May 3, 2024 · 58m · more-or-less
#45: How Tech Cos. Quit the Culture Wars · 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, tech founders and investors Jessica Lessin, Sam Lessin, Britt Morin, and Dave Morin analyze why Silicon Valley has abandoned culture war activism to refocus on bottom-line profits, debate the financial viability of AI consumer hardware like the Rabbit R1, and explore how social media platforms shape modern attention.
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 85.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 5.4 Guest teaching 2.3 Guest disagreement 2.1 The hosts pushing back 3.2
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 42:04 Britt challenges hosts on dumb phone and niche device viability
Britt forcefully asserts that dumb phones and specialized gadgets represent a legitimate consumer shift, rejecting the hosts' dismissive tech-determinist framing.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 20:37 Dave disputes Britt's belief that boundaries will easily normalizeDave explicitly rejects Britt's optimism about institutions crafting clean boundaries, invoking Ronald Reagan's forceful campus intervention in the 1980s to show these cycles repeat continuously.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 51:41 Britt reveals LinkedIn's stealth gaming launch to the hostsBritt educates the hosts on LinkedIn's new casual gaming rollout, detailing how puzzle mechanics map onto professional networks and demonstrating her own top leaderboard status.
The host holds their own ▶ 46:12 Sam dismantles the thesis of venture-funded hardware startupsSam applies clear financial and historical venture capital principles, arguing that zero-to-one consumer gadget startups burn LP capital on artistic hobby projects destined to fail.
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' Animated Title Sequence | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | The conversation opens with casual banter as Britt recounts narrowly avoiding jury duty and suggests technology or non-profits could overhaul the system. The hosts playfully tease her idea of starting an organization for it. | |
| Sam's Pilot Check Ride and Bandana Fashion | 5 | 1 | 1 | 2 | After bantering about Sam's pilot scarf, the hosts transition into the national campus protests. Dave shares insider observations from university contacts noting that outside activists are driving many encampments. | |
| Corporate Profit Discipline vs. University Mission Creep | 6 | 2 | 1 | 3 | Sam articulates a structured framework comparing corporate bottom-line discipline with university mission creep. Britt asks practical questions regarding how the protest cycle will wind down with summer approaching. | |
| Silicon Valley's Culture War Pendulum and Talent Leverage | 7 | 3 | 3 | 5 | Britt argues from her Google tenure that institutional rules will inevitably clarify, prompting Dave to push back citing historical campus unrest under Reagan. Sam and Jessica debate labor leverage and tech talent commodification. | |
| Corporate Hiring Lessons and the Death of Non-Competes | 6 | 1 | 1 | 2 | The hosts discuss tech recruiting practices, culture tests, and the calming of internal employee activism ahead of the election cycle. All participants share broad consensus that corporate leadership has regained leverage. | |
| Silicon Valley's Summer Calendar and Conference Season | 7 | 3 | 4 | 6 | Dave introduces the Rabbit R1 AI hardware device, which Sam immediately attacks as doomed to failure. Britt defends niche hardware trends, comparing future phone choices to choosing designer handbags. | |
| The Venture Capital Debate Over Consumer Hardware Startups | 7 | 3 | 4 | 6 | Dave defends artisanal hardware by referencing Apple's garage origins, while Sam vehemently argues that early-stage venture backing for boutique consumer hardware burns LP capital on projects that require massive industrial scale. | |
| Reviewing the Mill Kitchen Composter and Hardware Marketing | 5 | 2 | 2 | 3 | Britt and Dave champion the Mill kitchen composter as successful functional hardware, while Jessica questions its marketing reach. Sam maintains that true hardware breakthroughs historically stem from corporate labs like Xerox PARC. | |
| Pop Culture Club: LinkedIn Casual Gaming Launch | 4 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Britt informs the group about LinkedIn's new casual puzzle games launch, explaining how games like Pinpoint function and showing off her top standing on the UT Austin leaderboard. The hosts analyze the social engagement play. | |
| Digesting Taylor Swift Album and Rapid Media Takes | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 | The panel discusses the rapid media cycle around Taylor Swift's album before Jessica shares her belated appreciation for TikTok and Reels, sparking amusement from Sam and Dave. |
Statements from this episode (24)
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, …”
Sam Lessin says Columbia University was right to arrest student protesters
“You had Columbia where I think, you know, last night they did the right thing and they just arrested everyone and like, you know, we're moving on.”
Dave Morin calls campus encampments deep fake protests driven by activists
“There's actually a whole lot of people involved in these things that are not actually students. And I think that really confuses things and almost makes these things like deep fake protests.”
Sam Lessin argues that the average tech worker currently has no leverage
“The reality is your average tech worker has no leverage, right?”
Lessin predicts tech companies will recover from culture wars before universities
“The problem is that I think, again, the companies will recover much faster from this cultural moment than the universities will.”
Sam Lessin vows he will never hire student campus protesters
“Although I'll never hire any of them.”
Britt Morin predicts workplace political speech rules will simplify within ten years
“I would imagine that like five or 10 years from now, it's actually much simpler. We're just at this inflection point where this hasn't really been done like this before.”
Sam Lessin claims AI talent is the only scarce talent globally
“I do think that AI talent is the exception because it's the only scarce talent in the world right now.”
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…”
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?”
Britt Morin claims Silicon Valley essentially shuts down for the summer
“Everyone squeezes shit in up until Memorial Day, and then nothing else happens until after Labor Day. So summer is April and May in Silicon Valley.”
Jessica Lessin argues spring VC deal surge is seasonal deck-clearing
“No, this is just clearing the decks before the three-month summer hiatus.”
Sam Lessin says hardware startups cannot compete with big tech AI
“The idea that, that, that, like, that there's gonna be a startup hardware entrant, right, that is able to plow the amount of money over the amount of time in to compete with the, you know, the glasses or something, it just doesn't, I just don't think it's real…”
Jessica Lessin predicts smartphones will lose computing dominance within 20 years
“10 years from now, 20 years from now, I don't think the smartphone is gonna be as dominant as, I mean, it could be wrong, actually, but probably not in terms of how we're interacting with it, right, or it's a companion to other things”
Britt Morin predicts people will rotate digital accessories daily like handbags
“I think in the future you're going to pick out the phone or digital accessory you're carrying with you during the day, like a woman picks a handbag.”
Sam Lessin says artistic hardware devices have no prayer of succeeding
“What I'm really against though is like what I call, and I say this with respect for actually like teen engineering, but like I'll call it like artistic entrepreneurship where there's no prayer that these devices work. There is, it's fun to invest in.”
Sam Lessin says consumer hardware startups are wrong for venture capital
“The thing that I find offensive as a professional venture capitalist is like the startup of zero to one companies and the idea of using startup capital for these types of exercises, which are almost certainly like infinitesimally unlikely to work and are extre…”
Sam Lessin claims Google's Nest acquisition was incredibly lucky and timed
“Nest was the luckiest fucking acquisition ever, right? Had that been six Six months later, it probably wouldn't have happened, right?”
Sam Lessin claims smart ring maker Oura is not a good company
“But Aura's, like, not a good company. It's a great product, right?”
Lessin argues consumer hardware hits Ring and Nest weren't strong companies
“The track record of venture capital going into consumer hardware, there are a few examples of people who just barely got out by the skin of their teeth with reasonable outcomes, right? Ring, Nest, etc. But those were not actually fundamentally strong companies…”
Jessica Lessin argues that news is not a venture-backed business model
“No, news is not a venture-backed business.”
Dave Morin says instant reviews fail to properly evaluate complex new products
“Well, I think there's this interesting thing where, like, people try to metabolize new releases of things, like, in the first hour after they launch, and something that's 31 songs long, or even You know, new gadgets that take a long time to understand. It's li…”