Opinion
Lessin: Being a $10B public company is a dumb place to be
“There's no such thing as being a ten billion dollar public company anymore. It's just like a dumb place to be. No one cares, right? You either want to be a hyperscaler, right?”
Insight
Lessin: New AI social networks focus on choosing who follows you
“For 20 years, the way you start a social network is you say, who do you want to follow? And the way to start a social network today is say, who do you want to follow you?”
Opinion
Lessin suspects Twitter intentionally allows bots to satisfy user loneliness
“I'd actually argue Twitter is already doing this. Like Twitter, I think is intention. My, I'm not, I have no inside information. My sense is it is intentionally full of bots. Cause people are lonely. People want responses.”
Opinion
Lessin: AI is not a defensible moat for startups
“And the tagline is AI is not your mode. And it's just like, we were just driving on the one-on-one and every fucking billboard is like AI this, AI that. And we're like, this is just like piles of money burning on the one-on-one. So we decided to burn a little …”
Insight
Lessin: AI is an extending innovation uniquely benefiting Big Tech incumbents
“AI, unlike prior innovations, like unlike the transition from shrink rack software to the internet is just so good for the big companies, right? It's easy to slot in. It commodifies. I mean, there's just like, you can't, you cannot think of a better extending …”
Insight
Lessin: Instagram shifted luxury signaling from luxury goods to fitness and experiences
“It's an interesting social bandana because on one hand I'd argue that Instagram Has made it so that the real luxury consumption is experience and travel and being hot, right? Like all of a sudden like fitness is cool because like you can say you're hot and bei…”
Opinion
Lessin: Vision Pro Is the Most Expensive Product Per Minute Used
“Apple Vision Pro has got to be the most expensive product per minute of use in the history of the world.”
Opinion
Lessin: If MrBeast goes public, it will trade like a meme stock
“I think it's a meme stock. It's a meme stock if it gets out, right? It's just a meme coin on steroids.”
Assertion Supported
Lessin: MrBeast spent more on his Amazon show than his $100M deal
“Like, you know, the, you know, everyone's excited that he gets a hundred million dollar Amazon contract, but then he spends more than that on the show, right?”
Insight
Lessin: Startup customer acquisition cost always goes up, never down
“One of the dirty secrets, which, you know, it sounds like is in the venture capital world, entrepreneurs all day long will pitch you about how their CAC is very high, but the CAC will come down. Here's a secret CAC always goes up, right? It always goes up. Lik…”
Opinion
Lessin: AI pitch spam is making VC more insular, not less
“And so there's this interesting thing where AI is actually leading, making venture capital, I would argue more insular, right. Than it was before, not less insular.”
Opinion
Lessin: Slack and Discord are communication disasters
“But then people are like, you should be in my discord server or like slack. I'm like, absolutely not. Like, I think those things are disasters. I refuse to engage with them. I hate everything about them.”
Prediction Held up
Lessin: Fund-to-fund private sales will increase significantly in venture capital
“Private to private transactions are going to happen way more. Right. Like you're going to look just as it happened in private equity, like funds will sell the funds.”
Opinion
Lessin: Big tech will build internally rather than buy AI startups
“The big companies, just because they have such incredible access to capital and distribution at this point, they can kind of build whatever they need anyway, right? So anything that does happen will be highly bespoke as opposed to like some industry-wide trend…”
Insight
Lessin: Early Products Benefit From High Friction to Filter for True Believers
“Really successful things. You actually want fairly high barriers to entry so that the people who show up as your early customers are like deeply in need of it and true believers, right? Cause if they're deeply in need of it, they're gonna put up with a lot of …”
Insight
Lessin: Flawed expected-value math causes VCs to overpay for AI startups
“The problem with AI in general, and I think the entire AI discussion is I always like to point out, it's like the average of infinity and zero is infinity, right? And so VCs aren't very good at math, but they can do that one. And so the problem is you say, oka…”
Insight
Lessin: Winning investments back transformed workflows, not the underlying AI
“It's not, you're not investing in the AI. You're investing in like a new way or a new approach to hiring, which happens to leverage AI. And I think there is an important distinction there.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Lessin: Accenture will cannibalize its core BPO business with AI
“Accenture is going to make a lot of money short-term on trans on this stuff, right? Short-term. The problem is Accenture is mostly in the business of BPO outsourcing and they're going to kind of eat themselves in doing that.”
Insight
Lessin: Disruptive LLMs do not guarantee a good underlying business
“Don't confuse The fact that LLMs are powerful technology, like there's stuff you're going to do with them that are going to be great for all sorts of businesses with the disruption itself being a good business.”
Opinion
Lessin: Meta's core ad business faces no AI disruption unlike Google
“They're unlike Google aren't going to get disrupted in their core business on this. They don't have a search business. They don't have a lookup business to disrupt. They have a shit ton of an engagement attention and they sell ads. And you know, what definitel…”
Insight
Lessin: Indexing the seed market is economically irrational for multi-billion-dollar funds
“Historically speaking, when big funds try to index the seed market, there are two problems. One is someone wakes up and does the math and they're like, this doesn't make any sense, right? Like even if you have the million dollar check at seed, if you're trying…”
Opinion
Lessin: Apple Intelligence text summaries are comically bad
“At the same time, you know, I don't know if you guys get the Apple intelligence summaries or texts, but they're like comically bad.”
Opinion
Lessin: Google leads in AI elements but faces the biggest downside
“And yes, I think they are the company that more than any other company in the world is in the position of both being way ahead in certain elements of AI and like has a huge advantage, but they also have the most to lose, right?”
Insight
Lessin: Seed venture is less consistently profitable for GPs than mega-platforms
“The seed business model we run is definitely less consistently and meaningfully profitable than like being a, in a platform. There's no question, right?”
Sam Lessin