More or Less Podcast

Sam Lessin — Selected Quotes

100%. I mean, honestly guys, I have this set up. I've got open search backends. I've got the whole thing firing. By the way, incredibly easy to do at this point. I can take millions of records. I actually, you know what I did? I took all of our transcripts, ripped them apart, had them in a Postgres database by character so we can remix and redo anything we want. Like you give me any text file, it's like literally three keystrokes and I can give you anything you want.

— Sam Lessin, Episode more_or_less_indian_wells_2026_03

Of course it will! But the interesting thing is, is it actually incremental more tailor plays? Or is it just shifting old tailor plays to new tailor plays?

— Sam Lessin, Episode 44

Everyone's like, why is there so much money? Like there's like no money in politics, given the amount of impact it has. You're seeing tech companies starting to, you over the last decade, get more into Washington, but you know, this is high, high consequence of shit. Um, especially, especially if you believe the executive is taking rightly or wrongly more power, right? Which I think part of how you get pulled into this is like, you know, at Donald Trump, who apparently can do nothing illegal as long as he's president.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 59

Yeah, but it's just like, look, we were looking at, it's like, there are women, like, dominate nursing, women dominate OnlyFans, women dominate all sorts of stuff, right? Like, it's like, I just-

— Sam Lessin, Episode 82

I think the interesting question is, like, you know, and again, you never know how to these things in the game of Pokemon, but it's like...

— Sam Lessin, Episode 104

That's actually not the dumbest idea I've ever heard. NOISE There is like... Well, there is... One of Jessica's engineers of the information was like an international court soccer player. Where it's like soccer with a mini field. And she was on like... I think there are versions of it, but you're right. Maybe you could have like... The question is, what will old people play? Right? I think that's the core question you have to answer.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 54

I was actually, I had this whole thing staged guys, cause I, know, Jess is launching a news channel and like a good house husband, I was playing tennis while she was doing this. And I told the tennis coach, was like, give me a minute between, between, actually won a few games off this pro and, and between games, said, give me a moment. I'm just going to dial in. And I was like, oh, there's no audio. I was like, you know what? I'm going keep playing tennis because once the tennis match is over, I'm going to go home.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 108

Oh, it goes back even further. I mean, again, I, my dad was involved in this New York Times. It's taking me way back, but it's good. I'm actually working on a story about this is like, it's Andrew Weinridge in six degrees, right? Like even before all that stuff, the well in six degrees, like there was a generation earlier with a Facebook, the friending patents came from. And interestingly, those companies like six degrees was ultimately sunk because they couldn't afford the surfer costs. Right? Like they had a

— Sam Lessin, Episode 48

Yeah, they work out when you click the blue buttons. That's why you need to keep them exercised and fit when you click on the stupid buttons all over the internet, right? That keeps them generating images, you know? Yeah, they need it. Do you think AIs will get super depressed if you don't constantly talk to them? They're like really needy children.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 97

Okay. I mean, the thing that I think is interesting about the device thing I can't I actually demoed an incredibly cool wearable yesterday. Our children are obsessed with it. It's not mine and I don't feel good bringing this one up. But it's an awesome wearable like Dave and Brett. I'll actually send you the video of me using it later and you're gonna like, love it. And but an incredibly divergent I can't I'm not gonna talk about what it is. But it's an incredibly divergent version of the future and like what actually matters.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 102

So I got to say, I want to get into this. Here's the thing that's confusing me about this one. I would normally be shitting all over this as the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. I am confused because founders funded this and I actually think they're usually both disciplined. And I know for a fact that they're not the type of fund that cares about management fees, which is the normal reason for doing this. So

— Sam Lessin, Episode 44

But can I push? So sorry, can I push on this? Because I think this is a really like, look, media, here's my thesis. Media is incredibly strategic to own, but a shitty business, right? Doesn't mean it doesn't create cash flow on a fly we can build from is a shitty business, right? But so it's a great point. And here's the thing with your acquisition should with some smart CPG, you're like, oh, in 2024, the hardest part is authenticity of our brand and connecting with the demo. Yeah, that is the hardest part. Making process is easy.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 50

I don't know, Jess and I are not price sensitive when it comes to Airbnbs for things. And I will tell you that like every time I stay in them, they have some gimmicky, chincy thing to make them cool. And the actual experience, I'd so much rather stay in a hotel.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 99

But so like, just feel like if you told me that the sparrows were actually the rosewood prostitutes, that would make a lot of sense.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 91

will say on the flip side, know what LLMs are great for? I discovered a use case, very important use case. They are great for rewriting the lyrics to songs to mean other things. Like awesome at it. Like it's been...

— Sam Lessin, Episode 87

You know what that is, Britt? That's subsidized by the Colombians. They want you to get used to sticking things up your nose. And then it's a loss leader. It's a loss leader.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 129

Guys, got to tell you, can I, listen, I had a great Miata moment this morning I want to tell you about, which is I went to a meeting on Sand Hill Road and I obviously drove the Miata, left the top down, popped it next to a Porsche, went into a fancy investment office. It was great, it great. The whole night, I actually, have to, but I had slight Miata industry issues. It is quite low and I did slightly damage it by like rolling it over. It was bad. Anyway, so I pulled into this meeting and I'm walking around and I run into our good friend Stan Chavnowski.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 77

I'm not thrilled about either choice. I feel like what you have is caricatures of the extremes of both parties. But look, what'll end up happening is there's no question, if you ever wanted extreme narratives and conflict, you have your game now. You have the absolute caricatures of each extreme party running against each

— Sam Lessin, Episode 57

It's hard to ever substantiate this stuff, but those are all the rumors floating around is that there was like heavy espionage going on between those two to your point, Britt, because they were like locked in a death match, right? With people who like did what it took, right? It's like, and had.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 91

And then like, are they doing something that matters? And it's like, if you have someone who's fucking great. Yeah, like, they're just like gritty and they're great. And they can do the product. And by the way, they're working on something that matters. You know, you got to people more leeway on the business model for exactly what you're saying, Britt, which is like, I think that this is a moment where like the return on talent is just getting massive, right? Versus like, I'm a like, being business model nerd.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 103

Well, it does. I'm just shocked. I am shocked. I mean, to the AOC voting against, right? The story that I have been told over and over and over and over by smart people who have said, yes, Tick Tock obviously is a national security plant, obviously needs to be banned. There's no way that the Democrats will do anything before the election because they want every last scrape and vote they can get out of the children and like the children like Tick Tock. And so like it's just not worth it because they're so worried about Trump winning the election. The fact that like Biden is like clearly just being like

— Sam Lessin, Episode #38: Hartz & Minds_66cc4b089d6d7a010022af1a

It had nothing to do with the software. The software was already easy. I mean, this is my kind of thing with you is that the software is not, it's totally easy.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 72

to throw their hat in the ring and then maybe you get a bunch of $10 billion companies like Accenture glomming around them, right? So I'm glad, know, in some ways Meta is providing that nexus.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 57

Well, that I, so I, I, I, look, I, wrote, I wrote a piece about this. I think it's going to try to say at least two years ago, which is I think the new onboarding flow for social networks and a bot age, instead of it being like, you show up, you're like, who are you? And then who do you want to follow? It'll flip around or you show up and you're like, hi, I'm Sam. And it's like, who do you want to follow you? Right. And you're just

— Sam Lessin, Episode 58

because it's super hard to find the right developer to work with. And now they're like, my God, I can just do this stuff. And so you don't have like the implications of like the rise of the like, you know, solo creator, the Jonathan Katz Moses is the world. Like that's where it changes things. Now there's also the macro of like, that might be bad for the economy in certain ways, but like Jonathan Katz Moses is going to crush us with this stuff. You know, like, you know, these, these people who are like effectively blocked on pushing code around, right. Are now fully unlocked and there's going be wildly good stuff from them.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 139

firsthand. So General Magic was basically a little tablet computer device, a computing device that kind of came out right before the internet. And it was, it's a great documentary. We haven't seen it. There's a documentary on it and it was, oh, you should absolutely watch it. It's incredible. But it was like, it was amazing. It was actually Mark Peratt made it who's Ruth Peratt's brother. So the CFO of Google's brother was kind of the guy who led this. NOISE And interestingly, the reason I had firsthand exposure to it is because my dad saw it.

— Sam Lessin, Episode 48

You are you're in like a reality figured out business, which is way more expensive. It's a less good business model than the feels. It's it's it's differently competitive, right? Like the problem with feels is anyone can do it. So it's hyper competitive. From like a attention perspective. um What you do like the market is, it's not everyone can do it and not everyone even wants to try and it's actually more expensive and harder in some ways. But it is in that way also less competitive, right? Because you just you know, you have fewer

— Sam Lessin, Episode 102

Sure, Dave, but just to put, I'm gonna be a stick in the mud, push you little bit, I'm looking at numbers now. Apple initially targeted sales of three million Vision Pro units, then they revised the number to 900,000, then they revised the number to 800,000, and it looks like they sold 450,000. This is not a successful product launch, even as a developer kit. And you can say they're pointing in the same direction, lots of people see the Vision, mean, Snap put out glasses years ago, in terms of like it being the right, and it's not even a,

— Sam Lessin, Episode 70

you know, this strategy of saying almost nothing, right? Being almost nowhere and then trying to manicure and like weave the needle on the perfect message every time. Trump is obviously a volume guy, right? He just says everything at scale, right? And on one hand that drives a lot of people nuts because he says a lot of crazy shit, right? And like wrong things, right? And I understand why, especially if you're trained in last generation's media, that will drive you crazy and seem insane. But

— Sam Lessin, Episode 72

I can't wait for this to become like a highly politicized issue. Like who are you not letting in for vibe check reasons? Like this is going to be a disaster at some point.

— Sam Lessin, Episode #38: Hartz & Minds_66cc4b089d6d7a010022af1a

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