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 Internet Was Supposed to Make Social Capital More Fungible — Instead It is Creating Ever More Disconnected Niches
Posted bySam Lessin
*The social capital network is higher bandwidth and can carry an identity over more hops than before… but the networks themselves have localized with fewer and fewer connections ‘out’ from local loops* One of the dreams of the early internet was that it would make financial capital relatively less important, and social capital globally more useful, fungible, and then as a p...Slow Ventures
Big Digital Platforms Are Going To Need ‘AI’ Scape Goats — Why MSFT has it right, and GOOG needs to find partners / a platform strategy fast...
Posted bySam Lessin
The MSFT / OpenAI deal is really a brilliant move for Microsoft, and its brilliance is only becoming more obvious by the day. Let’s talk about what this was / what MSFT got 1) An incredibly safe economic deal at any valuation — MSFT basically let OpenAI pick their valuation (just like their very successful FB deal a decade+ ago) and then gets to make up the economics both ...Slow Ventures
Is ‘Woke Culture’ The Natural Limiter On Companies That Are Too Profitable?
Posted bySam Lessin
There seems to be a very very high correlation between companies that are highly profitable and highly secure and ‘woke’ cultures. To be overly simplistic about it, only companies that are very very fat and secure can afford to bother themselves with the fringes of ‘woke’ culture … and, I think the argument that when times get more ‘lean’ companies (and cultures?) tend to ...Slow Ventures
You Will Get Value From ‘AI’ Characters Following You Long Before You Follow AIs
Posted bySam Lessin
*Consider the following points:* a) It is way easier to generate 1,000 ‘AI’ characters that occasionally say something witty, funny, interesting, or compelling to you vs. trying to create a single perfect companion that is super personally engaging / compelling. b) It is a very high bar for a character to be so compelling you want to go out and follow them / get lots of ...Slow Ventures
Single “Voice” Oracle-Style AI / LLM Platforms Like GPT-3 Cannot Possibly Survive Regulatory & Social Pressures Around Speech Issues… The Only Path Forward Will Be Decentralization.
Posted bySam Lessin
For 20 years social platforms have been plagued with all sorts of awful speech generated by awful people. They have succeeded despite these speech challenges, because despite all sorts of debates around ‘amplification’ and algorithms, fundamentally they are not the ones that are ‘speaking’ but instead just moving around speech on behalf of users (or Russian bot farms, I k...Slow Ventures