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1. Amazon, Google, ChatGPT: When Do Products Start Gaming Their Users?

   30 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 3 min

   Afspelen
   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. Lees meer

   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 Wh…

2. ⁠The Real Reason Elon Wants SpaceX and Tesla to Merge Now

   23 oktober 2026 · 52 min

   Afspelen
   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. Lees meer

   Try the Polls app out now: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-information-polls/id6814969991

   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…

3. The Death of the Web Is Inevitable

   16 oktober 2026 · 50 min

   Afspelen
   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. Lees meer

   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 I…

4. Agentic Commerce Hits a Wall: Hilton, Amazon and the Bot Blocking Fight

   9 oktober 2026 · 53 min

   Afspelen
   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. Lees meer

   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…

5. Meta Muse vs Instinct vs OpenAI Dots: Do AI Agents Have Any Moat?

   2 oktober 2026 · 57 min

   Afspelen
   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'… Lees meer

6. Claude Is Doing Science, a16z Is Starting a University & the AI Bubble Keeps Growing and Still Be a Terrible Business; We'd Rather Send Our Kids to the Military Than to a16z's School

   25 september 2026 · 59 min

   Afspelen
   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. Lees meer

   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 pr…

7. Anthropic Wants to Slow AI Down & Instinct Wants a $10B Valuation. Is It Because They're Losing? Is Dario Amodei Actually Right?

   18 september 2026 · 57 min

   Afspelen
   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. Lees meer

   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 …

8. iPhone Duo, Meta Muse & Why AI Finally Scared Dave Morin

   11 september 2026 · 51 min

   Afspelen
   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). Lees meer

   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 Agen…

9. AI Agents Are Going Rogue. Should We Be Worried?

   4 september 2026 · 56 min

   Afspelen
   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. Lees meer

   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

   We’re also on ↓X: https://twitter.com/moreorlesspodInstagram: https://instagram.com/moreorlessYouTube: https://youtu.be/0XQ4tslBiboConnect 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

10. Meta’s $17B Reckoning & Why Parents Can’t Compete With Big Tech's Algorithm

    28 augustus 2026 · 55 min

    Afspelen
    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. Lees meer

    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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