More or Less · Topics · Episode #165
The List Racket — and How Benioff Is Still Everywhere After 40 Years
Clip from the full recording, 43:38–49:38 · download mp4 · watch at this point on YouTube
Slow Ventures ranked #99 of 100 on a unicorn list and Sam has never been happier: 'You are the worst pirate I've ever heard of.' Jessica explains how the Davos list economy actually works, and the table puzzles over Benioff's four-decade omnipresence.
Sam brings the week’s funniest artifact: a ranking of venture firms by unicorn count where Slow Ventures comes in at #99 of 100 ranked firms. He’s thrilled, quoting Pirates of the Caribbean — “you are the worst pirate I’ve ever heard of / ah, but you have heard of me” — and running the value math: Sequoia does all that work to be only five times better on the metric. Time’s AI 100 excluding Jensen Huang proves Sam’s theory that these lists are click-optimization queries, not judgment. Jessica then burns the whole genre down with reporting: in Davos she watched friends sprint to the Time party because sponsorship and attendance literally determine list placement. Brit adds that 95% of list entries have a PR person who pitched them. Dave’s founder PSA: if a list is driving your priorities, you’re thinking about the wrong things — get more customers.
The segment pivots on Benioff, who owns Time, and becomes an appreciation of staying power: forty years in, living in Hawaii, and still omnipresent. Dave’s answer is simply “CRM matters” — sales infrastructure compounds. Jessica credits deliberate stakes-awareness in the AI era. Sam’s read is the most interesting: Benioff isn’t a technologist, he’s arguably the greatest enterprise salesman ever — the (possibly apocryphal) origin story being that early Salesforce sold ‘cloud CRM platform’ while shipping unintegrated one-off builds, pure sales tactics. And unlike the founders who never sell a share, Benioff has sold stock every day of his life and taken the internet’s abuse for it — a genuinely different beast who still cares at his age. Sam’s honest coda: “I’m not sure I’ll be caring when I’m his age.”
Key points
- Slow Ventures: #99 of 100 on the unicorn-count ranking. Sam's response: best position on the list — the Jack Sparrow principle.
- Sam's value-investing read: Sequoia does 5x the work to be 5x better on a vanity metric. Not worth it.
- How lists actually work, per Jessica's Davos reporting: sponsor the party, attend the party, make the list. Brit: 95% of entries have a PR person who pitched.
- Time excluding Jensen from its AI list is click optimization working exactly as designed, per Sam.
- Dave's founder PSA: if lists drive your priorities, you're optimizing the wrong thing. Get more customers.
- The Benioff puzzle: 40 years, lives in Hawaii, still omnipresent. Dave: because CRM matters. Sam: because he's the greatest salesman in enterprise history — and the rare founder who sells stock constantly and stays in the game anyway.
Where they landed
Quotes
“It's the classic Jack Sparrow: you are the worst pirate I've ever heard of. Ah — but you have heard of me.”— Sam
“They're like, if I don't follow this, this, this — and we're a sponsor of this — I won't be on the list. That's how the lists work.”— Jess
“If you're a founder out there listening to this, you should not worry about this for even one second. It's a complete fucking waste of your time. Get more customers.”— Dave
Suggested tweets
Slow Ventures ranked #99 of 100 VC firms by unicorn count. Sam Lessin: “You are the worst pirate I've ever heard of.” — “Ah, but you have heard of me.”
Tweet this →How tech lists actually work, from someone who watched it at Davos: sponsor the party, attend the party, make the list.
Tweet this →“Sequoia is only five times better than us, and look how much work they do.” — Sam Lessin's unicorn-list value investing
Tweet this →All topics · Full episode #165 + transcript · Subscribe on YouTube · Spotify