Jun 6, 2025 · 54m · more-or-less
#102: Snap Spectacles, Build-A-Bear, and the Myth of the Everything App · More or Less Podcast
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In this episode of More or Less, co-hosts Dave Morin, Brit Morin, Sam Lessin, and Jessica Lessin dissect emerging technology developments, evaluating novel consumer hardware concepts like an AI-enabled Build-A-Bear, the sustainability of creator brands, the myth of super-apps, and the safety realities of autonomous vehicles.
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 99.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 5.5 Guest teaching 4.5 Guest disagreement 4.4 The hosts pushing back 4.1
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 28:22 Dave rejects OpenAI hardware and Snap acquisition
Dave bluntly shuts down Brit's suggestion of an OpenAI-Snap tie-up, arguing forcefully that OpenAI has a billion users and zero need for Snap's distribution or camera hardware.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 46:51 Jessica counters Dave's defense with crash evidenceWhen Dave attempts to reassure the group that Tesla autopilot automatically shuts down when blinded by the sun, Jessica immediately intervenes, citing the recent incident where the car struck a parked vehicle and severely injured a pedestrian.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 15:32 Sam breaks down creator fund economics and BATNASam educates the hosts on deal architecture in creator commerce, illustrating how creators without capital hold zero leverage in brand partnerships until venture funding establishes a credible outside alternative.
The host holds their own ▶ 43:15 Jessica leverages FOIA reporting against Silicon Valley complacencyJessica counters the panel's casual acceptance of autonomous driving by citing her investigative FOIA requests, demonstrating that actual incident rates are significantly higher than manufacturers publicly disclose.
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 Titles and Theme Song | 5 | 3 | 6 | 5 | Dave and Sam strongly pan the tech-satire film Mountainhead as unwatchable and poorly executed, despite Jessica revealing she was a paid consultant on the script. Jessica defends Jesse Armstrong's allegorical intentions and notes positive critical reviews from mainstream outlets, playfully telling Dave he can write his own movie. | |
| Substack, App Store Fees, and Creator Platforms | 7 | 4 | 3 | 3 | Jessica shares proprietary insights from her live interview with Substack CEO Chris Best, citing creator earnings thresholds and App Store fee bypasses. Sam analyzes the underlying economics, noting Substack provides commodity email infrastructure that requires closed-loop advertising to sustain a ten percent take rate. | |
| Creator Brands, Collabs, and the 'Vibe' Economy | 5 | 6 | 4 | 4 | Sam explains the venture thesis of his creator fund, walking through how creators often get exploited in collabs because their walk-away alternative is nothing. Jessica and Dave press him on whether physical consumer products differ from digital vibes and argue that investigative reality reporting retains high defensibility. | |
| The Supplement Craze, Red Light, and Longevity | 4 | 5 | 4 | 3 | Brit questions the deluge of influencer-led supplement pitches, while Sam argues that the broken American food system makes supplementation inevitable despite a lack of longitudinal double-blind studies. Dave defends probiotic research as scientifically validated, leading Sam to counter that time-series data for most wellness trends is nonexistent. | |
| Snap Spectacles, Jony Ive, and the 'E-Cane' | 6 | 4 | 5 | 4 | Jessica relays Evan Spiegel's openness to acquisition options and Snap's AR hardware roadmap. Dave forcefully dismisses Brit's suggestion that OpenAI should buy Snap or build camera-based glasses, while Sam pitches his long-running concept for a heavy self-defense smart cane. | |
| Build-A-Bear as an AI Robotics Company | 5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | Sam presents a thesis that Build-A-Bear is positioned as an emotional AI robotics brand that consumers will prefer over sterile industrial humanoids. Dave pulls up market data to challenge Sam's claim that the stock is booming, prompting Sam to defend its multi-year run from two to forty dollars. | |
| The Myth of the 'Everything App' and X | 5 | 5 | 3 | 3 | Brit brings up an Atlantic article questioning whether users will consolidate into a single everything app, which Dave and Sam reject in favor of a specialized chorus of AI models. Jessica points out that Elon Musk continues to quietly develop multi-function capabilities inside X despite public skepticism. | |
| Tesla Full Self-Driving Safety and Autonomous Commutes | 7 | 5 | 5 | 6 | Jessica brings up recent crash footage of a Tesla on Full Self-Driving and discusses the ethics of chaperones using autonomous mode on elementary school field trips. Dave defends Tesla's recent software iterations as dramatically safer than human driving, but Jessica pushes back with data gathered from public records requests. |
Statements from this episode (21)
Lessin: Consultant on Jesse Armstrong's Tech Film Mountainhead
“Dave, you realize, Dave, that I am a consultant on the project and, in, in the credits.”
Lessin: Over 50 Substack Writers Make More Than $1M Annually
“They have 50 people, more than 50, who make more than a million dollars a year, and they get 10% of their revenue.”
Sam Lessin: Substack's Only Long-Term Edge Is Internal Discovery and Advertising
“The only way they can have a competitive edge long-term is if they become a closed loop, effectively advertising for newsletters, right?”
Dave Morin: MrBeast appears to have invested effort into Feastables
“In their case, It does appear that Beast did put some time into making the chocolate actually good.”
Jessica Lessin: MrBeast's Feastables chocolate is "so bad" and inedible
“No, he didn't. It's so bad. I could not eat it.”
Sam Lessin: Firm avoids pure entertainment investments due to zero-cost AI
“I think that the most competitive markets are going to be the ones that look closest to zero marginal cost AI stuff, right? That's why like, I'm like super and creator fun. Like we're very anti investing in pure entertainment, right? It's too competitive. Like…”
Sam Lessin: We invested in Nicki Minaj's nail company
“Like we invested in this company that does Nicki Minaj's nail company.”
Sam Lessin: Creator-led supplement brands lack sustainable business moats
“But I also think we probably consume a ton of them and we'll consume more of them over time. So, you know, I don't think it's a great, sustainable, deep business where anyone's going to build like the winning mode other than the ones who are like pure or, you …”
Brit Morin: We are very close to personalized supplements
“And also I'm like a big believer in that we're like very close to personalized supplements.”
Sam Lessin: Snap stock consistently crashes on earnings and recovers
“Snap is it does this thing every quarter where, like, it gets, announces earnings, gets completely crushed, and then, like, somehow floats back up, and then announces earnings and gets crushed. It's a very interesting signature.”
Dave Morin: Adjusted for inflation, Snap stock never gained since IPO
“It's basically been sideways to down, and if you factor in inflation, like, they've never been up since since IPO.”
Sam Lessin: Snap's $14B market cap is too small for AR hardware
“You cannot play today's game with a fourteen billion dollar market cap. It's just not possible, right? Like he doesn't have the resources.”
Dave Morin: OpenAI will definitively not launch glasses or cameras
“I also think that OpenAI, I, I'll just say it on the record, I think that OpenAI will not launch a glasses-based vision, like, definitively they will not have cameras, they will not have glasses, like, That is a very diff, it's a very divergent worldview from …”
Sam Lessin: Build-A-Bear has been one of the best performing stocks since 2020
“From twenty-twenty to now, it's just like, it's like the best stock ever.”
Sam Lessin: Consumers will use a chorus of specialized AIs
“I actually think that the far more likely outcome, Is like the dinner party outcome for AIs, which is like, you just have a chorus of them, right? You trust different ones for different things. There's always new ones being introduced. They're like new people …”
Jessica Lessin: There is no advantage in tech to being an 'everything' app
“Technology just, there's no benefit to being the everything. You can just be the best at a lot of different things”
Brit Morin: Parents will eventually require autonomous driving for carpooling kids
“I think there's going to be a line we cross where you actually request parents to do the self-driving because it will be so much better than the human.”
Brit Morin: San Francisco parents mandate Waymo over Uber for kids
“We do know also a lot of people in the city that require that their kids use Waymo versus using Ubers.”
Dave Morin: Tesla FSD's sensor "exoskeleton" feels safer than manual driving
“I actually feel that it's safer because it, it's like a exoskeleton that has more sensors on it than I have.”
Brit Morin: People Are Using AI for Plastic Surgery Before-and-After Previews
“Now, the other thing I've been hearing about is people are starting to use it for plastic surgery before and afters. So they're taking pictures of their bodies and asking it to perform procedures on them and show them what it would look like after these plasti…”
Dave Morin: Top-three VC firm uses AI to mock all negotiations
“A venture capitalist from one of the top, let's, let me put it this way, top three venture firms in the world said that they were using it to mock all negotiations that they do. So they were taking, you know, describing the negotiation then, and then asking it…”