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 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
The real problem is that there is no point to keeping cash in a bank account in a frictionless modern economy…
Posted bySam Lessin
Historically the theory has been that money is three things - a store of value, a medium of exchange, and a record of account. But in our modern technological world of extreme low friction these three use-cases are being rapidly disagregated — and what we are seeing now with these bank runs is at least a partial echo of money’s role as a ‘medium of exchange’ matters less, w...Slow Ventures
Late Stage Funds Aren’t Doing Late-Stage Checks, So To Stay Busy They are Fighting a Proxy War in the Seed Market (and it is messing up seed financing for both real seed investors and founders)
Posted bySam Lessin
*NB: This is not a sam original - someone said this to me and I honestly can’t remember who, but they are 100% right and I think it is worth magnifying… whomever said this ‘proxy war’ line to me, feel free to claim!* If you hand’t been noticing, there is bupkis going on in later stage markets, but the seed market is alive and hopping - and somewhat weirdly at first glance ...Slow Ventures
‘Robots.txt’ needs a major upgrade for AI…
Posted bySam Lessin
For a long time we have existed in a weird world where if as a human you want to use a website you agreed to a long terms-of-service either explicitly or implicitly… But if you were a robot accessing a website the rules of the road were pretty basic: 1. There was some usual blanket but basically unenforceable ‘do not crawl’ use language in a TOS… this for most services sa...Slow Ventures
The Three Key Takeaways From The SBV Speedrun
Posted bySam Lessin
1) Tech isn’t immune to macro (anymore)… The tech world danced through 2008 relatively unscathed — google gambled, skip layoffs, and won then — the party basically continued… Relatedly, the narrative for a long time is that baby startups have little at risk in the big macro world because they are a decade away from the public market … but here we are, and bad macro bets by ...Slow Ventures
SVB: Watching A Bank ‘Speedrun’ in Real Time
Posted bySam Lessin
There are bank runs, and then there are what in video games (and now banking) we call ‘speedruns’…. A few thoughts in real-time: 1. Impact of Fool Me Twice “Shame on Me” Mentality of ’23 Before getting into the heart of the matter, let’s just be clear that this is just terrible and unfortunate timing for SVB. Everyone looks at the series of recent events punctured by FTX ...Slow Ventures