Sam Lessin
GP Slow Ventures. Intern The Information
Subscriber since 2013
About
Sam is currently an intern at The Information and a General Partner at Slow Ventures. He has co-founded two companies, Fin and drop.io (acquired by Facebook in 2010). Between 2010 and 2014 he was a VP of product management at Facebook, where he managed the People, Places, and Things product group and the Identity product group. Sam started his career at Bain and Company, and attended Harvard ('05). In his spare time Sam enjoys skiing and kite-surfing. He is married to Jessica Lessin, founder of The Information.
Open to
Looking to invest in startups / private companies
I have been an early investor in many notable companies and projects including (solana, venmo, birchbox, makerbot, teamshares, tonkean, blockdaemon, airtable, etc.) At slow we look to back ideally things that are a bit crazy but important.
Looking to hire team members
TI is very much looking for engineers, product, design folks. Slow doesn't really have many opportunities but always open to hearing from folks.
Articles
Topics
Markets
StartupsGoogleAmazonAppleNetflixVenture CapitalVcSemiconductorsCryptocurrencyCloudAsiaAndreessen HorowitzAirbnbEntertainmentElon MuskFacebookMark ZuckerbergSequoia CapitalSingapore Economic Development BoardEnterpriseSilicon Valley Bank (SVB)PolicyUber/LyftAmazon Web ServicesAIAutonomous VehiclesCryptoVenture-CapitalOpenAIBainE CommerceModest ProposalsFTXSvbMeta PlatformsMedia/TelecomSBFVenture CapitalStartupsSaasIdentityBitcoinLawCryptocurrencyHuman CapitalMarketsCrazy People
StartupsGoogleAmazonAppleNetflixVenture CapitalVcSemiconductorsCryptocurrencyCloudAsiaAndreessen HorowitzAirbnbEntertainmentElon MuskFacebookMark ZuckerbergSequoia CapitalSingapore Economic Development BoardEnterpriseSilicon Valley Bank (SVB)PolicyUber/LyftAmazon Web ServicesAIAutonomous VehiclesCryptoVenture-CapitalOpenAIBainE CommerceModest ProposalsFTXSvbMeta PlatformsMedia/TelecomSBFVenture CapitalStartupsSaasIdentityBitcoinLawCryptocurrencyHuman CapitalMarketsCrazy PeopleSkills
FinanceFundraisingProduct ManagementData AnalysisSqlMicrosoft WordWritingHiringPrivacy IssuesStartups
Weekend
Favorite Vacation Spot
British ColumbiaHawaiiCape CodJackson Hole
Favorite Sports to Play
TennisSkiingSurfingFoilingKitesurfing
Favorite Sports to Watch
Mma
Favorite Books
The HobbitThe Biggest BluffSnowcrashDuneThe Hero With A Thousand FacesBusiness AdventuresThe Three Body Problem
Favorite TV Shows / Movies
Game Of ThronesCasino RoyaleCurb Your EnthusiasmIt's Always Sunny In PhiladelphiaFor All MankindLetterkennySuccessionCaddyshackBlazing SaddlesZoolander
Forum Posts
AI is gonna lock engineering employees into big companies like Microsoft, Google, etc. and limit their job flexibility going forward - empowering capital and disempowering labor
Posted bySam Lessin
There is no question / zero / that there is value in LLMs as code-writing assistants. There is a spectrum of what this means, going from NLP to full implementations, vs. type-aheads / auto complete on code snippets — but either way, the value and use is real. This works because with open-source code you have an enormous data-set of examples with embedded tests/validations ...Slow Ventures
Question of the AM: Do You Buy Nvidia as the Ultimate AI meme stock?
Posted bySam Lessin
For months now my argument has been that if you want to invest in AI, buy MAAMAA, Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe… to said differently, the incumbents with huge distribution and data that will be able to leverage AI for better product and efficiency. I have waffled on NVIDIA…. Because short term their relevance is huge / they will do well, but mid-to-long-te...Slow Ventures
The Problem with Big Businesses & Connected Capitalism is that outcomes are primarily Macro Dependent and disempowered… Small Businesses are the REAL Bulwark of a Free Society and Capitalism.
Posted bySam Lessin
If there is one thing that I think the tech community really experienced in the last several years is how insanely dependent we all are on the Macro economy / how swings in the Macro economy and interest rates make or break EVERYONE. With 20/20 hindsight this might seem obvious, but for the last 10-20 years, the tech world has felt ‘exceptional’ to the rest of the economy...Slow Ventures
Is it so crazy (or bad) that everyone in the US wants to be a ‘creator’ not an ‘astronaut’ ?
Posted bySam Lessin
There is this meme running around about how in china all the young people want to be astronauts and in the US all the young people want to be a ‘creators’ and how disastrous this is / how shallow and f-ed we are as a society. I get it, I am a Star Trek fan, I would love more people to admire astronauts - I wish we could / would spend as a society spend way way more money o...Slow Ventures
Too expensive or too cheap - why AI continues to reveal itself as a terrible VC bet
Posted bySam Lessin
From an investing perspective, I have been saying for a while that generative AI is fools gold. It looks super shiny at first blush, but when you get into the weeds there is very little opportunity for VC (and mostly for startups). Why? For Venture Capital to make sense, you basically need opportunities where a few million high-risk high-reward dollars ‘makes the differ...Slow Ventures