Sam Lessin (1:39)

It's not. It's a hot dog shirt. The hot dog revolution has been.

Jess (1:42)

What is the hot dog revolution? And is this a weird innuendo to something sexual?

Sam Lessin (1:46)

Oh, that's a great way to sell hot dogs. I hadn't thought about that. No, this is Uncle Breakfast Company. Steve Bookbinder has got a new meats company. I'm a proud. I'm a proud and proud meat investor. You know, AI is taking all of the software margins to zero, so now we do meat.

Jess (2:01)

Wow.

Sam Lessin (2:01)

You know, because the AI can't. The AI can't disrupt meat.

Jess (2:05)

Well, true, except for it can, because I got pitched in a very cool company yesterday.

Brit Morin (2:09)

Here we go.

Jess (2:09)

Here we go. That's using computer vision to, like, weigh cows and detect the healthiness of cows.

Sam Lessin (2:16)

That's fine.

Jess (2:17)

Which then goes into a marketplace where people can buy the meat. And so. So AI can help some.

Sam Lessin (2:24)

It's fine. I Was pitched years ago on a company that would kill fish with AI more efficiently so that they. So that they wouldn't get poisoned. You basically kill an animal, right? And it feels adrenaline. It fucks up the meat. So this was. And it turns out it's like, quite difficult to, like, kill fish quickly, like factory farm fish. And so the meat always gets fucked up. These guys have an AI, a fish killing AI. So these things are happening.

Brit Morin (2:50)

Do you check back in on that one? How's it doing?

Sam Lessin (2:53)

Yeah, I'm sure. Probably pretty well, honestly. But it's like. I don't know, it's. It's the fish killing AI. Like, put the fish in, like, a little tube and the AI would figure out where the brain is and then poke it, kill it with one shot.

Jess (3:04)

Why can't we do this to kill, like, the bad fish that we don't want near our shorelines? Like the sharks?

Sam Lessin (3:08)

Well, you have to put them in, like, a tube first. It was like they, like, put them in a tube and they shot a nail through its head.

Jess (3:14)

We could put sharks in a tube.

Dave Morin (3:15)

Sharks in a tube.

Sam Lessin (3:17)

You don't need to do that. Honestly. If you let people, like, just kill sharks, people would love that shit. It's just more of a policy thing, I think.

Jess (3:24)

I think they do in some parts of the world. And then there's the whole documentary about why we shouldn't kill sharks because it ruins the ecosystem, blah, blah, blah.

Sam Lessin (3:30)

But that's like shark. That's shark propaganda.

Brit Morin (3:32)

We can get rid of the sharks. I don't have an issue. Sorry.

Jess (3:35)

That's what I thought. I was like, I know Jess wouldn't care because she could surf more.

Brit Morin (3:39)

Yeah, this would be fine.

Sam Lessin (3:40)

I don't know that we could. I mean, sharks have been around way longer than we have. I feel like they would find a way. The sharks always find a way.

Jess (3:47)

I'm not going to fuck around with a shark. That's all I'm saying.

Dave Morin (3:50)

At some point, we're going to figure out how to translate shark language. And the sharks are going to be like, what have you guys been doing?

Jess (3:57)

It's true. They are their ancient overlords.

Sam Lessin (4:00)

I kind of feel like sharks don't have language. They're just silent killers of the sea.

Dave Morin (4:04)

That's their only language, is killing.

Sam Lessin (4:07)

I will say this. A Shark vs. AI Summer Hollywood movie would be amazing.

Jess (4:14)

Oh, it's like Jaws 3.0.

Sam Lessin (4:15)

It's like there's some. During Shark Week, there's some scenario where, like, an AI has been told to kill all the sharks. And, like, the entire movie is an epic battle between, like, robots and sharks. And, like, I could just imagine that being a great movie.

Brit Morin (4:30)

Okay, well, that's a good side project. So here's what we're going to talk about today, everybody. We're talking about the UP summit. I need a little more color. The LPs. How are the LPs doing? It's been a big week of headlines. We've got some doomsday reports out that have the markets particularly spooked.

Sam Lessin (4:47)

They're not reports, they're just like, philosophy pieces.

Brit Morin (4:50)

Sure, philosophy pieces.

Sam Lessin (4:51)

Narrative precedes all else. Everything is narrative. People who only care about narratives. Anyway.

Brit Morin (4:55)

Yes. Sometimes I read the agenda and then we circle back. Yes. So that's what we're doing. I think we should check in on the cryptos and if they're okay, then we've got some AI earnings. Everybody loves some AI earnings. And then, of course, we have to check on all our bots and see how we're doing. But we're saved the bots for the end. Guys.

Sam Lessin (5:12)

Oh, guys, I'm totally back on Claude. Claude is where I'm at again.

Brit Morin (5:16)

Okay, back to the preview. But first we have to congratulate the victor, Mr. Dave Morin, who bested Mr. Sam lesson by how many seconds in the ski race?

Sam Lessin (5:27)

A second. How many seconds? But that's a lot.

Jess (5:29)

But he crashed through the finish, which slowed him down. So it would have been two seconds.

Dave Morin (5:33)

Oh, that's not true.

Brit Morin (5:35)

I mean, I think both of you were crashing left and right. But let's hear from the athletes. You know, over here placed fourth in the women. Weren't that many women, so we don't need to talk about that.

Jess (5:43)

I didn't even try because I didn't want to just put myself up there next year.

Brit Morin (5:47)

But, Dave, what is it like to once again have the top honor?

Dave Morin (5:53)

Well, it's nice to still have it, I guess. And it's always good to do a ski race. My. I'm nursing bruises and dealing with gait bruises, which is. I guess that's what I do this time of year. Every year.

Brit Morin (6:06)

You need the pads.

Dave Morin (6:08)

Happy to still have it.

Jess (6:09)

He wears the pads. He goes so hard that he bruises through the pads.

Dave Morin (6:12)

I had pads, but I still.

Sam Lessin (6:14)

I don't know. Those gates are actually pretty soft. Dave, those are not hard gates. You might want to toughen up your skin.

Dave Morin (6:20)

Sam, we've learned that you and I have different constitutions.

Brit Morin (6:23)

But, Sam, how does it feel? Like so close to gold, yet not there.

Sam Lessin (6:26)

Honestly, there's one thing I don't mind, Dave beating me. Dave was on the Junior Olympics team and I contest that I am as good a skier, if not better, in certain conditions. But there's no question Dave is a faster ski racer than I am. That's just not like a point of contention after 20 years.

Brit Morin (6:43)

Were you surprised how close you even got?

Sam Lessin (6:45)

No, no. That's about what it always is. That's how it works.

Jess (6:50)

Our son Ansel came in fifth in the kids, and I know that your sons came in higher than him, but I think there's a next generation, more or less ski racing that's gonna like start ramping up over the next couple years. So watch out.

Dave Morin (7:04)

I think he's inspired to start ski racing.

Brit Morin (7:07)

I mean, my six year old beat me, guys, and I'm a good skier.

Sam Lessin (7:10)

Yeah, our six year old really fucking put down some times. It's amazing. And our 9 year old did well. Did very well as well. But the six year old just went for it.

Dave Morin (7:17)

Your six year old is very impressive.

Sam Lessin (7:19)

The six year old is impressive. Soon enough you and I can just like drink a bunch of beer and throw beer cans at our children as they go down the course. And like, that's gonna be even more fun. We're just so close.

Brit Morin (7:30)

Let's start with ringing cowbells. Let's start with that and then we'll, we'll take it from there. Okay. Well, we just had to props where props are due. Dave Morin still number one. Okay, up front, like, what is the vibe? Like, is it AI red pilled? Is it? Where are our IPOs? Like, what's the vibe?

Dave Morin (7:49)

No, the vibe is a lot of GPS and not very many LPs.

Sam Lessin (7:54)

Is sadness.

Dave Morin (7:56)

No, it's.

Sam Lessin (7:56)

Oh, it's slim picky.

Dave Morin (7:58)

I would call it neutral to positive. But there are not very many LPs here this year, which everyone is commenting on.

Sam Lessin (8:07)

Oh, oh, no.

Dave Morin (8:09)

And like every GP is here. Gps, I wouldn't expect to be here are here.

Sam Lessin (8:13)

So the GPS are looking for the money.

Jess (8:15)

A lot of GPS are here. Not fundraising.

Sam Lessin (8:18)

No, that's what they all say.

Brit Morin (8:18)

Yeah, I was going to say never be fundraising.

Sam Lessin (8:21)

Yeah, you can't say, say you're fundraising.

Jess (8:23)

They're doing networking so they're prepared for their next raise. But I've heard a few things. One, the LPs, they finally started charging some LPs that were getting a free ride and then a lot of them backed out. Second, there was a huge snowstorm obviously on the east coast, so a lot of LPs got stuck apparently. I don't know if that's true.

Sam Lessin (8:41)

That's what I would say.

Jess (8:42)

And then I think a lot of LPs just don't have money right now. And apparently this is the worst fundraising market ever and everyone's complaining about it. People are calling their funds early and just like closing at wherever they're at. So everyone's waiting for liquidity from all these theoretical IPOs that are happening.

Brit Morin (8:58)

The IPOs are having what? Let's say more about why it's the worst ever. It's because the LPs are kind of at their peak level of exposure because you still see like eye popping fundraises from Andreessen Horowitz Thrive.

Jess (9:11)

Well, endowments in particular have this denominator effect where like they're way overallocated in venture and so they're just not spending. Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive are raising from like the Middle east and not necessarily like universities at this point. So there is a lot of talk about sovereigns in Middle East. By the way, like two years ago, up front Dubai.

Sam Lessin (9:33)

Is that where we're going?

Brit Morin (9:34)

Oh, up front Abu.

Jess (9:36)

Two years ago it used to be like, oh my God, I can't believe, I can't believe that fund raised Middle east money. And now everyone's like, so did you go over Middle east this time around, bro? Like, yeah, yeah, dude. So that was just expected. Except for I think now all the Middle east people are tapped out. It used to be like they thought this thing was shiny and now it's like old.

Dave Morin (9:54)

To be fair, none of the people telling us that were bros. They were all women that were telling us to go to the Middle East.

Jess (10:00)

There was one bro, there was one bro that, that told me that it was tapped out. Just saying.

Brit Morin (10:05)

The Saudis don't have any money.

Sam Lessin (10:07)

The oil fields are dry. We have to go back. You know, you should go is Canada. We should go to the oil sands specifically.

Brit Morin (10:13)

PIF is dry. Sway is not dry.

Jess (10:16)

It was fun to hang out with a lot of GPS though. I will. And like everyone kind of like talk about what's actually going on in this AGI AI agent world. Are you even investing in software anymore?

Brit Morin (10:29)

Yeah. What are the GPS doing about the SAS apocalypse?

Dave Morin (10:33)

News flash. Nobody has any clue.

Jess (10:35)

Everyone thinks something different right now. Yeah, it's like all over the board. A lot of people aren't hiring junior people at their firms though.

Dave Morin (10:43)

The story hasn't changed in three years. Like interest rates are extremely high. Venture capital is an asset class that, you know, doesn't return like the rest of the blah, blah, blah. And so this isn't a new story. This is the same story that's been going on for three or four years. It's just like more of the same. And there is some, I think, optimism about what's going on with OpenClaw and with AI agentic engineering and you know, where things are heading. But I would say that most people are saying that they're doing the, they've done the fewest deals that they've done in the last four quarters this quarter. And we heard that from a lot of people.

Sam Lessin (11:29)

Here's what's funny. And just so on brand, I have to say. So on brand, you know what our last Slow Ventures meeting was about flowing down. No, we've done more investments in the last quarter than we've done in the last year because we finally like, we're just, we're just got to be contrarian. So we raised our fund last year not at the upfront summit and we're fucking spending money like there's no hot dogs tomorrow.

Brit Morin (11:53)

Say more about why.

Jess (11:54)

Yeah, I don't know.

Sam Lessin (11:55)

Because it's good stuff. It's like for us, it's just like when's there good stuff and when is it cheap? Because we're cheap.

Jess (11:59)

Well, that's the other thing people are talking about. It's very binary. If it's cheap or super expensive right now, it's either like a $50 million pretty on a seed stage company or like a five and there's not a lot of in between.

Sam Lessin (12:11)

Guys, I've done two, two, two and a half posts in the last eight months. I'm very proud of myself.

Brit Morin (12:17)

So where are the bargains in venture

Sam Lessin (12:19)

post things on Twitter?

Brit Morin (12:20)

I see.

Jess (12:21)

Yes.

Sam Lessin (12:21)

People respond to you with their business plans. You pick the ones that are good and you fund those. But it's all about the Twitter post to idea to shit posting company cycle. That's how we make, that's how we generate returns.

Brit Morin (12:34)

On that front, Sam, I was going to ask you. You had an imposter about. You've have several posts but one this week about I'm going to get it wrong. But when intelligence goes to zero, what happens?

Sam Lessin (12:45)

Yeah, but intelligence is bad business. It's like everyone's like all these computer scientists are running around gleefully talking about how computers will commoditize human intelligence and so all the humans will have no jobs. And they're kind of like sad about it, but they're also kind of proud of their power. But what they fail to realize is that, you know, the original narrative was someone would get to AGI and then that would be the end of the game. Is not how this is playing out. Everyone's going to get to the same shit. It's all commodity. It's all going to get priced to the cost of energy, and it's all worthless because if things are abundant, then they have no value. So I'm just like, guys, if you really, like, if you really believe that we're moving towards a world of abundant machine matrix multiplication intelligence, y' all in the pretty bad business. Being hard is not a moat anymore. Software is not a moat anymore. I mean, I've been. I'm like, having fun with this because can be. If you can only uniquely create it. So I think this is like, this is my new precision right on this, which is like, these people, like, I was talking to some entrepreneurs, actually two today, who I felt like I was listening to, like a 2021 pitch where they're like, we did the user research and talked to the buyers, and the problem the buyers have is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we were building software to address the buyer need. And I'm like, what universe are you living in, right? Like, if you believe that the tendency is to, like, all this shit is like commodity software that can be cranked out, which is the direction we're. I'm not saying we're there yet, but we're in that direction. You can't build a business doing a thing a buyer thinks they want right now just because it's like. And it's just software. It has to be that you're doing something where you write software, right? And you basically give it away, right? Or it's like, basically or free. You. You don't bank on the software, but you use it to build some sort of durable compounding data asset or trust asset or marketplace asset where, like, they have to keep using you because you're fundamentally structurally better at something that is defensible, right? Where you have a compounding advantage. But this idea, like, anyone who. Who believes that they can build a business because something is hard right now as opposed to. Because there's some compounding inherent advantage to it that's not going to be attackable is like cray cray.

Jess (15:04)

We have a company in our portfolio called Pulse that a week ago had like 100k ARR. It's a new company and it's pronounced

Dave Morin (15:14)

R. I actually was thinking of bringing Ben on the podcast because it's been so fun to watch him.

Brit Morin (15:20)

We need some guests, by the way, guys. I mean, I love you all, but, like, we need some guests.

Jess (15:24)

Ben Lear was really pissed we haven't asked him back yet. Again, we got some good people from upfront. I want to be our guest.

Sam Lessin (15:29)

That's. It's like. Because they need to raise money. Be our guest. Be our guest.

Jess (15:34)

No, he didn't even need to raise money. Okay, so pulsea.com live. Is this, like.

Brit Morin (15:38)

Don't like that name.

Jess (15:39)

It's AI. Can I say it? Dave?

Dave Morin (15:42)

No.

Brit Morin (15:42)

Yes. Share with the public.

Sam Lessin (15:44)

Transform.

Dave Morin (15:45)

Don't give it away.

Brit Morin (15:45)

Break some news. Why?

Jess (15:47)

I think it's funny.

Dave Morin (15:47)

Don't give it away.

Jess (15:48)

Just think about words you can make with Pulsia. That's all. I'll leave it with that.

Dave Morin (15:53)

Keep telling your story.

Sam Lessin (15:53)

That sounds like. So that sounds like a female body part to me. Just gonna say.

Jess (15:58)

Okay, so it is showing it. This. This founder is a sole founder. He has no team. He just booted up all these agents to build this business. And if you go to pulse.com live, it's the agents running the business in real time, showing you everything they're doing. And this company has gone from like 100k ARR to like 700k ARR in like, less than a week right now. And it's like, you can see the graph on the dashboard page.

Brit Morin (16:23)

Are they doing a good job running the business? Is the business making more money than before?

Jess (16:27)

Yeah, yeah. No, that's. That's why their ARR is up.

Dave Morin (16:30)

Yeah, it's great.

Brit Morin (16:31)

It's crazy.

Jess (16:32)

And it optimizes all of the spend and, like, efficiencies of, you know, it's running ads for, like, you can start businesses on this platform. And it, like, does the same thing for you if you have a business idea. And it'll just, like, start doing things for you and, like, running your business for you. So people are, like, booting up many, many businesses.

Dave Morin (16:49)

It's really amazing, actually. So if you want to start a small business, you can use pulsea. It'll do research, help you do naming.

Brit Morin (16:57)

But, guys, these businesses aren't going to need capital from you. VCs.

Sam Lessin (17:00)

Yeah, it doesn't need any capital from you.

Jess (17:02)

We're not saying that they need capital from VCs. I'm just saying it's an example of, like, this agentic universe expl exploding right now and people like, I think the Tale of Two Cities as we've been talking about for a while.

Sam Lessin (17:13)

I'm gonna make a business called Policy a Clone that just takes whatever policy it figures out and just re. Implements it and gives me the ARR. Right. And lets them spurt all the tokens figuring it out. I mean, there's a tendency towards zero, right? Like there's no margin.

Dave Morin (17:26)

I don't know. I don't know, man. Like, pulsia took this guy quite a while to develop. This isn't something that was just vibe coded in a week. Like he's been building this system for over a year.

Sam Lessin (17:38)

I believe that. I, I totally believe that, Dave. And it's with respect to a founder. I, I have never met Sam.

Dave Morin (17:44)

This was a founder. We, we backed it slow. I worked with this founder several times before. He's extremely talented. He's from Paris.

Sam Lessin (17:52)

I'm sure it's all true. And this is not to knock him personally, but from a pure, pure first principles perspective, you know, it's like anything, it's like blazing the trail is much harder than following, right? It always is. So like someone shows you the roadmap, you can kind of get there faster and cheaper. And so I just wonder to what degree with any of these businesses that people can boot in a box or whatever. It's like even if you think about it like a token spend, it's like if you spend 100,000 tokens to figure it out and I can spend 10,000 tokens to clone it. Right? I'm not saying that it never works, but I'm saying like, that's kind of how market efficiencies work. And the more the bots are in the game and can do it dynamically, it just will. It'll just collapse margins so quickly is my sense.

Brit Morin (18:30)

Well, this raises a question I had, which is are businesses just going to operate in secret more because of this?

Dave Morin (18:35)

And like, it's a pretty cynical take.

Sam Lessin (18:38)

No, it's actually how capitalism works is like you, you, the whole point of capitalism is to collapse margins in an economics book.

Dave Morin (18:45)

Like it's not always true that it's that efficient, Sam. And you know that.

Sam Lessin (18:50)

Definitely not. It's 100%. But I'd say that the whole point of the bots and this, the whole world speeding up and the fact that like things that were hard become easy to like brute force, that is actually what the whole story is right now is like actually capitalism is getting, it's like a black hole. It's gotten so good, it's outmoding itself, right? Which is like you compete everything to the marginal dollar much more quickly because bots can do it and never sleep versus humans doing it. There's always going to be exceptions. Right. But I'm just saying, broadly speaking, I think that's a lot of what we're seeing is that margins just compress so fast. Right. It's like it's kind of the same story with these models and like open router versus Claude code, it's like versus even like cloud bot. It's like you sit there and it might be that someone had an advantage for six months that gets eroded to three. I sit there and just flip the models on open router or whenever I feel like it for the cheapest, most efficient thing, and there's just no margin to be had.

Dave Morin (19:46)

Well, I mean, at no point in human history where a new technology came along that made us more productive, were we less productive. Right. Like, it's always been the case that more things happen. I mean, if you look at the numbers, like there was an FT piece, I think it was this morning. New website creation is up 40% year over year. New iOS apps are up 50%. GitHub pushes are up 35% in the US, 30% in the UK. These metrics were flat for years before late 2024. And we're now seeing jumps in the production of all kinds of different software, like across the board, like the sparklines are all going parabolic. And so I just don't know that, like, I just don't know that it's like going to be this perfect machine.

Brit Morin (20:38)

But productivity and profits are not the same thing, are they? I mean, I don't.

Dave Morin (20:43)

Not necessarily, but like, I just think that, like, there's more activity, people are going to find interesting things.

Sam Lessin (20:51)

Sure. But here's like, here's another way to look at it. If you looked at the number of photos taken over the last decade, or when social media was like through the roof with the iPhone. Right. Or like the amount of likes and comments on a service through the roof

Dave Morin (21:06)

built a huge business.

Sam Lessin (21:07)

One person did or five people did. But the producers of all those things, all that activity, Right. Doesn't actually result necessarily in, in like net value. It's like a war of attrition for attention. Right. And so, like, it's just not clear to me.

Dave Morin (21:21)

But aren't you running the creator fund?

Sam Lessin (21:23)

Yeah, because I believe in cults.

Dave Morin (21:25)

That literally is investing in people that create the.

Sam Lessin (21:29)

But that's not. But, but, no, no, but I don't invest in them for creating content. I invest in them for building cults and communities and affinity groups. Like, there's a big difference, right?

Dave Morin (21:37)

Like I understand, but you think that there's profit there. What's to say there isn't that.

Sam Lessin (21:41)

I just don't think it's about token spent. It's like basically, or like this is the thing I've seen a lot of people get excited about in different things are like, we want engineers to spend as much money on AI and that's like a measure of productivity is the spend. And you're like, no, that's like not sensible. Like it should be. It's the margin that you care about, it's the profit. It's not just like you don't, you don't get credit for spending more money, right. Or for creating more. Absolutely.

Dave Morin (22:07)

I think that you want to look at value created per token, right? Just like you're saying, Sam, like, just because somebody creates content doesn't mean that they create a cult, doesn't mean that they create a community, doesn't mean that they create a marginal.

Sam Lessin (22:22)

The value per photo taken has never been lower. Right? Like in the world. Because we take. Because it's so cheap to take photos. You take photos of garbage constantly. There's no actual value to it, right. The value tends towards 0 of the incremental piece of content or the incremental thing as the cost 10.0. But it doesn't mean there's any margin in it and there doesn't mean any value in it. Right.

Dave Morin (22:45)

It's just, well, but you can use a stream of photos to create a community.

Sam Lessin (22:49)

No, but you know, if you look at my camera roll, I'll take a thousand photos for one good one, right? 999. If I didn't take those, the world would actually be a marginally better place. They're actually negatively valuable. Right. It's the thousandth that like is great. Right. And so I just think it's like this equation people are doing right now, like, more tokens spent, more intelligence burn. Look, I, I'm the first one to admit I probably spend, I think thousands of dollars a month right now on various web services that I wasn't a bunch of months ago, right? It's all for fun. I enjoy, I don't mind, I'm learning from it. But like there's not super valuable. It's just me fucking around, right? Like if it went away tomorrow, my life is not worse off. It's literally the same.

Dave Morin (23:28)

Yeah, but Sam, I think to your, to your creator fund thesis, like all the streams of digital creation that have come about because of the rise of the Internet have resulted in people being able to create new kinds of value in new configurations and new communities that otherwise, you know, maybe they would have existed because there's a magazine on the shelf in the airport and everybody who flies planes or loves cars or whatever finds each other. But I think that there's people who are making vastly more profitable businesses serving these niche interests because of what you can do with the Internet. And I would argue that the same thing is going to be possible with this new type of software creation. Like, you're going to be able to create businesses that are interesting and there's going to be a Cambrian explosion of them. And we don't know what they're going to look like, but they're going to come from streams of tokens that people are using to build new things.

Sam Lessin (24:27)

I think there's something to just keep in mind though, is like, look on the flip side. The first thing that comes to mind is the great old, like, Henry Ford quote, which you can have a Model T in any color you want, so long as it's black, right? We went through a phase where, like, you could have colors in a lot of colors. Did it make people fundamentally better off? Like, probably not. It's where the market drew you, right? But like, I don't think it, like, matters, right? Like, from like a big picture perspective. The analogy I would give on the Creator Fund is like, look, I 100% believe, obviously put a lot of money where our mouth is and whatever, that we're in this era where people are fleeing to the margins of these, like, cult communities with deep super interest in different areas and that becomes their, like, point of affinity. Does that make us better off? Like, no. I think what's happened is like, basically the entire we lost the ability to be the best basketball player in our town or to have meaning, or if you're the car dealer, to feel really good about being the rich guy in town because you want to use car dealership. Like, the globalization, the Internet blew away all that and made people super sad because they realized they're not the best basketball player, they're not the richest, they have no role in their town. AI is only going to accelerate that because people's sense of meaning goes away. So the market draws us towards cults and community right in these extremes and weird in order to, like, create a sense of purpose and meaning. Like, that's all for sure happening, right? Like, flat earth makes 100% sense. But, like, I don't know that there's any, like, deep value to that. It's kind of just shifting it Around,

Dave Morin (25:55)

I think their sense of meaning is going to go up.

Sam Lessin (25:57)

I think our sense of meaning is cratering right now. And so relative to where we are today. Yes.

Dave Morin (26:03)

I don't know, man.

Sam Lessin (26:04)

I think, I think, I think people's sense of meaning has never been worse.

Brit Morin (26:08)

I want to just take stock of where everyone's positions are. We're debating, for those who might remember, what's going to happen to capitalism in an AI era. Sam thinks it goes to zero because things commoditize. And Dave makes the point that productivity has always been coupled with greater business growth over time or new technologies.

Jess (26:29)

Right.

Brit Morin (26:29)

Am I summarizing that correctly?

Sam Lessin (26:31)

Well, I don't think capitalism goes to zero. I think capitalism does exactly what capitalism does, which is wring all the margin out of everything and make goods as cheap as possible. Right.

Brit Morin (26:38)

So who makes money in that world, Sam?

Sam Lessin (26:40)

That's the problem, right? Is that if capitalism works perfectly, no one makes money. Like, that's the irony of capitalism, right? Is that like capital, but it doesn't

Dave Morin (26:50)

work perfectly, Sam, it's good.

Sam Lessin (26:51)

It's working a hell of a lot better than it did.

Dave Morin (26:53)

There are always bottlenecks, but the people who build things that help with the bottlenecks make money.

Brit Morin (26:59)

Well, but Sam's point is, if AI takes all the inefficiency out of the system, the inefficiency is where the money's made.

Dave Morin (27:06)

It's not going to happen.

Jess (27:07)

Or does the money just go to the few instead of.

Sam Lessin (27:09)

Yes, I think Brits got it. I think Brits got it. Which is what happens is, and again, I'm not like, this is not a value, this is a statement of fact, is that if you own something that is fundamentally valuable and compounding, you're going to do great. Right? If you own scarce assets that are not digitizable or replaceable, you're going to do great. But if it used to be, hey, your value, you had some baseline value as a human, as a male, which is you could drive a railroad spike. That was like super good. That was a lot of confidence in that people felt really good about the fact they had fundamental value. That's gone now. It's just not that complicated with, like white collar work. Most of it gets blown away, right? And when that gets blown away, that means that the few compound really nicely and they're going to do great. Great time to own assets. Great time to like be in the, in that advantageous position. But there's no. The ladder is gone and then the value doesn't get shared, which is how you're going to end up with revolutions because is, again, this isn't even, this isn't even, I think, even avant garde to say anymore. It's like, look, people need a sense of purpose and meaning and security and safety and the value they can drive in the society. And unfortunately, there's no question that AI is just sucking that out of the system for most people.

Brit Morin (28:21)

Okay, Dave, what's, give us a response and then we're moving on.

Dave Morin (28:24)

There are, we've talked about this before. There are 4 million iOS engineers in the world. There are around 6 million Android engineers, and there's something on the order of 3 to 4 billion users of software in the world. And so another narrative is that everyone has been stuck using the software created by the few and that people have not had their own agency over how they create and therefore consume software. And that really what is happening right now is that AI, at least over the next couple of years is going to make it much easier for way more people to create their own software, share their own software with the people around them, and maybe even millions of people, not necessarily billions. But I just think even if you only see, call it a 3x improvement, like let's say it's going to be 30 million people creating software for the 3 billion, like that's going to be a massive amount of value created and a whole bunch of people that feel like they have new purpose and new agency in creating software for each other.

Sam Lessin (29:31)

But I just don't think software is valuable. Like, I like, I think we have

Brit Morin (29:35)

to be specific about what kind of value, David. Like, you know, I'm trying to think of an example. Like, you could be entertained and that's value. But make $0, right? You could. There's something that actually helps build a business that has different kind of value. There's something that has, like social capital, which has a different kind of value.

Jess (29:52)

Well, some software is still going to be valuable. To your point earlier, Sam, and what

Sam Lessin (29:55)

we've talked about, what, Brit, I actually think is an interesting question. What, what software? Forget ecosystem, forget network effect, forget data. What software is possibly going to be valuable, is even valuable now?

Jess (30:07)

No, but I mean, software coupled with like a data asset, like a marketplace, like a social graph.

Sam Lessin (30:13)

That's the key question, Brit, honestly, is assume that software is just like always disposable, all you're ever doing, really.

Dave Morin (30:22)

This is a really nuanced point, but

Sam Lessin (30:23)

no, no, I think this is an important point. Like there was, there's been a world for a long time. We're literally just doing the brute force of writing a bunch of software was in and of itself a defensible position. You're like, I wrote a lot of software and because I wrote a lot

Dave Morin (30:39)

of software and I'm not actually trying

Sam Lessin (30:41)

to argue, so that's going to go, that's gone, right? So like there, there's, there's ecosystems you can build or trust, you can build with software as an initial on ramp to it. The problem is, is that when anyone can write all the same software super fucking fast, like instantly or very close to it, it's gonna be very, very hard to compound new versions that way, because anything that starts working six other people are gonna instantly be able to do or just do themselves. Like, it's very hard to use software as an on ramp into a new. It's not impossible. I actually think we've invested in some businesses that are doing this nicely, but it's very, very vanishingly hard to do. So it's just an interesting problem because, like, yeah, I agree. Like, I've written, I've committed more lines of code this month than I did last summer with cursor. I committed more lines of code with cursor than I did by hand the year before. There's more diffs being pushed, sure, but like, it doesn't, like, have any value, right? Like, there's no economic value to the diffs. And I would argue that what it can do for me personally writing my own software, it's not terrible, but it's not like massively valuable. Like, it's just stuff I'm playing with, right? And so I think that like, the bar of, like, can you are, are millions of people going to find new ways to write personal software that makes them dramatically better off or has economic value to other people? Like, I'm just kind of skeptical, honestly.

Dave Morin (32:02)

I just feel like the people were locked out from even playing this game. SAM it's that people in Silicon Valley and around the technology community had the ability to combine software and a new business or business model or emotion around the creation of a new business. It was the combination of the two that created a lot of value over the last 20 years. And unless you knew how to speak the language of software, like, you couldn't do this. And so now you will be able to do this.

Sam Lessin (32:36)

So what does that really mean, though? Just to push you? One, I think it's bad for Silicon Valley, not good for Silicon Valley. Right. Because the reality is that was the superpower. I'd actually argue the average person in Silicon Valley is not as smart as, like the average person in New York finance, right? They're not the best marketers, they're not the best at anything. The advantage in Silicon Valley was actually knowing how to write the software. And so you would kind of be dumb about a bunch of other stuff and not very professional and get away with it because you had the magic wizard hat. And now that everyone has the magic wizard hat, I think it's quite bad for Silicon Valley is like, comparative advantage, right? Like, that's just like, I think going to happen. And then to the question is, when you give everyone the magic wizard software to make shit, are they going to make shit? It's like dramatically better than like, what? They already do that. And I'm just like, more skeptical than that, I don't think. I think it'll happen, like, certain things maybe. Like, maybe what happens is, like, stuff like terrible EHRs that have been impossible to replace. Like, EHRs are a great example of a business, Electronic health records systems. Like, why are they so shitty? Like, they're shitty because they're just so huge, right, that no one could possibly compete with Cerner or Epic or McKesson because it literally would just take too much engineering time to compete with them. And so they've been able to like, sit on monopolies that are really shitty for a long time. Does that get blown up? Maybe? I mean, they do have very powerful ecosystems too, and they can now move much faster too. But so, like, I'm not saying nothing will happen, but I think this utopian, like, now that we can all write software, GDPs, like, I, I don't buy it. I actually think of anything. Like, a lot of people who, like, had a skill that was valuable and allowed them to a lot of comfort and like, to feel like they had a role economically or whatever, are just going to get eviscerated. And it's very possible it gets replaced by nothing.

Brit Morin (34:22)

Okay, yes. This is what the whole economy is terrified about or curious about or have some opinion about. So.

Sam Lessin (34:31)

Well, this is. There's a great chart I love. There's a chart I posted on Twitter. We should post in the comments. This is not mine for egotistically, but it was great. It's like, I think it's from the Economist. And it's like the title is AI Could End Scarcity, End Humanity, or Boost Trend growth by 0.2% percentage points. And it's basically like this chart that has like the line going up and then two lines. The range goes like this to Infinity into zero with like. The thing is, no one's gonna fucking give a shit or bet on the 0.2% growth, right? Which is exactly what we're seeing. You're either in gold or you're in copper, right? Like, or you're in both, because you don't fucking have any clue. But all you know is that you do not want to be on the train of slowly growing profits, which is why all software companies to zero right on the narrative. It doesn't even matter if it happens.

Brit Morin (35:17)

Okay, we'll look at the chart. I have one more topic slash question for you guys. Who should buy PayPal? It's in play. Who should buy it?

Dave Morin (35:26)

What's going on?

Jess (35:27)

Why is it in play? Give me the. Give me that overview.

Dave Morin (35:29)

Does that mean Venmo is going with it?

Brit Morin (35:31)

Yes, they are. One coming.

Dave Morin (35:32)

Should we try to buy Venmo?

Sam Lessin (35:34)

You know, Ikram was messaging message. You and me, Dave, about buying Venmo.

Brit Morin (35:37)

Guys, I asked a different question.

Dave Morin (35:39)

Sam, come on, let's try to buy Venmo.

Jess (35:41)

Wait, wouldn't only fans want to buy this?

Sam Lessin (35:43)

Sam, I only can afford PayPal. Even with this depressed stock price.

Jess (35:47)

What is the price of PayPal?

Sam Lessin (35:49)

$40 billion. Oh, okay, here's the problem. Here's the thing that's interesting about PayPal. It's really like, what are you buying? Like, you're buying the distribution, the customer, you know, the brand, the data. Maybe the data, right?

Brit Morin (36:02)

I don't think the brand sucks. I will say I don't think the brand sucks.

Sam Lessin (36:06)

I don't know.

Dave Morin (36:06)

Isn't it just like a ton of like, banking interconnect, all kinds of crazy fintech stuff that you. Is very hard to build up over years.

Sam Lessin (36:15)

You know, there's only one way to know what you're buying, which is a sick Claude bot on it and say, claude, what the fuck is this thing? AI don't.

Jess (36:22)

Can you replicate it? What part of this $40 billion price can I replicate?

Sam Lessin (36:27)

For what it's worth, the fact that this whole idea that you could just like, that's a great example. It's like someone at some point. I don't think we're there yet. Some PE shop could sit there and be like, okay, PayPal's garbage, right? Like, I bet the infrastructure is terrible. Like, I bet it's all a mess. It's really a customer set of records. Like, whatever. There's like a bunch of assets to it. Historically, you'd be like, I can never touch this. Like, you have to kind of build from what's there? Like, there's no way we can touch this, right? Like, it's just, we're stuck with whatever it's potted in. I do wonder if you could just be like, look, take these assets, spend millions of dollars, billions of dollars on tokens and just like repot the entire thing. Like, it's just an interesting future, right, where you can just rip apart everything,

Jess (37:09)

customer base and like plug it all

Sam Lessin (37:11)

in, spit up an aws.

Jess (37:13)

How would you grow it from there? Like, what's the end case for PayPal?

Sam Lessin (37:18)

Well, PayPal I think makes half a billion or half a, like a shitload of money.

Jess (37:22)

But like on fees, right? Like, sure. So what's the like again, what's. Back to the competitive moat?

Sam Lessin (37:28)

I don't want to spend time dealing with this, but I'm saying someone out there, in terms of how, what businesses will exist, the business of like, buy the PayPal, spend millions on tokens and like repot it.

Jess (37:40)

It really is the distribution. It's like the PayPal buttons that are embedded across the Internet.

Brit Morin (37:44)

Stripe. How much would you pay for PayPal?

Sam Lessin (37:46)

Well, here's an interesting question I was thinking about. This is like his. In a non Trump administration, there's no way you could buy.

Brit Morin (37:51)

Correct. This is why it's all happening now, one shot.

Sam Lessin (37:54)

And so that's why it's happening now is like this is the one chance for Stripe to sneak through becoming effectively a US monopoly on payments. And so the question is, I actually think it's for Stripe less about the business and more about the politics of it, which is if you do it now, the next administration is going to go apeshit. And so the question is only like, clearly you should buy it and just consolidate the whole thing. Like, and that's an amazing position to put yourself in. But not at what financial cost, at what political cost when everyone goes to gets, you know, called before Congress. Like, it's actually a question for the collisons of like, how much time do they want to spend in Washington D.C. in hearings in like three years from now? That's like the real question of the whole thing.

Brit Morin (38:42)

Probably a little bit.

Sam Lessin (38:42)

Well, I don't know if I were them, from what I've seen in my life, the answer is it's not worth the headache. Like, we've done really well, we're going to keep doing well. PayPal's not really a threat. We're happy for them to continue to putter along and not spend all of our lives in Washington D.C. but maybe they, I don't know that's like, that's the person. It's much more of a personal question than a business question.

Jess (39:02)

And back to the like, long term where PayPal goes. If Agentic commerce really is where this is all going, does it matter that you have distribution across all these websites everywhere? Or like, you know that you can check out with PayPal, you're going to

Brit Morin (39:16)

have tolls everywhere else. Right. We had great story. And the information this week about the, the SaaS stuff and all these businesses and how they're thinking about sort of toll booths on the Internet versus meaning,

Jess (39:27)

like, I want to go buy something from Nike.com and use my credit card. Like, why would I need to use PayPal?

Brit Morin (39:34)

Well, it's like, is your age, does your agent have access to Nike and at what terms point?

Jess (39:39)

Yeah, like that's going to happen.

Brit Morin (39:42)

But if you're in a big network, the terms are probably going to be better.

Jess (39:45)

But just like, do any of these payment infrastructures matter when my agent just has my credit card?

Brit Morin (39:50)

I think, I mean, it is a great question.

Sam Lessin (39:53)

This is capitalism, Brit. You're describing it. If everything's efficient, there's no margin. That's how these things work.

Brit Morin (39:58)

Yeah.

Jess (39:59)

PayPal down to zero.

Brit Morin (40:00)

I also think PayPal, you know, all of it. Maybe you Facebook people will understand this more. But the whole like login race that we sort of witness that still think like PayPal. I log into a lot of sites.

Jess (40:14)

Log into sites with your PayPal ID all the time.

Sam Lessin (40:17)

Because what did use your AOL ID

Jess (40:19)

are you in 2002? What's happening?

Dave Morin (40:22)

I don't remember the last time I've done that.

Sam Lessin (40:24)

Guys, I kind of want to switch to an AOL address.

Jess (40:26)

Sam, what are you like, what is your wife doing over there?

Dave Morin (40:29)

I like the aol. I like team aol.

Sam Lessin (40:31)

I'm going to like. Guys, should we change our email addresses to@aol.com you know, I like PayPal.

Brit Morin (40:36)

Does anyone want to hear from the person who's using the target in question?

Dave Morin (40:40)

Everyone I've ever emailed with in the music business is on an AOL email address.

Sam Lessin (40:44)

Oh, guys. AOL mail is free and helps keeps you safe. Sounds like a plan to me. Go for it, Jess.

Brit Morin (40:49)

I just saying I think PayPal has a really great experience for just like login address cards. Like, I think it's just one of the fastest, to be honest. Um, and I have a lot of information stored up in there, so I.

Jess (41:01)

It's really surprising. I have a lot of new thoughts about you as a as an online.

Brit Morin (41:06)

Yeah it's not like using Outlook. Come on, be nice. This is totally different.

Jess (41:10)

It feels close to me. Are you using Comic Sans also in all of your memos internally?

Brit Morin (41:16)

Possibly. I don't know but also we're all using Venmo constantly which is part of PayPal.

Jess (41:21)

Well I'm down with Venmo. Yeah I think there's not only fans would want to acquire this Sam. Don't they need to build up their tipping infrastructure now only login with only

Sam Lessin (41:30)

fans actually might be the future because I got to tell you that only fans has incredible kyc so I think that is a real thing.

Jess (41:38)

There we go.

Brit Morin (41:39)

I bet let's see just. Let's see over under on them actually But I bet they don't this whole.

Sam Lessin (41:44)

I don't. They're not going. They're too smart too. It's not worth it. It totally in a normal business environment non political where miraculously they would be allowed to buy it. They should clearly buy it in a world where you're going to be able to buy it because Trump is president but it's clearly going to get scrutinized like you wouldn't believe and you're going to get a colonoscopy for the next 10 years if you do it. Why would you screw up like a perfect like you're in a great position. Why would you mess with.

Brit Morin (42:12)

I mean you're. Because your VP of policy testifies not you.

Sam Lessin (42:16)

Oh that is not how it works on something like that. And you well know it.

Brit Morin (42:19)

I mean you show up for one session but I don't know. I mean yeah, I. I will say my spidey sense of why it won't happen is just the. It. It's the nature of the leaks have been like trial balloons galore. You can just tell like how these stories get out there and this has been one like someone has like put their finger up to the wind to figure out which way it's going. So that makes me a little more dismissive of it but I don't know you know a non agentic story that we turned into an agentic story. I have a fun fact for you guys. So the information recently published the list of all the people working not all the people but some of the top people working on what we now know is OpenAI smart speaker.

Jess (42:59)

Hello. First I saw this.

Brit Morin (43:01)

How do we feel about a smart speaker?

Jess (43:04)

Is it a smart speaker or is it a thing in your ear? Because I've seen both.

Brit Morin (43:07)

No, there's a. There's A whole. There's a family of apps. A family here.

Dave Morin (43:11)

Okay, but aren't they a couple years away?

Sam Lessin (43:13)

This is honestly the most distracted company in the history of the world. Like, it's kind of wild.

Dave Morin (43:17)

There is a lot going on.

Brit Morin (43:18)

Do you want to guess who's one of the people who's working, the top people working on this project?

Jess (43:25)

Okay, give us a hint.

Brit Morin (43:26)

Adam Q. Do you know who Adam Q is?

Jess (43:29)

No.

Dave Morin (43:29)

No.

Brit Morin (43:30)

Do you know another Q who works in tech who might have a son?

Dave Morin (43:34)

Eddie's son?

Brit Morin (43:35)

Eddie's son.

Dave Morin (43:36)

I do know. I do know Adam. Adam's great, actually. I met Adam when he was younger.

Brit Morin (43:41)

He's on this project.

Dave Morin (43:42)

Oh, that's cool.

Brit Morin (43:43)

So, anyway, we've got a little.

Jess (43:44)

That's a weird family dinner. That's an awkward Thanksgiving.

Brit Morin (43:49)

There we go.

Sam Lessin (43:49)

You can now reach me at SAMW lesson@aol.com and send any feedback there. There's a lot of ads in this thing.

Dave Morin (43:58)

Can you. Can you get into it with Pop3?

Sam Lessin (44:01)

Oh, man, I used to love Pop3.

Jess (44:03)

Speaking of AOL, also, what. What device. What device do you think is way up in sales this year from the early 2000s?

Brit Morin (44:11)

From the early 2000s.

Jess (44:13)

Early 2000s. There's a single device that all Gen Z people are trying to buy now. It's almost like the phone. It's not a phone. Not a Walkman, No. You're getting closer, though. You're getting warmer. You're getting warmer.

Brit Morin (44:24)

A digital camera, you know?

Jess (44:26)

No. Ready. It's the iPod. Original OG with the click wheel. People are all over ebaying this thing.

Sam Lessin (44:35)

Guys. You guys know that I already. I hate Apple, but Apple's lack of capex has made me start liking them because it's just so great where they're like, fuck you. No capex.

Dave Morin (44:46)

It's amazing.

Brit Morin (44:46)

It's probably one of Apple's top. I don't know what the metric is, but you are a top customer of Apple. You do not hate Apple.

Sam Lessin (44:54)

To be clear, I literally just came from the Apple store to buy another laptop. I have, like, I'm starting out by a hundred thousand dollars of Apple devices here. I just don't like it.

Dave Morin (45:02)

Why. Why do you need so many laptops? I was actually trying to explain this to my son because he said, sam's son has a MacBook. And I'm like, that's because Sam buys a new MA book every month.

Sam Lessin (45:12)

Well, this one actually is for another one of my sons. But yes, the point is, I am. I am. My ratio of hatred of Apple. No No. What would it be? Devices purchased.

Brit Morin (45:23)

Just sort of.

Sam Lessin (45:24)

Devices purchased divided by hate is off the charts.

Brit Morin (45:27)

But I love they're coming out ahead in this battle.

Sam Lessin (45:31)

It's fine.

Dave Morin (45:31)

They're definitely coming out ahead.

Sam Lessin (45:33)

I. I absolutely love their fuck you capex spend. It makes me very happy. The only thing that would make me love them more and actually might turn me is if they do a big product announcement to reintroduce the 2001 iPod with the click wheel and just go all the way back and be like, yeah, you enjoy your agents. We're releasing a click wheel and we're gonna make more money than you do.

Jess (45:56)

It's a beautiful analog. Yeah.

Sam Lessin (45:58)

God, that would be the best acquire mod.

Jess (46:01)

Retro.

Brit Morin (46:01)

It would be better than the little sock holder they have. You know, that would be bad.

Sam Lessin (46:06)

It would be so good.

Jess (46:08)

The sock.

Dave Morin (46:08)

Wait, what are people. How are people talking to these old ipods? It's like an old FireWire device. How do they even get stuff onto it?

Jess (46:16)

Gen Z swap smartphones for single purpose. Ipods is like the head, okay? Gen Z is putting down phones and picking up ipods.

Sam Lessin (46:24)

I love it.

Jess (46:25)

Apple, release the retro ipod, you cowards. These are all headlines from news this week. Literally in the last day, Gen Z

Dave Morin (46:31)

is just like, we're going to be the least productive generation of all time.

Jess (46:35)

They're modified with new batteries and 160 gigabyte storage. They're selling out on Etsy and ebay. Just saying.

Brit Morin (46:41)

Okay, well, what's old is new as new is old. Agents and ipods all the way down. Dear friends, we should let our listeners and viewers go because they've gotten their agentic dose for the week. With that, we will say that we will see you again back here next week for another episode of More or Less.

Jess (47:01)

Bye bye.

Dave Morin (47:03)

Thanks, everyone.

Jess (47:04)

If you enjoyed this show, please leave us a virtual high five by rating it and reviewing it on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. Find more information about each episode in the show notes and follow us on social media by searching for or less avemorin at Lesson at J Lesson. And as for me, I'm at Brit. See you guys next time.