Sam Lessin: evaluation

Transcript context

…Well, let's go to Contrarian corner. This could be an entire podcast conversation with you, I suspect, but just like what's something you want to share that you believe that most other people don't believe? I think that the venture capital, the seed venture capitalists who invest in companies that are branded as AI companies are going to lose an impossibly large amount of money in the coming years. And that doesn't mean that I don't think you should be using AI to build things. I actually think you absolutely should. It's kind of like not using AI in your startup is the equivalent of not using the cloud in 2010 or not using the internet in 2000. It would be insane. Of course we're going to use these tools, but there's a difference between a great business that you're using AI to supercharge or make better or just as a piece of infrastructure. That's not an AI business. This is a business and I'm very into those versus all of these companies that come out that say we are the AI blank, I think they're all going to zero. Even my kind of argument this from a seed perspective is like, look, is OpenAI a good investment or not? It's a terrible seed investment, right? The way the number's baked out, even at a $500 billion market cap when all said and done, the seed investors have made something like 25 times their money. That's insane if you think about it. That's basically the worst. It's like a middling at best seed investment for the company that is defining the moment. And the reason is because these things are so capital consumptive. So if you're trying to deploy $100 billion, the market is fragmented, people want to dream a dream, people want religion, they want belief. There's a bunch of reasons why you can squint and justify it. You know what? If the storytelling of Elon allows SpaceX, which by the way, I love, I think SpaceX is an awesome company, but if all of a sudden that actually can be worth $1. 4 trillion to the public market, guess what? The money plowers are going to do great with all this narrative driven religion is what I would put it, but if you're a disciplined seed investor, I guess my contrary intake would be run away from things that are AI companies because even if you look smart for the moment, you're playing a dangerous game of get out before the narrative collapses. Wow. I love this. Okay. I want to follow this through a little bit. So you're saying because of the dilution that goes along with these companies.…

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