Sep 13, 2024 · 1h 1m · more-or-less
#64: Meta vs. Apple: the Future of Open vs. Closed Tech · More or Less Podcast
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of More or Less, co-hosts Jessica Lessin, Brit Morin, Dave Morin, and Sam Lessin contrast Mark Zuckerberg's open-ecosystem vision with Apple's latest hardware and health tech announcements. The panel also tackles the shifting realities of the venture capital market, the durability of top creator business models, and emerging risks in fintech infrastructure.
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 2.0 Guest disagreement 2.4 The hosts pushing back 2.4
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 43:00 Dave directly rejects Sam's MrBeast-BuzzFeed analogy
Dave sharply rejects Sam's core thesis, arguing that MrBeast holds a direct physical and emotional relationship with fans that BuzzFeed entirely lacked.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 44:00 Sam pushes back against Dave on YouTube algorithmic dependenceSam refuses Dave's framing on subscriber value, countering that YouTube's recommendation engine completely dictates creator reach regardless of vanity subscriber figures.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 35:00 Brit and Dave detail Bill Gurley's Palm Pilot contact hackBrit and Dave educate the group on Gurley's origin story, detailing his mass-export of attendee contact lists via preloaded conference Palm Pilots.
The host holds their own ▶ 55:28 Jessica demonstrates investigative reporting expertise on Stripe and banking complianceJessica presents proprietary reporting on Wells Fargo terminating merchant processing arrangements with Stripe, contextualizing fintech's precarious reliance on traditional regulated banking rails.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| "More or Less" Title Animation Sequence | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Segment 1 consists of casual opening banter, thank-you remarks for framed prints and pillows, and standard podcast housekeeping. | |
| Testing The Mill: Composting Gadgets and Sustainable Living | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | The hosts discuss the Mill composting appliance. Sam questions whether food waste actually matters in landfills, which Brit gently counters by mentioning enterprise waste opportunities. | |
| Mark Zuckerberg Live: Open Platforms and Founder Energy | 6 | 2 | 2 | 3 | Jessica and Sam break down Mark Zuckerberg's live Acquired interview. Jessica presents an informed journalistic analysis regarding platform competition and regulatory phases, while Sam offers colorful personal takeaways. | |
| In-Person Arena Podcasts: Atmosphere Versus Internet Scale | 5 | 2 | 3 | 2 | Dave questions the optics of 6,000 attendees in an arena, prompting Sam to bluntly assert that in-person podcasts do not work compared to internet-scale reach. | |
| The Apple Keynote: Evolutionary Tech, Hearing Aids, and Sleep Apnea | 6 | 3 | 4 | 3 | Dave shares insights from attending Apple's keynote, while Sam aggressively insists that Apple's hardware updates are minor and urges them to disrupt the CPAP machine market. | |
| Apple Parental Controls Frustrations and the Federighi Protest | 5 | 2 | 3 | 3 | Brit expresses frustration with Apple's slow pace on parental controls, triggering a debate on whether Apple's lack of action stems from market size calculations or political deflection. | |
| Health Tech Fragmentation, Aditya's Bevel App, and AI Queries | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | The hosts discuss Aditya's health app Bevel and the challenge of aggregating health data across fractured platforms, followed by playful banter over AI parent queries. | |
| The Information AI Summit: Hardware Economics and Smart Ping Pong | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | Jessica recaps The Information's AI Summit and experimenting with IBM WatsonX ping-pong analysis, while Brit describes attending a football venture event at Michigan. | |
| Debating Bill Gurley's Legacy and the Gatehouse Incident | 6 | 3 | 4 | 4 | Sam provokes a debate by asking why Bill Gurley is so universally respected, prompting Jessica to recall his early email distribution tactics and their infamous gatehouse telephone misunderstanding. | |
| Is MrBeast the Next BuzzFeed? The Creator Economy Debate | 7 | 5 | 6 | 6 | A heated, extended debate over Sam's viral thesis comparing MrBeast to BuzzFeed. Dave vigorously pushes back by arguing MrBeast owns direct consumer relationships that BuzzFeed never had, while Sam refuses to yield. | |
| Stripe, Banking Jitters, and Fintech Infrastructure Risks | 8 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Jessica breaks down The Information's scoop on Wells Fargo dropping Stripe due to third-party merchant risks, analyzing banking compliance bottlenecks in fintech before the hosts sign off. |
Statements from this episode (21)
Sam Lessin: Unlike Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk "just seems angry"
“You know, I think like Elon is a complicated character, but he just candidly, he just seems angry. Right. In a lot of ways.”
Dave Morin: Acquired Live left Chase Center's arena mostly empty
“And I think it's interesting that the Chase Center was not even remotely full. Like, we had 6000 people or so that showed up. That's a place that can hold, what, 30, 40,000? And the, you know, the boxes were largely empty.”
Brit Morin: Acquired was obligated by sponsor to host at Chase Center
“Wrong venue choice, but that was a partnership. That was a sponsorship. That was, they had to host it there.”
Sam Lessin: IRL event audiences are irrelevantly small compared to the internet
“The internet is so big that like anything you do IRL is just going to be like an irrelevantly small number of people.”
Dave Morin: The Apple App Store did $1 trillion in business in 2022
“You know, he was telling me that the app store did a trillion dollars in business in 20, 22 alone.”
Sam Lessin: The Apple Vision Pro was "ultimately a failure"
“For what it's worth, I will say that since the Vision Pro, talk about flashy Apple launches, since the Vision Pro was such a failure, ultimately.”
Sam Lessin: Apple is to blame for child safety failures on devices
“It is Apple's fault. They are the ones that actually have identity. They are the ones that actually could do financial controls properly. They're the ones, and they've done a really good job of deflecting that.”
Sam Lessin: Apple would crush CPAP makers with a high-design machine
“Apple would crush these people with a high design CPAP machine.”
Brit Morin: Apple ignores parental controls because the market is too small
“I just think it's a small enough market size that they don't care, and they'd rather make a better camera button on the iPhone that impacts the billion people.”
Brit Morin: I don't trust Google's Gemini AI model "at all anymore"
“I don't even trust Gemini at all anymore.”
Brit Morin: This is the hardest era ever for VCs and founders
“And like the hot take is this is the most difficult time of all time to be this category as an LP GP or founder.”
Sam Lessin: Legendary VC Bill Gurley lacks massive winners in his portfolio
“There's obviously like a lot of like Bill Gurley's awesome in the world, but I don't, when I look at his record of companies, like he doesn't have like massive winners.”
Jessica Lessin: How a wrong number sparked a feud with Bill Gurley
“We thought we had Bill Gurley's cell phone. It turned out we had his gatehouse phone. So upon calling it, our reporters in our newsroom were just calling it, and he thought we were hiding in the bushes.”
Sam Lessin: Slow Ventures will invest $50M into creators over next few years
“You know, slow, we've already invested tens of millions of dollars into this strategy. We'll be investing, you know, fifty million more in the next few years just into creators.”
Sam Lessin: MrBeast will mirror BuzzFeed's collapse due to a low-LTV audience
“The thing I was positing is I expect we'll end up with the same outcome, right? Which is you're going to see a huge run up, a lot of excitement, but unfortunately the beast audience is in highly competitive, straight up media, right? Like it's straight up, you…”
Dave Morin: Facebook's 2017 algorithm change destroyed digital media ad models
“Facebook just like changed the algorithm overnight in 2017 and effectively destroyed the entire media business because the, their advertising models collapsed overnight. Like they could no longer fulfill the insertion orders.”
Sam Lessin: We will never see another Kim Kardashian-style mega-creator
“So like, basically I think I would wager to say that we're not going to see another Kim Kardashian style Character, right? Like that era is kind of come and gone already.”
Sam Lessin: Social media subscriber counts "aren't worth dogshit" in 2024
“And I just think we've all learned the lesson, which is subscriber counts aren't worth dog shit, right? In 20, 23, 24.”
Jessica Lessin: Wells Fargo halted third-party merchant payment processing for Stripe
“What our reporter Michael Rodden reported for the first time is that Wells Fargo has stopped working with Stripes in this capacity to help process payments.”