Jun 28, 2024 · 53m · more-or-less
#53: What We Got Wrong—and Right—in a Year of More or Less · More or Less Podcast
Dave Morin · 14m spoken Sam Lessin · 14m spoken Jessica Lessin · 11m spoken Brit Morin · 6m spoken Intro Vocalist · 9s spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Celebrating their one-year anniversary, the co-hosts of More or Less conduct an honest retrospective on their past tech debates, contrasting industry hype with economic realities across AI, capital markets, social platforms, and wearable devices.
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 99.6% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 6.0 Guest teaching 1.2 Guest disagreement 0.7 The hosts pushing back 4.0
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 16:20 Guest questions Sam Altman's governance consolidation
When Brit asserts that Sam Altman cleaning house and stabilizing OpenAI is entirely good, Podcast Co-host interjects skeptically with 'Is it all good?', marking the guest's clearest moment of dissent.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 48:44 Jessica dismantles Dave's Vision Pro defenseJessica refuses Dave's framing of the Vision Pro as an intentional pro-developer release by citing Tim Cook's Vanity Fair cover and massive commercial marketing expenditure.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 46:32 Guest supplies the Humane brand nameWhen Sam struggles to identify the poorly adopted wearable AI pin devices, Podcast Co-host steps in to supply the exact hardware company name, Humane.
The host holds their own ▶ 5:56 Jessica cites institutional capital barriers to IPOsJessica demonstrates sharp industry expertise by citing Philippe Lafont from the private capital summit and explaining how ETF structural shifts and high valuation thresholds hold back large unicorns like Databricks.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Setting Up the One-Year Anniversary Retrospective | 3 | 0 | 0 | 1 | The co-hosts establish the premise of their retrospective episode and joke about AI summarization tools. The nominal guest does not speak, keeping guest-related scores at zero during collegial banter. | |
| Debate 1: Tech IPOs and M&A Recovery | 7 | 1 | 1 | 6 | Jessica and Sam demonstrate strong market literacy, citing Philippe Lafont, ETF dynamics, and market bifurcation between mega-caps and startups. Sam aggressively pushes back on Brit's positive IPO stats as mere capitulation, while the guest makes only a brief agreeable interjection. | |
| Debate 2: OpenAI's Trajectory and the AGI Narrative | 8 | 2 | 2 | 6 | Jessica details OpenAI's 90 percent developer market share while Dave and Sam analyze authentication architecture and technical analogues to Heroku and Stripe. The guest offers a lone skeptical interjection questioning whether Sam Altman consolidating control is actually good. | |
| Debate 3: The Decline of Social Apps into Media | 8 | 1 | 0 | 5 | Dave draws on his experience founding Path to analyze social network lifecycle dynamics, while Sam argues social platforms have devolved entirely into broadcast media driving mass stadium fandoms. The guest interjects solely to agree. | |
| Debate 4: Apple Vision Pro Flop vs. Meta Smart Glasses | 7 | 2 | 1 | 6 | Jessica firmly pushes back against Dave's attempt to excuse the Vision Pro as merely a developer device by citing Apple's massive consumer marketing campaign. The guest interjects constructively to supply the brand name Humane during a discussion of failed hardware pins. | |
| Episode 53 Conclusion and One-Year Pod Reflections | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | A warm wrap-up celebrating the one-year anniversary of the podcast and teasing future guest episodes. Dynamic is entirely harmonious with zero pushback. |
Statements from this episode (18)
Brit Morin: First half of 2024 saw 88 IPOs, up from 72
“So we had 88 IPOs the first half of this year and 72 during the same period in 2023.”
Brit Morin: Tech M&A deal value reached $535B in 1H 2024
“So that's up about 30% year over year in the first half of the year in 2024. And also the deal value is up. They actually gave me numbers on deal value for this one. Five hundred and thirty five billion versus four hundred and twelve billion from the first hal…”
Brit Morin: AI drove four of the five biggest 1H tech acquisitions
“What are the top five biggest technology M&A deals in the U.S. From the first half of this year? And they range in value from seven billion to thirty-five billion. Four of the five are AI related deals.”
Sam Lessin: The tech IPO market is currently irrelevant to tech's narrative
“More on the IPO market less is like, it just feels so irrelevant right now, right? To the overall narrative of what's going on.”
Dave Morin: High rates will force startups toward cash flow over IPOs
“As long as interest rates are high, I think that's what the world's gonna look like for a pretty long time to come, so, you know.”
Jessica Lessin: OpenAI is discussing converting to a B Corp
“I think it's very likely we've reported they're talking about converting to a B Corp, which is a company which would essentially completely liberate him from the nonprofit kind of overhang and the issues that had that board boot him.”
Dave Morin: Consumer-ready rapid AI video generation is years away
“In order for this to be, you know, something that consumers use to edit a one minute video in a very short time period, like we're talking years before that's going to be real.”
Sam Lessin: Simple API authentication drove OpenAI's massive developer adoption
“What they got right was basic auth. Huge business. It's like hilarious because like this goes back to the whole thing. It's like this. I think sometimes big companies get this really wrong and like open AI actually to your point about Stripe kind of gets it be…”
Sam Lessin: OpenAI weathered the storm but hasn't clearly won anything
“I'm, like, I would say, like, equal on Sam Alvin, but then on OpenAI, I'm, like, it's kind of the same thing. It's, like, they've weathered it, but they haven't clearly won anything.”
Dave Morin: YouTube's creator tools are vastly superior to other platforms
“The YouTube creator tools are really good. And they, the feeling that you have being a creator on YouTube is vastly superior to the other platforms.”
Dave Morin: Facebook was already dead to him when Threads launched
“Facebook was already dead to me when threads launched. So it's like, it just didn't matter. I never use it. I don't log into it. I don't, I never open it.”
Sam Lessin: Modern Social Media Is Just Media, Not Social
“It's like, you kind of just need to drop the word social from social media. It's just media.”
Brit Morin: Not Many People Left X During Musk's Transition
“We thought the moment of time would be perfect if Elon really messed up the Twitter to X transition, but I don't think many people left X.”
Jessica Lessin: The Information reported Apple paused next Vision Pro
“The information is reported there, they're not even working on the next version of it.”
Sam Lessin: Vision Pro is history's most expensive device per minute used
“Yeah, I would say that I think the Vision Pro is almost certainly the most expensive device per minute used in history.”
Dave Morin: Culture has staged a wholesale rejection of VR headsets
“Like, I also think that there was a wholesale rejection, like a wholesale cultural rejection of this entire idea. Like, I think that people experience both the meta quest and the vision pro and they were just like, Hard no. I do not want this. Like, this is no…”