home Camera Wars
September 24, 2019
Facebook’s announcement of their latest line of Portal screens last week is just the latest in a rapid-fire series of home-related releases from the major technology platforms recently. The race for control of the home—not just…
Modest ProposalsA Solution for Gig Economy Labor: Lightning Strikes
September 16, 2019
Technology has driven us to a fascinating moment in the history of labor relations. At the very high end of the labor market, workers have never been more empowered, thanks to the internet. Open communication tools and forums inside…
Modest ProposalsOn Inequality and Risk Capacity
July 22, 2019
One of the most important social questions of the next few decades is clearly going to be how we respond as a society to the overt growing inequality in the United States. As this discussion becomes more mainstream, the narrative that get…
Modest ProposalsThe Future of Free Speech
July 15, 2019
Late last month more than one hundred technologists, academics and journalists gathered in San Francisco to talk about the future of free speech. The event—which I organized with Andrew Kortina and Slow Ventures—tackled a range…
Modest ProposalsRemote Work and the Politics of Decentralization
May 6, 2019
One of the major themes playing out for both startups and large technology companies is a move away from centralized teams and toward embracing decentralization and remote work. To date, technology has been a centralizing force for people…
Modest ProposalsWhy the Internet Could Help Small Businesses Regain Power
April 22, 2019
What is going to happen to small businesses in the U.S. in the coming years? The general thesis is that technology allows mega-companies like Amazon to scale, putting small businesses into a systemic decline. But I am not at all convinced…
Modest ProposalsThe Cost and Risk of Regulations That Make Information ‘Own-able’
March 18, 2019
The internet is forcing us to engage with a far broader definition of the economy than in the past. Instead of thinking of the economy primarily in terms of physical goods and services, the internet is putting front and center a fuller pic…
Modest ProposalsA Warning on the Dangers of Ephemeral Messaging
March 8, 2019
Facebook’s decision to move toward end-to-end encryption and “secure data storage” is the right call. It is necessary. With this decision, company executives will be on the right side of history, as I will explain more be…
Modest ProposalsISAs and the Future of Securitization
February 25, 2019
Finance is fundamentally an exercise in pricing risk, and pricing risk is in large part a function of the cost of information. Given this reality, it is somewhat surprising that in the last few decades the internet has not more fundamenta…
Modest ProposalsThe Pressure on the News Industry Is a Symptom of Disempowerment
February 11, 2019
If you study the history of news, one thing becomes very clear: we are not living through as extraordinary a period in the history of news as some people think. Time and time again, over hundreds of years, the same pattern has played out.…
Modest ConversationsModest Conversations: Income Share Agreements
February 11, 2019
In late December Erik Torenberg and I sat down to talk about the future of human capital and the long history of Income Share Agreements. I am glad we delayed releasing this episode, because the last few months have only made the topic of…
Modest ProposalsHow to Introduce a Wealth Tax
February 4, 2019
In the last few weeks there has been an intense string of discussions in Silicon Valley about the future of taxation. The debate has primarily sprung from Elizabeth Warren’s comments about adding a wealth tax, and Alexandria Ocasio-C…
Modest ProposalsHow Political Content Fills the Void Left by Micro-Targeting
January 21, 2019
What if in the near future inequality continues to rise and the most valuable reason to advertise to many people becomes to seek their votes rather than their dollars? This was the fascinating question that my friend and collaborator An…
Modest ProposalsWhat Technologists Can Learn From Religions
December 24, 2018
In 1994, Umberto Eco famously wrote that the Macintosh was Catholic and that DOS was Protestant. While he was mostly speaking in jest, I am increasingly convinced that modern internet platforms have as much to learn from religious histor…
Modest ProposalsMy Predictions for Crypto in 2019
December 17, 2018
Almost exactly one year ago I made 14 predictions about how the cryptocurrency market would change in 2018. This year, I want to start by recapping how my predictions turned out, and then make a fresh set of 2019 calls. In reviewin…
Modest ProposalsWe Need Better Measures of Social and Environmental Impacts
December 3, 2018
When historians look back at the 21st century, they will describe us as a global society deeply weakened by incomplete measurement and false precision in how we view our economy. This challenge feels pervasive. The U.S. economy, on pape…
Modest ProposalsIs Uber Cash a Crypto Play?
November 12, 2018
The idea that social networking and messaging platforms could be used to launch and distribute new cryptocurrencies has been widely discussed in technology circles in the last few years. But what about ride-sharing companies—and in p…
Modest ProposalsThe Coming of the Human Knowledge-Work Cloud
October 15, 2018
There have been some major moves occurring at companies focused on the future of work in the last few months. Robotic Process Automation, a technology that makes it possible to automate repetitive tasks inside businesses, is on fire. UiPat…
EssayIntroducing “B is for Bitcoin”
August 29, 2018
Anyone with small children knows that our early childhood education is stuck in the 20th century. From an early age, kids learn about agriculture, construction sites and transportation through books focused on barnyards, trucks, airplanes…
Modest ProposalsThe Future of Privacy: Disinformation
August 20, 2018
Between 2007 and 2010, I lived in New York and worked on a startup called drop.io, whose goal was to make it easy to privately share files and content across platforms. Given what I was working on in that period, I spent a lot of time talk…
Modest ProposalsScooters: The New Self-Driving Cars
July 30, 2018
The dockless scooter wars are in full swing. With the announcement of huge funding rounds at billion-dollar valuations, deals with ride-hailing companies and a spate of local regulatory action, there is a lot of attention being paid to the…
Modest ProposalsIt’s Time for an American Internet Privacy Framework
June 19, 2018
In the last several weeks, you likely received a slew of emails from U.S. internet companies updating privacy policies in response to the Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation privacy rules coming into effect. Seeing these upd…
Modest ProposalsInstagram Is the Real Virtual Reality, Not Oculus
May 28, 2018
An odd thing occurred to me while watching Facebook’s F8 developer conference earlier this month. Amid announcements about new form factors for Oculus and a slew of updates on camera effects and lenses, I realized Facebook’s pl…
Modest ProposalsVenmo Trust and The Blockchain
May 8, 2018
One of the ideas I am most proud of contributing to was “Trust” on Venmo. Part of Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail’s original version of Venmo, the idea was to allow people who signed up for Venmo to “trust&rd…
Modest ProposalsGoverning the Internet
April 9, 2018
It has always been inevitable that regulation would come to the internet just as it has come to every major communications platform that preceded it. Once the Web became critical infrastructure and started down the path of consolidation to…
Modest ProposalsThe Intellectual Tension Between Social Networking and Blockchains
February 12, 2018
There is an interesting irony that social networks and blockchains, two of the most important information technologies of the day, sit in fundamental intellectual tension. The core idea of a blockchain is that there is a common shared &ld…
Modest ProposalsStable Coins, Oracles, Trust, and Identity
February 5, 2018
One of the biggest structural challenges for digital platforms, ranging from blockchains to social networks, is figuring out how to translate the real world into a language that digital systems can process. It is one thing to build a self-…
Modest ProposalsOpen vs. Closed in National Tech Strategies: the U.S. and China
January 29, 2018
In the last several months, the Chinese government has moved swiftly to manage and shape self-driving cars, genetics data and cryptocurrencies in their country—arguably the three most promising technologies of the immediate future.…
Modest ProposalsThe Future of Hybrid Centralized-Decentralized Apps
January 15, 2018
Early last week, it was reported that the messaging app Telegram is working on raising capital for an audacious blockchain-based ecosystem of services and a network token called TON. Some skeptics have mockingly called this the large…
Modest ProposalsBlockchains and the Right to Be Forgotten
December 18, 2017
In the internet of 2017, when something goes terribly wrong, the service provider hosting the content or code can usually turn it off. But the rise of blockchains means that won’t be the case for much longer. One of the most interes…
Modest Proposals14 Ways the Cryptocurrency Market Will Change in 2018
December 4, 2017
The energy around cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology stands out as a rare positive growth story among a sea of depressing technology narratives in 2017. This year I wrote two columns about cryptocurrency, detailing in May w…
Modest ProposalsThe Tower of Babel: Five Challenges of the Modern Internet
November 6, 2017
Late last year, I wrote a column about free speech and democracy in the age of micro-targeting. In it I observed that in order to preserve an open democratic discourse, it was critical to require that all micro-targeted political ads and…
Modest ConversationsModest Conversations: Attention and Addiction
November 6, 2017
Tristan Harris fomerly of Google joins to discuss his views on attention and addiction. Beyond talking about theory, we discuss a wide range of ideas about potential paths forward ranging from a low-engagement alt-phone, to enforced…
Modest ConversationsModest Conversations: The Human Side of Building Technology
October 15, 2017
Blake joins to discuss the human side of technology - growth mindset, failure, and success. How do the people who build technology, and the ways they collaborate on teams, and the culture of tech companies define the products that come out…
Modest ProposalsThe Future of Work
October 9, 2017
We are entering a period where machine learning is going to dramatically change the nature of work across a broad swath of service and knowledge industries. Extremists see a world where all human work evaporates rapidly, driving a convers…
Modest ProposalsThe Future of Free Speech
September 11, 2017
In the past several years technology has made speech dramatically more powerful and free than was conceivable in the past. In 2017, with a highly charged atmosphere locally and globally, the question of how the concept of freedom of speech…
Modest ConversationsOn Bitcoin Cash & New Ways Crypto-Projects Move Forward
August 6, 2017
Alexia and I discuss the last week in crypto and Bitcoin Cash. What does it look like when there is a pattern for faster innovation without 'consensus' in the cyrpto world? How does it change the power and importance of exchanges…
Modest ProposalsThe Future of Truth
July 31, 2017
For the last century we have had the luxury of being able to rely on photos, video and audio for a recorded understanding of truth. But for most of human history, trust and truth were far more complicated. World events couldn’t be di…
Modest ConversationsOn Product Management - Rousseau Kazi
July 29, 2017
Rousseau was a product manager at Facebook and now is starting on a new company. He joins for a modest converstaion on product management.…
Modest ConversationsViewpoint From The Silicon Valley Entering Class of ‘17
July 16, 2017
Samantha joins as a representative of the Silicon Valley entering class of 2017 having just graduated from Columbia CS and moving on to Facebook engineering. She talks about how she got interested in tech, her personal projects, and…
Modest ProposalsSeven Key Questions in the Cryptocurrency World
July 3, 2017
If you look at the list of the 10 largest online crowdfunding campaigns in history, eight of them raised money through the Ethereum platform. Far more shockingly, of those eight largest raises, seven have occurred in the last 45 days. The…
Modest ProposalsA Game Plan for VR and AR in 2017
June 5, 2017
The VR and AR push of the last several years is at a crossroads. The PR wave that had helped create excitement is subsiding against the backdrop of disappointing technology, content, and adoption. In the last several months the grand vis…
Modest ProposalsTime to Pay Attention to Cryptocurrencies
May 22, 2017
In the last few weeks there have been massive runups in several cryptocurrencies. The market capitalization of Bitcoin has doubled since the start of the year to the equivalent of more than $30 billion. Currencies like Ethereum and Ripple…
Modest ConversationsModest Conversations: The Near Future of AI
May 21, 2017
For this week’s modest conversation we have a double header on the near future of AI. Lukas Biewald, the founder of Crowdflower and intern at OpenAI takes us through his thinking on what happens next in the land of AI. Danie…
Modest ProposalsThe Wrinkle In Forecasting Autonomous Cars
May 9, 2017
Onstage at TED last week, Elon Musk made the very bold proclamation that in about two years, Tesla owners will be able to go to sleep at the start of a drive and wake up at their destination. While I applaud his showmanship and acute engi…
Modest ProposalsThe Bay Area Should Levy a 5% Equity Tax on Startups
April 24, 2017
There are a lot of new tax ideas circulating in conversations. With aging infrastructure, growing inequality, and an expectation of less federal support in the future, conversations among state and local politicians about raising more regi…
Modest ConversationsModest Conversations: The Future of Real Estate
April 23, 2017
Brad Hargreaves, the founder of Common and co-founder of General Assembly joins to discuss the future of Real Estate. We focus on topics like Millennial ‘Poverty’, how the death of retail is changing real-estate financing…
Modest ConversationsModest Conversations: Is Meditation The Next Yoga?
April 17, 2017
Eric Antonow, the founder of Public Meditation, and formerly of Facebook and Google, joins to discuss why meditation is either the next Yoga or toothbrush — or both.…
Modest ProposalsThe Second Coming of IT
April 10, 2017
For a generation before we thought of “technology companies” as Google and Facebook, there was a long era of IT, or “information technology.” During this era, technology was an unglamorous industry that made busines…
Modest ProposalsWhy Twitter Should Start Charging
April 3, 2017
In the last few months, while the technorati have mostly focused their navel-gazing on the story wars between Facebook and Snapchat, the usual chatter about how Twitter can save itself has been relatively quiet. That said, in late March,…
Modest ProposalsWho Pays for Redesigning Streets for Self-Driving Cars?
March 20, 2017
In the abstract, self-driving cars should make traffic in cities better. In practice, I think self-driving cars will make traffic congestion far worse, requiring a fairly substantial redesign of the road systems in American cities. The sh…
Modest ConversationsThe Information Presents: Modest Conversations
March 13, 2017
Sam Lessin, who writes the Modest Proposals column for The Information, is starting a new podcast series called Modest Conversations. In the first episode, Dave Morin joins Sam for a conversation on what they call digital drugs. The two ex…
Modest ProposalsSlowing Down the Digital Escapist Movement
March 6, 2017
In “The Three-Body Problem” science fiction trilogy, there’s a constant tension between the “escapists” who want to leave the galaxy and its problems and those who want to stay. We don’t have the technol…
Modest ProposalsThe Return of History: Google Photos and Personal Big Data
February 20, 2017
For the last several years, thanks to social media, people have valued photos for the attention they immediately garner when shared. The value of a photo as a piece of history, or a memory, while once primary, has been mostly relegated to…
Modest ProposalsThe Similarity Between Silicon Valley and Trump
February 13, 2017
For all the discussion about the relationship between Trump and Silicon Valley over the last several weeks, there is a deep narrative similarity that I think has gone under-acknowledged. It is this similarity between Trump and the Valley t…
Modest ProposalsOur Silent Future
January 16, 2017
Can you get through your day without talking, in person, to another human? If you unwind the clock 100 years, the prospect would seem ridiculous, unless you lived deep in the woods. But, as time goes on, technology is clearly drawing us cl…
Modest ProposalsBot Check-In: A Year of Disappointment
January 3, 2017
In January, I wrote about how 2016 had been declared the year of bots by many. At year’s end, the bots narrative has been very loud but mostly disappointing. Most of the major technology companies announced big initiatives. But the…
Modest ProposalsIn 2017, Tech Will Seek to Regain Moral High Ground
December 27, 2016
One of the things that in recent history set the technology complex apart from finance and other industries has been the ability to simultaneously be financially successful and maintain broad-based admiration—sometimes bordering on a…
Modest ProposalsWhy Amazon Should Launch a Bank—But Won’t
December 19, 2016
Last month Cross River Bank, an FDIC-insured, deposit-taking bank of Bergen County, New Jersey, raised $28 million from Battery Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and Ribbit. As was reported , VCs were interested in what looks like a boring…
Modest ProposalsFree Speech and Democracy in the Age of Micro-Targeting
December 5, 2016
For many centuries philosophers, political scientists and lawyers have taken for granted that there is a reasonably clear distinction between the public and private spheres and the nature of “speech” in each space. The private…
Modest ProposalsThe Rise of Information Imperialism
November 21, 2016
It recently dawned on me that we are in an age of information imperialism. Small communities of people used to have their own private stores of knowledge that were distinct to their local communities. That local knowledge defined and bonde…
Modest ProposalsThe First Modern Election
November 7, 2016
We just witnessed the first fully modern campaign cycle. If you are versed in science fiction, it played out exactly as predicted. It wasn’t pretty. The public discussion about technology’s impact on the election has mostly ce…
Modest ProposalsWhere Airbnb May Be More Vulnerable than Uber
October 31, 2016
Airbnb and Uber are, far and away, the two poster children for digital businesses disrupting physical-world industries in deep ways. As such, it is unsurprising that they have been reaping all the growth, value, attention and regulatory sc…
Modest ProposalsWhy Today’s Tech Narrative is Way Ahead of Reality
October 17, 2016
When I worked at Facebook, I used to give a talk to all the incoming product managers about science fiction. My message was that the role of product managers—and tech companies broadly—isn't to come up with new ideas. The…
Modest ProposalsHow Data Analytics is Changing Startup Financing
October 3, 2016
In my first job after college I worked for Bain & Company and learned a lot about how to use data to understand how companies could maximize revenue and profit—either to drive their stock price or service the debt applied by a fi…
Modest ProposalsUber’s Self-Driving Car Puzzle
September 19, 2016
The wave of fervor over self-driving cars is putting Uber in a precarious position. At first blush, it is easy to believe that fully autonomous vehicles will be the step that propels a valuable company to unfathomable heights. But a deeper…
Modest ProposalsWhat Everyone Is Missing about Venture Returns
September 5, 2016
It was interesting to watch the back and forth last week between the Wall Street Journal and Andreessen Horowitz about venture fund performance. The entire exchange seemed to miss entirely the reality of how LPs and founders value venture…
Modest ProposalsWhy I Like, but Won’t Use, Instagram Stories For Now
August 22, 2016
Facebook did a nice job rolling out Instagram stories earlier this month. The timing was excellent for sparking engagement (right ahead of the Olympics). The rhetoric was great (not trying to claim Facebook invented the product). The…
Modest ProposalsOlympic Coverage: The Best of Times and the Worst of Times
August 15, 2016
I have been very impressed with the access that NBC is providing to the Olympics. It feels like, finally, the decades-old dream of access to all the events, whenever I want, on whatever terms I want, has been delivered. It has been a pleas…
Modest ProposalsWhy the Bonus Culture Will Spread
August 2, 2016
We are currently living through an explosion of measurement technology. Once only athletes, salespeople and investment bankers could be managed by metrics of their performance. But increasingly everyone is, as technology opens up deeper ac…
Modest ProposalsHow to Profit from Political Correctness
July 18, 2016
I have had trouble using third-party keyboards. Some offer some nice bells and whistles, but iOS and Android invest so much in their native keyboards that beating them at their own game is hard. That said, there is one keyboard idea that…
Modest ProposalsBots in 2016: Mid-Year Check In
July 5, 2016
In January I wrote a post on bots , conversational apps and Fin. In the post I called out that it felt like 2016 was the year of a broad shift in the developer ecosystem away from apps and toward conversational interfaces and bots. A lot…
Modest ProposalsThe Negative Side of Incubators
June 20, 2016
We are awash in startup incubators. And while some like Y Combinator have strengthened the startup ecosystem, I fear the incubators’ increasingly standardized, demo day-focused financing model are harming entrepreneurs and young star…
Modest ProposalsEra of Lean Startups Nears an End
June 6, 2016
After about a decade of lean, capital-efficient startups, I believe we’re moving back toward a world of more expensive startups with higher initial capital requirements. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it will change p…
Modest ProposalsThe Non-Monetizable Product Blind Spot
May 23, 2016
Why, in 2016, is there still no good, widely available, digital address book? Why is mobile calendaring still so incredibly broken? Why is there no widely used news reader or personal journal? It isn’t for lack of trying. These are…
Modest ProposalsWhy the Home Wars Aren’t the Phone Wars
May 9, 2016
For a generation, there has been a “Highlander”-style battle between the tech giants to be the phone in your pocket. The assumption has been that, since people will not carry more than one phone, the battle for presence in your…
Modest ProposalsThe New Business of Editing
April 25, 2016
I was having dinner with my good friend and Fin co-founder Andrew Kortina, when we began talking about the nature of good editing. Kortina pointed out that many good TV series—like “House of Cards,” or “Mad Men,&rd…
Modest ProposalsThe Coming End of Capitalism
April 11, 2016
In the last few months there has been a resurgence of post-capitalist chatter flying around the valley. John Battelle, for instance, posted a widely shared note about “the reinvention of capitalism” after technology. At the s…
Modest ProposalsWhy Tech Needs Epic Failures
March 28, 2016
If you were to read the headlines about big technology company launches over the last few years, things might look pretty bleak. There have been a lot of epic failures. Apple’s Watch, the Amazon’s Kindle Fire phone, Google&rsq…
Modest ProposalsWhy We Should Abolish Time Zones
March 14, 2016
One of my favorite factoids about China is that the whole country operates in one time zone—just like the U.S. army. In most countries, before contacting someone, you have to think about what region they’re in and whether they&…
Modest ProposalsStartups Need to Fire More Customers
February 22, 2016
As belt-tightening has become a discussion theme in the Valley, teams are debating how to cut burn to survive through a perceived winter. Whether or not employees need to be cut, I believe that startups who want to build truly game-changi…
Modest ProposalsWhy Startups Are Doomed, Part Two
February 8, 2016
Jessica’s Friday column “End of Tech Startups” argued that today’s big technology companies are nimble, smart, and well run—and that until there is another fundamental technology disruption, the window of oppo…
Modest ProposalsOn Bots, Conversational Apps and Fin
January 18, 2016
2016 is being declared the year of bots. And it feels like there is a broad shift in the developer ecosystem away from traditional point-and-click apps, towards chat-based user interfaces. It’s happening because there is broad consu…
Modest ProposalsPersonal Voice Analysis for the New Year
January 4, 2016
In the past several years I have participated in the chorus of people railing against phone calls. People dislike them because they aren’t asynchronous, and they don’t allow for the depth of in-person exchanges. So I decided t…
Modest ProposalsStar Wars’ Private Tech Valuation Formula
December 21, 2015
Would you rather own Star Wars or 25% of Snapchat? What about 6% of Uber, 40% of Dropbox, or 1.3% of Facebook? Based on the 2012 sale of LucasFilm for $4 billion, that is generally the question that many investors might be ba…
Modest ProposalsWhy Aren’t We Talking More About Autonomous Passenger Planes?
December 21, 2015
Of all the tantalizing futuristic possibilities on the horizon, self driving cars is clearly the topic people love to talk about these days. But fully autonomous cars are going to take a long time to actualize. Passenger aircraft could b…
Modest ProposalsThe Good Enough Stuff Revolution
December 7, 2015
Are Harry’s or Dollar Shave Club razors better than Gillette? What about Honest Co. soap versus Dial soap? I have no idea, and I don’t have any interest in figuring it out. They are good enough and generally easier to buy, and…
Modest ProposalsKodak’s Lesson for Detroit
November 23, 2015
The downfall of Kodak is one of the best known cautionary tales in technology. A dominant and well respected company, Kodak in the early 1990s was well aware of a major shift about to happen in its industry—the transition from film t…
Modest ProposalsThe New Winners and Losers in the Boredom Market
November 9, 2015
Imagine trying to size the total number of hours people are mentally under-engaged each year. Let’s talk about it as the total boredom market—the fastest growing and most competitive part of the media world. It’s the mar…
Modest ProposalsHow Growth Will Burst the Tech Bubble
October 26, 2015
These days people trying to predict when the tech bubble will burst tend to argue it will happen when 1) tech companies run out of all the money they’ve raised or 2) the global economy worsens. On the first, I think it is important…
Modest ProposalsWhy It’s Hard to Fix Failing Tech Cos.
October 12, 2015
From time to time, I have a conversation with someone—usually from New York—about how to “fix” a Web-based company that seems to have lost its way. For years these conversations were about Yahoo, or more recently Tw…
Modest ProposalsThe Case Against Product-Market Fit
September 28, 2015
If you spend more than a hot second discussing startups, you have undoubtedly heard the term "product-market fit," a reference to whether a product is clicking with a certain customer base. It’s typically used in two ways…
Modest ProposalsPaying Up Front is a Legacy Concept
September 14, 2015
Last week Apple announced that they were taking a step towards a subscription model around the iPhone. Rather than paying upfront for the hardware, you pay each month and get access to iPhone as a product — effectively whatever…
Modest ProposalsUnderstanding the Hidden ‘Costs’ of Products
August 24, 2015
If you ask someone about the cost of a product, either hardware or software, you typically get an answer in dollars. HBO, for example, is $15 a month, and Facebook is free. The reality, however, is a bit more complicated. All products&mda…
Modest ProposalsOculus Is for the Elderly
August 10, 2015
When I am at home, for better and worse, I mostly only spend time with people who are very sophisticated in their technology consumption and tend to be about my age (give or take a few decades). In traveling for vacation to the East Coa…
Modest ProposalsThe Hidden Costs of Pivoting
July 27, 2015
Instagram was famously a pivot from Burbn, a failed check-in app. Twitter was a pivot from Odeo, a failing podcasting platform. Slack was a pivot out of a failing game company. The successful pivot is revered in Silicon Valley. But,…
Modest ProposalsStartups Need Shade—Not Just Time—To Grow
July 13, 2015
I was having breakfast recently with a friend who argued that Nest, the hardware company, only existed because it chose to do something that wasn’t important enough for a company like Apple to do because the market wasn’t big enough to mov…
Modest ProposalsWhy VCs are the New Investment Bankers
June 29, 2015
On Friday, Jessica wrote about how special purpose vehicles, SPVs, are good for VCs and for companies looking to maximize valuations . I think there’s another interesting angle that’s been coming up in discussions of late: how technolo…
Modest Proposals‘It’s a Trap’: The Danger Zone for Series B and C Startups
June 15, 2015
In “Return of the Jedi” the rebel fleet drops out of light speed to attack what they think is a not-yet-operational deathstar. In what has become one of the most meme-ized lines from the Star Wars saga, Admiral Ackbar, a minor character, e…
Modest ProposalsPricing for Consumer Perception
June 1, 2015
As Internet companies reach more deeply into the economy and our lives, they’re encountering a problem that has long afflicted other industries. When a person doesn’t understand how a service makes money, he tends to believe the worst. And…
Modest ProposalsThe End of the Bazaar
May 11, 2015
The first 20 years of the Internet could be described as a race to build the infrastructure to support a global heterogeneous bazaar—a single “place” where everything was for sale, from entertainment to services to physical goods. But j…
Modest ProposalsThe Downside of Positive Feedback
April 27, 2015
It is well known that anonymous and pseudo-anonymous feedback forums online, like Yelp and Craigslist, have a negativity problem. In emotionally disconnected and consequence-free environments, users tend towards over-the-top and unhelpful…
Modest ProposalsA Call for New Type of Mapping Platform
April 13, 2015
Here’s a Pop Quiz. Maui is 2,336 miles away from San Francisco and Montgomery, Vermont is 2,067 miles away. Which is closer? A map might suggest that they are both about the same distance away. But if you want to go to either, it turns…
Modest ProposalsThe Economics of Sharing: Past and Present
March 30, 2015
Every six months or a year, a new app reignites a conversation about why people share on social media. I think it is pretty straight forward. Humans are social machines with thousands of years of evolutionary refinement. When we speak, emo…
Modest ProposalsHow Startups Get Their Metrics Wrong
March 23, 2015
Y Combinator is hosting two Demo Days this week for startups in its latest batch to pitch throngs of investors. As is typical, some begin bringing investors on board before the rush, and so I have had a series of hurried meetings this past…
Modest ProposalsWhy Tech Comp is Broken and Ideas To Fix It
March 9, 2015
A handful of trends are causing the historical Silicon Valley model of compensation to fail employers and employees. I am not entirely sure how to fix it. But I believe that at least part of the solution will be a move away from equity…
Modest ProposalsWhy Late-Stage Investing is Becoming More Like Seed-Stage
February 23, 2015
People often think about venture capital as one homogeneous model. The reality, however, is that the way in which seed investors make money has been dramatically different from how late-stage VCs and growth-equity funds do. Seed investo…
Modest ProposalsLeapfrogging the U.S.: Transportation in Sao Paulo
February 9, 2015
Sao Paulo, Brazil—This city, where I spent the last week, is massive—much bigger than New York. Traffic can be terrible, from the main thoroughfares to the winding and complicated back alleys even locals struggle to navigate. Cars are extr…
Modest ProposalsLabor Economics and How Uber is Going to Disrupt Starbucks
January 26, 2015
The other morning I woke up, bought a coffee at a fancy coffee shop, hopped in an Uber and went to a SoulCycle class. I started thinking about how in just a few moments, I had bought services from people representing three very differen…
Modest ProposalsNative Advertising: A Convenient Pitch I’m Not Buying
January 12, 2015
There is a lot of attention around native advertising these days. Up-and-coming media companies like BuzzFeed and Vice are hauling in huge valuations against business models around branded content, namely writing content for advertisers th…
Modest ProposalsMy 2020 Predictions: A Reality Check
December 29, 2014
On the eve of New Year 2010, I published a set of predictions about what the technology industry would look like a decade later, in 2020. Since we are now halfway through that decade, I thought it would be a good time to chec…
Modest ProposalsTechnology, Taxi Medallions and the Ancien Régime
December 22, 2014
It is common to talk about the ways that technology is disrupting governments, and everything else for that matter. But there is one timely topic that illustrates how technology could help governments more efficiently capture value for the…
Modest ProposalsHow Digital Photography Is Altering Our Memory
December 15, 2014
Last week, I ran through all the digital photos I have taken since 2001 to help with a slideshow for a friend’s wedding. It quickly became apparent how changes in technology, specifically sharing services, have dramatically shifted t…
Subscriber SurveyEconomy Soars, Uber Drops in The Information Survey
December 9, 2014
Maybe it was the bullish jobs report. Maybe it was the drumbeat of mammoth fundraising rounds for private tech companies. Whatever the reasons, The Information subscribers are notably more optimistic about the overall economy than a mont…
Modest ProposalsThe Race to Become the Apple of Drones
December 8, 2014
One of the biggest technology battles brewing is the war over the flying camera. On one hand, there’s GoPro, the action camera company whose plans to build drones leaked last month. And then there is DJI, the Chinese consumer drone…
Modest ProposalsAs Technology Kills GDP, What’s Next?
December 1, 2014
Gross Domestic Product has long been criticized as a flawed measure of the strength of an economy. But as technology topples the core economic assumptions of our society, GDP is rapidly becoming a completely broken metric. So what s…
Modest ProposalsWhen Tech Companies Enter Zero-Sum Markets
November 24, 2014
We are accustomed to talking about technology companies as having infinite or near-infinite addressable markets. Productivity is almost by definition an infinite market; people have an uncapped appetite to do more with less. Communication…
Modest ProposalsUber As Gatekeeper to the Physical World
November 17, 2014
Uber and Spotify this morning announced a new feature that will allow Uber customers to listen to their playlists while riding in Uber cars. At first blush, it may sound like a media stunt conveniently timed to Spotify’s need fo…
Subscriber SurveyThe Information Subscribers Say…
November 11, 2014
The Information subscribers are nine times more optimistic about the tech sector than they are about the overall economy, according to The Information’s first monthly Subscriber Viewpoint survey. And they’re increasingly optim…
Modest ProposalsNative Apps: A Game Startups Can’t Win
November 10, 2014
Any software startup launching in 2014 has to abide by two rules. The product must be mobile-first, if not mobile-only. The desktop, at least from a consumer perspective, is on its way to extinction. Secondly, developers must build…
Modest ProposalsBig Brands Have Become Liabilities
November 3, 2014
In the sea of food pictures your friends post on Instagram, how many McDonald’s Big Macs have you seen? How many Starbucks cups, Sheraton Hotel lobbies or Budweiser beers? Perhaps a few. But, in general, mainstream brands are…
Modest ProposalsGrowth: Design It, Buy It or Get Stuck
October 27, 2014
Two classes of technology startups are doing well these days, pulling down enormous valuations and aggregating top talent in Silicon Valley. The first is applications that have strong self-reinforcing and highly scalable growth mech…
Modest ProposalsWhat I’ve Learned Since Leaving Facebook
October 20, 2014
I left Facebook six weeks ago, after working there for nearly four years. Working at Facebook is like working in a bubble. The company, like its peers in the tech industry, is highly effective at distributing everything from technology…
Modest ProposalsTime to Hang up on Voice
October 13, 2014
I recently spent some time playing with the new Moto 360 smartwatch to develop some intuitions about watches as a form factor for wearable technology. And it spurred some thinking about the utility of voice commands as an interface. …
Modest ProposalsHow the Sharing Economy Threatens the Traditional Economy
October 6, 2014
For centuries, technology has been making it easier to make more goods more cheaply, driving up ownership and consumption of everything from TVs to toys. But we’re entering a different era. Technologies that enable us to summon every…
Modest ProposalsThe Second Coming of Non-Consensus Currencies
September 29, 2014
Currencies are based on consensus. For a currency to have value, a consensus must form around what it is, who has it and what it is worth relative to other things in the world. This is the case with currencies like the Dollar or E…
Modest ProposalsWhy Universities Should Wise Up and Retain Their ‘Users’
September 22, 2014
Here’s a question: Can you name a service provider that kicks out all its paying and engaged members for no reason after four years? Answer: universities. After playing this game myself for a while, I haven’t come up with ve…
Modest ProposalsThe ‘Uber Effect’ on the Property Market
September 15, 2014
Real estate is one of the few industries in the world that’s bigger than transportation. But in the coming decades, companies like Uber and Lyft—eventually super-charged by self-driving cars—are likely to c…
Modest ProposalsSelfies, Emoji and the Economics of Communication
September 8, 2014
Today marks the debut of Modest Proposals, a new column by Sam Lessin. Sam is the former VP of product development at Facebook and is married to Jessica Lessin, founder of The Information. The human face is the oldest and most sophist…
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