SWL Week in Review - Looksmaxxing

From:

sam lessin <s@wlessin.com>

To:

Hidden Recipient <hidden@emailshot.io>

Date:

4/6/2026, 5:00 PM(13 days ago)

More or Less Pod - AI Security Apocalypse

For a while we have been gabbing about how AI completely breaks the business model of the internet / will end the internet by destroying how it makes money (the medium is the message… which is the business model) — but with all these inevitable AI security disasters… we discuss the other ‘end of internet’ part ... what packages you include in your security supply chain really do (and who is behind them)… the story was supposed to be that AI does the work, but humans co-sign the work and take the liability … but in an era of —dangerously-skip-permissions and speed being so valuable it is never worth evaluating the risk? … we in for a world of fail (and maybe the only real model for making money in the future is secure enclaves). Feels very dark ages to me… the big thing? The AI trade is clearly for a more powerful but less safe world.…

Hot Takes

Who is the real retard, you decide? — In fairness to Andreessen, even if I was deep Retardmaxx months earlier, he doesn’t get this newsletter ... I was actually more surprised to get the reply given that he used to block me (he has a weird thing for blocking and unblocking tons of random tech people to the point it is a running joke among many…. He must / I hope / have someone that does this for him!.. I am almost sad to be unblocked but will take the new followers lol?)

TBPN… — legit congrats on a great 18 month sprint… TBH if you are gonna do the media thing and not do it forever, this is 1000 percent the right money-making approach / quick flip low dilution to someone willing to pay you a tech multiple on a media business for a strategic reason like Bari, or just because the acquirers don’t know the difference between tech multiples and media ;) (this is the type of capital efficiency that turns your generational company into a 140x for seed, not just Capex!) ... my bet is that Eric Newcomer (who jess hired out of college!) is next -- someone needs 'cerebral valley summit'

Getting Sued by My Associate — This went nicely viral and was a great growth moment for petty lawsuit (go team!) — more lawsuits coming…

The Slow Creator/Bot Hackathon — We had about 30 creators hold up in a dingy SF library room for 2 days teaching them how to supercharge Claude code + —dangerously-skip-permissions, +github, + digital ocean for databases / app servers in one (the sam yolo stack)… honestly it was the most exciting thing I have seen in ages. It is WILD the value people can drive when they actually already have a business, community, and know what they are doing when you teach them how to go from ‘I use chatGPT’ to ‘I build what I want with AI and deploy it.

The biggest YC bottleneck? The Founders. — Garry Tan is having just as much fun as anyone AI coding… I get it… but look, it begs the question … the biggest cost suck at YC is sourcing founders and dealing with them… why bother? You don’t need them anymore.... and think of the efficiency of their business model if they can cut out all that recruiting and mentoring!

Waymo… I want my own… Waymo was the star of my week… I have used it a bunch for novelty / fun… but this week it finally has hit scale enough for me (quick wait times) + highway — that it is now a full full tool… Uber should be very worried, I honestly will never use anything other than Waymo now unless forced… waymo highway

Did I mention that AI is a terrible seed investment ever? — I have been hitting this theme a lot for a long time, but now it seems others are as well (I will wait for the Andreessen tweet :)! — here is some math from ChatGPT

Bad Yelp Reviews Please — hilarious VC with my partners on what we actually do here… upshot being… the ultimate ego thing is actually to be SOOO good that people still want your dumplings / come for the food even though you have terrible yelp reviews and are awful at everything else. It is basically the Seinfeld soup thesis — also remember the Walmart ‘rolling back prices’ bit? Rolling back prices on seed investments

Requestclip.com & Build Your Own Granola — I have a few ‘vibe coded’ projects I have even working on and finding fun recently … requestclip has been great (you send me a who-knows cold email … so instead record a video I will transcribe and summarize it and review the people skip the bots) — also in the process using assembly.ai (psyched to be a seed investor) you basically get your own granola.com for free if you use it for yourself (to the point that you just can’t build valuable software anymore / to easy to copy)

Security Theater - per above — this is the other thing going on as the security world implodes with AI — making people feel safe, while actually doing nothing of value.

Who could have possibly guessed Sora wasn’t gonna be a thing? — it was pretty obvious this one wasn’t gonna work from the start.

Onlyfarms — I marvel at how culturally impactful / known OF really is — it has to be the most under-valued brand in the world…. Also speaking of farms… loving Area2’s ‘be a farmer’ campaign — it is hilarious and right to me that farm investments we are doing / becoming farmers are crushing it as the cultural antithesis of the AI moment (for every action, equal and opposite)

Sincerely,
Jack Sparrow.

A paid word from sponsors (LOL) humans continue to pay me to run promotions in my newsletter, and I am a good capitalist so…

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getviktor.com - Sam vibe-coded a whole app this week. His ski buddies vibe-coded three more. Software is free now, everyone agrees. But nobody vibe-coded the thing that pulls ad spend from Meta and Google, compares it against Stripe revenue, flags what's off, and posts a summary to #leadership before Monday standup. Or the thing that builds you a client dashboard and deploys it from a Slack message. That's not an app problem. That's a coworker problem. Viktor lives in Slack, connects to 3,000+ integrations, and handles the cross-platform work that doesn't fit in a single prompt. 5,700+ teams. "It's like the most capable all-round colleague you can imagine." (Sam Kopelman, CEO, Givr). Add to Slack. $100 in credits, free.

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PS what about Circular Finance?… well I asked Jessica if The Information wanted to advertise in my newsletter given our new line of business in my personal newsletter… if the AI companies do it why can’t we? If only TI weren’t a wholly owned s-corp :(… — but so long as you aren’t a family member… I guess we do ads now

PPS the exact dollar peg for looksmaxxing — fun post-script… just for fun been running a few YouTube ads for more or less… wildly effective (I guess you just pay for distribution) but the thumbnails with the wives crush vs. men… and It seems quite clear that the better the wives look the cheaper the traffic - seems obvious, but it means that with ads you can exactly value / put an exact price on beauty — which is honestly pretty interesting. Maybe the it isn’t about retardmaxx… but really the looksmaxx folks have it right... and if they quantifiably do? well then Jabba the Hutt must have been much richer and more powerful than people even knew to flaunt ugly like that and not care.

oh and if you have feedback / made it his far and aren't a bot drop me a video-line

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