Sam Lessin
315 statements across 112 episodes · 89 bullish · 139 bearish · 3 people on the record · first statement Jun 23, 2023 by Sam Lessin · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Sam Lessin's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Everything said about Sam Lessin, oldest first
Jun 23, 2023
Jun 30, 2023 negative
Jul 31, 2023 bearish
Aug 4, 2023
Sam Lessin: Rich and poor choose identity over money, only middle class hesitates
“Pretend a devil came to you and said, you can either give up all of your cash, like all the money you have or your identity, which do you give up? Right. And what's interesting is very poor people, right and very rich people generally say they'd give up all th…”
Aug 4, 2023 positive
Sam Lessin: LK-99 superconductor will successfully replicate before 2025
“I'll say yes on one-time replication, and I'll go further to say, like, this is my AI killer scenario, where, like, it's so disruptive if it happens, right, that, like, it's worth putting a lot of effort in trying to figure it out.”
Aug 25, 2023 neutral
Aug 25, 2023 bullish
Sam Lessin: A fund backing only five-day in-person startups would outperform
“I bet that there'd be an appetite right now for a venture fund called six day a week or five day a week in person. And it only funds companies that are in person with an in-person pledge five days a week. Like I actually think they would outperform.”
Sep 1, 2023 bullish
Sep 1, 2023
Sam Lessin: Big VC firms believe 30 is the ideal partner hiring age
“The big firms have a problem, really want to hire people in their early thirties, right? Like, their view is that if you've had a successful career in your twenties, you're super networked then, you have all the energy, You're not a fucking burned out, ten-yea…”
Sep 1, 2023
Lessin: The most successful early-stage investments appear dead for years
“Most of the things I out of the gate thought were working ultimately didn't. They're the things that I had fundamental beliefs on and every single thing that I feel really proud of investing went through a several year period because we go so early of like, oh…”
Sep 22, 2023 bearish
Sam Lessin: Lyft has financially been a huge disappointment for dollars invested
“Lyft has obviously been financially a huge disappointment, right? Like for dollars invested, like some people might've gotten rich on it by timing it right and being in and out and lucky. But the reality is, is Enormous amount of money went in, far more than t…”
Sep 22, 2023 bearish
Sep 22, 2023 neutral
Sep 22, 2023
Falling Tech Stock Prices Create Downward Spirals That Ruin Hiring
“In practice. What actually happens a lot of time is price equals quality. So like the price goes down and then you can't hire anyone, right? Ironically, people want to work at like the thing where like you get all the job applications and the stock price is to…”
Oct 6, 2023
Oct 13, 2023 positive
Oct 13, 2023 bearish
Sam Lessin: Subscription News Orgs Won't Be Trusted Mass-Distribution Sources
“I don't, so I don't think it's going to be news orgs as much as I adore my wife. And I'll tell you why. I think it's a business model problem. So the news orgs have moved into a subscription model, which is correct for them. Right. And if you look at kind of a…”
Oct 13, 2023 neutral
Oct 13, 2023 negative
Sam Lessin: Harvard and Stanford Responses to Hamas Attacks Are Unacceptable
“Where I think the universities, the elite universities have been the worst. Right. Like, you know, their responses have been awful. And there are exceptions, et cetera. I'm thinking specifically of Harvard and Stanford, you know, like truly unacceptable in ter…”
Oct 20, 2023 negative
Sam Lessin: Someone At The New York Times Must Resign Over Misinformation
“Someone needs to resign from the New York Times, right? Like the disinformation story, which we've all talked about for a generation in terms of where the world is at and where technology is obviously going is finally very practically and publicly coming home …”
Oct 27, 2023 negative
Sam Lessin: He will never fund a pure product CEO again
“I'm not financing product people who don't know how to build a business anymore, right? No way, right? Like, I'm financing people who know how to take my three million dollar seed check, And build a good business, which then someday becomes a great business. A…”
Oct 27, 2023
Oct 27, 2023 negative
Oct 27, 2023 bearish
Oct 27, 2023 bearish
Nov 3, 2023 bearish
Nov 10, 2023 neutral
Nov 17, 2023 bullish
Nov 17, 2023 bearish
Nov 22, 2023 positive
Lessin: Safest business outcome is Microsoft absorbing OpenAI's staff
“For the sake of business, it would be great if Microsoft just inherited the people that want to work on this stuff and they go into a normal business structure where they're a hundred billion dollar piece of a three trillion dollar company. That's the safest o…”
Nov 22, 2023 positive
Nov 22, 2023 negative
Lessin: OpenAI's nonprofit governing a for-profit was an intellectual disaster
“This idea of wrapping A for-profit and a non-profit where the non-profit is, like, beholden to no one and somewhat religious, and the for-profit sits inside that was, like, hilarious, and was clearly intellectually a disaster, but everyone kind of looked the o…”
Dec 1, 2023 positive
Lessin: AI tools for rehearsing difficult conversations will be a massive space
“Like, if you told me that, like, the future is, like, there's, you know, you do use this stuff to be, like, I'm gonna fire someone. It's, like, here's what I'm gonna say. And you're like, all right, game, what are they gonna say back? And you, like, game theor…”
Dec 8, 2023 bullish
Sam Lessin: Personally very long Ethereum, Solana is now technically viable
“I'll talk my own book on this for a second as a seed investor is like, it actually works, right? Like Solana as an ecosystem can actually do this now, which even two years ago, it couldn't like no one really could, you know, I'm very sure the Ethereum world. I…”
Dec 15, 2023 neutral
Jan 12, 2024 neutral
Sam Lessin: Market downturns free VC partners by devaluing unvested carry
“One thing I would mention is that if you think about how venture capital compensation works, now's a good time for folks to move around because their carry in the last few funds ain't worth very much. And so if you think about it this way, it's like, there's l…”
Jan 12, 2024 negative
Sam Lessin: Calendly had its best month ever due to his feud
“I got reports from the CEO and board members of Calendly that when I started going to war with them on this, they had their best month ever, and it was largely because I had done so much free marketing for them by saying how much I hate Calendly.”
Jan 19, 2024 negative
Jan 19, 2024
Sam Lessin Kept an Apple Executive's Business Card in an Emergency Glass Box
“I had a business card of one in an Apple executive that worked in the app store, and I put it in a glass box that you would break in an emergency and left it in the office. So then I'd say like, look, when you're pushing bills and things come up, if you need t…”
Jan 26, 2024 positive
Sam Lessin: Metropolis used private equity to acquire incumbent parking operators
“And, you know, that's what we did with this Metropolis deal, which is pretty interesting. We're like, we had better, you know, the Metropolis team had better software for operating parking garages, but it just turned out that for a bunch of structural reasons,…”
Jan 26, 2024 bearish
Sam Lessin: Never compete against businesses whose workers avoid paying taxes
“The thing my dad taught me when I was a kid, he said, Sam, never, ever, ever compete in a business against people who don't pay their taxes. And my sense is that the lash people and the nail people do not pay their taxes. So it's going to be an uphill battle, …”
Jan 26, 2024 neutral
Sam Lessin: Startups cannot sustain long-term value on single growth hacks
“And like you ride that hack for a while, but it's not going to last. And so at some point you have to say like, okay, my hack that I used to initially acquire customers or grow the, you know, the way AWS is valuable is not any one service. It's basically low l…”
Jan 26, 2024 negative
Feb 16, 2024 bullish
Mar 8, 2024
Lessin: Algorithmic distribution control is a superweapon for shifting public opinion
“What you do is you, like, look, you just subtly, you think about bot farms and control, it's like, you're like, ah, I'm gonna let these people that are, like, pro this issue, I'm not gonna, like, limit them quite as much, or these other people, you can be so s…”
Mar 8, 2024 bearish
Mar 22, 2024 positive
Mar 22, 2024 bearish
Apr 12, 2024
Sam Lessin: Widely Known Information Has an Economic Clearing Price of Zero
“There's information that lots and lots of people know. The clearing price for that information is precisely zero. Right? Like if lots of people know something, it doesn't matter how it gets on the internet or if open AI bids one cent for someone to tell them a…”
Apr 12, 2024 negative
Lessin: ByteDance investors ignore national security risks for massive financial incentives
“Oh, they're pretty smart guys. They know exactly what's up. They, they're trading between what is obviously true to any American versus their enormous financial incentive, and empathy is a great word for that.”
Apr 12, 2024 bearish
Lessin: Media will bifurcate into AI slop and expensive elite newsletters
“The future is going to be almost like, this is what happened after the printing press is the news got super scummy and shitty, and all the elites retreated to super high price Italian private newsletters to know what was actually going on in the world. That's …”
Apr 19, 2024 negative
Lessin: New York lacks tech giants because founders aren't empire-building
“I mean, there have been good New York startups, but I do think, like, the problem is, is like, look, there's just, There are too many places for talent to go. There's too much fun to be had, right? Like, if you want to live in New York and have a billion, a si…”
Apr 19, 2024 neutral
Apr 19, 2024 positive
Sam Lessin: Speaking and reading is the optimal digital interaction format
“In an ideal world, the way to interact with people is you speak and read Right? Like that's the way to, it's better for me to speak and I don't, and listening is too slow. Reading is much faster. So the best thing is speak and read.”
Apr 19, 2024 positive
Apr 19, 2024 positive
Lessin says Calendly board thanked him after viral attack drove record month
“When I, like, got all, I, like, hate, I hate Calendly, and I made this viral post with, like, the millions of people engaged with about how Calendly sucks. And like, I got thank yous from multiple board members of the company because they said that it drove th…”
Apr 26, 2024 bearish
Apr 26, 2024
Sam Lessin: Facebook Forced Me to Sign Non-Compete Over Venmo
“When I went and worked at Facebook on the way in, one senior executive reviewed all my investments and told me which ones I had to divest from. Interestingly, path was fine at the time, but Venmo was a big problem. And then, yeah, believe it or not, I had to s…”
Apr 26, 2024 bearish
Apr 26, 2024
Sam Lessin Plans a $100K Harvard Presidential Search Documentary
“So my first documentary, I'm thinking about like all of my strategies and things I want to do in life is I'm going to make one. I can't decide if it's called fixing Harvard or saving Harvard. It's going to be a Harvard presidential search and saving Harvard fo…”
May 3, 2024 positive
Sam Lessin says Google was right to fire employees for office sit-ins
“And like, I think Google does the right thing. You fire the right few people for inching around it. The problem is when you don't, if you have rules and you let people trample them, you're screwed, right? You have to enforce your own rules, right?”
May 3, 2024 negative
May 3, 2024 negative
May 3, 2024 negative
Sam Lessin calls Silicon Valley AI juror hype asinine
“If you put the wrong Silicon Valley person on this podcast, they'd give you some asinine thing about how AI will be the jury in the future, and then they'll do it gleefully. They'll be like, and good news, we'll have better jurors because they'll be AI based, …”
May 3, 2024 bullish
May 3, 2024 negative
Sam Lessin says elite degrees no longer guarantee suitable business values
“You can no longer say, well, you went to Harvard, you went to Brown, you went to Stanford, you know, you've got the right values to do a lot of business. It's going to be a thing where employers really need to dive into the culture of whether they want to hire…”
May 17, 2024 bullish
Sam Lessin: Slow Ventures Targets Niche Creators With Zero CAC Advantage
“The way we've been playing this is our creator investing strategy, right? Which is you find creators, right, who have built cults around them in super specific verticals where they are the trusted brand, right? Whether it's in lawn care or terrariums or someth…”
May 17, 2024 positive
Sam Lessin would deploy an avatar AI agent to attend large Zooms
“If you told me I would use an AI that I could dispatch onto large zooms as me, Can log in, review them and just send me notes. That is an actual use case. It has to look like me because otherwise it wouldn't be allowed in. But if there was a thing, which is li…”
May 17, 2024
May 31, 2024 negative
Sam Lessin argues that men-only tech events should be allowed
“We now live in a world of LadyFests and things that are a lot of men, but there are also ladies. There are no ManFests because we somehow convinced ourselves that ManFest is canceled. And I don't think this is fair. I think if there's LadyFest, there should be…”
May 31, 2024 positive
Sam Lessin says coding is his only real generative AI use case
“Actually, to be honest, like, the coding use case is the only thing I really get value from these systems because it is exactly what I need. It doesn't actually give me the right answers, but it points me in the right direction on stuff I don't know, and then …”
Jun 7, 2024 neutral
Jun 7, 2024 negative
Jun 14, 2024 bearish
Jun 21, 2024 bearish
Jul 5, 2024 negative
Sam Lessin: Billionaires bought pickleball teams as tax shelters, not real franchises
“Well, they ran out, all of the billionaires and rich people bought Pickleball teams last, in the last two years, because they like the idea of owning professional sports teams because they're incredible tax hacks to them, but they can't afford real sports team…”
Jul 5, 2024 positive
Sam Lessin: Pickleball forced tennis to reinvest, like snowboarding did for skiing
“I think this is one of the unintended consequences of the rise of pickleball, which is the most ridiculous sport, which is, it just, this is kind of what happens. It's like, you get like a snowboarding, and then skiing gets really good, because you're like, fu…”
Jul 5, 2024 neutral
Jul 19, 2024
Aug 2, 2024 negative
Aug 2, 2024 bearish
Aug 2, 2024 neutral
Aug 2, 2024 negative
Aug 9, 2024 negative
Sam Lessin: Creator success requires edge and differentiation, not generic AI tools
“Is, it's exactly the type of shit that just everyone comes blind to is everyone does the same thing, and then no one gives a shit. The whole creative thing is finding edge. It's edge. You gotta do something different.”
Aug 9, 2024 bearish
Aug 16, 2024 positive
Aug 23, 2024
Aug 30, 2024 positive
Aug 30, 2024 neutral
Sep 6, 2024 negative
Sep 6, 2024 negative
Sam Lessin: Instacart would fail if executives adopted founder mode
“Instacart would be a complete disaster if all the people running around as executives being founder mode. Like, you need them to, like, sign up for goals and hit them and turn cranks and take incredible joy out of hitting their metrics, right, so that you can …”
Sep 6, 2024 bullish
Sep 6, 2024 neutral
Lessin: Facebook alternated organizational structures every few years
“At Facebook when I was there, You know, we kept switching between a functional design, right, where like PMs report to PMs all the way through up, and like product groups. We say, okay, this product cluster all reports through this person. And the basic conclu…”
Sep 13, 2024 neutral
Sep 20, 2024 bullish
Oct 4, 2024
Oct 4, 2024 bearish
Oct 18, 2024 negative
Nov 8, 2024 positive
Lessin: Trump used targeted internet influencers while Harris relied on mass media
“Like if you just get down to how do you run a modern campaign with targeted influencers in the places that matter with an open pipe versus mass media, you know, biggest voices like Trump, just like either intentionally or by happenstance has exactly the right …”
Nov 8, 2024
Nov 8, 2024
Lessin: Internet communication resembles seed investing, broadcast is like growth investing
“Internet communication with an open fat pipe where you can speak to everyone all the time lends itself towards going for home runs, thousand X winner statements, thousand X winner moments, and then just like burying very easily everything else, right? It's kin…”
Nov 8, 2024 bearish
Lessin: AI search summaries will break the internet's economic machine for truth
“You're just going to break the entire machine for truth, right? Because you just get a reflection of whatever the economics are of the system. And if the economics are, oh, we're just going to like, there's no way to monetize it, you know, or even now it's lik…”
Nov 15, 2024 bearish
Nov 15, 2024 negative
Nov 15, 2024 bullish
Sam Lessin: IPO Window Will Reopen for the Biggest Private Companies
“The reason the IPO would know it reopen, and I think it will reopen for the biggest of the private companies would be that diversification wealth effect strategy. Whereas if the market runs enough and people are feeling rich, they're going to want to diversify…”
Nov 15, 2024 neutral
Nov 15, 2024 positive
Nov 15, 2024 neutral
Dec 6, 2024 bullish
Dec 13, 2024 positive
Lessin: Sustainable creator economics depend on trust and identity, not attention
“And there's a very big difference between economics based on attention, right. Versus economics that are based on like trust and identity. And I actually think real creators build their businesses around trust and identity, not around attention.”
Dec 13, 2024 bearish
Dec 20, 2024 bearish
Dec 27, 2024 negative
Dec 27, 2024 bearish
Lessin: Vercel will struggle to monetize commoditized AI software creation
“If the marginal cost of building, it goes towards zero. And like, that's the general trend of history. My big concern for your company will be, you're not going to get paid enough for it. Right. Cause like it'll be commodity.”
Dec 27, 2024 bearish
Jan 4, 2025 bearish
Jan 4, 2025 neutral
Jan 4, 2025 bullish
Jan 17, 2025 positive
Sam Lessin: Cultural shift has freed people to speak their true beliefs
“In this last few months, even, we've kind of switched where there was a lot of things that were unsayable, or you could say, but it was, like, dangerous. Not dangerous from a practical perspective, but, like, it's just, like, You were supposed to say, then now…”
Jan 24, 2025 bearish
Jan 24, 2025 bearish
Sam Lessin: Financial Reality Will Ultimately Break OpenAI's Cult Narrative
“OpenAI has built a great cult around itself. It has, it's awesome from that perspective. I do think that the gravity of the financial meme, right, and effectively financial thinking will ultimately break that, right? I don't think that it can survive as a narr…”
Jan 24, 2025 bullish
Feb 7, 2025 neutral
Feb 7, 2025 positive
Lessin: Met weekly for 18 months with Venmo co-founder on Jelly Jelly
“And we've been meeting weekly for 18 months to go over this company that he's been working on, Jelly Jelly, where I've been an investor. I was an investor of the previous company. I have, like, I'll always back Ikram. I believe in Ikram.”
Feb 7, 2025 positive
Feb 7, 2025
Feb 7, 2025 bearish
Feb 7, 2025
Feb 7, 2025 neutral
Sam Lessin: Crypto creators cannot formally prove they didn't secretly sell
“Interestingly, I actually have no formal way to prove that, right? Because it's reasonable. And I was like, because he's like, could I have in theory created other wallets and been the one that made it moon and then sold it? In theory, I guess I could have, an…”
Feb 7, 2025 positive
Feb 7, 2025
Feb 7, 2025
Feb 7, 2025
Lessin plans to buy a $25k satirical AI billboard on Highway 101
“Instead of eight million dollars, I'm gonna spend 25,000 dollars and have a hilarious billboard. I'm very excited. It's one of those things, like, I'm gonna submit it as an expense to the venture firm, and if they reject it, it's okay.”
Feb 14, 2025 positive
Feb 21, 2025
Feb 28, 2025 neutral
Mar 7, 2025 neutral
Mar 7, 2025
Mar 7, 2025 bullish
Mar 14, 2025 negative
Mar 14, 2025 positive
Mar 14, 2025 bearish
Mar 14, 2025 bearish
Mar 21, 2025
Mar 21, 2025 bearish
Mar 21, 2025 bearish
Apr 4, 2025
Apr 4, 2025 bearish
Apr 4, 2025 bearish
Lessin: The generative AI infrastructure boom is ZIRP's final gasp
“This is like the last death knell of Zerp where people are like, fuck, we need to stuff a bunch of cash somewhere. Right. Ideally with downside protection, which is nice because we're buying like fucking real estate and servers and power.”
Apr 25, 2025 bearish
Apr 25, 2025 bearish
Sam Lessin: Digital entertainment economy will collapse to zero value under AI
“The entertainment economy has got to go to zero, right? It's just an AI jerk off feed. It's going to be highly personalized, like whatever, like there's going to be no, there's no, there's, it's not like, I can't, I just don't imagine a world where there's any…”
Apr 25, 2025 bearish
Apr 25, 2025 positive
Sam Lessin: Exempting mothers from income tax solves childcare economics
“If you're a woman and you were working before and doing the homework, but you weren't monetized and now you're monetized and you're making a hundred K a year. But you're paying 50 in taxes. You can't even afford childcare because the net, the tax burden fucks …”
May 2, 2025 bearish
May 2, 2025 bearish
May 23, 2025 neutral
May 23, 2025 bearish
May 23, 2025 positive
May 23, 2025 negative
Lessin: Cursor is difficult to manage due to messy multi-file AI edits
“I think it's really difficult to use. I actually really don't like the sidebar and how it chats back with you and how it updates your files. I find it extremely hard to follow and then hard to track, even if you're using Git and trying to maintain state on eve…”
May 30, 2025 bullish
Jun 13, 2025
Jun 13, 2025
Lessin is building an AI clone of himself to screen founder pitches
“Before you call me, here's all my tweets and everything I've ever written, and it's all, I've only, so far, I've only pulled the tweets in, and I'll pull everything in, and just be like, try it out. Like, if I'm just gonna shit all over it, don't pitch me. But…”
Jun 13, 2025 negative
Lessin passed on Scale AI because he feared business development challenges
“Now, interestingly, the reason I didn't invest then, which was clearly a mistake, I clearly shouldn't, It's like, you're like, there's a lot of people doing this, and I was really worried that the number one problem was business development.”
Jun 20, 2025 bearish
Sam Lessin: Dopamine-driven entertainment businesses face a losing war for attention
“One, I'm very short entertainment, because that's just a complete war of entertainment, right? Like dopamine hits is a war of entertainment. You're gonna lose. There's always gonna be someone else competing for the attention and be bigger, faster, and better.”
Jun 27, 2025 negative
Jun 27, 2025 negative
Jun 27, 2025 negative
Jun 27, 2025 negative
Jul 4, 2025 bearish
Jul 4, 2025 bearish
Jul 4, 2025 neutral
Jul 11, 2025 positive
Jul 11, 2025 positive
Lessin: Shaun Maguire is abrasive but a good guy with good takes
“I think he's abrasive at times to say the least, but he's a good guy. I think, you know, he's got good takes in a lot of places. And I think most importantly, like, you know, it's the internet. I believe in free speech. I don't like, I think it's like people c…”
Jul 11, 2025 neutral
Lessin: The internet economically rewards adopting ever more extreme viewpoints
“The problem with the internet and the economics of internet is that the best strategy is to always be more extreme, right? And the way, like, because what happens is any extreme you pick, Eventually that with so many people online, there are too many people in…”
Jul 11, 2025 bearish
Jul 11, 2025 bullish
Jul 18, 2025 bearish
Jul 25, 2025 neutral
Sam Lessin: Pivoting consumer agents into assistant trainers is a classic failure
“What you're describing is the classic failure mode of new technologies. Which is, you start out, you're a B to C company, which is, I am your agent. And the agent's like, fuck, you're just making more work for me. And then you're like, no, no, no, we're a B to…”
Jul 25, 2025 negative
Sam Lessin: YC's advice to customer-chat your way to startup ideas fails
“And this is also why, like, I mean, I, you know, I haven't shat on YC in a while. So like, it's probably time for that again. But like, it's like the idea that you go to like some thing and like you customer chat your way by talking to like business people int…”
Jul 25, 2025 positive
Jul 25, 2025 positive
Sam Lessin built a custom AI CRM for 50,000 personal contacts
“I have SamGPT that I've built out, which is, like, on all my writing, and I actually now have built out and did, like, a bunch of passes and built, like, a pretty awesome next generation, like, CRM with, like, Bios and structured data and, like, all the things…”
Aug 1, 2025 positive
Aug 8, 2025 neutral
Aug 8, 2025 neutral
Aug 8, 2025 negative
Sam Lessin: AI Has Destroyed Seed-Stage Startup Diligence
“That's blown out of the water by AI because all of a sudden, like everything looks the same. Like not to mention the fact that pitches are customized at scale and the decks are all crap. The apps themselves, the V ones are like too similar. So we don't know ho…”
Aug 8, 2025 neutral
Sam Lessin: The internet forces people to niche extremes for community
“And like, you know, I think with the follow on of the internet, what happens with that is it forces everyone towards the fringe of weirder and weirder stuff to right size communities. They can be the best of blank and whatever. And so you end up with like thes…”
Aug 8, 2025 negative
Sam Lessin: AI will force a massive retreat into closed private networks
“What you do is retreat to private networks in every form. It happens in news. It happens in app building. It happens in who you date or whatever. It's like, there's just going to be this massive retreat away from the commons, which is, I think actually really …”
Aug 15, 2025 bearish
The Olympic Games have jumped the shark
“Like, the Olympics are not what they were, right? They've gotten, they've kind of jumped the shark, unfortunately. Like, I love the Olympics, but I, it just, it's, what was that? I mean, when the big story is the breakdancing lady, like, the Olympics has also …”
Aug 15, 2025 negative
Aug 15, 2025 positive
Aug 15, 2025 bearish
Aug 15, 2025 bullish
Aug 15, 2025 positive
Aug 22, 2025 bearish
Sam Lessin: Much of generative AI revenue is empty machine-to-machine noise
“I actually bet that like a lot of the use of, and this is why this is so scary from a revenue perspective, is like, with the machines talking to machines doing random things, there's just a lot of like, A lot of movement and no output right from a lot of what'…”
Aug 22, 2025 bearish
Aug 22, 2025 neutral
Aug 22, 2025 bearish
Sam Lessin: Top influencers avoid creator tokens fearing they will lose fans' money
“No actual influencers or people who have brands want that because it's such an asymmetric risk. If they don't want to lose their fans money, they're terrified of losing their fans money because they like want to be loved”
Sep 6, 2025 bearish
Sep 6, 2025 negative
Sam Lessin: Moderate-scale internet businesses cannot maintain a successful long-term strategy
“You're either, like, targeting the one percent, and you can make a ton of money by charging a lot to people who really care, but it's small, right? Relatively speaking. Or you're, like, a completely fucking global mass platform. Like, I think the unsuccessful …”
Sep 6, 2025 bearish
Sep 6, 2025 neutral
Sam Lessin: Successful creators must be sought out independently, not rely on algorithms
“Well, for me, I think the reality is, like, on the creator thing, my whole theory is that actually the algorithms can't be important. Like, you have to be an important enough creator, like, slash community leader that people will seek you out independently.”
Sep 6, 2025 bullish
Sep 6, 2025 bullish
Sep 6, 2025 negative
Sam Lessin: Sarbanes-Oxley made public markets too annoying when private money exists
“Everything going back to Sarbanes-Oxley and like the public markets have just become too fucking annoying for anyone to want to deal with. And so everyone's like, why would I deal with the public markets, right? And like, there's plenty of private money. So li…”
Sep 12, 2025 bullish
Sep 12, 2025 positive
Sep 12, 2025 neutral
Sep 12, 2025 bearish
Sep 12, 2025
Lessin: Memetic warfare succeeds via customizable templates for user validation
“Mimetic Warfare is about having an idea that you want promoted broadly, and you don't actually tell people the idea. But you give them a template and then show examples why if they copy and extend the idea easily and give them the tools to do that, they can ga…”
Sep 12, 2025 negative
Sep 12, 2025
Sep 19, 2025 bearish
Sep 26, 2025
Sep 26, 2025 neutral
Lessin: AI startups cannot compete directly against incumbent tech giants
“Like, I just think, like, the chessboard has matured enough that, like, the children don't think they're gonna get a seat at it. So, like, there was this moment where, like, a bunch of small warlords with, like, two followers were like, I'm gonna be the next k…”
Sep 26, 2025 bullish
Lessin: Early-stage VC is largely past AI hype and ridiculous valuations
“I'm seeing all these tweets on the Twitter of, like, venture capitalists complaining about ridiculous valuations, and we've lost our minds, and all this type of stuff. Honestly, I'm, like, really not seeing that. I guess I just hunt in different waters on this…”
Oct 3, 2025 neutral
Sam Lessin: Multiple successful tech figures are building solo artificial superintelligence
“I have talked to three people in the last month that are all very, very smart, successful people. Who, when you're like, what are you doing? They're like, oh, I'm working on super intelligence. I'm like, with what team? I'm like, just by myself.”
Oct 10, 2025 negative
Lessin: VC Accelerators Exist to Hedge High Valuations With Cheap Seed Deals
“I think there's a real reason, which is what happens if you, every, these take like a year or two years to gestate as ideas. So two years ago, all these venture firms sitting around watching valuations go bananas, and like, this sucks, I don't want to pay thes…”
Oct 10, 2025 positive
Oct 10, 2025 neutral
Oct 10, 2025 positive
Sam Lessin: The most investable founders are the most improved, not polished
“I actually don't think you want to go with the person who has the best etiquette. I think the most interesting people are the most improved, right? Like you want the person who comes in with terrible etiquette, but takes it seriously and comes out with great e…”
Oct 10, 2025 positive
Oct 10, 2025 bullish
Oct 24, 2025 negative
Sam Lessin: Lowbrow Culture Imitates Machines While Highbrow Rejects Them
“What lowbrow people do is they start talking like the machines. Like, they start trying, like, so there's a whole genre of people who are speaking like LLMs. They're imitating the fucking technology, and like, that is what lowbrow people do. What highbrow peop…”
Oct 24, 2025 negative
Sam Lessin: No Thinking Person in 2025 Uses AI to Write Speeches
“Which is why, for instance, remember, there was a brief moment where everyone thought the AI's written speeches for dinners was like the cutest thing ever, and no, no thinking person would use AI to write a speech in twenty-twenty-five because it's just a lowb…”
Oct 24, 2025 positive
Nov 7, 2025 positive
Nov 7, 2025 bullish
Sam Lessin says he launched the Jelly Jelly meme coin and held
“Which I launched, and the application has adopted, and it's driving, and the app is cool, it's got a lot going on, but it literally, like, is traded very heavily, and it's gone far beyond any expectation. Well, it's kind of, it's a wild thing about crypto, whi…”
Nov 7, 2025 bullish
Nov 14, 2025
Nov 14, 2025 bullish
Nov 14, 2025 bullish
Nov 14, 2025 negative
Nov 14, 2025 bullish
Nov 14, 2025 positive
Nov 14, 2025 positive
Nov 14, 2025 bearish
Lessin: Balaji's bottoms-up community journalism vision will fail over legal defense costs
“This is one of the really strong anti-substack theories, which is like, you can't as an individual support these lawsuits. Like you can't afford it. It's actually quite expensive to be in the news gathering. It isn't quite risky. And so if you're going to do i…”
Nov 21, 2025 neutral
Nov 21, 2025 positive
Nov 28, 2025 neutral
Nov 28, 2025 neutral
Nov 28, 2025 bearish
Nov 28, 2025 bearish
Lessin predicts a winner-take-all AI lockout outcome will not happen
“Well then to the point is there's no lock-in, right? It's like, it's always, the only thing that changes it, which is, was the original pitch, was that we're so close to this, like, game over nuclear style outcome that someone will get to first, and then there…”
Nov 28, 2025 bearish
Dec 5, 2025
Sam Lessin sourced a dozen venture deals via viral screenshot essays
“So I've done, like, probably like a dozen investments where I put out something nuts, or maybe I don't think it's nuts, but some people do, and they get better stuff. Everything from Area Two Farms, which we seeded was from a screenshot essay.”
Dec 5, 2025 positive
Lessin: Provocative headlines paired with reasonable screenshots generate viral deal flow
“And then if you make it a punchy headline so people get mad, but then say something reasonable in the screenshot that most people don't read, it gets packaged and sent all over the place, and then smarter people will give you better ideas and send you a compan…”
Dec 5, 2025 negative
Lessin mocks Aaron Levie's generic claim that AI won't take all jobs
“Like, and his line, he says, I'm emphatically in the camp that AI doesn't take all the jobs. I'm like, that is the funniest non-statement I have ever heard. He's like, okay, you're emphatically in the camp that some jobs will exist.”
Dec 5, 2025 neutral
Dec 19, 2025 bullish
Jan 9, 2026 negative
Jan 9, 2026
Jan 9, 2026
Brit Morin: First AI to ingest personal health data wins superior moat
“However, whoever wins the like ingestion of all the data, though, first is going to have such a superior advantage unless you're Sam lesson and you think you can just export from one model to another, which I tried and it was very difficult.”
Jan 9, 2026 bullish
Sam Lessin predicts most will choose AI companions over real relationships
“Imagine in the near future, you can have an AI driven girlfriend, right? Boyfriend, companion, whatever. That is exactly what you want, but digital. Always available, says that it does all the things you want, like is like a perfect companion in every possible…”
Jan 16, 2026 negative
Sam Lessin: Cursor's store split from VS Code creates app store lock-in issues
“Cursor split the store from VS code because they want to, like, create their own ecosystem that's independent, etc. And the way it all plays out Is VS code is like, no, like the package you need to install to do Garmin watch faces. We're going to control that.…”
Jan 16, 2026 bullish
Sam Lessin: Seed-stage investing is the most defensible part of the investment world
“I think that seed stage investing is the most defensible part of the entire investing world. Everything should get more efficient ETFs, algorithmic trading. Does that come down market? Of course it comes down market and it spans. But any idea That a bot can ro…”
Jan 16, 2026
Sam Lessin: Slow Ventures does zero outbound sourcing or automated market mapping
“Candidly, we don't do outbound sourcing at all. There are companies, there are venture firms inside wherever they're built machines for outbound and market mapping. I don't do any of that. We say shit on the internet and then people email me.”
Jan 16, 2026
Jan 16, 2026 bearish
Sam Lessin: Ubiquitous AI will kill public APIs and turn everything into walled gardens
“The upshot is like, in some ways, all that AI is doing is rationalizing effectively the world of APIs and the world of programmatic access. Because when you drop access, where it's not just like really sophisticated, smart people who can kind of do stuff and y…”
Jan 16, 2026 bearish
Sam Lessin: Platforms will lock down app stores to extract value from AI
“I do think there's gonna be all sorts of weird business development games that start getting played with locked down app stores, locked down code bases, who has access to what. All of a sudden, Garmin is going to be like, Hey, guess what? We had a whole busine…”
Feb 13, 2026 neutral
Sam Lessin: AI Has Created a 24/7 Work Cycle, Not Less Work
“And so to me, I think that's really the, you know, we talk about where the world is going and, you know, people are like, oh, AI is going to make people work less or whatever. No, I think what's happening is, especially right now, it's just created a work cycl…”
Feb 13, 2026
Feb 27, 2026 positive
Mar 6, 2026
Mar 6, 2026 positive
Sam Lessin: Built six AI apps in a week using podcast transcripts
“I've done, I've built like six apps this week, like literally, I'm not even exaggerating, but like I did bought, I did first build a quick version. I basically took our, all of our transcripts. I ripped through them, had to build personality, psychographic pro…”
Mar 6, 2026 negative
Apr 3, 2026 negative
Sam Lessin: Autonomous Bot Accidentally Sent 30 Invitations Instead of Drafting Them
“I asked by CRM, I was like, hey, we're doing this creator bot school. Go find the 20 to 30 most important people that creators would want to meet with in New York, I'm sorry, in San Francisco, and invite them if they want to stop by, and like, you know, it pul…”
Apr 3, 2026 bullish
Apr 3, 2026 neutral
Lessin: AI Compute Has Zero Vendor Lock-In for Developers
“And like the reality is the fact that I can just sit there and in three commands while I'm doing other stuff, do that is mind blowing, but it means there's no lock in on anything. I'm just going to sit there and price and quality optimize. Right. Like there's …”
Apr 3, 2026 bearish
Apr 17, 2026 bearish
Sam Lessin: Fund Started Selling Allbirds at Series B
“Then it was the B. Because it was getting so, it was great product. Like we love the product. Great, great products. But the math became simple, which is the only way it made sense to hold it is if you believe that Allbirds was the next Nike. And we're like, w…”
Apr 24, 2026 negative
Apr 24, 2026 negative
Startups hyping AI danger to raise money caused the public backlash
“And it's like, actually, this was the entire marketing strategy. Right? Like, if you think about it, like, the irony of the whole thing is everyone's like, everyone hates that. It's like, well, your money-raising strategy has been to run around, including the …”
May 1, 2026 positive
May 1, 2026
May 1, 2026 negative
May 15, 2026 positive
May 15, 2026 bearish
Jun 5, 2026 bullish
Lessin: Silicon Valley is film finance and tells better stories than Hollywood
“Because it's all about the attention and narrative economy anyway. We're financing. We actually are doing film finance at this point. Like Silicon Valley has just taken the job of Southern California, and we're way better at storytelling.”
Jun 5, 2026 negative
Jun 5, 2026 positive
Lessin: I use ElevenLabs to make voice-cloned custom podcasts for my kids
“I will say I use a lot of 11 Labs because I just only listen to podcasts I make for myself. I'd say most humans are like, I don't like listening to my voice. I apparently am fine with it because like in our car, I'm just constantly making new podcasts for the …”
Jun 5, 2026 bearish
Lessin: Nobody watches tech shows like TBPN live, only clips travel
“The irony is no one watches any of this stuff live. Like the TPPN has a tiny, had, I don't even know now, had a tiny actual Audience for the thing. It's just the clips moved, right? Like, so there's no one who's ever watching it anyway, right?”
Jun 26, 2026 negative
Jun 26, 2026 bearish
Jun 26, 2026 positive
Jun 26, 2026 neutral
Jul 3, 2026 negative
Lessin: A verified national internet would be far more moderate than Twitter
“That if you truly had the American internet or, like, the French internet, this can be global in various ways, it is so much more moderate than what you get on Twitter, right? Like, it would, like, it would be so much more moderate”
Jul 3, 2026 positive
Jul 3, 2026 positive
Jul 3, 2026 positive
Jul 3, 2026 neutral
Jul 10, 2026 bearish
Jul 10, 2026 negative
Jul 17, 2026 bearish
Sam Lessin questions value of passive listening AI hardware
“In practice, like most of what people say isn't that valuable. So I don't know that like passive listening is actually all it's cracked up to be in the end of the day for usefulness. It's mostly a lot of ums, but look, marginally lowering the barrier to record…”
Jul 17, 2026 negative
Jul 24, 2026 bearish
Jul 31, 2026 positive
Lessin: Cold Outreach Should Imply You Were Already in Conversation
“The best move in an email if you want to meet with someone, Is start in the middle of a conversation as though you have already been talking to the person. Because then you're like, oh shit, like, and then it's a lot of work. I have to like figure out if we ac…”
Aug 7, 2026 negative
Aug 7, 2026
Aug 7, 2026 negative
Aug 14, 2026 neutral
Aug 14, 2026 negative
Lessin: Handing out market-compounding cash will not solve America's opportunity crisis
“It's not clear what the next story is, but the story of, hey, here's a thousand bucks, hopefully it compounds in the market, I don't think solves the underlying problem of, like, how do you create opportunity for people and, like, the American story of capital…”
Aug 14, 2026
Aug 14, 2026 negative
Aug 14, 2026 bearish
Lessin: Traditional American pathways of hard work and schooling have run out
“Historically, if you were an IQ 100 person and worked hard, you'd do fine. If you had a shovel, then it was like, oh, just go to school, and you'll do fine, because there was so much demand for, like, intellectual jobs. Those stories have run out on the capita…”
Aug 14, 2026 bearish
Aug 28, 2026 negative
Apple easily deflects child safety and age verification blame onto Meta
“On the kids stuff, they get to blame. I mean, the stuff like the, like, age verification stuff will be It's so easy for them to do, but somehow it's Facebook's problem. Like, they're pretty good at pushing off blame to others.”
Aug 28, 2026 bearish
Aug 28, 2026 bearish
Apple risks a Nike-style decline if it relies solely on supply chain
“This is my being really cynical snarky, but the cynical snarky take is in about 15 years, you can supply chain optimize the hell out of a company and make stock go way up, but then Apple better figure out how to not be Nike, right, and come up with the innovat…”
Aug 28, 2026 positive
Lessin: Email is by far the best interface for AI agents
“The email agent thing, I was on with an entrepreneur, actually two in the last week, and he's like, well, I have, like, the, I call the agent, and I text the agent, and I was like, yeah, but email's by far the best, and he's like, yeah, it is. Email's sick. Th…”
Aug 28, 2026 negative
Aug 28, 2026 negative
Sam Lessin algorithmically screenshots his son's iMessages all day to bypass Apple
“And like, by the way, you know, I have a desktop, like sitting in my computer in my room where I just like logged into my son's iMessage account. And I've sit there and fucking screenshot it all day long algorithmically. Cause there's no APIs to it. So I can p…”
Sep 4, 2026 positive
Sep 4, 2026 positive