Intern @theinformation. GP @slow. Fmr VP Product FB. co-founder dropio & fin. Seed investor solana, venmo, openphone, teamshares, sublime. https://nitter.gq/t.co/N6JqjBvF1o ¶.
San Francisco, CA
Joined March 2007
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A bunch of people have written me back saying this was the best newsletter I have ever sent (flattering) ... so here it is for those who don't subscribe: AI Is Not a Labor Crisis. It Is a Meaning Crisis.
"so you are telling me there used to have to be a piece of wire to everywhere you would want to make a phone call?" (lion, 9 - incredulous)
GS elevator running two months behind me ;)
nitter.gq/lessin/status/20971753…
The real currency of 'agents' is trust... but it will take a while for north bay to figure out the reality of 'agenting' that LA has understood intuitively for a long time.
Thank you @JonathanVanian and @CNBC for including Dazzle in your piece on the importance of humans in the loop for AI personal assistants!
Because Dazzle’s context is built from photos, we lean heavily into taste and visual nuance. Multimodal AI is incredible at this, but commerce (especially around soft goods) frequently benefits from human discernment to bridge the gap between intent and catalog data.
One of Dazzle's investors, @lessin, previously ran Fin. He often points out how quickly customer trust evaporates if someone orders red shoes and green ones show up.
Two recent examples from my personal shopping that highlight why agentic commerce sometimes benefits from human insight/intervention:
• A silver geodesic dome tent: The finish options were "Clear," "Mirrored Clear," and "Mirrored Smoke." The model selected Clear, but cross-referencing my style photos I actually wanted Mirrored Clear. Our concierge team caught this before placing the order.
• My daughter's group Halloween costume: The chosen black t-shirt was part of a two-pack that was sold out in my daughter's size until mid-November. The agent correctly flagged the "out of stock" and offered alternatives, but our human concierge realized the same shirt was bundled in a different two-pack as well and got it here on time.
Autonomous agents are advancing rapidly, but when personal taste and high expectations intersect, having human diligence in the loop ensures our users get the precision and care they deserve.
Also, Dazzle's human concierges rock! Thanks, team! @itsdazzleai
Not my fastest marathon, but super fun one in NYC (and hard!) ... bot analysis post race ... pretty good.
This is what it looks like / is supposed to look like having a balance sheet to cover damages. Labs take note.
I skip one episode for an AGM and Bing Gordon walks in and says the quiet parts out loud.
This week on More or Less, Dave and Brit grill the guy credited with inventing Amazon Prime on when products start gaming their users. The highlights:
— Facebook never measured friendship on the server. The money was clicks, so friendship was never the metric. That is the entire history of social media in one sentence, and nobody wants to say it.
— "Friction is what makes pearls." The AI-era delusion is that removing all friction is good. If 10 other people are running the same prompt as you, zero friction means zero edge.
— A founder who loses the board two meetings in a row gets replaced — "if the board can." Bad board meetings are to CEOs what junk-strewn floors are to factories. Argue with that one, I dare you.
— On autonomous driving: everyone agrees machines must be 10x safer than humans before we trust them. Nobody can explain where the number came from.
Also he runs family board meetings with business cards for his kids. Might steal it.
🎧 Full episode: podcasters.spotify.com/pod/s…
All episodes + transcripts: moreorlesspod.com/episodes/
Chat with the show's AI twin: molchat.ai
The most important book right now for understanding company building in the age of AI is about an agent... a hollywood one... Ari Emanuel's book ('roll the calls') -- there are TWO key lessons from it (one simple, one a bit more nuanced but even more important...)
The two:
First - the easy but important point... it is all sales right now as software commodifies, and the real lesson of first half of the book is simple -- as software commodifies and everything is just sales, if you get a 'no' call the next day... over and over and over... be relentless and keep asking til you get the answer you want. This mentality has historically not been in software / tech CEO DNA, but as the leverage of being 'unique genius' gets destroyed by arms-dealing AI / commodification of expertise (and certainly software) -- the winners are storytellers and salespeople.
Second - the more intellectual but even more important point - WHAT AGENTING REALLY IS? Why does anyone pay an agent... for trust / the relationship. What do agents do? Whatever the clients need / everything - not one thing. Why this matters? it totally changes business building. In a world where tech is 'hard' being a leader is figuring something out about the universe, building an advantage around that competency, and doubling down over and over on your 'advantage' in providing something specific. No more... whether for consumers or for companies...
if you are a 'business' in an agentic world, your asset it TRUST of your client, and you do as much for them as you can / anything (also send them random gifts). Your job is to get in the door, become trusted, and then pick up more and more business doing whatever the customer needs. This means the mission is SERVICE not PRODUCT or MISSION. The asset is the 'relationship' ... and the winners do everything they can for their clients.
If you are building a modern business right now - this reality changes everything from how tech companies were built over the last 20 years or so... mission is less important, top-down vision is less important, instead what matters is sales, clients, and being flexible with 'free to develop' software and services to SOLVE problems for your actual specific customers.
It this GOOD for most (startup) business... probably not.
Agents get fired all the time, there is less enterprise value in what they build, etc... also per Ari's book, in the agenting world, scale is everything -- but from a technological deterministic perspecitve... this is where we are going, and founders that understand that (relenteless sales, how do i get in the door with something and build trust, and then what I 'do' is everything ... will be the RELATIVE winners)...
Any firm not scaling their security spend at the same rate as their AI spend... is missing the moment.
Is does AI face the same problem as Oil Dependent Development?
Once you know a business can be bought and optimized (and everyone knows it), then the price goes up even before you 'drill', and the theoretical margin from drilling becumes a liability vs. asset.
Fish, Lumber, and Parking were the major themes of Slow AGM this week... minors in lawfare and admittedly some chips, but i give us points for being sufficiently off theme ✅
second coolest website ... 🙌 -- seems as good a metric as any in this environment.
the most important metric for any VC is obviously how cool their website looks
so here are the top 10 VC websites:
1. paradigm.xyz (@paradigm)
2. slow.co (@slow)
3. blueyard.com (@blueyard)
4. airstreet.com (@airstreet)
5. 8vc.com (@8vc)
6. southparkcommons.com (@spc)
7. betaworks.com (@betaworks)
8. benchmark.com (@benchmark)
9. pillar.vc (@pillar_vc)
10. hummingbird.vc (@HummingbirdVC)
honourable mention to @BeginVC, because it's our ranking and we're obviously the most objective judges in the world
who did we miss?
sam lessin 🏴☠️ retweeted
the most important metric for any VC is obviously how cool their website looks
so here are the top 10 VC websites:
1. paradigm.xyz (@paradigm)
2. slow.co (@slow)
3. blueyard.com (@blueyard)
4. airstreet.com (@airstreet)
5. 8vc.com (@8vc)
6. southparkcommons.com (@spc)
7. betaworks.com (@betaworks)
8. benchmark.com (@benchmark)
9. pillar.vc (@pillar_vc)
10. hummingbird.vc (@HummingbirdVC)
honourable mention to @BeginVC, because it's our ranking and we're obviously the most objective judges in the world
who did we miss?
btw, why don't people make truly edible/ high protein crayons. i would love to eat those... and so would kids.
Only 250 ppl spending $10M+ is wild & this is the Anthropic bull case succinctly put. It doesn't matter if margins come down / are thin, basically no one is actually using AI yet, and everyone will.
Huge riverside fan and heavy user ... excited to try this
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