#151 — Silicon Valley IPO Summer 2026: SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI Explained
June 05, 2026 · Listen · All episodes · Chat with the show's AI
Jessica Lessin, Dave Morin, Brit Morin and Sam Lessin debate the tech of the week.
Full transcript (AI-generated — may contain transcription errors):
Brit Morin: Hackers have been stealing people's Instagram handles by going to Meta AI's customer support chat bot. Should we be putting all of our most sensitive information into any of these things right now? Agents are going to be invisible, just like the algorithm on TikTok's invisible, and so people won't even know they're using agents.
Sam Lessin: This year, with moving more capital than anyone in the history of the world.
Brit Morin: So we've got SpaceX pricing at 1.75 trillion, going out June 11th. We also saw Anthropic signaling they are officially filing for a trillion dollar IPO. And then we had... Actually had Cerebras open with a $95 billion valuation.
Dave Morin: They should've been public, like, years ago. I think it's, like, kind of almost a financial crime that the American public didn't get to participate in the growth.
Brit Morin: Wordsmith, which is like a Harvey 2.0, dude that does in-house legal work, raised $70 million. Town raised 55.
Dave Morin: Brit, no one cares. Just because they raise money means nothing.
Jessica Lessin: More or less. Is it no or is it yes? We'll debate the tech that's best. Will we get more or less? Dave and Brit, plus Sam and Jess, put it all right to the test. More or less.
Brit Morin: Why, hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of More or Less. It's Brit subbing in for Jess this week as moderator of these two rascals. Sam Lawson and Dave Morin. Can I call you rascals? Is that all right?
Sam Lessin: I heard that last week my wife was being kind of spicy 'cause I wasn't around. Is that true?
Dave Morin: She was super spicy.
Brit Morin: She's generally pretty spicy when you're not around.
Dave Morin: No, but yester- last week was extra spicy. She was, she was on fire.
Sam Lessin: She was like... I was like, "Oh, that's great. I should leave more often. You can be more spicy."
Brit Morin: Well, the thing she really got into it with us on was, like, whether anyone actually is gonna use AI, in, like, in the normie audience. Agents. Sorry, agents.
Sam Lessin: See, the, so the, I, I'm belying the fact that I obviously don't listen to the, to the More or Less podcast. Yeah, I'm glad. Good for her taking the under. Good for her taking the under. I like that. I actually kind of... I mean, I obviously agree. I-
Brit Morin: That people won't use agents?
Sam Lessin: Like, normal humans? No.
Brit Morin: Yeah.
Sam Lessin: I mean, I'll use them.
Brit Morin: You don't think normal humans will use agents. My point was that agents are going to be invisible. And just like the algorithm on TikTok's invisible, and so people won't even know they're using agents.
Sam Lessin: Well, I guess it depends how you define these things. Sure, but is an agent that you don't... Is not an agent an agent? I mean, like, sure. Y- We'll all be multiplying big numbers to s- shortcut our way through booking things.
Brit Morin: Alas, here we are. And listeners, if you missed that debate, it's worth a re-listen, even though Sam won't listen, uh, from last week's episode. So.
Sam Lessin: I'm gonna have my agent listen. I'm just gonna have my agent listen.
Brit Morin: Yeah, have your agent summarize it for you. There you go. First week of June. It's been a hot week. I think everyone's trying to get out.
Dave Morin: Really? Like hot temperature hot?
Brit Morin: No, like a hot tech week. There's a l- many IPOs happening. There are, like, lots of people announcing fundraises. A lot of events going on still. We've got also events coming up next week, including WWDC and, and all kinds of other things. So we've got a lot of news to get into without Jessica here to ground us in real facts. So I will do my best to lead us through it. But the first, of course, is the IPO stuff. So we've got SpaceX pricing at what we thought it would be, 1.75 trillion, going out June 11th. We also saw Anthropic signaling they are officially filing for a trillion dollar IPO. And then we had, actually had Cerebras open with a $95 billion valuation and shares jumping 68% on the first day.
Sam Lessin: That's hilarious. Was Cerebras this week? 'Cause to me, that was like 10 years ago.
Dave Morin: I think it was two weeks ago.
Brit Morin: Well, and, and OpenAI was one of the people on the cap table, or the companies on the cap table, so I thought that was an interesting little Russian doll racket there. But this has a lot of implications, uh, for good and for bad, but I wanted to kick it over to Dave first. What do we think about any of this? Does it, any of it surprise you? Or is this really more, for us at least, about like what does this mean for venture capital and housing and prices and craziness in the general markets here in Silicon Valley?
Sam Lessin: You guys should sell your house to one of these Anthropic people. You could make a fortune.
Brit Morin: And then where would we live?
Sam Lessin: A lower tax state.
Dave Morin: Wyoming. Um, I mean, I, the thing I found interesting, I don't know the exact details of it, but, um, I heard that SpaceX is actually, um, requiring... There's some kind of interesting term in the IPO, um, setup where they're not going to allow... There's, like, a big lockup. Sam, I don't know, do you know what this is? There's some, there's some big lockup and then there's some requirement that ETFs and the sort of more algorithmic traders are the initial buyers, so they're not actually selling the float to retail immediately or something like that. And so it sounds like an interesting setup to ensure that the liquidity profile stays less crazy over the first year.
Sam Lessin: How do you ban an algorithmic firm from buying? That doesn't make any sense.
Dave Morin: No, it's, they're not b- banning them. They actually want them to. Um, I should have actually done my research before bringing this up, but there's-
Sam Lessin: Have some bot do it and we'll bring it up by the end of the episode.
Dave Morin: Okay.
Brit Morin: Yeah, you can always return back to it.
Sam Lessin: Yeah. Uh, it's like bring a bot into the conversation. Look, the, I think the SpaceX IPO's gonna be fascinating. It's just, like, gonna be a cultural moment, right? Of, like, where are we and what do we value and how does this all work? I mean, the whole wildness around, like, how it relates to the market, um, with the S&P 500 is, like, actually kind of a huge deal, right? In terms of how that plays out. How do we value stories versus reality? I mean, like, the, uh, it's just, like, I, you know, I, as a shareholder, I want number go up and number high, but, like, I'm actually just as fascinated by how this will be digested by the whole world. It is a really important cultural story in my mind, even more than a financial story. It's a cultural story.
Dave Morin: Which, what do you mean by that?
Sam Lessin: The SpaceX IPO?
Dave Morin: Yeah. What do you mean by cultural?
Sam Lessin: Well, we ha- it's an, it's an incredibly compelling story Right? Like from a science fiction perspective. It is financially, if you look at it like with a Wall Street hat on, nonsense, right? At a one point seven five trillion dollar valuation. But it's an incredible story. And if it delivers the story, and people wanna buy into the story and hold the story and believe the story, and we're okay with narrative capitalism, then the thing goes to the moon. But if Wall Street rationality dominates, it doesn't add up, right? And so, like, this is gonna be really... I mean, it's, like, such a stark contrast of those two realities and how we, how we play those as... I mean, again, I just look at this as an observer, as like a-- from a-- from like, what do we store value in? Do we store value in story? Do we store value in, like, financial reality? Like, how do we think about this stuff? And this wasn't the case if SpaceX had, like, a five hundred, eight hundred million-- billion dollar valuation as, like, a launch plus Starlink connectivity company. But when you layer all the pieces in, right, in terms of how this has played out, it really is, like, just an incredibly interesting moment. And then you have this whole thing with, you know, the S&P side, right? Where if you're really sharp-nosed and you're coming into this thing as an investor, and you're coming in n- new, and you're like, "What's gonna happen here?" It's like, well, all the institutions that would normally buy this already own this, right? 'Cause it's-- it has, like, a huge cap table. Some people have more, whatever. Then, like, you can say, "Okay, I wanna buy this." The question is, who's buying it after you, right? Like, a- and the interesting thing is it's really unclear who's buying it after you. Unless the rules of the S&P five hundred change, and the answer is structurally, retail has to buy it after you, right?
Dave Morin: Yeah.
Sam Lessin: And, like, if that happens, which by the way is great exit liquidity for anyone buying into the IPO. I mean, it's, like, the best. It's also weird 'cause it means higher the number is, the more they buy, right? Which is, like, this wild new reality, right? Where number go up means number go up. I don't know. It's just, like, I honestly-- like, I just step back from this as an observer, and I'm like, look, I actually think SpaceX is a super cool company. You know, I think the-- it's a really interesting thing. I love the vision of the whole thing in a lot of ways. I also just recognize that it's a vision, right? It's a vision wrapped in an S-1. And I, I think that's, like, a really ... It's like, it's an S-1 as a piece of incredible science fiction, right? And you're like, "How do I value that?" I don't know. Like, the answer is not-- the easy answer is to shit all over it financially. But on the flip side, we're gonna have three IPOs which are, like, inspirational science fiction narratives coming out, right, this year with-- moving more capital than anyone in the history of the world. And the reality is maybe we just store money in stories now.
Dave Morin: Yeah, and what-- was gold just a story?
Sam Lessin: Gold is just a story.
Dave Morin: Yeah. It's an interesting... For sure.
Sam Lessin: Like, a hundred percent they're just stories. They're just stories that-- uh, with-- which were gonna be bigger stories tomorrow than they were today, right? A hundred percent. That's just, like, not, you know... I think everyone at HBS is, like, losing their minds right now, right? Because the story- ...that we all bought into before was, like, free cash flow and DCFs.
Dave Morin: Yeah.
Sam Lessin: Right?
Dave Morin: Yeah. There's no DCF here. You can't value any three of these companies on DCFs. Like, they're, they're literally-
Sam Lessin: Maybe, maybe you can sort of squint at Anthropic, may- it's so-- I don't know. It, it's like, it's just a wi-- again, I just think this is a year, this is a summer where we're gonna learn a lot about ourselves.
Dave Morin: To throw onto that, I found the-- my claw found the information for us. So they're doing seven percent tranches at seven ninety, one hundred and five, one hundred and twenty, and one hundred and thirty-five days post-IPO. Full release at a hundred and eighty days for most holders.
Sam Lessin: What does that even-- Sorry, what does that mean? Oh, this is the lockups.
Dave Morin: Yeah. So they're doing this, like, tranched lockup, which almost sounds like a crypto release, Sam. And then there's a full release at a hundred and eighty days for most holders. Elon and key investors are three hundred and sixty-six day, so full year lockups. And then one of the more interesting things is that SpaceX reserved up to five percent of the IPO shares for a directed share program, which is people selected by the executive officers. And so they're offered at the IPO price, and they have no post-IPO lockup restrictions. So that's kind of them saying, like, "We're giving you trusted people, you know, IPO price, and kind of trusting you not to sell immediately."
Brit Morin: Who are these people that they're giving the s-
Dave Morin: Whoever they select.
Brit Morin: That's interesting. So capital's gonna flood the market in December for the most part.
Dave Morin: No, they've got this dri-- seven percent tranches over the next hundred and thirty-five days.
Brit Morin: Fine, but I'm talking about also, like, with Anthropic and then OpenAI coming next in six-month lockups, like, all this capital will be hitting in December for the most part.
Dave Morin: It's unclear, Britt. Like, Sam could be right. Like, it could be that, you know, no, like, the... Yes, like, some liquidity comes in. People will take some off the table, but, like, you know, people might buy this story and hold it, right? Who knows? Like, Sam's right. Like, it's totally unclear which way this is gonna go, and we have no idea until it all happens.
Brit Morin: So the downstream effects, though, assuming some liquidity comes off the table in the next six months, are what? Like-
Dave Morin: The main one is that this is just fantastic for the Silicon Valley ecosystem. Like, it's-
Brit Morin: 'Cause finally there's liquidity again.
Dave Morin: No, no, no. It's less about even liquidity. It's just about focus. Like, people can stop talking about these companies and move on. I don't-- Seriously. Like, it's like I'm bored. Like, I never wanna talk about these companies on the podcast again. Like, get out into the public market.
Brit Morin: Well, we're gonna have to talk about them 'cause if they, like, start failing... Yeah, and, like, the game's not over.
Dave Morin: And it's not about it being over. It's-- But it is. In our world, on this podcast, we, we think about startups and the private markets. And we can talk about the public markets all day long, but, like, I'm done. I'm like, I just don't care about talking about these companies in the private markets anymore. They should've been public, like, years ago. I think it's, like, kind of almost a financial crime that the American public didn't get to participate in the growth.
Sam Lessin: I've-- I'd like to introduce you to someone named Bernie Sanders. I'm just kidding. I obviously-
Dave Morin: I'm not a Bernie bro, but, like, you know, I do think that it's great. Like, it's actually just great. Get out into the public market. People can have the CNBC conversation about these things till the cows come home. It's great. Now we can return to, like, more of your regular startup programming, which is like, let's figure out the next phase, which is agents and everything else going on and how that's gonna play out the next ten years.
Sam Lessin: Unless there is no next phase, Dave, 'cause it's the singularity.
Dave Morin: It's the AGI and blah, blah, blah.
Sam Lessin: Blah, blah, blah.
Dave Morin: Well, I can, I can report from the singularity as someone who's building agents every day that these things are
Sam Lessin: Way far away. This-- we-- But my favorite-- This is like-- I actually do-- I think we should talk for a second about the walkback on AI's gonna take all your jobs.
Dave Morin: The narrative gap? Yeah, it's crazy.
Sam Lessin: The narrative walkback.
Brit Morin: Well, okay, I saw Sam Altman walking that back, but isn't that just because AI's brand sucks, and he needs it to not suck?
Dave Morin: No, it's also just true.
Brit Morin: But I al- but he's also doing a PR campaign about, like, why AI is good.
Sam Lessin: Benefit of being true.
Dave Morin: Yeah.
Sam Lessin: But that's a secondary point.
Dave Morin: Exactly.
Sam Lessin: Like, it's like, like, look, it's just really funny 'cause it's like, a- again, it is incredibly masterful PR strategy. I think you just look at everything through a narrative lens these days. And it's like, what, what happened? It's like phase one of AI was we need a shit ton of capital, and the fastest way to do that is to convince everyone that, like, the end of the world is coming, right? And like, it's like the most powerful jujitsu move. You go to Washington, you're like, "Please regulate us. We're, we're scared of how powerful things are." Now we're into version two, which is once you start winning, you become like everyone else, right? Like, this is what always happens, is you start out as the insurgent, and then you just, you become the thing you sought to fight, right? And, like, this is, like, the era we're now in, where all these companies are like, well, one, bad news, by telling everyone that AI was taking-- was so powerful and dangerous, and being like, "Well, we're the only trusted people," you were able to achieve something unheard of, which is I believe that in a recent survey, AI has a lower approval rating than Jeffrey Epstein. It's like six percent. It's like-- And, like, apparently six percent of Americans approve of Jeffrey Epstein, but, like, it's, like, wild. It is, like, literally the most hated thing in the history of the world. Some of it is clearly, like, foreign influence, like, trying to slow down data center build-out. Like, that's for sure true, and there's, like, all sorts of narrative warfare going on. But it is also true that, like, it's a terrible brand. And so now you're like, "Okay, well, now that we have all the capital, and we convinced everyone to give us these huge numbers and convert it into a ton of infrastructure, we need to kinda walk back all the scary stuff," right? And so it's just like, it's really funny to watch this stuff play out.
Brit Morin: So that's what's happening in IPO land. We'll see what the downstream effects are, if people hold, if they sell. It's gonna be an interesting rest of the year for 2026.
Dave Morin: Who cares? We can get back to talking about building things and, like, what's going on.
Brit Morin: Okay. Well, speaking of building things, Dave, you were at the Microsoft Build conference this week. What happened there? Anything of note?
Dave Morin: It's a continuation of the same message that we're hearing from all of these big developer conferences. Although, I guess it's-- differs slightly from the Google one in that Microsoft is very focused on agents and the enterprise and, you know, we did a big integration effort with Microsoft over the last month or two. We announced that OpenClau is fully integrated with Windows now and did a bunch of really great security work around giving it controls and, you know, if you wanna deploy OpenClau into the enterprise, now you can using all of the Windows and Azure tools. And you can have full control over it and, you know, set up all of your observability policies, admin policies, all that kinda stuff. It's the stuff people are asking for. They also, really kind of cool, integrated it, like, directly into Windows, and they have a new long-running agent called Scout that's based on O- built on OpenClau. And so that's been pretty neat to see, but you know, that's the same story that a lot of folks are chasing right now and kind of been the story of this half of the year. So, um, it's cool. It's cool to be on stage with Microsoft.
Brit Morin: There's, you know, a Google I/O, Microsoft Build. We've got Apple next week. We've got the Dell World event happening. Like, like, does a lot of this feel like feature parity, like everyone's trying to get to the same infrastructure when it comes to AI and agents in the big tech land?
Dave Morin: No, I, I mean, I do think that this is the era of figuring out what agents are going to be. I keep saying this, but I think it's kind of 1997. I always say it's, like, either 1983 or 1997, depending on which part of the technology canon you wanna look at. But we're kind of in that era where websites were just invented. Some of the early languages for programming them are around. Some of the early servers for building them are around. But the, you know, real, really cool stuff that you're gonna be able to build with this has not yet emerged, and it's pretty messy. And agents, like, the narrative between what agents can do and what people think they can do could not be wider. That's, like, one of my other narrative fascinations right now, Sam, which is that it's like anybody building this stuff knows that, like, they cannot do what a lot of people are claiming that they can do, i.e., they cannot be an employee of your business. Like, they do not learn every day. They have really poor memory. There's a lot of stuff to figure out.
Sam Lessin: I mean, mine's pretty good, but yeah, I hear you.
Dave Morin: But, like, would you trade a employee for an agent right now, like, I think is a really interesting question.
Sam Lessin: Oh, that's an interesting question. If I could only have one-
Dave Morin: Yeah. What would you take?
Sam Lessin: ... this is a very interesting question.
Dave Morin: Yeah. I think this is the premier question right now.
Sam Lessin: Honestly, if you said I could either lose my associate Jack Raines or Claude... Wow, that's an interesting-- That's a hard call. I, I like Jack.
Brit Morin: Sorry, Jack.
Sam Lessin: But I think, I think I would stick with Claude.
Brit Morin: Oh, no, Jack.
Dave Morin: Oh, no.
Brit Morin: Sorry, Jack.
Sam Lessin: I-- But the good news is I don't have to choose. I can have both. I-- It's not a choice. It's not an either/or. But I don't know.
Dave Morin: But this is the question people are asking, Sam. Like, and this is the more direct question that people are debating right now, right?
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Dave Morin: And I'm fascinated by that agents really-- Like, when you hire a new employee, at the end of 30 days, people learn, they get smarter, they continually learn, they collaborate. Agents can't do this right now. They write down memories in a book and put it on the shelf, and they try to consult all of their books to answer the question for you each time you're talking to them. But they're not really learning. They're not really getting super, super better, though everybody says that that's what's happening.
Sam Lessin: I don't know, man. I feel like mine's really good, but I don't use, I don't use markdown files.
Brit Morin: Are you still using just one? I have, like, so many agents 'cause I'm trying all the different agent- harnesses and platforms and like—'cause I wanna compare them as we're, as we're moving along in this race, right? But are you just using one, Sam? And is that where you think most people are gonna net out here?
Sam Lessin: I-- It's an interesting question. I mean, I, I basically, I do-- I guess it depends how you define what an agent is. Like, I use Gemini for things that I actually care about security in, right? So, like for health and finance stuff, I just use Gemini 'cause honestly I trust them. Like, and I think there's like value to that. It's like I'm not even sure-- They're not like... I have no opinion about them being fundamentally better. I just like, I generally f- trust-- It's like, kinda like my dad used to say, "You can go on Disney World rides 'cause they're a public company," right? "They're not gonna screw you 'cause it's too expensive." And so I'm like, "Okay," like, it's like that is my Gemini thing. And like, I use like Groq for image stuff 'cause candidly it's just way better. It's like not even close. Like Groq is the only one that's cared about image stuff, so like their image stuff is just way better. And then, I mean, I use tons of services and agents, but they're all for me wrapped through like a central, like setup I have built around Claude, right? So like I have like Claude controls everything else, and it controls a huge number of services, but like it's kind of the ty- And, and I have multiple instances of it running, and I email. I mean, like a, it's, like but it's really hard to even define what an agent is. It's like I have an infrastructure that has a huge amount of access to other infrastructure and-
Brit Morin: It's like a stack.
Sam Lessin: Yeah. Like and if Claude went away tomorrow, it would take me a day to recover, if that makes sense, and I'd just use OpenAI or I'd use, you know, whatever. Like it doesn't matter, right? Which is a b- part of my like long term... Like I don't even know what any of this stuff is 'cause like it's all just like plumbing, you know?
Dave Morin: I mean, this plays into, for what it's worth, I think the big question about these IPOs that we just talked about, which is that are these guys really, you know... And it's increasingly looking more and more like it. Are these guys just infrastructure providers? And-
Sam Lessin: They are just infrastructure providers.
Dave Morin: I know-
Sam Lessin: Right?
Dave Morin: ... but everybody's debating this, Sam. And like I think you're right that I have this experience with OpenClaude. You know, I'm switching back and forth between all kinds of different models all of the time. It doesn't really matter which one. One of the big stories this morning was there's like a new company that's providing, you know, routing to these, whatever the most efficient model is. Every CFO on the planet wants control over their token spend. And, you know, to deliver this stuff, no matter how your agents are set up, you wanna do it in a way that you're getting good value out of. And you can make that decision as to whether or not a token person is more valuable.
Sam Lessin: I think this is like the really interesting place we're in right now, 'cause like, look, I wa- I mean, even this morning on CNBC we were talking about this 'cause, you know. And I was like, "Look, here's the deal." Right now, Anthropic tokens cost like 100 times as much as like the open source tokens, right? Like just i- in terms of what they g- And like the open source stuff is catching up, and Open Router and whatever, like obviously you don't need a PhD to do your IQ 100 work, right? So like obviously the future is not gonna be like you just send all of your stuff to the most expensive model, right? So this stuff should rationalize really quickly, and the fact that it's so frictionless means that it should rationalize financially way faster than like a normal market with more friction in it, right? So like naturally speaking, like we're just multiplying big numbers and like it's fine. The only caveat on that for a more or less conversation is ironically the fact that there's no dem- demonstrable, measurable ROI is in some ways this weird moat for a while. 'Cause you're like, "Well, I can pay a hundredth as much, but I can't actually measure the value of this token versus that token in, from an ROI perspective." So the fact that it's so opaque in some ways like makes it kind of defensible for a while, right? Like 'cause I can't actually tell the, you know, the, uh, like what the gap is for an average person. So this is a weird market where like the opacity of quality, it creates defensibility sort of. Does that make sense? Like if you actually had an advertising ROI function, like think about the ads market, which is totally the opposite at this point. It's incredibly transparent. You can literally just look at the ROI and it's perfectly efficient at this point, and so you're gonna buy Meta ads when they're more efficient. And the second they're not worth their extra cost because they're tar- like be, from an ROI perspective, you can run shitty other ads. Like it doesn't ma- It's like a efficiency thing. Whereas with the tokens, you're like you ask for an intelligence task and it's like hard enough to benchmark what you're getting, right, without redoing the work twice in a lot of ways all the time, that you're like, "Well, is there some defensibility in the lack of measurability?"
Dave Morin: Yeah. I, I agree. I think there's an and here, which is I'm-- I was watching this group chat that I'm in with a bunch of interesting CEOs this morning, and it... People were talking about that one of the general observations is that people are also highly addicted to the personality of Claude, and so they're unwilling to disrupt the addiction of their workforce to this personality.
Sam Lessin: Really? I just don't give a shit about the personalities. It's so funny. Like I think this is maybe like where I'm like a psychopath 'cause I truly don't care.
Dave Morin: I think it's, uh, all depends on how you look at it, Sam. Like I see this in people where people are truly addicted. Like I think if you look at the tool objectively and in a non-anthromo- how do you say it? Anthropomorph-
Sam Lessin: Anthropomorphized. Anthropomorphized.
Dave Morin: An-anthropomorphized way, then yeah, it doesn't matter. Like I've, I've really tried to train myself to do this, where I just don't care whether I'm using GPT or Claude or any of it. Like I view it as a tool and, you know, just because it can speak to me in first person doesn't mean it, it's anything other than just a tool that outputs tokens. But a lot of people don't see it that way. They actually care about the personality, and if you're a leader trying to make a decision on this, like do you want to remove the personality that is-
Sam Lessin: You're gonna like, you're like f- worried about firing Jane 'cause people like talking to her over the lunchroom break? Come on. I mean, like, it, it's like-
Dave Morin: I know
Sam Lessin: ... come on, dude.
Dave Morin: Dude, I've got like, I've got like serious people saying this this morning, you know? And so-
Sam Lessin: I, I just don't... Those people aren't smart.
Brit Morin: Can't you just like retrain the personality?
Sam Lessin: Those people are not smart. Like, uh, what are they doing?
Brit Morin: Sam, you were saying that you trust Gemini with finance and health data
Sam Lessin: To be clear, I trust Google... No, I trust Google not to-
Brit Morin: Fine
Sam Lessin: ... accidentally publish my shit, and I know if they do, I will sue the shit out of them, and everyone will.
Brit Morin: But the irony-
Sam Lessin: So those are very-
Brit Morin: ... of this is that literally today, like, it was broken news that hackers have been stealing people's Instagram handles by going to Meta AI's customer support chatbot, asking them to change the email account of, like, big Instagram handles, and they're doing it. And now, this has been happening for four months, and no one has caught it until today.
Sam Lessin: I have to share a screen for a second. Hold on. This is very, very pertinent, and I've, I don't think I've ever shared a screen on "More or Less," but I have to share my screen 'cause this is so good. Guys, look at Slow's, Slow's Instagram. Some-
Brit Morin: Oh-
Sam Lessin: Some dude-
Brit Morin: ... my God
Sam Lessin: ... Hamdan Alboushi-
Dave Morin: No way
Sam Lessin: ... stole Slow, which is a good four-letter domain.
Dave Morin: Adam Mosseri gave that to us fair and square.
Sam Lessin: It's just, I'm not particularly worried about this.
Brit Morin: What are you gonna do now?
Sam Lessin: Well, I'm laughing about it. I'd be like, "This guy's our new marketing associate." I wanna message him and be like, "Up your game."
Brit Morin: For those that are only listening and not looking at this video, Slow is @slow on Instagram. They-
Sam Lessin: A good domain. Good name
Brit Morin: ... that is for Slow Venture. Sure, great. Now it's been hacked by Hamdan Alboushi, Alboushi.
Sam Lessin: He's my new associate
Brit Morin: ... Middle Eastern apparel. And his headshot, which why would you put your headshot on here? Like, you're totally giving yourself away.
Sam Lessin: I just think it's so funny. I mean, I can understand why, like, I'm not stressed about this because, one, I'm sure I can get it back, and two, like, I just think it's extremely funny. But, like, it is kinda hilarious, you're right, Britt, that this happened. And like, I'm kind of enjoying that Hamdan Alboushi, who turned our profile private, is now in charge of the instagram.com/slow.
Dave Morin: I hope he makes good content.
Sam Lessin: I hope so. I keep messaging him like, "You haven't even posted yet. If you're our new person, you gotta post." You know? Like, this is like ...
Brit Morin: What if, if Meta did this, like, like if these big tech companies can have these little flaws and errors, like should we be putting all of our most sensitive information into any of these things right now?
Dave Morin: Yes. You need to set them up right. Like, this is the whole point of, like, what we announced on stage with Microsoft, Britt. But like, this is not a normie thing. This is a thing where this is a big... This is a t- multi-trillion dollar company that has serious infrastructure.
Brit Morin: My point is that, you know, what, what other information might get caught up in a, in an oopsie that one of these even huge multi-trillion dollar companies-
Sam Lessin: I agree. And for what it's worth, the, the counterargument, the counterargument to what I've said is that don't put your data where everyone else's data is 'cause it's a bigger, fatter hacking target. You know? But it's like, I don't know, I trust Google. I, I'm, I'm fine with them.
Brit Morin: But how many, like how many things have you MCP'd your email or your calendar into at this point?
Sam Lessin: I don't... My core email I won't let, uh, any bots touch. I have a secondary email I let the bots use, and I've MCP'd a huge number of things, but I, there is a level of, like, inner circle, inner ring fence that there's no way I would let... Like I, people like, I think people like auth one password with like OpenCloud, that's insane, right? Like, people who do that, that's insane. Right? Like, don't do that. Don't, you know, give it access to your core email. You know, understand the fact that anything you put in there, there's a non-zero chance it gets, and then just be okay with that. You know?
Dave Morin: Britt, this is the answer to your question, which is that you have to put agents in a sandbox that has real guardrails. Some people, like Sam just said, do that by quite literally buying different Mac Minis. Like, you have a Mac Mini that has your email on it, and it has its one password, and there's n- there's no agent, and then you have an- another one that doesn't, right? Or you have the cloud, and like that's what we were talking about with Microsoft.
Sam Lessin: I just run this stuff not on-
Dave Morin: All cloud
Sam Lessin: ... like local.
Dave Morin: Yeah.
Sam Lessin: It's all just cloud. Yeah.
Dave Morin: I know, but I'm just using the metaphor, Sam, for those that-
Sam Lessin: Yeah
Dave Morin: ... don't know how to think about clouds. Like, it's like you have to put them in a sandbox where you know what they can and cannot do and what software they can and cannot touch, and then, you know, have another area where you have tools that they can use, and they can only come in and out of it to do certain things, right? And that's a lot what the big thing has been the last many months of getting, you know, agents to go to more and more places. Like, you have to let them interact with sort of traditional software in ways that you understand, and then you have to let them do their thing in a sandbox that they can't mess anything up. And what happened here with Meta is they, like, let them run around in areas that they shouldn't run around in, right? And now this guy's running a Slow account.
Sam Lessin: Which, yeah, like it's good for me. Like, I think it's funny, but I can understand that it's not funny for a lot of other people, including probably our friends at Meta. But for me, it's funny. Like, how great would it be if he just started posting great content?
Brit Morin: But there's also, like, Dave, there's all these wrappers now or harnesses or whatever you wanna call them. Like this one called Town raised $55 million.
Dave Morin: Town's not a harness.
Brit Morin: O- okay. I'm just saying there's like agentic applications that have raised a lot of money, $55 million raised this week w- by fancy VCs, and now people are, like, connecting everything into them. Like, no one is gonna think to sandbox their stuff.
Sam Lessin: Let me try to provoke, let me try to provoke Dave. Harnesses are stupid. Like, no one's gonna make money on a harness business, right? Like, it doesn't ma- It's like, it's, um, markdown files, like, that are copyable? Like, what, what are we doing here? Like, this is not... The idea that, like, you're gonna, you're selling me a PDF, like that's what these things are. Like, how is anyone... I understand why you can raise VC for them, but how on earth is anyone justifying the idea that the selling of PDFs called, and calling them harnesses is gonna be a business?
Dave Morin: I don't know what you mean by PDF.
Sam Lessin: They're just, like, they're just markdown files. Like, people are just like, "Oh, here's our framework."
Brit Morin: It's like orchestrating all your things.
Dave Morin: It's just an app. Guys, this is, these are all just apps. Like, they're just apps built on top of models. That's it Like that, there's no difference between an app that's built on Linux or an app that's built on iOS. Like, these are just apps.
Sam Lessin: But this is so funny, right? Like, what are we s- they're just selling... It's, whether it's a markdown file, which was the original basey harnesses or now we have fancier ways of talking about them. Like, it's really funny to be in this world where, like, everyone's like, "Software is dead," except for these things that are software.
Brit Morin: Well, that's what I'm saying. I think that the-
Dave Morin: But I mean, Sam, isn't that why, isn't that why the entire SaaS sector is back up, like, ridiculously right now? Like-
Brit Morin: No, that's what I'm saying. So, like, the application layer is must be, like, hitting because there's another one called Lassie. They do, like, automation for dental offices, and they wanna move to other types of clinics. They raised $47 million. Wordsmith, which is like a Harvey 2.0, do that, does in-house legal work, raised $70 million. Town raised fifty-five-
Dave Morin: Brit, no one cares. No, it doesn't, Brit, it doesn't matter. You're a venture capitalist. You know this as much as anyone. Like, just because they raise money means nothing. Like, we've, we've shifted... Like, this is how you know the cycle is coming, like, at least somewhere in the tail end because people aren't actually talking about customers. They're only talking about the money that they raise, and it's like a, there's, like, high art now in, like, announcing your fundraise using a, like-
Sam Lessin: But-
Dave Morin: Like a movie trailer.
Sam Lessin: But you guys get... Look, by the way, I actually like the movie trailer thing. We should come back to that. But te- set aside that for a moment. You guys remember when, like, TechCrunch, if you raised, like, half a million dollars, you used to, like, immediately write an article about how some kids raised half a million dollars and, like, now no one truly gives a fuck.
Dave Morin: Now you have to release a movie trailer.
Sam Lessin: Fifty million is like TechCrunch 500K of, like, the aughts, you know? And, like, this is where we're at. The, the... Here's the movie trailer thing. I actually love this. I think it's one of the best things I've seen. I've now, to Dave's point, seen several startups, some of them which I really like, who literally... I mean, I've been in this 100K documentary thing, like, why don't we produce more, like, video, high quality vid- They're starting to make really good storytelling videos about what it is their startups do. I love it. I think it's great for investors. I think it's great for narrative development. I think it's consumable. I think it's hard for bots to make it well. Like, you can't, you... A bot can make a deck. Like, I don't care. Someone sends me, like, an awesome fucking movie trailer for their business, like, I'm gonna watch it, right? And so, like, I'm actually very along this trend, and, like, I'm annoyed that I haven't been further out ahead of it. The people investing in, like, mini docs and high quality video production to tell stories of their startups. Like, I think it's great. I've seen... Or just for the wor- for anyone. Like, I just think it's like, I know there's one-
Dave Morin: No, Brit, not to raise money. They do it after they raised money. They're doing it to raise awareness in order to hire people. You don't put content out for any other reason than customers, investors or hiring people, Town.
Sam Lessin: Well, you don't tell stories for anything other than customers. Like, that's the only-
Dave Morin: Yeah.
Sam Lessin: That's what a company is, is-
Dave Morin: Yeah
Sam Lessin: ... money and people and customers. But, like-
Dave Morin: Yeah
Sam Lessin: ... I just, I'm just saying that, like, I think, I, I don't know if I can mention it publicly, so I won't, but, like, there's a company that I've known for a while, we put a small C check into 18 months ago. I lo- It's, like, the coolest story, right? And, but the storytelling was never, like, quite there beyond the one-liner, and they sent me their recent video where, like, we've got a video person now, they're doing video, like, every month and helping us with the storytelling, and I'm like, "This is so much better." Like, this is now so compelling, and you're telling it so well because you're fitting it into a narrative format in an era of narrative capitalism. So, like, of all the things that I'm super skeptical of and hate, I actually think this, like, let's give, like, storytel- Like, the future of Hollywood is gonna be, like, storytelling for companies and, like, we should do the sto- we should do the documentaries of startups and, like, continuously be doing high quality video. It's like the anti-TikTok. I'm, like, super it, into it, and I'm, I'm only annoyed, I'm only annoyed that I've, like, been on this 100K documentary thing for a while and, like, really wanted to do this, and I have not done it, and I haven't executed it, right? Like, and so I'm... But, so but it's, it's totally a thing, and I think it is such a thing that, like, one Sam structural mistake is I always, like, see someone else do something and I'm like-
Dave Morin: I know, I know something that you're involved with which we can't talk about yet that had some really good stuff recently that I've seen.
Sam Lessin: That's true. And by the way, there's a good video with it.
Dave Morin: Yeah.
Sam Lessin: Right? There's a good video.
Dave Morin: Yeah.
Sam Lessin: And so-
Dave Morin: And, and, and now I have the bra- And Sam, Sam, now I have-
Sam Lessin: Ooh
Dave Morin: ... the bracelet. I'm very excited.
Sam Lessin: Wait, look, look at this. Hold on, hold on. Let's just, like, let's just confuse people. I've got two.
Brit Morin: Ooh.
Dave Morin: Yeah, it's something.
Sam Lessin: Yeah, these are Easter eggs so that later we can lick the cookie later, dear listeners.
Dave Morin: It's funny, I guess I get annoyed by the we raised all this money version of these.
Sam Lessin: No, no, the video mon- I don't give a sh- The money raising thing is stupid. Like, that's not a good story. That's a boring story. But there are great stories. It's like if you can't make... If you, how about this? If you can't make your startup into a sick movie trailer, don't do it, right? It's like you should be able to tell, have a sick movie trailer for your startup. And if you're just like, "I'm making something," and you can't articulate the vision. So, like, Elon companies have sick trailers.
Dave Morin: Totally.
Sam Lessin: Right? The sickest trailers. You're digging holes, you're going to space, like, you're going to Mars. Like, these are amazing-
Dave Morin: No, there's plenty of them that can.
Sam Lessin: But, like, if you can't make a movie trailer, don't pitch me and don't do it. They don't and they shouldn't exist.
Dave Morin: No, they can go do, like, they can go do, like, a version of Suits. Like, go, like, you know-
Sam Lessin: Yeah, like, like Petty Lawsuit Bot, that's a great fucking movie trailer.
Dave Morin: Oh, it's so good.
Sam Lessin: It's a great movie trailer.
Dave Morin: All I want is trailers.
Sam Lessin: So my-
Dave Morin: You know?
Sam Lessin: Yeah.
Dave Morin: Sam, we should ma- we should vibe code an Apple TV trailer app that people can submit their pitches to.
Sam Lessin: Yeah, well, it's like, it's like I actually, you know, I already do this a little bit where I have these, like, apps set up where, like, if you wanna talk to me, I'm just like, "Just pitch me lot." Like, send a video or submit a video of the thing, and then my thing transcribes it and gives me a summary and whatever, and we're like, "I only want video pitches." But now I'm like, "Actually, I want you to produce me a trailer." Like, just make me a trailer, and if the trailer is sick, then, like, that means you have good taste, that means you have a story people are gonna care about. Like, it means all the good things. And if your story is boring or there's no good trailer, then your company's gonna suck. This is a new thesis
Brit Morin: I feel like AI's gonna make their trailer, though, for them in the next year or two
Sam Lessin: It's fine. I- AI can make... If the AI can make the trailer, here's the thing, they should use AI to make it. I- if AI will always make the same fucking trailer over and over again, which means I will instantly get bored of your trailer, right? It's like, it's like, it's like Transformers number 87. Boring, right? I don't care about your trailer. But if you use AI to make an amazing, like to help your improve your storytelling, like, God bless. But basically, I wanna wake up every day as a VC and instead of looking at my inbox, I wanna watch an, a hour of like movie trailers before I get to the meeting I have to go to. And like, I will pick which movies I wanna see/which startups I wanna invest in based on the movie trailer. This is the future.
Dave Morin: This is one of the reasons why I love Silicon Mania, this little media company that Adil started. It's like, you know, they make these amazing cartoons every week of everything going on in Silicon Valley.
Sam Lessin: This also is clearly part of the future, 'cause it's straight out of the movie Idiocracy.
Dave Morin: Right. Yeah, totally.
Sam Lessin: Where like venture capitalists are like fat assholes sitting at a movie theater- ... and like eating popcorn, and they're like picking the companies to invest in based on the trailers.
Dave Morin: Is that a Mike Ju- is that also Mike Judge? Have you guys seen these bars that people are making now that have like Polymarket and... This is like the pop culture corner this week. There's like these bars where people are putting Polymarket, sports, like it's like every TV and every possible variant of story and narrative in the bar.
Sam Lessin: Polymarket launched a bar, I think, to do... Like it's literally a Polymarket bar.
Dave Morin: Oh, it was?
Sam Lessin: Yeah, like they literally made a bar.
Brit Morin: While we're in pop culture corner to, you know, round up the pod here, can we debrief on Taylor Swift and Disney this week? I don't know if you caught this, Sam-
Sam Lessin: You can, but just-
Brit Morin: ... 'cause you're not a Swiftie
Sam Lessin: ... like, well, you can debrief on this.
Brit Morin: Uh, Dave... Okay. Well, Taylor might be selling out. Though, and I'm a Swiftie, so me saying that is a really big deal. But guys, for like a week, for like a week there are all these Easter eggs, TS billboards were going up, which was in, in this Toy Story font. So you thought it was Toy Story, but then of course all the Swifties thought about whether it's Taylor Swift and like all the T's and S's in Taylor Swift lyrics on Apple Music were capitalized, and all these Easter eggs were happening. Okay, fine. Everyone's getting real excited it's gonna be like a new album or something crazy. Turns out Taylor Swift has a new song on the new Toy Story movie called I Knew It I Knew You. It's coming out June 19th.
Sam Lessin: You're talking about it. You're talking about it, it's working.
Brit Morin: There's some like interlude between that and maybe she's gonna have a country album or there's another announcement. But the amount of marketing that went into this is on Disney and Taylor Swift levels for like a one song release, which is like, it just felt very commercial. Like is like Taylor jumping the shark?
Dave Morin: But that's alwa- it's always been commercial.
Brit Morin: No, but it was always for her before. Like is this a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know. I think the Swifties were pretty upset about this. It was like, why are we putting so much emphasis on her, a song in a Disney movie when we just want an album. We want real Taylor doing stuff for us.
Dave Morin: Yeah, it's fine. She's, she's Disney.
Brit Morin: I don't know. I'm just saying, watch this space. I think the Swifties are starting to, to sort of question what's going on in the Taylor ecosystem.
Sam Lessin: You know what Taylor needs is a movie trailer for me to care.
Brit Morin: Well, there was a Toy Story movie trailer that she's not part of, but she, she could be. She's also getting married literally in a month.
Dave Morin: I was actually noticing that like MTV, I didn't realize MTV died, like fully was shut down. Maybe what we're all just asking for is we want the return of MTV.
Sam Lessin: We, I want MTV back.
Dave Morin: The return of... Yeah.
Sam Lessin: Well, it's like, like I want-
Dave Morin: But it's like tech TV this time. Yeah
Sam Lessin: ... but like it's gonna be awesome. Like you're gonna have like, like when I get like Cardi B shaking her ass in pitch videos, we will have reached Idiocracy and the future.
Brit Morin: I don't think... I don't want Cardi B shaking her ass in my pitch video.
Sam Lessin: I mean, you'd watch it.
Brit Morin: Okay, but it has to be catchy. I don't know. Suno and Eleven Labs also raise a lot of money, so I think we could have music videos pretty easily, but for startup pitches with AI.
Sam Lessin: I don't know. I will say Eleven... I use a lot of Eleven Labs because I just only listen to podcasts I make for myself. And Dave, most humans are like, "I don't like listening to my voice." I apparently am fine with it, 'cause like in our car I'm just constantly making new podcasts for the boys using my voice. Which is great. I've learned so much.
Brit Morin: Really?
Sam Lessin: Constantly.
Brit Morin: That's very weird.
Sam Lessin: No, it's great. I've learned so much.
Brit Morin: Is this your way of tricking your kids into thinking you're the smartest person in the world?
Sam Lessin: I, I-
Brit Morin: That's a little weird, Sam, I'm not gonna lie
Sam Lessin: ... it's fine. I don't mind it. I-
Brit Morin: I know you're fine with it, but like-
Sam Lessin: You can call me a psychopath. It doesn't really bother me.
Brit Morin: But is there an inner, inner something though that you want your kids to think you know the history of how Tetris was invented?
Dave Morin: No, it is a good idea. Like who, who, who else's voice would you use?
Sam Lessin: I could use Jess's voice.
Dave Morin: No.
Sam Lessin: No, but I don't own those voices. The problem is like you don't want... The stock voices sound weird. You own your own voice. You can use it. You might as well just use a m- better voice than the stock voice.
Dave Morin: I'm kind of with Sam on this.
Brit Morin: Well, you could license Matthew McConaughey.
Sam Lessin: Why? I have no interest. It's like, why would I do that?
Brit Morin: It's because it's an option.
Dave Morin: On Eleven Labs?
Brit Morin: Okay. Yes. He's officially licensed.
Sam Lessin: Okay. I'd personally rather listen to myself than Matthew McConaughey, but maybe that says more about me.
Brit Morin: Well, that's not what the women would choose. If Jess were here, she-
Sam Lessin: Ah
Brit Morin: ... I think she'd back me up right now.
Sam Lessin: Some women might choose it, Britt.
Brit Morin: All right, folks. Um, well, with that, I, I hope we left you with something today. Entertainment, ideas, maybe some intelligence. We don't know. Um-
Sam Lessin: You know the, the trailer thing well? TPN.
Dave Morin: Oh, yeah. True.
Sam Lessin: TPN launched a sick trailer.
Brit Morin: Wait.
Dave Morin: It's true.
Brit Morin: Can I get a TPN update? Have they sold out since the OpenAI thing or no? Like what do we think? Is it fine?
Dave Morin: Are they still broadcasting?
Brit Morin: You think it's normal? That's what I don't know.
Sam Lessin: There's your answer, Britt. I mean, I think the... I just, the real question I've always asked and wondered is like, has like Elon just like deplatformed and demonetized? Are like they posting to themselves? Like I don't actually know what happened. 'Cause like-
Brit Morin: I don't see them in my feed. I don't know what's happening.
Sam Lessin: Well, that's not shocking. He sold to Open... They sold to OpenAI.
Brit Morin: I know. I'm just saying.
Dave Morin: I only ever see, the only thing I ever see live every day now is that Andreessen Horowitz thing, MTS, that, um, Derek Tornberg's doing.
Sam Lessin: The irony is no one watches any of this stuff live. Like the, the, the TPN has a ti- had, I don't even know now, had a tiny actual- ... audience for the thing. It's just the clips moved, right? Like, so there's- no one was ever watching it anyway, right? Like-
Brit Morin: Has TITV been hit by any of this? Does Elon get pissed if they write a bad story and then they get demoted?
Sam Lessin: No, you gotta ask Jess that. I've, I don't think so.
Brit Morin: It could be an algorithm change at large for, like, news shows. Uh, anyway.
Sam Lessin: Also, Jess's audience-
Brit Morin: Okay
Sam Lessin: ... is a little different. But yes.
Brit Morin: Fair.
Sam Lessin: Well taken.
Brit Morin: More, more to uncover in our next episode.
Sam Lessin: Dun, dun, dun.
Brit Morin: All right. Thank you, dear listeners and viewers, for keeping up with us, hopefully, this long in the pod. Make some pitches v- in a, in a, in a video trailer-
Sam Lessin: Trailers
Brit Morin: ... style.
Sam Lessin: But, like, you have to get me in the first five seconds.
Brit Morin: Yeah.
Dave Morin: Yeah.
Brit Morin: Like, if you want capital from Offline or Slow, show us what you got.
Dave Morin: Yeah, make some trailers.
Brit Morin: And yes, think about the first five seconds. We need a, we need a good opener.
Sam Lessin: And, like, it's good.
Brit Morin: Yeah.
Sam Lessin: Like, I get the trailer and I finance the movie.
Brit Morin: The movie of the company. Yes, exactly.
Sam Lessin: 'Cause it's all about-
Brit Morin: Okay
Sam Lessin: ... the attention and narrative economy anyway. We're financing.
Brit Morin: For sure.
Sam Lessin: We actually are doing film finance at this point. Like, Silicon Valley has just taken the job of Southern California, and we're way better at storytelling. At least some people are.
Brit Morin: We should also write into the term sheet we get rights for the actual movies if Hollywood ever wants to buy it from us down the line for these companies.
Sam Lessin: I do like the idea of putting rights into term sheets that are completely nonsensical like that, um, and just seeing what they accept. If you're like, "Look, we have a side letter on the YC safe and it's for movie rights."
Brit Morin: Yeah. And books.
Sam Lessin: It's like-
Brit Morin: Publishing and, and film.
Sam Lessin: It's like, look, we don't, we don't do standard YC letters anymore. Like, we don't care about-
Brit Morin: Yes
Sam Lessin: ... program rights, but we need, we need movie rights.
Brit Morin: Exactly. This is where the world is going, folks.
Dave Morin: I love it.
Brit Morin: All right. Well, um, thanks everyone for following along with us. Um, like, rate, subscribe, share with a friend.
Dave Morin: It took me a minute to realize-
Brit Morin: All the things
Dave Morin: ... that this is actually a real term that we need to do.
Brit Morin: Guys, I'm closing the episode.
Dave Morin: All right.
Brit Morin: You gotta stop jumping in.
Dave Morin: See ya.
Brit Morin: Okay. And with that, we'll be back next week for another episode of More or Less. Bye, guys.
Dave Morin: See you later.
Sam Lessin: Bye.
Brit Morin: 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 podcasts. Find more information about each episode in the show notes, and follow us on social media by searching for @moreorless, @davemorin, @lesson, @jlesson, and as for me, I'm @brit. See you guys next time.