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.
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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
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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
Professionals last too long in Entertainment, Finance, and Government — and it leads to weird fragmentation
Posted bySam Lessin
The Rolling Stones uses auto-tune to tour forever… Investors can tele-commute from Yachts — or in the case of Charlie Munger, a lazy boy — easily vs. being stuck in the office, so they keep working because ‘why not’ … Government leaders accumulate power and then stay in office until they are 1000 years old. This didn’t used to be the case — it used to be people just got to...Slow Ventures
Did Sam Altman Just Cross the AI-Rubicon? Both Altman and Caesar had to ‘leave’ to return… so should we fear an ascendant ‘Consul for Life’?
Posted bySam Lessin
Julius Caesar crossed the rubicon twice… once leaving Rome around 58 BC to go out a-conquering — a charismatic character expanding the empire and inspiring crazy loyalty from his men — , and once significantly on the way back into Rome when he marched a highly loyal legion across the river and ignited a civil war that ended the roman republic and started the Roman Empire (wi...Slow Ventures
The Big Bertha of Governance Disasters isn't FTX and OpenAI… it is TikTok.
Posted bySam Lessin
But the real big-bertha, the grand kahuna of Governance problems in’t crypto, and it isn’t AI — it is TikTok, and China. So, the FTX governance disaster was pretty straight forward — a bunch of investors looked past the fact that there was none. And the OpenAI governance disaster of the last week was a bit more complicated. The investors (and partners, and customers, an...Slow Ventures
With OpenAI’s new non-profit board, they just retired their ‘cult’ founding identity in favor of being a ‘business’. — now it needs a proper contract with its CEO, to actually pay him, and move on.
Posted bySam Lessin
Larry Summers is a serious person. He is smart, precise, and cares about capitalism and the United States. Bret Taylor is a serious person, and the rare guy who grew up as an innovator but is willing to run as boring a company as salesforce…. These are people who show up to build businesses, not lead cults… So, I would argue with their appointment to the OpenAI board (...Slow Ventures
’The Founders Should Have Just Paid Their Taxes’ — the real lesson of OpenAI
Posted bySam Lessin
We have witnessed massive value destruction in the last week because of an incredibly strange structure - where a non-profit with a philanthropic mission (as misguided as it might be) has come into direct conflict with the for-profit it controls…. All of this could have been easily avoided if OpenAI hadn’t been set up as a non-profit…. which they easily could have done and...Slow Ventures