Sam Lessin
VCCo-Founder & General Partner, Slow Ventures
Generalist seed GP backing experienced founders
Background
Sam Lessin is a co-founder and General Partner at Slow Ventures, a generalist early-stage VC firm with approximately $770M AUM based in San Francisco, Boston, and New York. Before Slow Ventures, he was VP of Product at Facebook, where he founded the Identity product group. He co-founded drop.io, which was acquired by Facebook in 2010, and Fin Analytics. At Slow, he was among the original seed investors in Solana, Airtable, Teamshares, and Sublime Security. He is also a columnist at The Information and host of the More or Less podcast.
Investment Thesis
Backs founders with deep domain expertise and genuine conviction who have spent years developing insight into a problem — not founders seeking problems to solve.
Investment Focus
Stages
Typical check: $500K–$3M
Sectors
Based in: USA (San Francisco, Boston, New York) (North America)
Notable Investments
Airtable
Seed investor; no-code database platform
Solana
Original seed investor; high-performance blockchain
Teamshares
Seed investor; employee ownership platform
Sublime Security
Early investor; email security platform
Venmo
Early seed investor; P2P payments; acquired by PayPal
Robinhood
Early investor; commission-free stock trading app
Allbirds
Early investor; sustainable footwear brand; IPO 2021
Slack
Early investor; team messaging platform; acquired by Salesforce