#161 — Jeff Dean Leaves Google, Airtable Sells, and the Bag-Securing Era
August 07, 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: Charles was hired at OpenAI from Instagram to, like, help build creator sort of love for OpenAI products, ChatGPT. They held a retreat in Upstate New York. Creators were posting their, like, wildflowers, and nature baths, and things like that, and then all the new AI things they were learning. The internet got real mad.
Jessica: The internet got so mad. They were so mad.
Brit Morin: So mad. Like, "AI sucks," just, like, a- hating AI, you know, and like, "Why would you take money and go to this $2,000 retreat when the world is burning and AI is taking up all this compute?" Elon segue, breaking news. Nikita, Head of Product at X, Elon's company, is leaving.
Dave Morin: What?
Jessica: That's a sad-
Brit Morin: Head of product.
Dave Morin: Oh, that's sad.
Brit Morin: What's gonna happen to X, you guys? What's gonna happen?
Guest: More or less. Is it no or is it yes? We'll debate the tech that's best when we get more or less. Dave and Brit, plus Sam and Jess put it all right to the test. More or less.
Jessica: Why hello, friends. Welcome to More or Less. I'm singing this week. We're singing the tech song.
Brit Morin: I, I noticed that. Can you give us a, little more? Where did that come from?
Jessica: Well, I'm actually happy at the moment 'cause I have a plan for this episode. So-
Brit Morin: Oh, we like plans. We like... I was gone last week. I noticed you tried to lead the horses to the water, and, you know, they went in their own directions.
Jessica: Also, guys, I was wrong. I was so critical of the setup of last week, Dave being in a car and Sam being on a porch, but it worked out really well, and so-
Brit Morin: Why do you say that? Did you get good feedback?
Jessica: Well-
Dave Morin: We did get good feedback
Jessica: ... we had such nice comments on the pod.
Dave Morin: Yeah.
Brit Morin: What?
Jessica: People are like re- They're like, "It's my favorite podcast."
Dave Morin: We appreciate it, everybody.
Jessica: We really do. It warmed my heart, actually. I've got a little emotional. But it also encouraged Sam to literally do the podcast from the beach, because those watching on YouTube will notice our Boston Whaler behind him.
Sam Lessin: That... My original plan was to do it on the Boston Whaler, but it's a little too windy for it, so I'm just hanging out on the beach, spying shit on Instagram.
Brit Morin: I thought Sam had a Zoom background up, and then I noticed the water was moving.
Dave Morin: Sam, although that Boston Whaler that I found for you is pretty awesome.
Sam Lessin: That is awesome. I might have to buy a red Boston Whaler. I c- I, I have an extra mooring, so we can do double mooring Boston Whalers here. Dueling Whalers.
Dave Morin: Ah.
Brit Morin: Can the moorings go mooring with you?
Jessica: Yeah.
Sam Lessin: Sure. I mean, the on- My, my only problem I... For any listener, I do have a problem on the Boston Whaler, which is it's rained a lot here. Not now, but earlier. And my aux pump for pumping the water out of the boat is, somehow the circuit's broken, so I had to bail it a little bit manually. So if anyone out there likes Boston Whalers-
Jessica: We had to change the battery on the boat
Dave Morin: It's called a bilge pump, Sam
Sam Lessin: ... thank you. My aux bilge pump. The main bilge pump seems okay, but the aux, which is supposed to always be on, and just, like, it didn't quite work. So I got a-
Dave Morin: Yeah
Sam Lessin: ... I got a bilge pump problem.
Jessica: And bilging and pumping.
Brit Morin: This is great. I love how Sam is bilge pumping on the East Coast, and Dave, on Friday, went ranching and herded cattle here in Montana.
Jessica: Guys, no, Dave, which ranch did you go to? We have to compare notes. I'm planning a trip where I'm gonna learn to barrel race.
Brit Morin: Not Yellowstone Ranch.
Dave Morin: My lifelong best friend, Terral Hibbard, who is both a rancher and a, uh-
Sam Lessin: I love that guy. The king of pastoral rap.
Dave Morin: Yep, pastoral rapper. And he also makes single malt whiskey in Helena, Montana, called Gulch Distillers, so this episode brought to you by Gulch Distillers. He's a fifth-generation Montana rancher. They have one of the largest ranches in Montana. Ranching with him every summer.
Sam Lessin: But he's a first-generation pastoral rapper.
Dave Morin: Yeah.
Brit Morin: Here's the deal. I just love how I was hearing Dave on AI calls in the morning, talking about, like, the open AI ecosystem, open source, and then he left at 4:00 PM to a ranch with no service, brought his Starlink with him, and then herded cattle, on foot even, not even on horseback.
Jessica: Yeah, no, I, I've gotta, I've gotta get herding cattle. There's, like, a metaphor in here. I'm very excited by it.
Dave Morin: I got you. W- we will... Come to Montana. Anybody who's interested, we will set you up with the real experience, not this dude ranch.
Brit Morin: Wait, don't give everyone the invite, Dave.
Jessica: It's like More or Less ranching, or bilge pumping. Okay, guys, while we were ranching and bilge pumping, there was some tech news this week. There are actual things happening. We have an AI shakeup.
Brit Morin: What kind of summer is this?
Sam Lessin: It's proof of AI, because somehow the business continues while we're all on the beach. So clearly, the AGI- ... has taken over.
Jessica: Okay.
Sam Lessin: And that's the only reason there's... Like, the computers are just talking to each other on Techmeme now.
Dave Morin: It's true. This is a good point.
Jessica: Some of us are working, but, you know, there's also such thing as vacation. Some of us are vacationing. But we have a Google AI shakeup. We have the Airtable acquisition by Bending Spoons. We have some Airtable investors present to talk about this and what it portends for the industry.
Dave Morin: Indeed, we do.
Jessica: We have a great story out of The Information about Apple and iCloud and how it relates to the OpenAI lawsuit. And we have SpaceX earnings, SpaceX tanking, SpaceX lockup soon upon us. And we have some rants. So let's start with Google. Who paid attention to the news? Who needs a recap?
Brit Morin: I paid attention to the news.
Jessica: Okay. Brit, tell us what happened at Google.
Brit Morin: No, I mean, I feel like The Information reported it better. I actually quantified, I was in the top 5% of all Google employees who joined Google, so, which means they've had a lot of employees, but, 'cause-
Jessica: By, by time, by skincare, by what? Top 5% by what?
Brit Morin: Like, number of employees. I was in the first, like, 5,000 employees of Google. So I feel like-
Jessica: Not to imply it would only be by tenure. It could also have been by brilliance, Brit. I'm just trying to-
Sam Lessin: But Brit, didn't you also win the Google Award for, like... You, like, won the million-dollar Special Googler Award when you were a child, right?
Jessica: She did.
Brit Morin: I mean, guys, I don't wanna toot my own horn here. I just-
Jessica: Toot it, Brit. All people do on this pod is toot their own horn.
Brit Morin: I'm just saying.
Jessica: Go for it.
Brit Morin: I'm just saying, top 5%, early Googler.
Dave Morin: Yeah, always give Brit an opportunity to say she got a straight A.
Brit Morin: I like to win things. I like gold stars. I'm gonna leave it at that. My point being, I was at Google when Jeff Dean was at Google, 'cause Jeff Dean's been at Google even longer than me, 27 years.
Jessica: Well, he's still at Google for, like, two more days. But yes.
Brit Morin: Yes.
Jessica: Okay, I'll recap the news for everybody. So obviously, the context has been, there's always a lot of questions inside Google about their AI strategy. Are they falling behind? Is Gemini competitive? What's the strategy? They've had a lot of different leaders in typical Google fashion, and the latest iteration is that Demis Hassabis, who's been the leader, obviously the founder of DeepMind, as Sundar says, stepping up, but really stepping back from the day-to-day management of Gemini and the AI efforts, and taking on a broader AI research kind of role. Core, and I'm gonna get, pronounce Kovaculu, Kovaculu? I'm gonna pronounce his name wrong, who has been actually running Gemini, and Team had an awesome profile of him recently in The Information, um, is sort of the clear leader of, of the AI efforts. And then Jeff Dean, who was there when Brit was there, but also actually was, in many ways, the godfather of Google AI because he was, led Google Brain, which was Google's AI effort until they bought DeepMind, and then they were both their parallel AI efforts, is, um, going on to start something new. So, um, Brit, what's your take? And I, I of course will offer mine as well, but I wanna hear yours first.
Brit Morin: Well, my insider sources, because we are highly interactive with Google and DeepMind right now on a couple of fronts, claim that Demis really wants to focus a lot on Isomorphic, the sort of spinout of DeepMind that's doing a lot in the drug development space. So I think he's personally really passionate about that. He's still gonna continue to have-
Jessica: He also said that in a tweet, just so you... Uh, not that your sources aren't a bo- or, but this is, yes.
Brit Morin: It's real, is what I'm saying. It's not just, like, PR narrative. He's super passionate about it and he, you know, he'll stay involved at the high level.
Dave Morin: And has been for some time. I mean, that was the whole thrust of the Nobel Prize winning work with AlphaFold.
Jessica: Absolutely.
Dave Morin: Right?
Jessica: Absolutely. Yeah.
Brit Morin: Yeah. But I think, like, the macro points to, like, there are just shakeups happening at all these, like, frontier labs. I think a lot of Google employees might see this as a sign that maybe they should leave. Is it unstable? You know, I think any time that just one, but n- not only two leaders like this leave, it creates some instability.
Sam Lessin: The world has changed a lot. Like, you just think, like, these AI things and the types of orgs required to run them, the leaders required to run them, has just changed a lot. Like, you know, a lot of these guys have been doing this a long time. They were great research leaders. They're not gonna, like, be the operational leaders you need to do it. By the way, half of them are so fucking rich, they don't wanna, like, lead some big team. That sucks. Like, they wanna work on, like, frontier cool stuff, right? Which is, like, health or things like that. So this is like, we're in the cycle where, especially at, like, big companies, the right people aren't the right leaders at different phases. And I think it's good and healthy to, like, recognize that and then reshuffle the decks when you can. Like, the worst thing you want is to have some guy who's, like, the wrong leader for this phase. They're not in it 'cause they're too rich and they wanna work on health. They're, like, an amazing research leader, but they don't care about driving some random metric up. Like, you wanna cycle people out in healthy orgs. So I actually think turnover and these types of changes are good. Now, the interesting thing, when you're at a really big company and you kind of keep people around 'cause you can afford to, and so it is sometimes comp inefficient. You don't fire anyone. You're just, like, letting them get paid $100 million a year to do their pet project. But, like, it is an interesting thing.
Jessica: I mean, Google, like, not only didn't fire people, they created companies under their company for these people to keep them around. So Google is the OG of this strategy.
Sam Lessin: Yeah, it's the OG of if you're a really, really, really rich company. First of all, you don't wanna put your talent back out into the world. You wanna hoard your talent. And then two, it's much more pleasant, 'cause they built teams, there's loyalties or whatever, to, like, let them have a bigger job somewhere else while recognizing the fact they're just not the right person probably to do the next phase of what actually has to be done for the business, right? Is the way to think about it. Either because they actually would be great, but they just have no interest, or they're just, like, the wrong person.
Dave Morin: The other take here is that if you believe that self-improving AI is coming, the current model is going to raise the next model, that will raise the next model, and that we're onto that pathway now.
Jessica: We should call it by its name, Dave, recursive self-improvement.
Dave Morin: Whatever the current marketing term is.
Sam Lessin: I love recursion. Who doesn't love recursion?
Jessica: I mean, who doesn't celebrate the-
Dave Morin: It's like none of this shit... I love this, it's like personal super intelligence, like recursive whatever.
Jessica: Oh, it's ridiculous.
Dave Morin: It's like all just, like, marketing nonsense. The point is, if these systems start improving themselves, like, less than two years from now, the more cynical take is that if you're one of the 1,000 people who have the most coveted of all skillsets, which is in training, pre-training, the sort of raising of models, then you need to get out the door now in order to capture the capital and the resources and the mojo that you need to start up another one of these labs. And you kind of see this happening. Like, the last six months has just been lab after lab after lab after lab of people that were from one of the labs, right? And now they're going out to build their own version because Propik and OpenAI are worth a trillion dollars, and so I'm gonna go try to get my trillion dollars. You kind of have, I think, an element of that going on.
Sam Lessin: This is the era of bag securing. Everyone is trying to get their bag right now, and whether that's, like, a big amount of private capital or selling your company or whatever, everyone is in a desperate... I, it feels like musical chairs. We're in a musical chairs era. Everyone gets it and everyone wants their bag. It's the line from, uh, I love, what is it? It's not The Big Short, it's the other one. The CEO of the bank comes in and he's like, "I'm not paid 'cause I'm the smartest." I'm paid to know one qu- thing, which is where the, what music is gonna play, and right now I hear silence.
Dave Morin: That's a good one.
Jessica: Well, but, so I agree with all of that. I also think Demis has the same chance of being CEO of Google today as he did yesterday. So I don't think this is, like, he's going off on this parallel path to pursue unrelated interests, right? So you can look at this news, and then because I'm a business journalist and I can't help myself, I'm like always, "What does it mean for succession? What does it mean for succession?" Not that this is imminent, like I don't think Sundar's going anywhere, so I don't mean to say that, but like it is a company where that's an open question that smart people have had for years. And again, it's not like a burning question 'cause Sundar isn't going anywhere.
Sam Lessin: Why would he wanna run Google?
Dave Morin: Do you mean what does it mean for succession for DeepMind or for all of Alphabet?
Jessica: No, no, for Google. Who's gonna be the next CEO of Google?
Brit Morin: Uh, there's probably a deep bench over there.
Sam Lessin: Why does he want that job?
Brit Morin: What did Sam say? Who wants that job?
Sam Lessin: No, seriously, like why, if you're him, why do you want that job? You know how many headaches and reports that is?
Jessica: Sundar?
Sam Lessin: No, Sundar is fine. Sundar's already doing the job. If you're Demis, you're the forefront of AI, you're with, like, the future is no employees and you're self-improving, nursing a whole-
Jessica: Guys, it's time for a bet. It's time for a bet. Who wants to take the bet? I'm gonna bet it's Demis. Who's getting against me?
Brit Morin: After Sundar, it's Demis, you think?
Jessica: Yeah.
Dave Morin: No way.
Sam Lessin: Why does he want that job? Like, it's a terrible job. Like, I don't know, I literally am asking honestly.
Brit Morin: I'm gonna ask Gemini.
Jessica: Oh, we should make a fun bet. To be clear, I obviously have no, like, reporting inside information, but I have for years believed, and I don't think it's imminent, it's a race between Thomas Kurian, who runs Google Cloud, and Demis. And the question of the next CEO of Google is really gonna be a question of what type of company is Google however many years from now when Sundar moves on? And Google's enterprise business is growing. Many inter- tech behemoths have gone the enterprise direction, in which case it would be Thomas. But if AI, in some form, is still the prevailing dynamic, Demis is still the leader. And, you know, I gotta tell you, there's multiple aspects to Demis and his leadership and personality that I think go unmissed. One, he is incredibly ambitious. You guys should read Sebastian's book about him that he just published. The takeaway from that book is this is not a guy who just wants to win another Nobel Prize, okay? So one, he's incredibly ambitious.
Sam Lessin: What is he ambitious for?
Jessica: Sam, some people wanna run companies. The-
Sam Lessin: Why?
Jessica: The... Okay.
Brit Morin: They, why can't they just sit on their beach?
Jessica: You can feel that way. I wanna... Let me finish my point, because there will be a next CEO of Google, and listeners of our pod may be interested in my opinion and other people's opinion on who that's gonna be, which again, is grounded in reporting. When I saw Demis at Davos this year, he was talking, uh, like it was like a CEO road tour. Google was trotting him out to every publisher, and he wasn't just talking about Gemini and he wasn't just talking about DeepMind, and he wasn't just talking about Isomorphic. He was talking about Google Cloud, he was talking about regulation, he was talking about all of this stuff. So I, I don't say this with super high confidence. I think this is actually a, a really interesting and open question in the technology business right now about what path Google goes on. But I don't think people should read this as, like, Demis is totally out of that game. I think he is very ambitious. I think the platform of running what will be the world's most valuable company is interesting, and I don't think it necessarily has to involve, like, a lot of day-to-day management and people reviews, which I don't think he's interested in.
Dave Morin: Doesn't Sundar have, like, 100 reports?
Jessica: Sundar has 100 reports because because every time someone gets poached, they report to Sundar. But a new CEO could operate differently, so.
Brit Morin: What about the guy taking over DeepMind? C- Coray? What's his name?
Jessica: Coray's awesome, but he's very technical. I mean, he's a great AI leader.
Brit Morin: He's not, like, uh, he can't speak on, like, the world stage and run a business?
Jessica: I mean, he ca- he's a very impressive guy. I don't think... He's not usually mentioned in that context. It also could be a no-
Brit Morin: Maybe Larry or Sergey comes back.
Jessica: Larry, like, is basically pulling all the strings he wants to pull, and that's just fine for him. Like, they, I actually think he's way more involved than people realize.
Dave Morin: I guess, like, my response to all of this is that's how Google has always worked. You go back to that old funny org charts that were made in the 2000s about how all these companies work, and Google's always kind of worked like this. There's always been, like, a, an amalgamation of leadership. It's like this emergent organism thing that has kind of always been the way that that place has worked, even, Brit, wh- when you worked there.
Jessica: I mean, Sundar became Sundar by winning Game of Thrones with Andy Rubin. Sundar had Chrome, Andy had Android. Ultimately, like, there's gonna be, like, some person had to run both of those, and it was a battle, and Sundar won. And Andy got his whatever Alphabet company he got until he had to leave for indiscreet m- reasons. But yeah, I mean, that's all reported in the information. There were some s- some issues, but-
Brit Morin: I was there in that era, and Sundar was, like, the more magnetic sort of personality internally. He could, like, lead a crowd, had a business sense.
Jessica: I mean, that's a little bit of rewriting history. Like, I'm a big fan of Sundar. I think he's actually been a much better CEO than people give him credit for. Magnetic is not a word I would use to describe his personality.
Dave Morin: That was Brit's internal experience.
Brit Morin: Product managers loved him. My internal experience is, like, the employees loved Sundar.
Jessica: Okay, so he was magnetic internally.
Brit Morin: The employees thought Andy was, like, very technically interesting and smart, but Sundar had, like, a little bit more of the gravitas of a CEO.
Jessica: Well, it worked.
Brit Morin: Just my take.
Jessica: Okay, guys.
Sam Lessin: I just think it's really funny. Jess knows this. My favorite Sundar story is that if you unwind tech history, like, 15 years, there was, like, this dinner we were invited to where, like, I was Sundar's, like, peer at, like, the dinner, like we were put together as, like, peers.
Jessica: We were seated together
Sam Lessin: It was pretty funny, 'cause if you just, like, unwind history and you look at, like, divergent paths, I just always find that hilarious. That was where we were at, whatever, 15 years ago.
Brit Morin: That happened to me once with Adam Grant.
Dave Morin: Could've been you, Sam.
Sam Lessin: No, it, it could not be me, 'cause I need the whaler and the beach, and I don't understand why you'd wanna run Google.
Jessica: Sundar could buy more than a whaler, but yes, okay. Okay, guys. So I like, to, to end this point though, I like where you took it in terms of AI, the nature of this moment, the wealth attached to it, the predictions around the technology are actually driving really interesting personnel, structural, corporate changes. I mean, that, that's, that's one reason I actually continue to find this industry interesting, is that each era, like, has common patterns, but then there's, like, totally new dynamics, and I think the wealth dynamic and the, like, technical race dynamic are playing out now in ways that probably aren't talked about enough. Brit, on the deal-making front, you always predict more deals. Did you predict that Bending Spoons would buy Airtable for about a billion and a half dollars when it was once valued at $11 billion?
Brit Morin: Less than that. 1.3? 1.2? Yeah, I think it was 1.2, right? I wouldn't even round up to the half.
Sam Lessin: Let me give some context on this. So I put a $3 million check into Airtable at a 90 post in between rounds early on, 'cause this is now probably in 2012-ish, maybe, uh, that era.
Jessica: Is this a lick the cookie moment, or, like, what should we prepare for here?
Sam Lessin: Sure, I'll lick the cookie.
Dave Morin: I can, like, partially lick that cookie too.
Sam Lessin: I mean, sure. Dave, but, uh, I think Dave was my second on the deal, but, like, we had Howie over, we loved the software, that we were literally, when we were building Fin, we were using Airtable. I was like, "This product's sick. We need to invest in it. Who's behind it?" Turned out it was Howie at Etax from back in the day. I knew him from his first startup. So we put 3 million bucks in at 90 post, which Dave did support me on. It was very rule-breaking for Slow at the time, 'cause it was too far along.
Dave Morin: Yep.
Sam Lessin: And what's kind of amazing-
Dave Morin: Too far along, way too big a check.
Sam Lessin: But we did it anyway. The good news is we made a bunch of money on it-
Dave Morin: Yep
Sam Lessin: ... because we did take a bunch off the table throughout the rounds.
Dave Morin: We did.
Sam Lessin: It is an interesting one, 'cause you think about all the dilution that's gone on between that $90 million valuation and, like, kinda the ultimate Bending Spoons exit, and it's pretty rough math on the core product. Now, the good news is Howie's a great leader and a great thinker, and has an AI play that's coming next. I don't know that much about it, so it's a split thing where it seems like the Airtable, like, legacy business is going to Bending Spoons, which, by the way, I love Bending Spoons. I actually bought stock at IPO in Bending Spoons, I love Bending Spoons so much. So I'm, like, big Bending Spoons fan.
Brit Morin: Why do you love Bending Spoons?
Sam Lessin: Oh, it's like, it's exactly the type of Sam thing with Love, where it's like take valuable internet assets that people are mismanaging and, like, buy them and then operate them properly and make shitloads of money. So, like, I'm very pro-Bending Spoons as a company, because they're bottom feeders.
Brit Morin: But aren't they taking the heart out of these companies? It's very PE-esque.
Sam Lessin: There's no heart needed. You take Vimeo, you buy it. It's a great business if you operated it properly. You, like, buy it cheaply, you consolidate customer service, you make a shitload of money, right? It's awesome. I do think, like, SaaS is crushed. It's cool they've negotiated this out. I actually don't know the details. I haven't spoken to Howie about it at all. My sense is, is that Howie gets to go operate the AI company he actually wants to operate. And as a Bending Spoons shareholder, I'm very happy. Now, as an Airtable shareholder, the write down from where everyone had it marked, the big fancy people, is pretty brutal. And I'd also say that, like, the amount of capital it took them to get to this outcome is not my favorite, 'cause there's a lot of dilution, but, you know, it's something.
Brit Morin: Wasn't the scene, I mean, it was, the perception was pretty negative, right? Like, this is, like, the SaaSpocalypse playing out in real time. These companies are all dead. They should exit now while they still have an opportunity, even if it's just returning investors capital. Like, that was what I was picking up from across the web.
Jessica: Yeah.
Sam Lessin: Really?
Jessica: No, this is not good.
Sam Lessin: But guys, it's also a people thing. It's like Howie wants to work on AI, 'cause AI is cool. You're saddled with a thing that has hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, but is clearly, like, a SaaS business, and, like, they're like, "Let's fix it. Let's just clarify this. Call a spade a spade." It's painful, but you're not in a place you can IPO it. I don't know, you clear the decks and you let the people... This is so human driven, right? Like, what people wanna work on, what teams wanna work on. Bending Spoons will pick it up and make a lot of money on it, so God bless.
Brit Morin: What will Bending Spoons do with it, do you think?
Dave Morin: If anything, this is the right way to go about things when the dynamics that Sam has described have played out. And oftentimes founders don't try to pursue a split kind of, I don't know what to call this, a split landing, one where you're landing the former product in a home that is as good of a deal as you can find, but then you're keeping your team together, your core creative team together, to go pursue the new opportunity, and giving your investors upside in that. And that's the other thing going on here, which is, as I understand it, investors are going to get a piece of Hyperagent. Maybe not the same piece that they had, but something.
Sam Lessin: Well, but Dave, I mean, if we wanna be cynical, 'cause we've gotta be cynical a little bit here, here's the other way to look at it. The reason this never happens is because big fancy investors, not us lowly seed investors, but big fancy ones, have no interest in the write down, right? It's a massive write down, right, for them, and they'd rather just stick it on their books and pretend like it's worth something it's not until the last possible moment. The fact that they could get rid of it, get a little bit of cash back, and then turn around and say, "Oh, no, don't worry, we still have our AI upside," that's kinda what allows it to happen. So as much as it's a split landing and it's good for the team, it's also a thing, and big fancy investors who don't want the write down can look at and be like, "All right. Well, we can tell everyone that we took a write down, but not really 'cause of AI." I, I say that having not read the docs, to be clear, but, like that is certainly part of the dynamic.
Jessica: This is, like, CYA all over it.
Dave Morin: But for sure. But I, I mean, I think that's what a split landing is. Like, you have to be able to land the investor ... aspect of this in a way that's reasonably appetizing to everyone, right? Otherwise, this just doesn't happen.
Brit Morin: Wait, so Sam, do you get to invest in Hyperagent, and what is Hyperagent?
Sam Lessin: I think we get some tiny piece of it.
Dave Morin: No, we get some kind of ownership in it.
Sam Lessin: It's, like, something ti- This is, like, literally 'cause we're seed investors, we have no information rights on this. Our firm thread yesterday was like, "Hey, Airtable's being..." Or whatever it was. It was like, "Airtable's being sold. I saw it in a tweet. What's it worth? I don't know. This guy tweeted this." What's going on with the I- Like, we don't fucking know. Like, we're like, we're so out of the information flow, but I assume at some point we get some Bending Spoons stock.
Jessica: Do you guys think there's more of this to come? Uh, were you looking at the SaaS-
Dave Morin: Yes
Jessica: ... in your portfolios with some-
Brit Morin: For sure. That's what I'm saying. I think this is SaaS-pocalypse.
Sam Lessin: That's why I'm a big Bending Spoons fan. I think Bending Spoons is gonna... Is, like, so well-positioned with a public currency to pick all this shit up for cents on the dollar.
Dave Morin: I think it would be intellectual malpractice to call this a blanket statement about SaaS. The reality of Airtable and tools like it is that AI has made it... You know, there's, like, other businesses that were really, really f- flying, like, in the Airtable days, like Retool, and these kind of lightweight UI layers that made it easier to interact with databases or build your own CRM, like, all these types of tools that were big in the 2010s, they no longer are needed anymore when you can just build whatever you want using AI. And so you've got, like, a category of SaaS that's in trouble and is gonna have to look for exits like this. That doesn't apply to everything, right? Like, is, I don't know, is Rippling at risk? No.
Brit Morin: Well, some people would disagree with that.
Sam Lessin: I think a lot is. I mean, like, my favorite, "Oh my God, everything's at risk," actually happened this week with this game that our kids play, this, like, block-matching game. It's actually a fine game.
Brit Morin: Our kids play that game, too.
Sam Lessin: It, it was so annoying 'cause, like, it turns out, I was like, I hate the game ads. I don't want my kids ever seeing a game ad. And there's literally no way to buy your way out of them that I could figure out. So I asked my bot, I was like, "Hey, bot, can you find me a version of this game," it's a pretty popular game, "that just I can buy so that the kids don't have ads?" And w- unprompted, my bot responded. It was like, "Look, I looked into it. There's one that's, like, 14 bucks a month. That's too much. I just built it for you. It's deployed, and here's an iOS version." I think that's, like, another example. Like, casual games are just gonna get demolished because forget just, like, connecting to a database, I'll just build my own game. Like, I don't need the stupid ads anymore, right? Like-
Brit Morin: Dave, we should make our kids pick their top three games and then rebuild them as their remainder of-
Sam Lessin: Yeah
Brit Morin: ... summer project.
Jessica: So Sam, Brit asked a good question, which I, you didn't get to answering, which is what is it that you think Bending Spoons is gonna do to economically unlock more value from all these assets they're picking up dirt cheap?
Brit Morin: Well, from Airtable specifically.
Sam Lessin: Oh, look, it's easy. These things have big enterprise contracts. They're gonna, like, milk those. They're gonna, like, hack the CS, the customer support teams to zero 'cause they can consolidate it.
Brit Morin: Yeah, but isn't that just, like, short-term revenue? This isn't a long-term viable product, I don't believe.
Sam Lessin: One of my favorite companies ever is Constellation Software, right? It's a fucking beast.
Dave Morin: This is Constellation 101.
Jessica: Didn't it tank? Didn't it go up and then down? Didn't it-
Sam Lessin: Had one of the most beautiful public market stock charts in the history of companies until about a year ago, and then they had some transition problem, and I think, and then there was, like, a bunch of issues with, like... And then people just, like, lumped it as SaaS, and, like, the stock got crushed, but they're so good at making money. And, like, I just think that's the reality. Like, I invested in, like, the Yahoo buyout, which has been, like, an incredible deal, right, financially, that Apollo did. And so, like, I just think there's all these ways. Like, these are big, old internet things that will continue to exist.
Jessica: Has it been, has Yahoo had an exit? Like, what makes it an incredible deal? Like-
Sam Lessin: 'Cause they sold off all the real estate, and they got it for free, and so you can make a lot of money. Like, and so it's just business.
Jessica: But have they made a lot of money, or have they-
Sam Lessin: Yes
Jessica: ... just-
Sam Lessin: No, they literally-
Jessica: Okay
Sam Lessin: ... returned a bunch of money, and, like, and, like, they're gonna really-
Jessica: Oh, that's interesting.
Sam Lessin: So, like, the basic point is that if you take out the tech people and their lattes and their $100 million comp packages, and you're like, "How about we just make a lot of money with this huge revenue stream?" There are these awesome bottom-feeding business organizations that can do it, and people have tried evergreen funds in tech for... People have tried this 15 times, but there are these operating groups that will just do it, and I think Bending Spoons is a great example of one.
Brit Morin: I'm agreeing with Bending Spoons. I just don't see why people are using Airtable in five years, like, and haven't gone full agentic.
Sam Lessin: 'Cause their fing- 'Cause they type A on their keyboard, and it autocompletes to airtable.com, and so they will keep using it. Like, why do people... Like, Yahoo is still fucking huge. Huge. Yahoo's huge. Like, why is Yahoo huge? It's-
Brit Morin: The people that use Airtable are not the same people that use Yahoo. Like, mass normies use Yahoo.
Sam Lessin: You'd be surprised.
Brit Morin: Okay, Yahoo Finance maybe. I know a lot about Yahoo. Like, there's a lot of mass normies that use Yahoo.
Sam Lessin: And there's a lot of mass normies who use Airtable.
Jessica: I occasionally use Yahoo Finance.
Brit Morin: All right. Well, I'll be the less on this one. You guys can be the more. Let's check in in five years.
Sam Lessin: What I will say that the, the basically 10X writedown from max Airtable value to now with all the dilution is brutal, right, is what I would say.
Dave Morin: Yeah. For sure.
Sam Lessin: And it does speak to the fact that it's good to be a seed investor. And again, this is-
Dave Morin: The next version of this is gonna be the lab writedowns.
Sam Lessin: Ooh, snap. Bending Spoons is buying OpenAI.
Jessica: Ooh, snap. The open source AI guy thinks the labs are getting written down. Say more, Dave.
Dave Morin: No, I mean, I think you have a similar dynamic playing out as the SaaS world in the 2010s, right? Like, the, in the 2010s when capital was cheap and Zerp was all just flooding the market with capital, you had an sort of infinite recursion loop creating SaaS startup after SaaS startup all throughout the 2010s, right? Now that is coming home to roost, and you've got the same thing going on. It's a different dynamic this time around. It's more the narrative capitalism thing that we've been talking about, but it's the same thing where everybody's trying to go get their bag and create an entire set of these lab companies which They're not all gonna work. We do need to do this important research, right? LLMs are only gonna carry us so far into AI, but all of these labs are not going to find product market fit and business value. Like, it's just not gonna happen.
Sam Lessin: All right. So Dave, here's the funny thing. One, it is narrative capitalism because the SaaS thing was a fucking narrative, right? The narrative is you acquire a user once, and they'll pay you forever, so it's an infinite LTV, and that was the narrative of the SaaS era, which collapsed.
Dave Morin: Okay, fair. The capital markets were different.
Sam Lessin: I'm not done. I'm not done. Here's the even fun part. Do you wanna be really mean? Can we be mean for a second?
Dave Morin: Oh, God.
Sam Lessin: It's the same in-
Jessica: Sam, what did you take?
Sam Lessin: It's the same, it's the same investors.
Dave Morin: Oh, interesting.
Sam Lessin: It's exactly the same cap tables.
Jessica: He's just so excited.
Sam Lessin: It's exactly the same people.
Jessica: And I don't know why.
Brit Morin: I know. He loves it. He loves it so much.
Sam Lessin: Like, literally it's the same cap table.
Dave Morin: That's a good point. I hadn't thought of it that way, but it's true.
Jessica: Okay. Guys, I wanna mention so- another... Quickly, we can end with SpaceX, but everyone's been paying attention, of course, to the lawsuit, Apple suing OpenAI about employees who've gone to OpenAI and allegedly taken trade secrets. And The Information had a great story this week, pointing out that one of the key issues is iCloud and its shitty syncing. So specifically, what's happening is that a- former Apple employees are still getting corporate documents synced to personal devices via iCloud, and I just think this is very interesting, and probably a broader example of the leakiness of information throughout Silicon Valley. But OpenAI is now saying, "These employees didn't even want to get the updated versions of these documents that were being synced to their iClouds." I thought this was funny. Maybe 'cause I've had some iCloud syncing issues, but what do you guys think?
Brit Morin: I feel like it's only getting crazier. Now we have, like, a million MCPs connected into stuff. Like, when a, an employee leaves an organization now, you don't just turn off their email. You have to turn off, like, all these connectors and all kinds of things that they might have had access to.
Dave Morin: I mean, it's even worse than that. It's like all of these new models can just hack everything, so, like, nothing's secure anymore. So, like, I I mean, it, it's like what is document security in 2026? It, like, doesn't exist.
Brit Morin: CSOs are freaked out everywhere.
Sam Lessin: I think both are almost certainly true in that I am sure that it is true that people lifted a bunch of IP out of Apple on their way to OpenAI. I am also 100% sure that it's the equivalent of, like, continuing to FedEx all your employees all your internal documents when they're no longer employees, and, like, Apple, like, it's so leaky. Right? So, like, both are true. Both are true. It's a great defense. I didn't even ask for this file.
Jessica: I believe OpenAI also responded to the lawsuit saying, "Your own employees at Apple reached out to their former colleagues for help understanding how some of these things worked," and you were, like, asking for documentat- like, them to look at documentation and act because they, like, forgot how things worked with the people gone now at OpenAI. And they showed some text messages that are actually pretty convincing of that.
Brit Morin: So you're leaning towards who to win this case?
Dave Morin: Well, that, that means they're being highly effective in their court case of public opinion here, right?
Jessica: Yeah. I actually have not engaged in the legal merits of either side, and I assume this sort of gets resolved and, you know, OpenAI launches its, like, HomePod AI Siri Alexa device, and I think this sort of gets resolved. But, like, yeah, it, it was sorta interesting. I don't know. I... Like, sometimes I turn on a new device, and all these little iCloud things come in and iCloud photos groups I've shared on and iCloud sync that I'm just like, "What is going on?" So apparently that is also an experience of former Apple-
Dave Morin: We could get into a technology discussion.
Sam Lessin: On the flip side, I need that because I don't think I remember my core Apple password anymore, so my only saving grace is I have, like, 10 Apple devices and just keep syncing them off each other.
Jessica: Not knowing your Apple password is pretty risky. Like, that, you should know that. That's, like, one of the only ones that-
Sam Lessin: I'm not thrilled about that, but it is true. If it weren't for my face ID, I could not get apps.
Brit Morin: Wait, can we talk about OpenAI's creator summit that they hosted?
Jessica: Oh, yes. Let's talk about OpenAI's creator summit. Brit, give us the lowdown. Set the scene.
Brit Morin: Sam might just take this. Would you like to take it, Sam?
Sam Lessin: You can set the scene, but, uh, my number one question is apparently they held a $2,000 a night resort thing on the East Coast. My number one question is what resort do I not know about that charges $2,000 a night on the East Coast, 'cause I'd like to attend.
Brit Morin: Wildflower Farms. It's in the Hudson Valley.
Jessica: Sam, I would like you to know that upon reading this article, I cut and pasted the name of the hotel and put it in my places to maybe take Sam for his birthday on the East Coast in future years folder.
Sam Lessin: Perfect.
Jessica: So rest assured- ... I am on this for you. Because I agree-
Sam Lessin: Thank you
Jessica: ... we have searched the East Coast far and wide for luxurious celebratory birthday excursions.
Sam Lessin: For places we can spend too much money per night.
Jessica: It can't be that good because I have done exhaustive research on ChatGPT on this topic, and this resort never popped up. So, but Brit, go ahead.
Brit Morin: Oh my God. First of all, I need to correct you. This resort is, like, classic. A lot of people talk about it. I am going there next year for a different event, and it's in Upstate New York. It's part of the O. Berge collection, blah, blah, blah. Fine. Okay. Here's the scene. So we all know AI has a branding problem, right? People hate AI. Most people are, like, not even using AI, and of course, OpenAI has its own branding problem, so they wanted to change this. So our friend, actually, Charles Porch, gathered a bunch of creators and influencers.
Dave Morin: This was an Instagram creator summit, but OpenAI version?
Brit Morin: Yes.
Sam Lessin: Wait, we love Charles. Don't use Charles' name. Leave Charles out of this.
Jessica: Sam, Charles is at the center of this. He has to be. We have to put him at the center of this.
Sam Lessin: I know. Of course he is, but we don't have to say his name. Like, just say a person.
Jessica: Of course we do.
Dave Morin: Yes, we do, Sam. This is OpenAI.
Sam Lessin: We like Charles.
Brit Morin: I'm not saying this is a bad move.
Jessica: Sam, Charles just did a Vanity Fair story about himself in this new role. We're good. We're good.
Brit Morin: By the way, I like Charles, okay? For the record.
Sam Lessin: I understand that it's obviously Charles. I was just saying we can skip-
Brit Morin: No, you call out people, we can call out people, Sam. Anyway, I understand why he wanted to do this. I get the brand is not doing well, specifically with the masses. Charles was hired at OpenAI from Instagram to, like, help build creator sort of love for OpenAI products, ChatGPT. They held a retreat in Upstate New York. Creators were posting their, like, wildflowers, and, like, nature baths and things like that, and then all the new AI things they were learning. And the internet got real mad. They just started, like-
Jessica: The internet got so mad. They were so-
Dave Morin: Really?
Brit Morin: So mad.
Jessica: So mad.
Dave Morin: Really? Wait, d- like, describe the nature of the mad.
Brit Morin: Just, like, taking down these influencers. "You AI people," like, "This isn't... AI sucks," just, like, a hating AI, you know? And like, "Why would you take money and go to this, like, $2,000 retreat when, like, the world is burning and AI is taking up all this compute, and it's tone-deaf?" All the different things. So anyway, it backfired on OpenAI.
Dave Morin: So a very much a Threads response.
Jessica: Kind of, actually, but more, more, like, a little bit, but, like, kind of nastier, to be honest.
Dave Morin: Was Twitter pissed about this? So this... Or, sorry, this was an Instagram... That sounds like an Instagram response to me.
Jessica: No, Twitter. I saw it all on Twitter.
Brit Morin: TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram, all social media. By the way, Sam Lessin, here on our podcast, hosted a similar creator retreat in San Francisco, not at a $2,000 a night hotel. And I think-
Sam Lessin: I did?
Brit Morin: ... the creators liked it. Yeah.
Sam Lessin: Oh, you're talking about my bot school?
Dave Morin: Yeah.
Sam Lessin: Bot school is the opposite of it.
Brit Morin: It's like-
Sam Lessin: This bot school was in, like, a dingy basement, and we taught them how to, like, use AI to, like, crush things. And we actually had them use Claude, not any OpenAI stuff. I think it was the opposite. It was, like, literally we got them, like, shitty bagels, and we, we t- we negged them and taught them how to use GitHub and DigitalOcean.
Brit Morin: Well, then the... I guess the moral of the story is take people to lesser-known places.
Dave Morin: Yeah, if they had done it that way, would it have been better? I guess they should've asked them to not be posting on Instagram.
Brit Morin: The whole point is that they're posting. That's, like, the whole point of the retreat. They're teaching them how to use AI. They want them to post about their experience with AI. They do, and then all their fans hate them.
Sam Lessin: I actually just would be curious what the curriculum was, 'cause I bet it wasn't that good. I think that's the real problem is, like, I can teach you a great how to be a creator and leverage these tools to make tons of money, and, like, build apps and stuff, and I just am not convinced that you can do that at a farm. I think you do that in a dungy basement, and teach people about DigitalOcean and GitHub and how to run an instance of Claude in the cloud.
Brit Morin: They were learning how to make websites and all kinds of things.
Dave Morin: The nuance here is that are you going to this event to learn how to use AI to make your creator business better, or are you going to this event because the AI company wants you to do influencer things about your company? Like, these are very different things.
Brit Morin: They were a sponsored post, so that's why it got shat on.
Jessica: And also, it's very in line. Like, this is... OpenAI bought TBPN to try not to, like, recreate a media company because of, with technology, but to basically, like, counteract just to have talking heads who are pro-AI.
Brit Morin: The moral of the story to me is the masses continue to hate AI. And like-
Jessica: Yeah, they do. And this is not gonna go away. This isn't something you throw a retreat at. Not that OpenAI would've assumed this retreat would have single-handedly changed the d- I'm sure they didn't do that, and at some point you, if you're gonna have a creator strategy, you have to start doing things with creators and give them some room. But this is a really, really tough one in terms of brand positioning. And you're gonna go into epic wealth generation, Anthropic IPO, which isn't gonna help the issue, and then same for OpenAI. So I don't know how you fix the image.
Brit Morin: I'm, like, trying to think about what should you do, okay? You're the head of Anthropic or OpenAI or anything that's trying to make the brand of AI better among the masses, especially Gen Z.
Sam Lessin: Don't even worry about it. Just do your thing. Just be honest.
Jessica: I think being honest is a really good approach.
Brit Morin: Well, be honest, but, like, I mean, I think you have to lean into all the ways that's, you know, drug development, saving lives.
Jessica: If you cure cancer, that will help. I think you try to cure cancer. I think that's what you do 'cause-
Brit Morin: Exactly
Jessica: ... like, that would be great. That would be awesome.
Dave Morin: I mean, that's pretty cynical, actually. That implies that there is no way to make the current form of AI universally useful to all the people of the world, and that everybody is moving on to try to cure cancer in order to get some redemption. It's like the same thing as, like, I made $100 billion, and now I'm gonna spend... I'm gonna do all this stuff for philanthropy to fix my brand. Like, that's the cynical take here is that everybody's moving on to-
Sam Lessin: What was the brand of dynamite? 'Cause, like, dynamite is super useful. You need dynamite. It also is pretty bad for wars. And then Nobel had to create the Nobel Prizes, so, like, isn't... Like, what's the dynamite history to learn?
Dave Morin: Nobel created dynamite, right?
Sam Lessin: Yeah, yeah, that's my point. Ultimately, the redemption was at... Or, like, for steel, Carnegie built a bunch of libraries. Like, you generally have a redemption work, but, like, the thing you do is disruptive, right? Like, what... You know, that's how it always works.
Jessica: It, it's a great question, Dave, and I think- I'm thinking about it because obviously I am a passionate user of AI and think it is useful. I think it comes back to what is AI. An AI search result in your Google search that appears like another Google search is very different, and I do think y- the population will obviously be using AI more and more. But I'm struck by, like... I'm just seeing, like, now, like, smart people I know telling me or posting on the internet, "We don't need AI." It's wild.
Sam Lessin: We don't need AI. We like AI.
Dave Morin: I think people are getting extremely sick of consuming AI slop in their workdays. You hear this refrain is really starting to kick up. "Do not send me work slop. I literally don't work with humans so that, like, the human can talk to the AI and then copy and paste what the AI said to me." There's like, those conversations are happening more and more and more, and, and I would actually say, like, just like people, as we used a lot of social media, people started to really have an intuition about their feed being influenced by this influence or that influence or... People started to get more smart about it. Like, it seems like that's also what's going on here, which is that the work slop isn't actually adding enough value to our daily lives, and people are just getting sick of reading the AI rather than, you know, what another human wrote. And so there's, like, this undercurrent of that going on, too, I think, which is much more simple than agents or any of the really sophisticated stuff that we talk about all the time.
Jessica: I'm gonna move us to our last topic because we've done a nice job of not going all AI, but I also think, and we can't forget, David, like, AI is just being demonized as, like, the source of every political problem in America and wealth inequal- Like, so there's that as, in addition to, like, what you're saying. But will OpenAI perhaps have your next creator summit, I don't know, online, virtually?
Sam Lessin: In a basement.
Jessica: I don't know. We'll... In a basement.
Brit Morin: And don't-
Jessica: In a bunker
Brit Morin: ... and don't ask them to post.
Jessica: And don't, yeah. That would-
Dave Morin: Sam's happy to host it for you, Charles.
Jessica: Um-
Sam Lessin: Aw, Charles and I do different styles of work.
Jessica: That, Sam will be on the last people C- Charles would turn to, but... Guys, the SpaceX lockup is upon us. Let's see. By the time this posts... Yeah.
Sam Lessin: So I will tell you, I'm getting SpaceX shares out of the woodworks.
Jessica: Some will be free by the time you listen to this pod. Yes, Sam, go lick the cookie. Do what you gotta do.
Sam Lessin: I'm learning about all these extra SpaceX shares I have from random funds. Everyone had SpaceX.
Jessica: Okay. Th- that's not really helpful to this conversation. But, um, guys, it's not going so well. They keep spending more money, which keeps taking the stock price, or saying they're spending more money, and the shares have been drop, drop, dropping.
Sam Lessin: They're fine. They're doing exactly what you expected them to do.
Dave Morin: Yeah, like, the curve looks identical to what I think anybody would expect.
Jessica: People expected them to be below-ish their IPO price. I don't know exactly where it is as of the taping.
Brit Morin: I think their IPO price was also just too high. Th- they're just getting back to normalcy.
Jessica: Is this what we should expect with Anthropic and OpenAI?
Dave Morin: Yes.
Sam Lessin: Probably.
Jessica: Guys, we have some big proclamations here, yes.
Sam Lessin: Why would number go up? Like, this is like, you know what it is? It reminds me of, like, the Bill Gurley thing. You know how Bill Gurley always likes to talk about how bankers rob startups because they under, they, for the pop and ba, ba, ba, ba, ba?
Jessica: Yes. His direct listing that did not take off, but yes.
Sam Lessin: Blah, blah, blah. It's silly, but the point is that, like, this is just, like, the opposite of it, which if you're Elon, you're gonna price to perfection 'cause you can. You're gonna, like, get the headline number, the trillion number you wanted. You get a bunch of money for the company, I guess, or the, at a high price, and then who cares what the stock trades within reason? It's fine. He got everything he wanted. He bailed out his xAI people. He bailed out his Twitter people. He bailed everyone out, right? So Elon gets to be the guy who makes everyone money. And if you're a SpaceX shareholder, you're like, "Whatever." You kinda got robbed on a few things, but number big.
Jessica: Well, what if you're a SpaceX shareholder who, like, bought on day two and is now down 33%?
Sam Lessin: Well, that was a very silly thing to do. Like, like, that was, like, that was, that was a silly thing to do. Honestly, those people who bought on day two are Elon cult boys.
Jessica: Yeah.
Sam Lessin: And they'll be fine because, like, eventually he'll figure out a way to make number go up for them because that's the cults until it's not, right?
Jessica: Yeah.
Dave Morin: The one-liner was that they have now moved, what, they've moved up one year their $1 trillion revenue number. That was the kind of funny Elon quote from the earnings call, that things are going so well that they're going to hit 1 trillion one year early.
Jessica: I know how you do that. You buy another company that has a lot of revenue. That's how you do that.
Sam Lessin: That's exactly right, and that's how he gets his comp package, too.
Brit Morin: It starts with a T and ends with an Esla. Wait. Segway, Elon Segway breaking news. Nikita, head of product at X, Elon's company, is leaving.
Dave Morin: What?
Sam Lessin: I saw that.
Brit Morin: To start a new product.
Dave Morin: Oh, that's sad.
Sam Lessin: I saw that on TBPN.
Jessica: You guys just gave him so many props last week. He got all the flowers.
Brit Morin: What's gonna happen to X, you guys? What's gonna happen?
Jessica: What's Nikita gonna do? I haven't even seen this news.
Sam Lessin: Good for Nikita.
Brit Morin: Listen to this. Nikita says, "In the last 400 days, we built almost every aspect of X, the timeline, Android app, onboarding, notifications, chat, and more. We launched 30 new products," and they also rose by, like, 70 spots in the App Store from this time last year. So, I mean, he did turn it around.
Dave Morin: He did a great job.
Jessica: This was our whole convo last week. Y- X is kicking.
Brit Morin: But-
Jessica: X is alive and kicking
Brit Morin: ... I know, but maybe it's not anymore
Jessica: ... culturally.
Brit Morin: But he didn't name a successor.
Dave Morin: Because there doesn't need to be one.
Brit Morin: Maybe there does.
Jessica: Gwen Shotwell.
Sam Lessin: I think Nikita played this brilliantly, personally. Like, from a personal perspective. And I give him props for getting out and doing what he did. It's like, look, I think it's a brutal place to work. I think he worked unbelievably hard, if you looked at the, how he tweeted the whole, through the whole period.
Jessica: Totally.
Brit Morin: Yeah. It's gotta be brutal.
Sam Lessin: The guy probably had about 400 days of focus in him on this, and he's built his brand ridiculously, and he probably got a shitload of stock on... So good for him. In and out, make it happen, do the interesting stuff, and let someone else garden it. Either that or he really did go over the line when he started making fun of Mark a bunch. I don't actually know. That could be the other part of it.
Brit Morin: He's gonna be an advisor going forward, so.
Jessica: I don't think you get pushed out of an Elon company for making fun of someone.
Sam Lessin: I think that's almost certainly true.
Jessica: I think it, if anything, it probably gives you a promotion, so. Yeah, I mean, that wasn't out of character, Sam. Those were classic Nikita trolls.
Sam Lessin: I know. It was, that was a little cringey. The stuff where he, like, kept banning spammers who were, like, interacting with him was very funny, though. He's very good at media.
Jessica: Okay. Maybe he's starting a media company. Morins, bring a, give us something to look for. Have you guys seen The Odyssey? Like, what's-
Sam Lessin: No
Jessica: ... going on in your lives? We're almost back to school. What's happening?
Brit Morin: Travis Kelce is back on the field. Fall training has kicked off. That means the NFL is around the corner. Very much looking forward to it. I'm in, like, a sports drought right now between World Cup and NFL season, so.
Jessica: I know. I, it's, I'm also between Wimbledon and the US Open. It's very, very tough period, so.
Brit Morin: Yeah, it's sad right now.
Jessica: I understand, yeah.
Brit Morin: Yeah.
Jessica: Guys, I have one rant. I just have decided this pod is a good place to rant. Last week I ranted about people who invite themselves to your-
Sam Lessin: You just decided that?
Jessica: conferences via their EAs months before they're actually invited. Maybe the Morins can help me with this, because Sam and I experience a lot of wonderful things together that we capture in photos, and my problem is Sam posts the 20 person IG carousel of these events while we're at the event before I get a chance to. We're doing something fun that we wanna remember, we wanna share with our friends, and this man is so trigger-fast to posting, it leaves me with very little to share. I really wanna know, like, what is the right etiquette here? Like, I- But, Jess-
Brit Morin: You're playing the-
Jessica: Yeah
Brit Morin: ... you're, you're playing it right. You need to show up in other people's Instagrams, not post on your own. Way, way more powerful move.
Jessica: Well, no, they're of our children, mostly. I'm, like, an ancillary holding something. Occasionally.
Brit Morin: I think you and Sam need to have a strategic content conversation, content strategy, about, like, which topic areas does Sam get to own, and which topic areas does Jess get to own, and you stay in your lanes. Can't cross-post about the same thing. You gotta diversify.
Jessica: But, or can we collab? Do couples collab, or is that not, is that too weird?
Brit Morin: I know Dave is reposting so much on Instagram. Like, the, I don't repost. I don't know if you guys do this on Instagram, like in the feed itself. Everything I'm looking at, Dave is reposting.
Jessica: I've been experimenting. I just wonder, and, a- and the, it's possible no one feels my pain here, 'cause this is a very particular situation, right?
Sam Lessin: I just normcore it. I just think you post the things that you see, you know?
Jessica: Yeah. Sam's totally normcore-ing it. So I just post what I wanna post, you post what I wanna post, and our mutual followers get the same thing, and they get it from me two days later.
Brit Morin: I do, I do get a little duplicate it of you guys.
Jessica: It depends on who your audience is. Like, this is an audience problem, and this comes down to classic problems that we dealt with at Facebook and Path, and all throughout over the years. Like, it's a classic audience problem. It depends on, Sam, you've got, I think if I remember correctly, like, a really narrow Instagram audience that's, like, mostly real friends.
Brit Morin: We have the same Instagram audience. I just think if you're doing another version of etiquette school...
Jessica: It's like Britt has an enormous Instagram audience, and so, like, she's got a totally different problem set.
Brit Morin: I wouldn't say it's enormous. I'm definitely a micro-influencer.
Jessica: I think this should come up in etiquette school.
Sam Lessin: My favorite audience I have is my Threads audience, which I don't know how this happened, but is, like, raving left wing people. And so anything I post, they get so mad about. I don't know how I acquired this audience.
Jessica: You've talked about this before.
Brit Morin: My favorite audience is my Pinterest audience. I've got middle American moms.
Jessica: Why have you relocated? Did it get breezy bayside?
Sam Lessin: I'm just done, so I moved, 'cause I think we're about to end, right?
Jessica: So you're literally walking off this pod. That is your level of interest in it. Okay. You just got.
Sam Lessin: No, no. I brought you with me.
Jessica: Well, I think with that, should we preview next week for the dear listeners and have them have something to look forward to? Sam, take it away. It can be a surprise, but...
Sam Lessin: So I can't exactly preview it, 'cause my other phone that I was buying things on died, but somehow these silly people have decided that I'm gonna do this pod alone. And so I have assembled six of the world's premier investors, and we're gonna do a Sam and Friends episode, and who knows what's gonna happen. But I've got basically the founders of some of the best VC firms.
Jessica: Sam, you're cutting in and out. Say it again.
Sam Lessin: I've got amazing people. It's Sam and Friends next week.
Brit Morin: Six seems like too many people. That's-
Sam Lessin: Well, you know what? You're not here, so I get to do what I want.
Brit Morin: Okay. I would, I would advise you to cut it to three.
Sam Lessin: Nope.
Brit Morin: Fair.
Jessica: Basically, uh, the, the three of us have other commitments. We thought Sam should monologue for an hour, but then we also thought he should just phone a friend for an hour. So get ready. Next week.
Sam Lessin: There was a great SNL skit where it was like, it was like the McLaughlin Report where the moderator would, like, ask a question and someone would monologue an answer, and then he would just say, "Wrong," and then just give his answer to every question. That's basically what I'm gonna do.
Jessica: I mean, you do that already. But we don't put up with your shit, so. Okay, dear listeners. We appreciate you. We hope you found this interesting. Sam and Friends will see you next week for another episode of More or Less. Bye. Bye.
Brit Morin: Bye.
Jessica: See you guys later.
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 @britt. See you guys next time.