Sam Lessin on Technology Trends

Essays

From the Podcast

Dave, can you, can you back up and describe like, what's the software? And this is a question I ask is like, what, what is really open-claw? to me, again, when you think of the high level, it's persistence and identity on some level, right. but it doesn't, unlike a Linux server, like it's, it's not like a heavy piece of software. So when you think about like the few, how you define even the guardrails of like what open-claw is and what Matt, like what. What is it? mean, you know, it kind of blew up because it had some persistent memory. and like, did it, I mean, it's very useful and then like bridge to telegram. And so it made it really easy for less technical people to like consistently interact and build skills. Like that was kind of like, but like, there's not a lot of like complexity to that. And that's not necessarily a criticism. I'm just trying to understand, like, when you really got to the heart of it, what is this thing other than like kind of a shim?

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 140

And like, it's just like, basically it's, or you could also call it, you could call it AI HR. Like I want an HR manager. I want like a, it's not HR, it's A-R-A-I-R, right? here's the thing, it's just like basically like for every a hundred software engineering jobs, there's going to be one master of bots job created, right? It'll be, you know, a hundred X downshift.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 140

And like, I know it just makes sense. The master's job is just like literally to manage the bots, deploy new bots, sit down with people who don't know the fuck they're doing and help them build the bots. Maybe build some software. It's just IT. It's just new IT.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 140

No, I think the Hollywoodians think nothing about nothing but about us. Are you kidding? All they do is think about technology all day long.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 139

And so I think there's this era of technology that in like technologists that were like obsessed with like, do we pixel perfect recreate the real world? And like, that's what's valuable, right? The hyper realism, but actually the reality is the mind is the most powerful machine, right? And what you're paying for is the prompting for imagination. You're not paying for like hyper reality, if that makes sense. So I actually think if you think about what's going to happen in a lot of spaces in fantasy, whatever, like Hyper realism, I think is quite overvalued. This goes also for like, you know, these AI generators that make these like Instagram creator girls that like are really hot and like they're all over Instagram now. I'm sure, I don't know if you guys get those. I don't know if you get those, but like Instagram is like full of fake, you don't get any fake bikini girls. It's like half of my Instagram and they're all fake.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 139

I will all is there's gonna be exceptions, but I don't think it's the point is there'll be network effects for sure. There'll be dark pools for sure. Software is totally commoditized. So the only thing you use software for is a lever to build the trust and a dark network or build the software as a lever into, know, you know, security or a brand or something that no one else can replicate. Like you cannot just write software that's valuable.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 139

You can't make any money on those. And the reason you can't make any money on those is because with open access, someone will always overbid or overprice. It just doesn't work. So it turns out that when markets get too efficient, they're bad businesses. And technology and AI makes markets efficient. The only way to have a good business, the only way to do a good venture deal is to have proprietary deal flow. You need a dark pool of deals that no one else knows about or dark pool of founders that no one else knows about or access that no one else has that's sustainable and ideally compact. And I think we're going to see this in a lot of things. We're like, the internet was all about bringing liquidity to marketplaces saying, okay, there is this inefficient market and we're going to make it more efficient and make money on it by effectively aggregating demand, supply and demand and hosting the market. I think that goes to zero value because it's too efficient and everything becomes in a company building sense about forget the software, forget the market story. It's all about can you own and control dark pools of value effectively? and then monetize them consistently.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 139

I totally get it. don't, I don't, I'm unconvinced it's a business, but I get it. Just because like, well, it's just like, it's like, yeah, that's, mean, first of all, there's, well, we can get into a few angles on it. think it's great that people are doing that and like it, but I just don't, you know, I think anything that is basically software, anything that's writing is fundamentally just going to be an undefensible business. Cause it's too easy to replicate over and over and over and only gets easier. You have to, the only way to build businesses is with dark pools or with

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 139

I'm just saying, I'm not saying I wouldn't be. just think anything that's software is so easy to replicate that it's extremely hard to imagine any of stuff is defensible, right?

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 139

So maybe, can I define it a little differently? Here's what I think is opportunistic, because I think what's really amazingly cool is effectively the IC engineers who weren't managers, maybe who didn't communicate well and can just manage. the real opportunity is engineering management getting flattened because I can just do so much more myself. I don't need to talk to anyone. The business thing is interesting because I actually think this is one of the big angsty things right now is like, if you were an amazing scribe, right in like the year one or a thousand BC, right? Like that was great, but you didn't know anything other than scribing. If all of sudden everyone can scribe, like you have no comparative advantage. Whereas like, if you know a business really well or whatever, there's still like some, maybe talk about the depth of expertise. Like there's some angle or some community you have trust with or you have relationships. Like there's other assets. I think the problem with being a pure scribe or a pure software engineer is like you don't, that doesn't, give you what you need to be successful at business, right? Like I do think it can knock out engineering management if you're a great IC engineer, but not a great manager, but I don't think it like, I actually think this is a real problem. There's a lot of people who's like core advantage or like if you were a computer in the year 1920 and really good at adding, it's like, you don't have to do that anymore, right? And that's what you're specialized in.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep more_or_less_indian_wells_2026_03

Well, but here's the thing about silicon. No, but here's here's too late now. Here's the thing about, I think the more important element beyond just the structural unionization part is look, you're a software builder. To admit that you are worried about software taking your job as a software builder is to effectively say that you are a bad software engineer, right? Because it basically is, the story should be.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep more_or_less_indian_wells_2026_03

I don't know. mean, am I a software engineer? Well, okay, I guess that's the semantic thing if you consider me a software engineer.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep more_or_less_indian_wells_2026_03

It was interesting. was talking to some public markets investors that this week and they're like, I think this block thing is a bigger deal because it signals, cause they were saying like, we talked to really big companies. Like we see no AI impact on our workforce. And he's like, people have been saying, this is going to like change the narrative on that. And I, maybe that's true. But to me, it's like, yeah, like obviously these companies are all going to shrink a ton. And like, I don't know, Dave, you, you think Silicon Valley, you still believe that Silicon Valley isn't going to fire a ton of people. Cause like I mean, we're all 50 % cutters and you think everyone's still gonna have a software engineering job.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep more_or_less_indian_wells_2026_03

CRM, it's so good. It's so good. There's a stuff you doing six months ago, you had to manually patch. Now it just understands how to... But it's just too easy. No one's going to build a company doing any of this stuff because it's too easy to build. There's no software defensibility to any of it. So you just have to be really pure on business model and why it is that you're have a compounding advantage versus you did something... that was quote unquote hard that a customer asked for and that's somehow valuable. I this is my number one rant. I've had several meetings this week where I feel like people are still stuck in the old model of building companies where they're like, I'm like, what are you working on? They're like, we did this. I'm like, why? It's like, well, we talked to the customers and the customer said they wanted X. So we built it for them and now we'll sell it to them. I'm like, no, you're not going to sell it to them. They might want X.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep more_or_less_indian_wells_2026_03

Also congrats to France. Fichy is probably the most famous French person in technology. Like, big moment for the whole country.

— Sam Lessin, More or Less Ep 99

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