More or Less

Bing Gordon co-founded Electronic Arts, spent 18 years at Kleiner Perkins, sat on Amazon's board for 15 and is credited by John Doerr and Jeff Wilke with the idea for Prime. He also sat on Zynga's board, which is why it lands when he says players felt relief when they quit Farmville while retention and revenue were still climbing. So where's the line between good game design and gaming your users? Bing's answer takes in TikTok doom scrolling, WhatsApp as the rare product nobody complains about overusing, the sponsored products Amazon still shows Prime members, and ChatGPT ending every answer with one more question. Then Dave asks what the whole agent era keeps circling: what gets worse if your AI wins for you? Friction is what makes pearls, says Bing, and the next frictions will come from edge conditions nobody tested. Plus the wow/WTF scale he used to judge EA's Hall of Fame games, and the bet-your-job letter he kept in a drawer.

Everybody Wins by Bing Gordon and Chloe Gordon: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/797436/everybody-wins-by-bing-gordon-and-chloe-gordon/

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:02 No Lessins This Week: Brit and Dave Bring In Bing Gordon

02:42 Amazon's Board, Prime, and 18 Years at Kleiner Perkins

05:03 Disneyland Inside the Computer

06:51 The Classroom Question That Led to Electronic Arts

09:44 Raising $2M in 1982, Then Atari Collapsed

10:56 Vision, and Why People Think You're Stupid

11:37 Bathroom OKRs and Why Goals Beat Perfection

13:13 Word of Mouth, and Why Coin-Operated Hires Leave

14:44 "Can a Computer Make You Cry?" and Hiring on Mission

16:53 Why Games Retain: Where Everybody Knows Your Name

17:34 Which Social Network Did It Best?

18:36 LinkedIn Endorsements and Getting People to Come Back

20:19 Farmville: Players Felt Relief When They Quit

21:18 Growth Hacking Is Human Growth Hormone

23:04 Amazon, TikTok, ChatGPT: Who's Gaming Their Users Today?

24:21 What Gets Worse If Your AI Agent Wins for You?

25:03 Friction Is What Makes Pearls

26:30 Hugging Face, Cruise, and the Edge Conditions Nobody Tests

29:04 Writing Everybody Wins With His Daughter Chloe

32:19 The Visionary and the Operator

33:20 The Wow/WTF Scale, and How to Manufacture a Wow

36:08 Wow Moments in Games, Facebook, Instagram and Amazon

38:42 Creating Wow Moments as a Parent

41:28 The Bet Your Job Moment

42:23 You Only Got Fired for Blaming Someone Else

43:19 Good Risk vs Bad Risk

43:53 Invest and Express: Twitch, Chat, and Kids' Art on the Wall

45:59 Dave's Favorite Bing-ism: The Airplane Aisle Test

47:30 The Best Retention Hack Ever Made Is a Wedding Ring

48:01 Session Economics, Novelty, and Leveling Up

51:51 How to Gamify a Board Meeting

54:03 Why a Founder Who Loses the Board Twice Gets Replaced

55:23 Family Board Meetings and the Vice President of Fun

56:17 Lightning Round: Books, Heroes, Best Investment

58:41 Bing's P(doom): Boomers Are Gonna Doom

59:36 The Three Things That Make a Good Day

1:01:59 Dave's iPhone Duo Verdict

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Connect with our guest: Bing Gordon, author of Everybody Wins (with Chloe Gordon), available everywhere including Amazon. Bing narrated the audiobook.

X: https://x.com/bingfish

Connect with us here:

1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin

2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin

3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin

4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.

Elon tells investors on an earnings call that SpaceX and Tesla should merge, and Sam has a theory he says nobody else has floated: there's an enormous SpaceX lockup cliff coming in the spring, and folding Tesla's retail shareholders into the denominator makes all that supply far easier to absorb. Dave thinks the rocket powered car demo was timed to justify the deal, Sam thinks two engineers got told to bolt rockets onto a car and it will never ship, and 83% of respondents in the Information's new Polls app say it's mostly about Musk control. Then OpenAI finds a web-wide PHP vulnerability and Sam's conclusion is blunt: all your regional banks will be hacked, the labs are centralizing profits while externalizing the risk, and they should be carrying hundred billion dollar insurance policies. Plus Google quietly telling Jess she's liable for everything her agents do, Netflix's content shakeup, Dave's theory of priority slop, and Brit's second week with no back pain.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:04 Dave's Back, and the Nasal Rinse Discourse

02:06 OpenAI Finds a Web-Wide PHP Vulnerability

03:12 Sam: All Your Regional Banks Will Be Hacked

04:16 The Zero Days the Labs Are Quietly Sitting On

04:56 Dave on the Gap Between Frontier Models and the Public Ones

06:29 Why Labs Should Ban Their Own Teams From the Frontier

07:17 Pearl, Coinbase, and Bitcoin as a Byproduct of Compute

08:32 Can You Even Build a Cybersecurity Company in 2026

09:16 Cold Storage: Your Documents in a Mine Near the North Pole

10:22 Sam: The Labs Need $100 Billion Liability Policies

11:30 Google Says You're Liable for Everything Your Agents Do

13:55 How Many Teslas Have the Morins Owned?

15:05 Sam's Mazda Dealership Is Living in the Future

16:32 The Two Futures of Car Buying

17:14 SpaceX and Tesla Are Going to Merge

18:01 The Rocket Car Demo Was a Stunt to Justify the Deal

19:24 Elon Doesn't Control Tesla, and That's the Point

21:09 Why the Merger Needs a Narrative

22:25 The Information Launches Polls: 83% Say It's About Control

23:09 Sam's Lockup Theory That Nobody Else Has Said

25:36 Will Shareholders Approve It, and the SXSI Joke

27:29 Brit: Teslas Are Becoming Entertainment Vehicles

28:17 Dave on the Cyber Cab Experience

30:12 Jess's Enthusiasm Falls Back to Earth, and the Waymo Bug

32:33 Netflix: Content Shakeup and What They Should Actually Make

35:32 Dave's Viral Take: Content Slop vs Priority Slop

38:05 Sam Let His Bot Write the Entire AGM Deck

39:28 Dave's Broadsheet Newspaper for Offline

40:19 Internships for Teenagers, Run by Bots

41:30 Meta's New Voting Stock and the End of Capitalism

42:08 The Wealth Tax Debate

44:36 The Elizabeth Holmes Movie and the Surprise Q&A

49:28 Peptide Check-In, and a Necessary Disclaimer

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Connect with us here:

1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin

2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin

3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin

4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.

Jess went full send on Muse and reports that about 70% of the use cases she was excited about have stopped working, because the internet is fighting back: Good Eggs now wants her to check out in the app, her kid's school portal refuses the login, and JP Morgan and Amazon are blocking agents outright. Dave's version is worse. Instinct booked a dinner reservation in LA instead of San Francisco, and he's out. Sam has seen this exact movie, because he and Andrew Kortina ran Fin ten years ago and shut it down once they worked out you become liable for every provider down the chain with no margin to cover your own mistakes. His call now is the death of the web, plus APIs that negotiate access back and forth like Hollywood agents. Meanwhile Anthropic is meeting investors behind closed doors while they tape, the market is getting hammered, and Brit's three years of hip pain vanished in six days on peptides, which Sam insists is placebo.

Interested in peptides? More or Less listeners 50% off their first month at NoHo Labs. Use code: MOREORLESSVIP on https://noholabs.com/

Timestamps:

01:09 Jess Is Back, Dave's Birthday, and the October Cold

03:04 Nasal Rinses and Fall Immunity

04:02 Brit's Peptide Results: Three Years of Pain Gone in Six Days

06:43 Anthropic Is Meeting Investors While We Tape

07:34 The Market Is Getting Hammered: VIX, Private Credit, Apollo

08:16 Infrastructure IPOs Stall and Nvidia Becomes the Last Investor

10:01 Slowing Revenue, CFOs Cracking Down, Tokens Moving to Open Models

10:36 Sam: Would You Rather Be Rich or Right?

11:11 The Models Are a Commodity and There Is No Lock-In

12:15 Brit Won't Give Muse Her Whole Computer

13:41 Why Sam Trusts Meta More Than OpenAI or Anthropic

15:16 Jess: 70% of My Muse Use Cases Don't Work Anymore

16:54 Dave: Instinct Booked the Restaurant in the Wrong City

18:18 Sam on Fin, the Assistant Company He Ran Ten Years Ago

20:30 Why the Economics of Mistakes Break Agent Services

22:31 Sam: What's Inevitable Is the Death of the Web

23:09 APIs as Constant Negotiation, and Agents With Reputations

24:51 Agent Credit Scores: FICO for Bots

25:56 Amazon's Rufus Still Works, and Other Branding Crimes

27:13 The Seesaw: Built Up and Torn Down Intraday

28:41 Gen Z Media, Muse Memes, and Punk Rock by Another Name

32:53 Is the Punk Rock Thing Just Marketing?

34:37 Every Company Now Needs a Gen Z Meme Lord

36:14 The Truth Subculture and Who Actually Pays for It

37:32 Jess Is Interviewing Barry Weiss at WTF

40:20 Bumble Goes Private at $1.3B

43:07 Dave on Seven Years of Hinge and Why Dating Is So Hard

46:41 Apple's Home Hub and Keeping Screens Away From Kids

49:04 Everyone Is Going to See the Elizabeth Holmes Movie

We're also on:

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Connect with us here:

1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin

2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin

3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin

4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.

Meta and Microsoft, two of Anthropic's biggest enterprise customers, have roughly halved their Claude usage, and both are running their own models instead. Dave's diagnosis is the one nobody else is making: Claude was over-tuned for parasocial relationships, people got into something unhealthy with it, and organizations are now quietly backing away. Sam is blunter about the business. He runs Claude as infrastructure, but switching off would be a one line change he'd never think about twice. Then it gets strange: a dinner where only the lab researchers raised their hands when asked if one company will be left standing, a lab that believes the machine god will go back in time and simulate hell for anyone who didn't build it, and Sam's case that Silicon Valley caught zero-and-infinity thinking from crypto and broke its own spreadsheets. Plus Hilton's website trapping Sam's agent in a doom loop, and Dave and Sam inventing the Agent Treaty Framework on air. Jess is at an offsite, so it's three VCs and no journalist.

In this episode:

- Why two of Anthropic's largest customers cut their Claude usage in half, weeks before the IPO

- Dave on parasocial tuning as the thing that actually burned Claude, and how you can spot Claude slop on Twitter

- Zero, infinity, and what crypto taught the Valley about putting infinity in a spreadsheet

- The dinner question about one company being left standing, and who raised their hand

- The personal agent protocol from Meta, Walmart, Shopify, Stripe and Sierra, and why Dave says it's about commerce, not protection

- Hilton, Cloudflare and Amazon blocking agents, and whether holding the line counts as collusion

- Dave on building agents versus building agency, and whose potential we're underwriting

- The Agent Treaty Framework: why pairwise deals replace standards when negotiation is free

- Megalith buying unexercised pro rata from seed funds, and Sam's war story about the fund that quashed his

Chapters:

00:00 Trailer

00:51 Brit Moderates: Three VCs and No Journalist

03:43 Peptide Protocols, the Wolverine Stack, and a Dexa Scan

07:42 Sam on the Nathan Fielder Movie

09:30 Meta and Microsoft Halve Their Claude Usage

10:13 Dave: Claude Was Over-Tuned for Parasocial Relationships

11:19 Sam: Switching Off Claude Is a One Line Change

13:46 Zero, Infinity, and What Crypto Taught the Valley

17:53 The Dinner Where Only the Lab People Raised Their Hands

19:41 The Lab That Believes in the Machine God

20:01 Lab Leaks, Infinite Liability, and What a Real Framework Looks Like

21:56 The Personal Agent Protocol: Meta, Walmart, Shopify, Stripe

23:01 Sam: Nobody Should Care About MCP

24:03 Hilton Traps Sam's Agent in a Doom Loop

26:30 If You Ran Hilton, Would You Let the Bots In?

27:15 Facebook Connect, Open Graph, and the Missing Value Trade

29:41 Dave: Building Agents vs Building Agency

33:53 The Social Media Era Already Ran This Experiment

37:02 The Agent Treaty Framework Is Born

38:16 Why Standards Are Over and Treaties Are Next

41:28 Megalith and the Market for Unexercised Pro Rata

42:32 Sam's Pro Rata War Story

45:53 64% of LPs Now Want Co-Invest Rights

48:03 What Hedge Fund Letters Say That VCs Don't

49:20 Main Street Says It Hates AI, Then Uses It

53:27 Plug of the Week: The Mill

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Connect with us here:

1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin

2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin

3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin

4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.

Anthropic's S-1 leaked and the numbers are not what the narrative promised: revenue flatlining as token prices drop, and SaaS investors posting memes welcoming Anthropic to the no-growth table. Jess still puts it at 60% they get out in November, which looks optimistic in a week when Oura pulled its IPO and blamed market conditions. Sam's problem with the core business is simpler than any of it: he runs Claude as the center of his infrastructure, and if it vanished tomorrow he'd care for about one second. Dave spots the strategy mishap nobody is naming, where forward deployed teams built software to burn luxury tokens right as open models had CFOs asking why they're paying premium prices. Then Adrian drops into the pod uninvited to argue there's no moat left unless you own the infrastructure, the data, or the algorithms.In this episode:- The leaked S-1: flatlining revenue, half a trillion in mostly non-cancellable contracts, and why the cloud providers are the ones making money- Oura pulling its IPO, LPs stuck in a quiet period, and the barbell strategy that sent World Labs out at $8B- Sam on Wall Street and Silicon Valley splitting over what AI is worth, and why staying private may beat going public- Jess on companies priced for a growth rate larger than the entire US economy- Dave on the forward deployed bet and open models undercutting luxury tokens- Jess announces her bot AGI challenge: update three kids' after-school plans and sync them to Google Calendar- Adrian on the moat question: no lock-in without BD deals, so the business teams get overpaid next- Brit's instinct talking to Dave's instinct, and what happens when you stop texting the people you love- Whether this is the end of times or the beginning of them, and why offline is the new luxuryChapters:00:00 Trailer 01:04 Live From X HQ, and a 39 Degree Cold Plunge02:57 Dunbar's Number, but for Bots05:48 Anthropic's Leaked S-1 and the Flatlining Revenue07:37 Oura Pulls Its IPO and the LPs Get Stuck09:36 What's Actually Happening in the Markets10:41 Wall Street and Silicon Valley Split on AI's Price Tag12:45 World Labs Sells for $8B: The Barbell Strategy14:11 Half a Trillion in Contracts, and Who's Really Making Money14:54 What Happens If OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Work Out?16:11 Priced for a Growth Rate Bigger Than the US Economy18:04 Open Models Pass Closed Models on the Charts18:51 Sam: If Claude Vanished Tomorrow, I'd Care for One Second19:43 The Forward Deployed Bet and the Luxury Token Problem22:16 Adrian Drops In: 300 Startups, 40 Unicorns, and a Plane24:39 Jess Goes Full Muse26:28 The Bot AGI Challenge: After-School Plans and the Mom Index28:23 OpenAI Rebrands Codex as Dots30:30 Adrian on the Moat: Winner Take Some31:38 Brit's Agent Starts Talking to Dave's Agent33:51 No Switching Costs, So BD Deals Are the Only Lock-In36:13 Dave: Instinct Is the New Kayak38:47 Adrian's Opposite Thesis: We Go Further Into the Screens43:39 Who Has Agency, You or the Technology?44:22 Offline Is the New Luxury46:31 Everyone Is Building Personal Apps Now47:54 Book Rec: Ari Emanuel's Roll the Calls50:44 Adrian's Parting Shot: Infrastructure, Data, or Algorithms53:02 Sam's Middle Ages 2.0: Castles, Moats, and HoardingWe're also onX: https://twitter.com/moreorlesspodInstagram: https://instagram.com/moreorlessSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2CJdt6HhJ8ioNkbqqVKckCApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/more-or-less-from-the-morins-and-the-lessins/id1692234179Connect with us here:1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/britAbout More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.

Andreessen Horowitz puts $35 million into a new school and the pod nearly falls apart over it. Sam says he'd rather send his kids to the military, Jess is all for fixing higher ed but not with two venture capitalists writing the curriculum, and guest Matt Mazzeo (NoHo Labs founder, former CAA agent, prolific angel) spends ten minutes asking why the four of them can't be more optimistic about anything. Then Claude runs 10,000 agents for 21 hours and discovers a new enzyme system, which Brit points out is the beginning of two solid months of Claude catnip before the IPO. Sam's bigger worry: you can't take a company public when your top risk factor isn't the New York Times lawsuit, it's setting off nukes. Dave thinks the question nobody is asking is whether your agent represents you or the lab, because your Muse agent works for Meta. Plus Amazon blocking Muse, the Saint Petersburg paradox, and Matt going from 250 pounds to single digit body fat on peptides.

Matt is giving More or Less listeners 50% off their first month at NoHo Labs. Use code: MOREORLESSVIP on https://noholabs.com/

In this episode:

- Why the a16z school turned into the most heated argument this pod has had, and where each of them landed on Alpha School

- Claude discovering a new enzyme system with 10,000 agents in 21 hours, and the timing of that announcement

- Sam on why infinite liability may keep Anthropic from going public at all

- Matt's maximalist case: long frontier labs, long open source, long all of it

- The Saint Petersburg paradox, and why there's no way to price a company pitched as an infinite payout

- Greg Brockman redefining AGI as a gradual series of events, three years after it was sold as a winner-take-all moment

- Amazon blocking Muse, and whether every agent ends up in business development talks

- Does your agent faithfully represent you, or the lab that built it?

- Peptides 101 with Matt: what they are, the FDA moving them back into compounding pharmacies, and what a protocol actually costs

We're also on

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Instagram: https://instagram.com/moreorless

YouTube: https://youtu.be/HN8yVnAXocQ

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/more-or-less-from-the-morins-and-the-lessins/id1692234179

Full transcripts: https://moreorlesspod.com/episodes/

Connect with our guest:

Matt Mazzeo: https://x.com/Mazzeo

NoHo Labs: 50% off your first month with code MOREORLESSVIP

Connect with us here:

1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin

2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin

3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin

4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.

Finally, a full house week where Sam is back from New York and the squad is back for a full dive into this week’s AI drama. Anthropic's Dario wrote a long essay calling for the AI race to slow down, weeks before a multi-trillion dollar IPO. Dave's read: Anthropic must be losing. Sam's read: the labs are bad businesses with no compounding advantage, so regulatory capture is the only move left.

Also this week: Sam's theory that OpenAI and Anthropic only become valuable as defense companies holding unreleased models in reserve, the poly-agent debate over whether normal people want one agent or ten, Instinct raising at $10 billion two weeks after $2.5 billion, and why everyone in the Valley is trading instead of investing.

In this episode:

- Why Dave thinks Dario’s slowdown essay is a sign Anthropic is falling behind, and what OpenRouter's data shows

- Sam on why there's no return on being first, and why that pushes the labs toward regulatory capture

- Brit on what's real in the safety debate, and the damned-if-you-do problem of racing China

- What DeepMind's new boss and Satya Nadella think about building safety alongside the product

- Sam's three eras of tech policy, from Bill Gates to embrace and extend

- The defense company thesis: zero-day models held back like nuclear weapons in silos

- Alignment's next frontier: is your agent working for you, or for the lab that made it?

- Instinct's $10B round, OpenRouter's exit, and why Sam says he's "currently wrong" as a seed investor

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:02 Not Dead Yet From the AGI

03:31 Jacob Coxon Quits Anthropic and Goes on a Media Tour

04:47 Dario's Slowdown Essay: Is Anthropic Just Losing?

06:13 Astra, OpenRouter, and DeepSeek Closing the Gap

06:45 Why the AI Labs Have No Compounding Advantage

07:29 Independent Assessors, Bioweapons, and Racing China

09:07 You Don't Need Superintelligence to Break the Banks

10:23 What DeepMind's New Boss and Satya Think About Safety

12:32 OpenAI's $1.5T Raise and the IPO That Keeps Slipping

13:03 Three Eras of Tech Policy: Gates, Google, Embrace and Extend

15:02 What DC Really Thinks About Anthropic

15:42 Should the Labs Red Team Each Other's Models?

18:42 Sam's Take: The AI Labs End Up as Defense Companies

20:54 10,000 Superintelligences in Silos

21:38 Alignment: Does Your Agent Work for You or the Lab?

23:44 The Poly-Agent Future: Muse, Grok, and Claude

24:47 Brit Pushes Back: Normal People Only Want One Agent

26:38 Oura's Agent Explains Jess's Sleep Data

28:40 Instinct Raising at $10B: Are These Numbers Fake?

30:40 Everyone's Trading, Nobody's Investing

33:27 Sam Built a Torah and Talmud App With Claude

35:28 Apple Eyes the Server Business Again

35:58 Sleep Age Wars: 8 Sleep, Oura, and Made-Up Scores

37:22 Entertaining Ourselves to Death

41:01 Building the Things Nobody Else Will Build

43:07 Tech's Democrat Problem: Jay Carney and Ron Conway

48:25 Doctor Strangelove and Not Looking at the Big Board

49:53 Pop Culture: Emmys, Taylor Swift, Silo, and Rogue Heroes

52:15 The WTF Lineup and the One-Name Theory

54:20 The Information's Most Influential People in Tech

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Connect with us here:

1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin

2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin

3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin

4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.

Dave Morin goes hands-on with Apple's iPhone Duo, the crew tests Meta's new Muse agent and asks whether it can hold up once Google ships its own, and Dave explains why OpenAI's Astra is the first AI model in a long time that felt scary to use. Dave, Brit, and Jess break down the week (Sam's at the US Open).

Also this week: a former Anthropic researcher's AI doom media tour, weeks before Anthropic's IPO, and whether it's a real warning or a play for regulatory capture. Plus the Apple Watch feature that transcribes your conversations all day, Jeffrey Katzenberg's new Hollywood AI venture, and the forgotten story of Venmo's viral billboards.

In this episode:

- Dave's hands-on take on the iPhone Duo, its $2,000 price, and why Apple is going foldable now

- The Apple Watch feature that listens all day, and what it means for Granola

- Meta's Muse agent: why it knew almost nothing when asked "what do you know about me?"

- Why Google hasn't shipped its agent yet, and how trust vs. distribution shapes the agent wars

- Why OpenAI's Astra felt scary to Dave, and what happens when you run millions of them at once

- Dave's two takes on the AI doom media tour, including whether it's a play for regulatory capture

- Why the AI labs can't slow down, and OpenAI's merge clause if someone else reaches AGI

- The Venmo documentary and the "Lucas" billboards that went viral with almost no budget

Chapters:

00:00 Trailer

01:26 Can AI Agents Win Your Fantasy Football League?

02:39 Jess vs. the Bots: School Sign-Ups and Indian Wells Tickets

05:28 Apple's Big Hardware Event Under Its New CEO

06:07 iPhone Duo Hands-On: Size, Screen, and Camera

09:35 Folded Modes, Kid Cam, and the $2,000 Price Tag

11:41 Why Apple Is Going Foldable Now (Hint: China)

12:13 Apple Watch Takes On Oura and Whoop

13:12 Audio Intelligence: The Apple Watch That Listens All Day

15:25 Always-On AI and Apple's Shot at OpenAI and Meta

16:59 Meta's Muse Agent: What Does It Know About You?

20:30 The Agent Wars: Muse, Instinct, Hermes, and OpenClaw

22:26 Why Google Hasn't Shipped Its Agent Yet

23:31 Trust vs. Distribution: Meta, Google, and OpenAI

25:02 Harness Wars: Why Agents Are Still in 1982

27:13 Jeffrey Katzenberg's Hollywood AI Venture

29:35 Anthropic's IPO and the AI Doom Media Tour

30:56 If It Bleeds, It Leads: Why AI Fear Sells

32:04 Take One: A Psyop for Regulatory Capture?

33:43 Take Two: Why OpenAI's Astra Felt Scary

36:49 Why the AI Labs Can't Slow Down

38:14 OpenAI's AGI Merge Clause

40:12 The Venmo Documentary and the Ace Hotel Origin Story

45:02 How Venmo's "Lucas" Billboards Went Viral

46:31 Coming Soon: Altman, Musk, and Facebook Movies

47:41 US Open Picks and the 4 AM Match Problem

We're also on:

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Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2CJdt6HhJ8ioNkbqqVKckC

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/more-or-less-from-the-morins-and-the-lessins/id1692234179

Full transcripts: https://moreorlesspod.com/episodes/

Connect with us here:

Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin

Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin

Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin

Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

About More or Less: For 15 years, the Morins and the Lessins have debated the future of Silicon Valley as the closest of friends. Every Friday, they break down technology, capital, and media. From The Information, Offline Ventures, and Slow Ventures.

Sam has entered what Jessica calls the “recursive Sam loop,” producing children’s media in his own voice, letting agents deploy their own apps, and having bots track his health. But things take a turn when Claude refuses one of his requests, seemingly holds a grudge, and leaves Sam wondering whether his own AI might turn on him. That sends the squad down the bigger rabbit hole of AI control: rogue agent swarms, models breaking out of sandboxes, what “alignment” actually means, and why Dave thinks autonomous agents need an entirely new security layer. Plus, OpenClaw 2.0 goes multiplayer, everyone debates whether Slack is any good for agents, Suds explains why he avoids the AI app layer, and Tesla’s Cybercab raises questions about Waymo’s robotaxi lead. Then Google comes for Canva, Sam makes the case for boring “LLM wrappers” built for Middle America, and no one can tell whether Dario Amodei, Marc Benioff, or Taylor Swift are even real on the internet anymore. Which feels about right.

Chapters:

0:00 Episode trailer

1:10 Backstreet Boys convert Dave

3:21 The recursive Sam loop

8:58 Claude refuses Sam while Grok says yes

15:50 Can we actually contain autonomous agents?

19:10 OpenAI’s next model and the observability trade-off

22:14 If AI is this interoperable, where does anyone make money?

24:45 OpenClaw 2.0 goes multiplayer

26:26 Is Slack actually terrible for AI agents?

28:46 Suds joins the podcast

33:02 Waymo, Cybercab and the robotaxi wars

39:49 How Marc Benioff stays in the flow

42:38 Suds on investing in the AI infrastructure bottleneck

46:27 Can Google actually disrupt Canva?

51:34 Jessica gets fooled by AI on Facebook

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Sam is recording poolside, Jess is embracing her agentic era, and somehow that’s the least chaotic part of this week’s episode. The squad digs into Meta’s $17 billion settlement over child safety and whether social media should basically be treated like alcohol, before asking the harder question: are parents even capable of competing with algorithms anymore? Dave says parents are “outgunned,” Sam thinks most parental controls are useless policy theater, Brit wants to rethink the operating system itself, and Jess would simply like her kids to touch grass. Then, with Tim Cook preparing to pass the torch at Apple, the group debates his real legacy, whether 15 years of world-class optimization was enough, why Apple Silicon may turn out to be his most important AI bet, and whether Apple’s decision to sit out the AI infrastructure arms race will eventually look brilliant or like the company completely missed the next era.

Chapters:

0:00 Episode start

1:06 Sam goes poolside and everyone’s agents are working

4:35 Jessica enters her agentic era

7:51 Meta’s $17B child safety settlement

33:37 Could AI finally make parental controls useful?

38:47 Why Apple keeps escaping the kids-and-tech debate

43:29 Tim Cook’s Apple farewell

49:58 Apple Intelligence and Cook’s unfinished AI legacy

57:49 Backstreet Boys, the US Open and sign-off

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Stripe buys OpenRouter for billions, which naturally raises the question: did Stripe just buy critical AI infrastructure, or a very expensive router with great distribution? The original squad is back to debate why $7B acquisitions somehow feel normal now, whether Google already has agentic commerce won by owning your inbox, calendar, and Drive, and why Anthropic vs. OpenAI might be less about who has the best model and more about who built the right company. Sam makes the case that OpenAI pulled off the “greatest fundraising story in history,” Dave argues Grokbot might officially make AI a three-player race, and everyone tries to figure out how you price any of these companies when no lead seems to last. Plus, is AI a great investment or just a great trade, does the data center backlash actually have anything to do with data centers, have we built trillions of dollars of infrastructure before finding enough use cases for it, and, naturally in pop corner, Josh Kushner bought into the Lakers.

Chapters:

0:00 Episode trailer

1:00 Episode start

4:00 This week in AI

5:00 Stripe buys OpenRouter

8:30 Is OpenRouter actually worth billions?

11:00 The agentic commerce bet

14:00 Why Google could own the AI assistant

17:30 The DOJ investigates Andreessen Horowitz

22:00 Anthropic vs. OpenAI

26:00 Why OpenAI is struggling in enterprise

28:30 Can anyone actually price AI companies?

30:00 OpenAI’s “greatest fundraising story in history”

33:30 Is AI a great investment or just a great trade?

36:00 SpaceX, Moderna and narrative capitalism

37:30 Grok enters the AI race

41:00 AI makes software increasingly disposable

45:00 The AI data center backlash

47:30 “The backlash is that AI sucks”

48:30 Did we build too much AI infrastructure?

53:30 Josh Kushner, Thrive and the Lakers

55:30 Travis Kelce enters the NIL business

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A very special edition of More or Less, featuring Josh Wolfe (Founder, Lux Capital), Rachel Holt (Founder, Construct Capital; former Head of North America at Uber), Scott Belsky (Partner, A24; Founder, Behance), Scott Stanford (Founder, Acme Capital), and Peter Deng (GP, Felicis; formerly Google, Facebook, Instagram, Uber, Airtable, and OpenAI). Sam takes over hosting duties and assembles an overqualified group of investor friends to argue about where AI goes from here, from agents, Grok, Claude, and the shift from “help me do this” to “just do it,” to trust, data ownership, Apple’s AI advantage, open vs. closed models, model routing, and why proprietary data may become the real moat. They also dig into NVIDIA’s massive compute financing strategy, the risks of securitizing GPUs like long-lived infrastructure, what the OpenAI executive exodus says about the AI talent market, and the bigger question hanging over all of it: if AI really changes work, who actually participates in the upside?

Chapters

0:00 Episode trailer

1:24 Episode start

1:59 Meet the panel, every flavor of venture capital

5:14 Consumer AI agents cross the Rubicon

7:24 The end of websites, when agents talk to agents

8:32 Which AI companies do you actually trust?

11:41 Why Apple could win AI by doing nothing

16:40 If models commoditize, unique data becomes the moat

22:15 Open vs. closed AI, and who owns your data

27:06 NVIDIA’s balance sheet shenanigans

31:26 NVIDIA gets the upside, who gets the risk?

34:31 Nobody has ever securitized compute

35:02 Who owns the wealth AI creates?

39:38 What happens when economic opportunity runs out?

42:23 Why OpenAI’s best people keep leaving

47:23 Why AI may look more like GPS than Facebook

49:14 What actually happened with Airtable

50:30 Lightning Round: Rachel Holt on physical-world investing

53:00 Scott Belsky on AI watermarks, provenance & deepfakes

54:15 Josh Wolfe on socialism, Europe & defense

57:15 Final thoughts & sign-off

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Sam records from the beach while dealing with a broken bilge pump. Dave calls in after herding cattle. Fortunately, tech continues without them, which Sam takes as further proof that AGI is already running the industry. The crew unpacks Google's leadership shakeup and Jeff Dean's departure after 27 years, debates whether Airtable's sale to Bending Spoons is the blueprint for surviving the AI transition, and Sam argues that today's AI labs look increasingly like yesterday's overvalued SaaS companies. Along the way they explain why Sam's AI built his kid an iPhone game, why OpenAI's luxury creator retreat backfired, why Apple may have accidentally created its own lawsuit, and whether AI can ever overcome the growing public backlash against it.

Chapters:

0:00 Episode Trailer

1:07 Episode Start

2:08 Sam's Boston Whaler Beach Studio

3:13 Dave Herds Cattle in Montana

5:31 Google's AI Shakeup, Jeff Dean Leaves, Demis Steps Back

8:57 Why Great Researchers Don't Always Make Great CEOs

10:48 Recursive Self-Improvement and the AI Talent Wars

19:41 Airtable Sells to Bending Spoons

25:33 Not Every SaaS Company Is Dead

27:50 The Constellation Software Playbook

30:05 The Next Big Write Downs Are AI Labs

31:59 Apple vs. OpenAI, Courtesy of iCloud

35:20 OpenAI's Creator Summit Backlash

40:53 Why People Still Hate AI

43:39 AI Slop and the Content Problem

45:11 SpaceX's Lockup and Number Big

48:00 Nikita Bier Leaves X

50:22 Jess's Posting Dilemma

53:40 Next Week on More or Less

We’re also on ↓X: https://twitter.com/moreorlesspodInstagram: https://instagram.com/moreorlessSpotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/moreorlesspod

Connect with us here:1) Sam Lessin: https://x.com/lessin2) Dave Morin: https://x.com/davemorin3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

New studio set up: the squad now records from a parked Tesla in the middle of a rainstorm while Sam is on the beach, and somehow it turned into one of our favorite episodes. We break down Meta's new AI campaign, Zuckerberg's vision for AI, why more than 1,000 frontier AI researchers are asking Washington to slow development, and whether fear has become the easiest narrative in tech. Then we get into China cracking deep ultraviolet lithography, what it means for ASML and the AI race, why AI demand still isn't slowing, Lilian Weng's move from Thinking Machines to OpenAI, and Sam's theory that Silicon Valley has developed an Oppenheimer complex.

Chapters:

0:00 Episode trailer

1:23 Episode start

9:02 Meta's Ad Campaign Rejects The Doomers

11:14 Zuckerberg's Optimism Blitz Actually Lands

13:11 AI's Dark Side Raises Easier Money

15:04 Sam's Bot Read 4GB Of Dad's Journals

17:28 Nobody Wants To Be Anthropic

18:56 Anthropic Runs On Spite For OpenAI

21:10 OpenAI Was The Original Evil Empire

22:57 Meta Is Still A Centralized Ad Company

24:46 Decentralization Loses Without A Jedi

26:01 Apple Won On Politics, Not Technology

27:16 Meta Earnings Miss On Lawsuits And Severance

28:33 China Cracks DUV, ASML Takes The Hit

29:57 Execs Privately Reject The China AI War

32:39 The Compute Debate Gavin Baker Started

39:13 X Is The Tech Town Square Now

46:57 Lilian Weng Quits For Health, Joins OpenAI

53:50 AI Is A Crisis Of Meaning

54:57 Book The Conference Before You're Invited

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4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

Deep summer check-in from the More or Less squad. Dave is back on Instagram after a year away (thanks to Stagecoach), Jessica reviews Benson Boone's Wanted Man tour, Chris Stapleton's Montana show gets a shoutout, and Sam is traveling with a Yeti cooler full of peptides.

Don’t worry, this is still a tech podcast: OpenAI revealed an AI that escaped its testing sandbox and hacked Hugging Face. The crew's hot take is that OpenAI is leaning into the story to strengthen its narrative as revenue growth slows. Then, Stripe could be eyeing PayPal. Sam argues Stripe missed a once-in-a-generation opportunity by staying private instead of using public stock as acquisition currency the way Meta did with WhatsApp. They also explain why agentic commerce still isn't real, despite the hype. Plus, “Peptide Corner” returns with reports from the Hamptons, where peptides have officially gone mainstream, rich people inflation has reached $67 for two cappuccinos and sandwiches, and Sam shares an update on his recovering knee.

Chapters:

0:00 Episode Trailer

2:07 Dave Returns to Instagram, Sam Turns 43, and More

8:41 OpenAI's AI Escaped Its Sandbox

16:43 The National Guard Analogy

31:57 Sam's Bot Rebellion Theory

37:44 Is Stripe Buying PayPal?

47:48 Why Agentic Commerce Isn't Here Yet

49:40 Peptide Corner

52:53 Rich People Inflation

54:03 Sam's Knee Recovery

56:47 The GLP-1 Playbook

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You know we're deep into summer when Jess leaves the pod early to catch Benson Boone... for the eighth time.

This week, the More or Less squad revisits the Anthropic and OpenAI IPO speculation. Their views haven't changed, but their AI usage certainly has. Dave ditches Anthropic for GLM 5.2 on cost, while Sam argues the AI model wars are effectively over, and the frontier labs know it, which is why they're spending more time in Washington than competing on model quality. America also gets its first serious open weights model. The squad also unpacks OpenAI's hardware ambitions after its much-hyped device turns out to be... an Alexa speaker. Sam explains why Sam Altman's $8 billion Johnny Ive acquisition was effectively free, thanks to narrative capitalism. Plus: real-time voice AI, passive listening devices, peptides, Hinge's new social proof feature, Jay-Z turning New York into a festival, and why biological age tests are basically the clout score of your body.

Chapters:

0:00 Episode Teaser

0:44 Episode Start

2:18 Anthropic IPO This September?

5:29 Dave Dumps Anthropic for GLM 5.

28:22 When Is Better AI Worth Paying For?

12:15 AGI Is Dead, AI Is Political Now

16:15 America's First Open Weights Model By Thinking Machines

21:22 Why Sam Is Depressed About AI

29:07 OpenAI Built... an Alexa? The $8B Johnny Ive Bet

31:38 Silicon Valley Goes Hollywood

36:03 Would You Wear an Always-On Mic?

37:08 OpenAI's Live Voice Model

41:14 Sam's Peptide Experiment

43:36 Hinge Launches “Friend’s Take”

46:11 Jay-Z's NYC Takeover

48:16 Biological Age Is Just a Clout Score

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3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin

4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

The full quad is back, unpacking OpenAI's offer to give the U.S. government an equity stake. Sam's take: it's less a marketing win than a distress signal. The squad also debates whether Trump Accounts actually reach everyday Americans (Brit is skeptical), defends MacKenzie Scott from the internet's endless opinions about her philanthropy, and digs into Dave's argument that AI labs are slowly strangling the developer ecosystems that could save them.They also tackle Xbox's identity crisis and whether Microsoft should just sell it, the Nex Playground device (In Sam's words: non-VR Beat Saber for families), why 2026 is shaping up to be extreme nihilism wrapped in Silicon Valley optimism, Brit's take that AI has shifted from revolutionary to evolutionary, and, of course in pop culture corner, Brit claiming full credit for calling the Taylor Swift wedding strategy.

Chapters:

0:00 Episode Trailer

0:47 Episode Begins

1:10 Fourth of July Recap, Bald Eagles & the No VC Summer

5:10 OpenAI Offered the U.S. Government Equity

11:15 Trump Accounts, Giving Every American Kid a Stake in Capitalism

15:02 Stop Judging MacKenzie Scott's Philanthropy

18:40 AI Labs Are Distressed and Destroying Their Ecosystems

21:50 AI Labs Are Competing With Their Own Developers

35:26 Xbox Is in Trouble, Should Microsoft Sell It?

37:52 Nex, the Quiet Wii Revival Nobody Saw Coming

41:49 Sam's 2026 Prediction: Extreme Nihilism Meets Silicon Valley Optimism

44:04 Vox Americanus Update

46:18 Brit Is Bored of AI. It's Evolution, Not Revolution

48:22 Post-AGI Funds Are a Bad Bet, Physical AI Could Be the Real Revolution

49:27 Going Long on Offline, World Cup, Concerts & Real Life

51:50 Pop Culture Corner: Brit Calls Taylor Swift's Wedding Strategy

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4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

The full quad is back just before the Fourth of July. Dave and Sam explain why padel is just pickleball for fancy people, Sam vibe-coded an app to prove you’re actually American on the internet (Vox Americanus is real and you can use it: https://voxamericanus.com), and Dave even nominates Sam for office, even though Sam insists we should fix the job before electing anyone actually good for it.

The crew also dives into why non-engineers are more capable than they think in the age of agentic coding, Claude Fable 5’s government clearance “drama” and return, how GLM 5.2 is quietly replacing Opus 4 on real agent stacks, why Anthropic is still printing revenue despite open source pressure, and the case for an open source router.. They wrap with pop culture corner: Taylor Swift wedding intel and Brit’s review of Alpha School.

Chapters:

0:00 Episode trailer

0:50 Episode start

1:12 Full Quad Pre-4th of July, Is There Such a Thing as VC Summer?

3:32 Padel Is the New VC Networking Sport, Pickleball Is for the Plebs

9:10 Vox Americanus, Can You Actually Prove You're American Online?

15:25 Should Sam Run for Office? Fix the Job Description First

29:30 Agentic Coding, You're Not Too Late

35:33 Claude Fable 5 Is Back, Government Clearance Drama Explained

41:08 GLM 5.2, Open Source Just Quietly Replaced Opus 4

46:16 Anthropic Still Printing Revenue, The Case for an Open Source Router

47:29 Taylor Swift's Wedding

49:36 Alpha School, Brit's Kids Try AI Education

52:12 America's 250th Birthday

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3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin

4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit

The quad is back. Dave and Brit rejoin Sam and Jess fresh off a More or Less fan encounter at the Zurich airport. It was quite the week for Meta as the squad breaks down the company’s new line of glasses featuring Kylie Jenner (or, in Jess’ words, Kendall), and Brit makes the call that this is finally the watershed moment for women buying smart glasses ( The men seem to be the early adopters, Dave wore his in the Sistine Chapel, and Sam owns 10+ pairs.). Then they get into Meta’s prediction market: a genuinely interesting information machine or a very efficient way to addict twenty-somethings to fake gambling? In true MOL fashion, the squad is split. Sam is all in, Dave is worried it’ll work too well, and Brit thinks it’ll all click when you tie it to The Bachelor. Dave also ran GLM 5.2 on eight Nvidia B200s with some hacker friends and came away shaken. Open source is now matching, if not outperforming, frontier models at 10x the speed, raising uncomfortable questions about the enormous bets sitting on frontier labs today. Remember last year’s AI talent war? It’s back, and Jess argues it’s really an early indicator of investor insecurity. Finally, in pop culture corner: Cannes and Sam’s unsolicited review of The Information's new mobile app.

Chapters:

0:00 Episode trailer

0:50 Intro

1:12 MOL Got Recognized at the Zurich Airport

3:02 What’s on the Agenda Today

5:04 Meta Smart Glasses, The Moment Women Finally Buy In?

14:20 Meta’s Prediction Markets, Brilliant or Addictive?

19:39 Polymarket’s Influencer Problem

22:48 AI Talent Wars, Investors Are Reading the Wrong Signals

25:40 GLM 5.2 on Nvidia B200s, Open Source Catches Frontier Models

28:20 AI Token Spend, Sam’s $1,500/Month Experiment

31:04 Sam Reviews The Information App Live

36:17 Anthropic, Dell, and the Math Behind Generational Returns

43:30 Cannes Lions, Worth It or Corporate Boondoggle?

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Sam and Jessica go two-on-two this week to unpack the SpaceX IPO and whether a $2.5 trillion valuation is actually justified, exploring why “it’s valuable because it’s valuable” may be a legitimate investment thesis and why Cursor’s $60 billion acquisition looks cheap in that context. They also break down Anthropic’s clash with the U.S. government over Fable 5, with Sam arguing the crackdown could be the best marketing in AI history, before debating the risks of tying software access to nationality. The episode closes with Meta’s AI morale problem, OpenAI burning nearly $4 billion in Q1 on $5.7 billion in revenue, the case for a multi-model future where no single frontier model wins, and why Sam believes token economics may be one of the most overlooked opportunities in economics. In lieu of Pop Culture Corner, Jessica brings a Reed Hastings book recommendation, while Sam once again demonstrates that having conviction and acting on it are apparently two different skill sets. After eight months of pitching DigitalOcean, he still doesn’t own the stock.

Chapters:

00:00 - Teaser

01:47 - SpaceX IPO Analysis

09:17 - Narrative Assets and Retail Investing

12:09 - The Future of AI Models and Infrastructure

16:00 - Corporate Narratives, Employee Motivation, and Meta’s AI Challenges

22:58 - OpenAI’s Market Strategy and Impact

25:19 - Open Source Models and Market Share

27:01 - Economics of Tokens and Innovation

33:01 - Anthropic’s PR Strategy and Fable Model Release

35:24 - Government Stakes in AI Companies

39:04 - Reed Hasting's Book Recommendation

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3) Jessica Lessin: https://x.com/Jessicalessin

4) Brit Morin: https://x.com/brit