More or Less · Topics · Episode #167
Instinct at $10B Two Weeks After $2.5B: 'Everyone's Trading, No One's Investing'
Clip from the full recording, 31:28–37:19 · download mp4 · watch at this point on YouTube
Instinct — a text-message agent with ~100K users — goes from $2.5B to a reported $10B ask in two weeks. Brit says the numbers are fake, Dave says it's unhealthy, and Sam delivers the line of the episode about the whole cycle.
The information reported Instinct (text-message-based agent; Koto, Sequoia and Benchmark circling) is raising at $10B — two weeks after its first round at $2.5B, with roughly a hundred thousand reported users. Brit, who actually uses and likes the product, says the quiet part: ‘these numbers are fake’ — it’s an out-of-compute negotiation, not a valuation. Dave can’t get past the health of it: ‘how do you actually build a business that’s worth $10 billion?’ — and notes even the buyers of these rounds are traders. Sam’s frame becomes the episode thesis: ‘everyone’s trading and no one’s investing.’ He’s still buying at zero and holding — which by current Valley math makes him ‘currently wrong, betting I become right’ — while the ecosystem plays secure-bag-get-liquid. The nostalgia hits: Instagram’s ‘shocking’ $1B, Flickr’s $20M, Summize — and Sam’s structural point that unprecedented private liquidity (Bending Spoons buying at a tenth of private prices as the liquidity provider of last resort) is what actually changed. His close: this makes the dot-com bubble look quaint, the railroads and WorldCom all went bankrupt, and the only honest bull case anyone gives him is asymmetric weirdness — ‘pretty loose analysis.’
Key points
- Instinct: first round at $2.5B, reportedly seeking $10B two weeks later with ~100K users; Koto, Sequoia, Benchmark in the mix.
- Brit (a user and fan): the numbers are fake — it's an out-of-compute term negotiation, and someone should mark up the $150M-ARR billboard company too.
- Dave: hyper-marking rounds is unhealthy for the company itself, and even the cap-table buyers are traders now.
- Sam's episode thesis: 'everyone's trading and no one's investing' — seed-buy-and-hold is 'currently wrong' by ecosystem math, and he knows it.
- The liquidity story is the real change: Bending Spoons buys at ~1/10th of private prices as liquidity provider; deep secondary demand props everything.
- Sam's history check: railroads and WorldCom all went bankrupt in their cycles — 'this makes the dot-com bubble look quaint.'
Where they landed
Quotes
“The really interesting thing is just everyone's trading and no one's investing.”— Sam
“That's only because they're out of compute. These numbers are fake.”— Brit
“I am currently wrong, and I'm betting I become right. But I could stay wrong for a long time.”— Sam
“This makes the dot-com bubble look quaint... the railroads all went bankrupt, WorldCom went bankrupt. I think this time is not different. But there's a lot of money to be made on the trade.”— Sam
“It's not about not being diluted, it's about how do you actually build a business that's worth 10 billion dollars?”— Dave
Suggested tweets
Instinct: $2.5B round, then a reported $10B ask two weeks later, on ~100K users. Brit Morin — who likes the product: 'These numbers are fake.'
Tweet this →'Everyone's trading and no one's investing.' — Sam Lessin's one-line diagnosis of the 2026 AI market
Tweet this →Sam Lessin, on staying a buy-and-hold seed investor in the flip era: 'I am currently wrong, and I'm betting I become right. But I could stay wrong for a long time.'
Tweet this →All topics · Full episode #167 + transcript · Subscribe on YouTube · Spotify