Dec 5, 2025 · 1h 0m · more-or-less
Code Red, Bitcoin Costs, AWS Resurgence, and Waymo Safety (Not About AI... ish) · More or Less Podcast
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In this episode of the More or Less podcast, hosts Jessica Lessin, Sam Lessin, Brit Morin, and Dave Morin analyze tech industry developments spanning OpenAI's Code Red pivot, enterprise cloud battles, autonomous vehicle safety, and the cultural quirks of Silicon Valley venture capital.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 99.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 4.9 Guest teaching 1.9 Guest disagreement 1.7 The hosts pushing back 2.4
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 40:55 Sam rejecting the idea that founders can delegate commercial focus
Sam forcefully dismisses Jessica's assertion that OpenAI can succeed in products by simply hiring people who care, insisting founder-led cultures fail whenever executives lack genuine passion for the product.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 49:17 Jessica refusing Dave and Brit's defense of Tesla AutopilotJessica flatly rejects Dave and Brit's claim that Tesla FSD drives better than humans, countering with her newsroom's ten years of investigative FOIA reporting on concealed crash data.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 23:00 Dave educating the panel on Alan Dye's AR and interface portfolioDave clarifies that Alan Dye specifically led interface design, Liquid Glass, and VisionOS at Apple, educating the hosts on the exact strategic value Dye brings to Meta's smart glasses division.
The host holds their own ▶ 46:16 Jessica citing exact Waymo safety statistics to anchor the debateJessica counters cynical quips about autonomous vehicle memes by citing verified metrics showing 91% fewer serious injury crashes and 96% fewer intersection crashes in Waymo vehicles.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opening Title Sequence: The More or Less Jingle | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | The co-hosts engage in lighthearted banter regarding San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie's social media videos and the city's drone deployment. Jessica and Brit bring up local policy context, but the tone is warm and collaborative. | |
| Podcast Housekeeping: Urging Listeners to Hit Subscribe | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Housekeeping segment focusing on audience subscription appeals and listener feedback complaining about excessive AI coverage. The dialogue is self-deprecating and casual. | |
| The Garmin Challenge and Motivating Kids with Tech | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Jessica and Sam describe how their young kids earned Garmin watches and became obsessed with tracking steps and time zones. They discuss behavioral incentives and gamification in children's devices. | |
| Brit's Curated Holiday Tech Gift Guide on Instagram | 5 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Brit outlines her tech gift guide, leading to an analysis of social media creator dynamics in venture capital. Sam explains his strategy of using provocative screenshot essays on X to source deal flow. | |
| Trapped Creator Payouts, AngelList, and the Investment Returner | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Discussion centers on unclaimed creator earnings and venture capital payouts trapped in AngelList. Brit clarifies rolling fund distribution mechanics while Sam quotes a partner's quip about modest investment returns. | |
| Adam Mosseri's Five-Day In-Office Mandate at Instagram | 6 | 3 | 2 | 2 | The panel analyzes Adam Mosseri's five-day RTO mandate and Alan Dye's departure from Apple to Meta. Dave clarifies Dye's specific background in interface design, Liquid Glass, and VisionOS, explaining the strategic implications for Meta's AR glasses. | |
| Jessica's 2025 Predictions: The Great AI Divergence | 6 | 2 | 2 | 3 | Jessica outlines her upcoming predictions thesis that the AI wave will no longer lift all big tech companies equally in 2025. Sam playfully prods her to monetize this insight via a hedge fund rather than a newsletter. | |
| AWS Resurgence and the Battle for Enterprise Compute | 7 | 2 | 1 | 3 | Sam shares recent business outreach from AWS, prompting Jessica to correct his framing by citing AWS's strong quarterly earnings beat and explaining how AI compute demand drives enterprise migrations. | |
| OpenAI's Code Red: Latency, Haptics, and Google Gemini | 6 | 2 | 2 | 3 | The hosts discuss OpenAI's reported Code Red memo pausing ads and agents to counter Google Gemini. Brit compares Gemini's multi-second latency against ChatGPT's swift responsiveness, while Jessica questions whether the memo is authentic strategy or misdirection. | |
| OpenAI's Identity Crisis: Pure Research Lab Versus Product Enterprise | 7 | 3 | 3 | 5 | A vigorous debate on OpenAI's corporate identity crisis between pure research and commercial product development. Sam forcefully pushes back against Jessica's suggestion that founders can easily delegate commercialization to hired executives. | |
| The Crypto Slump and Corporate Tech Non-Statements | 6 | 2 | 2 | 2 | The hosts touch on Aaron Levie's statements on AI jobs before Jessica presents detailed findings from Waymo's safety report, detailing severe injury crash reductions compared to human drivers. | |
| Evaluating Tesla Autopilot Mileage and Personal Driving Preferences | 5 | 3 | 3 | 5 | Dave and Brit praise Tesla's latest FSD release and cite high personal usage percentages. Jessica firmly refuses their positive framing, citing a decade of FOIA investigations by her reporting team uncovering buried Tesla crash records. | |
| Conceptualizing a General Partner Only Gathering and Status Badges | 4 | 1 | 2 | 2 | The hosts satirize tech holiday parties, conceptualizing a GP-only event where attendees wear badges indicating fund size or DPI performance. The segment wraps up with book plugs and sign-offs. |
Statements from this episode (21)
Brit Morin: SF deployed 150 drones per month over the past year
“Guys, we've deployed a 150 drones per month for like the last year.”
Sam Lessin: Daniel Lurie is crushing it as SF mayor
“We've known Daniel Lurie a long time, and when he was running for mayor, I will admit that I was skeptical he would win, and I was skeptical how he would do as mayor. I'm so wrong. He's crushing it, and he's not just crushing social media.”
Sam Lessin: Vinod Khosla shares his personal email onstage and responds
“He literally gives everyone his email address on stage. He's like, if you want to email me, I respond to all the emails.”
Lessin: Companies hire McKinsey to provide cover for decisions already made
“It's kind of like hiring McKinsey, where you hire McKinsey to tell you the things you already know, but someone else can say them for you and so that you can implement. Like, I didn't do it. McKinsey did it.”
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…”
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.”
Lessin: Instagram will be the only Meta division working in-office full-time
“I think they'll be the only division.”
Brit Morin: Apple design lead Alan Dye is leaving to join Meta
“Alan Dye, Apple's design lead. Is leaving the company and joining Meta.”
Dave Morin: Meta hired Apple's Alan Dye to design its smart glasses
“And so the reporting to Boz, I would bet, you know, working on the metaglasses, I think that's the strategic move here.”
Lessin: Tim Cook's public statement signals Alan Dye is a major loss
“So Mark Garman at Bloomberg had the scoop and Tim actually had a statement on it, which I thought was highly unusual and is a sign of what a big loss it was for them.”
Lessin: AWS is proactively courting startups again after a long sales hiatus
“I haven't heard from Amazon as like a company reaching out from the VC startup ecosystem in a long time. And they're calling me like, they're like, let's do business.”
Jessica Lessin: Users dislike AWS's Nova AI models but prefer agent tools
“I don't think people love Nova, but people like the new agent stuff”
Lessin: 50 percent chance Altman's Code Red memo is strategic misdirection
“I kind of think there's a 50% chance Sam Altman wrote that memo so people would not know their actual strategy.”
Brit Morin: Google Gemini takes two to three times longer than ChatGPT
“No, it takes two to three acts as long to get me an answer, and I'm sitting there waiting, whereas GPT is much more quick.”
Jessica Lessin asserts that OpenAI is definitely not pausing its advertising
“Guys, they're so not pausing ads.”
Lessin: OpenAI's executive fiefdoms destroy the agility needed to execute Code Reds
“And when I look at what's happening in OpenAI, where they have a lot of very fancy people, people I like, but like the trade is, and you're going to get your fiefdom. And you're going to get to do important work you want to do. You then can't declare code reds…”
Lessin: Marc Benioff only cares about winning sales, not Salesforce product quality
“Well, one, I think Benioff loves sales. Like, he loves winning. He's just a winning, so like, he doesn't care what he sells. He doesn't care about the product quality. He just wants to win.”
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.”
Morin's Tesla interface shows 70 percent of his driving is currently autonomous
“This week I was looking at there's a new interface on the Tesla when you click on autopilot that tells you the percentage of time that the car has been self-driving. And I hadn't seen this before. And mine is somewhere in the range of 70%, which is like actual…”
Dave Morin claims recent Tesla FSD versions drive better than human drivers
“Whatever it is, 14 dot one and 14 dot two, like, they're just so good. It's really crazy. You can just feel it. It's better at driving than you are.”
Jessica Lessin calls the Kleiner Perkins holiday party the stodgiest in VC
“You are gonna get kicked out of the Kleiner Perkins holiday party, which is the stodgiest of, I mean, very much fun. Really looking forward to it. I love Kleiner Perkins. I mean, you get the John Doorky. No, I love it. It's a highlight of my year, but it is th…”