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
How Asset Volatility is Driving Consumption Behavior Isn’t Discussed / Studied Enough…
Posted bySam Lessin
Reflecting on the last few years personally, I feel like I have justified spending a lot more money than I have in the past partially on the realization that ‘well that only costs like a single day of volatility in my stock portfolio’ / or ‘that thing costs about the same as the gain or loss of bitcoin I had in the last hour’ I haven’t seen any academic research on this (w...Slow Ventures
The problem with shortages of workers in the ‘trades’...
Posted bySam Lessin
The problem with shortages of workers in the ‘trades’ is that our economy forks young people early toward either high paid steady ‘trades’ that will make you comfortable but never super-rich, and low-odds home-run-derby jobs without actual skills (finance, management, etc.)…. As everyone has noticed / is talking about we have (a) a shortage of ‘workers’ in the US broadly a...Slow Ventures
A wild debate on crypto use cases with Zack Weinberg
Posted bySam Lessin
A month ago Zack invited me to debate him about crypto use cases (he has built a bit of a reputation as a 'crypto has no use cases' piper). He then delayed the release by a month, which is somewhat annoying because there was a good ecosystem conversation going on in late June / early July on specific crypto uses. That said, they finally released it. It got pretty ...Slow Ventures
The coming fall of the Kardashians in context of how entertainment is evolving... (aka why they are so pissed about tiktok)
Posted bySam Lessin
The Digital Media ‘Attention’ Food Chain in Progress…. People Magazine < Your Friends < Kardashians < Algorithmic-Everyone < AI Personalized Content (someday but not soon) It is funny to see the Kardashian’s ‘bring back old instagram’ posts today… I get it, they feel threatened & they should — Their power is about to get eviscerated (well, at least dampened)...Slow Ventures
As Apple chokes of add revenue from developers (see snap earnings); developers should collectively respond by dramatically raising prices on iOS and lowering them on Android and making a real push to pry people off iOS (and/or soak the rich people who stay on the platform)
Posted bySam Lessin
*NB: I haven’t read the iOS TOS recently — if this is against their terms of service then that should be a major thing to break in anti-trust…* Apple has recently effectively killed the ad supported app model on iOS while somewhat hilariously starting to go deep on their own tracking and ads platform — this is a real ‘I drink your milkshake’ move — as a business person you ...Slow Ventures
