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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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
We need a "please disturb me" mode more than we need "do not disturb" on this week’s More or Less….
Posted bySam Lessin
Mobile, and then COVID destroyed meaningful AIM style ‘availability’ / status… HUGE LOSS One of the biggest losses from the early internet was AOL instant messenger status (also original FB messenger).. which worked ~gloriously~. In that pre-mobile era the green ‘available and online’ dot was real - it actually meant you were free to chat (while chatting with 30 other pe...Slow Ventures
Why don’t we train animals to do digital work?
Posted bySam Lessin
While taking a break today I was served by instagram a video of a goldfish driving a vehicle from point to point quite successfully as part of a science experiment…. Juxtaposed with recent news about fiascos of self driving cars on SF streets, I am lead to a question… why aren’t we training and breeding animals at scale to do digital work like remove vehicle operations, et...Slow Ventures
The Billionaire Next Door: Why There will be an order of magnitude more billionaires minted in the next decade than ever before, but you won’t know almost any of their names….
Posted bySam Lessin
As most people recognize, the Forbes Billionaire Ranking is kinda a joke. It gets the wealth numbers wrong for the people it does cover sometimes by a very wide wide margin, but even crazier - it misses a ton of people who in many cases would rank highly on the risk - but are just more private / secretive than the easy-to-know about founders of big public companies, investo...Slow Ventures
NetJets for Farms — Request for Startup
Posted bySam Lessin
One idea I have had for a very very long time, and I have wanted to see someone execute is NetJets for farms. I started thinking about this in the era when I was obsessed with ‘own nothing’ and on-demand everything with the rise of uber and airbnb. IMHO I think the time for this to actually happen is soon / now. The thesis: 1 - Very very very rich people own their own a...Slow Ventures
Startups are like running ultra-marathons… but without a set end-line / instead you choose when you stop running— this is mentally the most brutal thing imaginable.
Posted bySam Lessin
On this week’s more-or-less we talked a bit about the mental brutality of startups. Vs the envious project based ‘Hollywood’ model of production. Pretend you are a director or actor — in Hollywood — you do your thing on the project intensely for a while, then the thing ‘ships’ and it either works or it flops. It is like having a race/ competition with a very defined window...Slow Ventures