Apr 4, 2025 · 52m · more-or-less
Can Tesla Survive? | More or Less #93 · More or Less Podcast
0:00 / 0:00
▶ Watch on YouTube →
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In episode ninety-three of More or Less, co-hosts Dave Morin, Sam Lessin, Brit Morin, and Jessica Lessin debate the intensifying cultural and commercial backlash threatening Tesla, critique the financial viability and valuation of OpenAI, and dissect an explosive corporate espionage scandal between Rippling and Deel.
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 100% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 5.5 Guest teaching 3.6 Guest disagreement 4.5 The hosts pushing back 4.5
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 28:04 Sam dismantles the Facebook executive comparison
Sam aggressively rejects Dave's thesis that ex-Facebook leadership validates OpenAI, labeling the executive exodus as depressed tech veterans blindly chasing their past professional highs.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 39:40 Dave pushes back against messaging app comparisonDave adamantly refuses Sam's characterization of LLMs as commoditized low-margin chat utilities, claiming users treat ChatGPT Pro like essential hardware.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 31:00 Sam educates on why data context fails as a moatDrawing on his direct experience running Meta's Identity group, Sam provides structural and regulatory reasons why historical user context fails to yield durable lock-in.
The host holds their own ▶ 34:29 Jessica quotes Nikesh Arora on AI spending limitsJessica leverages reporting from The Information, quoting Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora to substantiate the market shift toward cheaper models over frontier IQ.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Episode Preview: Tesla Backlash and Cultural Divides | 4 | 2 | 3 | 3 | The episode opens with light, humorous banter about an AI voice-cloning experiment and a playful bet over Mars exploration. The interaction is relaxed and low stakes with minimal pushback. | |
| Setting the Agenda Across a Tumultuous Tech News Week | 6 | 3 | 2 | 4 | Jessica establishes journalistic authority by citing scoops from Politico and The Information regarding Musk's Doge involvement and Anthropic's Model Context Protocol. The group banters collaboratively while selecting topics. | |
| Tesla's Plunging Sales and the Cost of Cultural Backlash | 6 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Dave defends Tesla's mechanical and self-driving superiority while Sam jokes about battery stripping arbitrage. Jessica interjects with fundamental EV market realities and Tesla's steep sales decline. | |
| Silicon Valley Fatigue and the War of Attrition Strategy | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | Sam introduces the concept of strategic fatigue and attrition warfare across modern tech controversies, from TikTok to university funding disputes. Dave and Jessica debate how effectively companies and institutions ride out news cycles. | |
| Social Media Detox and Real-World Versus Online Activism | 5 | 3 | 3 | 4 | Dave reflects on quitting social media and contrasts ineffective online activism with tangible ground-level boycotts. Jessica challenges him on whether a moderate middle ground exists versus going cold turkey. | |
| Vibe Coding Tools and the Brown University DOGE Bot | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 | The panel touches upon the vibe coding trend among non-technical professionals and laughs about a Brown student emailing the campus with an automated job-essentiality audit. The tone is amusing and lighthearted. | |
| OpenAI's Hypergrowth Versus the Illusion of Internet Big | 6 | 4 | 6 | 5 | Jessica cites OpenAI's $12.7B revenue trajectory, but Sam rejects the framing by coining the term 'internet big' and arguing that selling heavily subsidized compute makes hypergrowth misleadingly easy. | |
| Is OpenAI the Next Facebook or a Nostalgia Trap? | 6 | 5 | 7 | 6 | Dave compares OpenAI's talent composition and growth to Facebook's golden era, which Sam forcefully rebuffs as mere nostalgic chasing of early-career highs by depressed executives. | |
| The Moat Debate: Memory, Data Portability, and Enterprise Pricing | 7 | 6 | 7 | 7 | Dave posits that personalization and memory create a defensible moat, but Sam cites his time leading Identity at Meta to argue that data portability and LLM summarization destroy traditional data moats. | |
| Product-Led Versus Business-Led VCs and the iPhone Analogy | 6 | 5 | 7 | 6 | Sam dichotomizes product-led venture capitalists from business-model purists, comparing LLMs to free messaging apps rather than cash machines. Dave hits back by asserting that ChatGPT functions as an indispensable computing hardware platform analogous to the iPhone. | |
| Compute Hoarding, Data Center Bets, and ZIRP's Last Stand | 7 | 5 | 7 | 6 | Sam labels the massive compute buildout the final death knell of zero-interest-rate policy, while Dave points out that unique image generation features drive millions of users per hour. Jessica highlights Altman's calculated PR around compute shortages. | |
| The Rippling Versus Deel Corporate Espionage Scandal | 6 | 3 | 4 | 3 | Brit summarizes the affidavit alleging corporate espionage between Rippling and Deel, featuring James Bond references and secret Telegram channels. Sam mocks the amateurish execution and notes the recurring presence of Forbes 30 under 30 honorees in corporate scandals. | |
| Meta's UFC Deal and Live Sports Sponsorships | 4 | 2 | 2 | 3 | The hosts briefly discuss Meta's sponsorship tie-up with the UFC and broader sports trends before wrapping up with recommendations for the comedy series The Studio. |
Statements from this episode (34)
Sam Lessin: AI voice cloning can likely trick JPMorgan authorization
“The problem, unfortunately, is I think it probably is good enough to trick JP Morgan, which is the real fucking problem for voice authorizations.”
Brit Morin: Amazon made a last-minute bid to acquire TikTok
“But Amazon just put in a last minute bid.”
Jessica Lessin: Tesla's sales decline is tied directly to Musk and DOGE
“Well, the Tesla sales is definitely related to Elon and Doge, no question.”
Dave Morin: Used Tesla selloff creates a purely cultural underpricing opportunity
“People are just unloading Teslas at a ridiculous rate right now, and it's not like these are bad cars, right? It's a fully cultural under underpricing moment.”
Dave Morin: Excluding politics, Tesla makes the best American car unequivocally
“Like, look, I think at the end of the day, it's the best American made car that there is, right? Like it's unequivocal. If you kind of separate the cultural thing going on with Elon and Trump and mega and all of that stuff, and you just look at the Tesla objec…”
Sam Lessin: TikTok Should Be Banned From First Principles
“TikTok should be banned. Like from first principles.”
Sam Lessin: OpenAI obviously stole O'Reilly Safari books to train models
“I think I saw this thing about Tim O'Reilly saying like, it's pretty obvious that like they stole all the proprietary information from Safari and like their books to like build it. And it's like, it's total. I'm sure it's true. We all know that they stole ever…”
Dave Morin: Companies escape scrutiny through information overload and public fatigue
“The modern 20 25 strategy in general is to war of attrition through all the noise, right? Like there's so much noise. You can play a war of attrition almost across any topic. And as long as you go long enough, People are so fatigued by everything else going on…”
Dave Morin: China will retain control of TikTok's algorithm despite divestment
“There's one little detail in there, which is that here we are at the very end of this very long, very arduous news story, and China will still retain control of the algorithm, right? Like, so they did win the war of attrition at the end of the day. Like, it so…”
Morin: Activist protests at dealerships are scaring Tesla owners into selling
“Whoever these activism organizations are that you know, organize the protests around Tesla dealerships, like they're having a real impact right now, right? They're scaring Tesla owners. Tesla owners want to sell their cars. People are afraid to be driving thei…”
Dave Morin: Sam Lessin and I launched a cryptocurrency meme coin
“We didn't buy any domain names, but we did launch a meme coin.”
Sam Lessin: Masayoshi Son's OpenAI investment is the signal to sell
“When Masa buys, you sell the fuck out, right? And like, this would be the moment.”
Jessica Lessin: OpenAI is on track to hit $12.7B in 2025 revenue
“I mean, we reported their revenue target this year is 12.7 billion up from four last year, and they're on track to hit it.”
Jessica Lessin: OpenAI is projected to lose $44 billion through 2028
“They're only projected to lose forty four billion between. 2023 and 20 28, according to the information.”
Lessin: The X and xAI merger mimics the AOL Time Warner deal
“It's basically AOL Time Warner. If Time Warner had a shitload of debt and like the upshot is, is like the cheap money right now is for the AI thing.”
Lessin: AI startups buying physical assets with cheap capital will end terribly
“And so because they have cheap money, they're buying all these like real assets with super cheap money. And That's gonna work out terribly for most investors.”
Dave Morin: OpenAI can realistically be underwritten to a trillion-dollar valuation
“And so if you look at it like a five to seven year time horizon, can you see this becoming one of the, you know, trillion dollar big companies in Silicon Valley? I think you can actually underwrite that from a company perspective, right?”
Lessin: Ex-Facebook executives join OpenAI chasing growth highs, not business quality
“So there's a pattern matching of all these exacts informed people going over there, which has absolutely nothing to do with like actually the quality of the business. Right. But it's purely about chasing that experience again at all costs, which is why you see…”
Lessin: Unlike AI, Facebook was massively profitable from its early days
“Facebook was massively profitable. From the early days, it was always almost zero cost from a user perspective. It was a great business from the very early days.”
Morin: ChatGPT's defensible moat will be user memory and personal data
“The thing that ChatGPT is becoming and continues to get better at is memory. And just like we've seen at Apple, Dropbox, like many places where data is a moat, like...”
Sam Lessin: OpenAI will not become one of tech's pantheon companies
“I wouldn't be surprised if the number go up, get to run up higher, but I don't think it's fundamentally going to like be in the pantheon of important companies.”
Brit Morin: Users will pay more for ChatGPT as features expand
“I think there's elasticity in like the pricing mechanisms that they offer right now, where as there are more product features and tools to be had, which I don't think it's just going to be like this format forever. I will probably pay more as both a consumer a…”
Dave Morin: ChatGPT is the most important product on Earth
“It is the most important product on the Planet right now.”
Lessin: Equating AI usage volume with economic value is an intellectual failure
“I think there's a massive intellectual failure when you equate using more with value, right? Because that's just not how the economy or business works, right? Like, I think that, and the reality is, I think the iron, the likelihood, Britt, is you will use more…”
Morin: ChatGPT is a new computer platform comparable to the iPhone
“ChatGPT is an iPhone. It's not the chat. Like you're buying a computer.”
Sam Lessin: ChatGPT is easily replaceable by four identical alternatives
“If it went away tomorrow, there's like four others that are basically the same thing.”
Morin: Willingness to pay guarantees OpenAI a massive long-term business
“The willingness to pay for this thing, provided they keep executing, like Facebook was executing in the same period of growth means that they will build a big, big business over the long term.”
Jessica Lessin: OpenAI's for-profit conversion will trigger a multi-year lawsuit
“And then they actually have to convert into a company cause guys, they're not a company. And then there's going to be a multi-year lawsuit over that fact.”
Lessin: The generative AI infrastructure boom is ZIRP's final gasp
“This is like the last death knell of Zerp where people are like, fuck, we need to stuff a bunch of cash somewhere. Right. Ideally with downside protection, which is nice because we're buying like fucking real estate and servers and power.”
Lessin: Smart investors are desperately trying to sell OpenAI at $300 billion
“I know a lot of smart investors are desperately trying to sell at 300, right?”
Brit Morin: Deel CEO allegedly recruited Rippling employee as paid spy
“Keith O'Brien, who was the man allegedly spying for deal while working at Rip Lane had to
Put out an affidavit today, and he basically, like, came forward and just was like, all right, here's the truth.
Alex, how do you pronounce his name?
Boise, Boise, the CE…”
Brit Morin: Deel espionage was coordinated via Telegram with 'The Watchman'
“Also, they had a telegram channel where they were discussing the payments, and.
Wait, who was?
Okay, it's Keith, it's the spy.
How much did they pay for the telegram, Brett?
I know, telegram, not signal.
It's the spy, it's the CEO, and then there's a third per…”