SWL Week in Review - Bears and Books no E, no T

From:

Sam Lessin <sam@wlessin.com>

To:

Hidden Recipient <hidden@emailshot.io>

Date:

6/6/2025, 7:37 PM(7 days ago)

More or Less Pod: Creators / Creator Businesses & AI Hardware
conversation is about the future of creator businesses — some thinking on how Slow is investing in people, how AI extends the bounds of what creators can ‘build’ trust, etc. Riffing on AI hardware forms. Also fun that I am doing a proton-modified fast, sitting, hitting ketones and on beta-blockers post a clearly test for this one… Jessica seems to notice a difference / for better or worse…

Hot Takes:

Build-a-Bear is the Ultimate Sleeper AI Company… this came up on a slow partner discussion & then again on More or Less — but I buy this narrative a lot. The AI is kinda commodity, but people don’t want Elon-kill-bots roaming their house, what they want is cute-cuddly-personalized friendly-characters in their homes (and serving them chipotle) — seems like build a bear wheelhouse (best performing stock even beyond Nvidia in last few years) — you gotta own the customer interface :) — we have had a ‘chief compliance stuff bear from COSTCO at slow for a long time’ … typical right story wrong horse I guess.

The Middle Chapters — Hat Tip to My Dad For Nailing it in 1997 — I found a copy of this around the house and picked it up and read it — From what a world with zero inflation / deflation looks like to the economic boom of the Internet followed by next-generation-economic-questions — my dad really got a shocking amount right in his 1997 book. A few have asked me for copies — which aren’t buyable anywhere but here is a PDF.

Lymphatic Discrimination - on the RX of Jessica I went to get a lymphatic drainage massage in Burlingame … and after I showed up I was denied service for being ‘male’ — and told they only do it for women!? What type of new discrimination against the white hetero patriarchy is this!? Do I not also deserve to have my lymphs drained ?! what is happening to America.

Deleted Tweets!? 20VC got spicy — fun to join Harry and crew as always for state of VC, etc. I can’t believe I am the one who agrees with Chamath — very embarrassing position to be in TBH + pretty sober conversation on power-laws and which companies matter that clearly got a little heated…

Duo-lingo for Religion — I am only more bullish on this over the last few weeks — it is such an obvious ‘solve an existing problem for an existing real high-pressure need’ (I need to convert to get married) … coupled with cultural broader momentum (search for meaning, different religions needing to figure out modern marketing, new cult-influencer-religions, etc.) — not letting this go.

Harvard Corporation Grants Honorary Degree to BDS Professor?! — well this is just shooting yourself in the food IMHO… here is my outrage tweet - and 1636 of course covered with more rigor / really hitting on the point, which is that the Harvard Corporation really loses credibility when it talks a good game about open inquiry and pursuing academic excellence and then give a completely voluntary honorary degree to someone who has unabashedly supported academic boycotts of a country and their professors + BDS. Why would you endorse totally voluntarily such a person? I am sure as part of the response here to the outrage, Harvard responded with this press release yesterday... oh and hi from harvard yard.

AI consumer lock-in — tempting narrative but not a thing — I just don’t buy it — I get how people get here, but I think it is a wrong take. We are going to see people interacting with a chorus of AIs and it is quite easy to tell them what they need to know to serve you best… vs. a single ‘god’-Samantha.

AI: The Cause of, and Solution to, All of Outbound’s Problems — recurring framework, but now with real data — interesting point from Salesbot CEO / noting that AI really is already very measurably destroying cold outbound — that isn’t just theoretical… and it boy is it a war of attrition.

Sam

P.S. This singles list got pretty big… unfortunately it is very gender imbalanced … if you are looking for love and think a niche newsletter’s close-readership is a good filter hit me up looking@wlessin.com and I am trying to work the problem BUT what I really need is men / very under-indexed (which is wild because my default assumption is this is very male-gender-balanced readership?

P.P.S if you are interested in foundation farms (opting-out of factory farming in the USA with a private farm network… making good progress on that with great folks & same goes for experiments on PI-BB (a private BBS for no/bs private market transactions) & lots of exciting stuff going on with merit and that team :)

Similar newsletters

There are other similar shared emails that you might be interested in: