Sam Lessin's views on media, journalism, newsletters, content creation, and the future of information — as a columnist at The Information.
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 even better yet von Neumann (the Maniac is a great read btw)… but the ...
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 aren’t gonna win on volume… and how much ‘premium tokens’ will fol...
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 ‘experimental budgets’ to actual deployment with ROI conversations… and t...
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 of 140 characters along with them flying cars)… Anthropic has full...
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 defensibility… "The narrative gap in AI is crazy.”, “Is Taylor Swift...
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-center capacity like that… are we long just anyone acquiring GPUs for t...
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 was gone HOT TAKES Gamma Squeeze to Infinity — no one knows wh...
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 the vying for first place, it is the fact that there is a race at all… bec...
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, and more. HOT TAKES Narrative WWE Warfare When Story Matters More T...
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 is the business model) — but with all these inevitable AI security...
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 is actually starting to work (and yes, I 100% will pay more and choo...
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 discussion IMHO on ‘is Openclaw an OS’… what does an OS even mean / what is the...
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 ‘intelligence’ just the cost of power … and brutal competition in a world ...
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 will make more money vs. getting axed?! Also more on the ‘triangle t...
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 this big question of what happens when building software goes the ...
I know. It was, that was a little cringey. The stuff where he, like, kept banning spammers who were, like, interacting with him was very funny, though. He's very good at media.
— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 161
And then it's a lot of work. I have to like, like, figure out if we actually were talking before, like, whatever. So, like, the pick up in the middle with, like, all these assumptions is, like, a very smart BD move. I think for anyone fundraising or doing sales, imply you're already talking, right? Don't start, don't say, "Hey," like, "I'd like to pitch you on a new thing." That's immediately gonna get deleted. But if you're like, you know- ... "Love to conti- like, continue our conversation from last week." You're like, "Oh, shit, were we talking?"
— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 160
So if you want out, you're welcome to be out. Now, I will say, Jessica did give me my only negative user feedback, which about notifications I've gotten so far, and I did immediately actually create a notification center so you can unsubscribe from those post notifications.
— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 157
The problem with it is like the, like there's some great irony to that example, although I think it's a good one to discuss, which is what do the models do immediately? Like the b- like OpenAI, whatever. They went and ripped the entire internet- ... and broke all copyright and stole everything, right? To like in order to build like version one, and then they get all mad about people distilling them, and like that's literally just people doing to you what you did to everyone. So like I think like-
— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 158
Bye, guys. If you enjoyed this show, please leave us a virtual high five by rating it and reviewing it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Find more information about each episode in the show notes, and follow us on social media by searching for @moreorless, @davemorin, @lesson, @jlesson, and as for me, I'm @brit. See you guys next time.
— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 156
I don't think she's choosing to do this. I think the media has taken on a life of its own around this. I don't think she's trying to put any of this out.
— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 156
Except for please stay human, because I really think we're entering the, I know we're already in the loneliness epidemic because of social media, but this is entering this new scary, dark place, I think, where people are alone with their agents up at all hours, not having community and real social conversation, and I'm like really actually worried about it.
— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 156
But you guys get... Look, by the way, I actually like the movie trailer thing. We should come back to that. But te- set aside that for a moment. You guys remember when, like, TechCrunch, if you raised, like, half a million dollars, you used to, like, immediately write an article about how some kids raised half a million dollars and, like, now no one truly gives a fuck.
— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 151
Go Spurs go. Bye. If you enjoyed this show, please leave us a virtual high five by rating it and reviewing it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Find more information about each episode in the show notes, and follow us on social media by searching for @moreorless, @davemorin, @lesson, @jlesson, and as for me, I'm @brit. See you guys next time.
— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 152
The first thing I need to talk about is that Disney spent $200 million on this movie. They've probably gotten, like, f- half a billion dollars of earned media through Taylor Swift. And-
— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 152
Disney spent $200 million on this movie. They've probably gotten, like, half a billion dollars of earned media through Taylor Swift.
— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 152
I have to look this up. I think it was the Victor company that I just saw some headline they raised. And they, they had been, like, messaging, and they're the ones who, like, had advertising in my newsletter. Probably should have asked them to invest.
— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 149
I think that what... The company that sponsored my newsletter just raised a ton of money. I, like, saw this, like, news flash by. I was like, "Wow, that's awesome."
— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 149
Y- or Instagram became Facebook. It's like Dave Moore, who doesn't use social media, liked this enough that I got the, "A friend of yours who hasn't posted in a long time is active," and it's like, ah, Dave has been brought back to social media.
— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 149
Yeah, yeah. I get it. I get it. I get it. I just think it's a really... Like, it's kind of like the, the algorithmic social media problem on, like, massive steroids, right? If it's distributed, you can't even stop it, right? And so it's like someone told me this week, I don't know if this is true or not, but it was an interesting fact. I was in a meeting. They were saying that the Chinese are running an $80 billion a year social engineering budget for so- b- against the US right now, right?
— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 146
Required Reading for All VC Jobs — You Will Fail at Capitalism if You Haven’t Digested This Media https://t.co/5ehBL1L95c
March 21, 2025 · 2307 likes · link
A bunch of people have written me back saying this was the best newsletter I have ever sent (flattering) ... so here it is for those who don't subscribe: AI Is Not a Labor Crisis. It Is a Meaning Crisis. https://t.co/usOWCPUFtO
April 12, 2026 · 1378 likes · link
This is the problem with the NYT losing so much trust in their journalism / neutrality. A jewish man is killed at a pro- palastian demonstration after being struck in the head by a megaphone by a pro Palestinian protester -- the NYT just skips that part .... The NYT OMITS… https://t.co/f7LmZaiQS0
November 07, 2023 · 1326 likes · link
1/ People who believe in 'citizen journalism' fundamentally don't understand is that the 'cost' of real information is very high. Finding new facts, and validating their truth, and carrying liability is structurally much more costly than citizens can afford alone.
July 10, 2020 · 995 likes · link
The US has a ban on foreign owned media for very valid national security reasons... if it wasn't clear before, it should be crystal clear now that there should be no loophole in that for "social" media -- this is a critical national security issue / not about politics. https://t.co/TUASomq3C1
October 25, 2023 · 701 likes · link
Why Micro-Payments for Journalism Don’t Work (Crypto or Otherwise)… https://t.co/OiDZaphGFs
August 16, 2021 · 620 likes · link
This is important to watch and understand is not at all isolated. media matters. The messages you give your kids ends up being destiny - and there is a very clear right and wrong here. https://t.co/yieoKIbA1S
December 15, 2023 · 210 likes · link
5/ So, yes, punditry - is indeed getting cheaper and cheaper & more ubiquitous. Today, content and commentary are truly the domain of individual citizens. Just don't confuse that with actual journalism / fact finding, which isn't gonna come from 'citizens'.
July 10, 2020 · 205 likes · link
So Jack Leaves Twitter... Twitter immediately commits to content moderation and Square immediately rebrands as a crypto-style .xyz -- in 2021 this makes 100% sense, i know where i would want to spend time ...
December 01, 2021 · 187 likes · link
6/ The challenge today is that with distribution costs at zero, punditry is nearly free to produce end-to-end but real information / journalism is still v expensive. This creates huge business pressure towards more high-margin punditry and less journalism / fact finding.
July 10, 2020 · 184 likes · link
look the obvious answer is accept the jet, immediately sell it and use cash to pay down the federal deficit....
May 13, 2025 · 164 likes · link
What are best VC newsletters (there are some) ... like coatue takes or slow snail mail - pls comment like to your favs (and yours i guess :)
December 05, 2025 · 160 likes · link
authenticity on social media... https://t.co/3ZwpZGJV6a
February 01, 2025 · 151 likes · link
This is hilarious -- Florida imposes fines on media companies for blocking speech / banning accounts... unless they have a theme park. https://t.co/LVLyeQ9iFl
May 24, 2021 · 132 likes · link
@bradrobertson the difference is that everyone understands social media to be untrustworthy, we need institutions like the NYT to represent a higher standard of trust, because if they are just social media as well, we are in a world of pain as a democracy
November 07, 2023 · 127 likes · link
Been playing with gpt-summarizing all the newsletters I get and then getting one 'meta-overview' daily ... https://t.co/6NoIJKsZoL if you want to play along https://t.co/GViVMcggWm
July 02, 2024 · 97 likes · link
@NickADobos not at all - we literally do not allow legally foreign ownership of media companies without a special waver, which tiktok does not have. You can say whatever you want ... just use a platform not controlled by foreigners.
October 30, 2023 · 93 likes · link
I have said it before & will say it again, when Softbank buys, you need to figure out how to sell immediately. We have a handful of seed investments left alive that I like still in the portfolio where SB came in later. I really hope it doesn't turn out to be a 100% kill rate :( https://t.co/7RlGBEDwDL
July 18, 2023 · 81 likes · link
On @a16z 's New Publication & Why The Modern Media Seems So Adversarial… https://t.co/SD9y2stYnu
January 21, 2021 · 79 likes · link
Non-tenure track Harvard faculty just voted to organize under the United Auto Workers... if this were a private company the correct response would be to eliminate all non-tenure faculty positions immediately. back in reality that won't happen and this does not bode well. https://t.co/4yMQd28IA1
April 06, 2024 · 79 likes · link