Jake Paul on Going From YouTube to Boxing to Investing | a16z ft. Anti Fund

Jake, Geoff, we've got some big news. Thanks for coming on the podcast today to discuss it. We've got a growth fund. Why don't you share the big news?

Yeah, we're officially announcing the growth fund that we've been working on for quite some time, and some of the tier-one names—a lot of the tier-one names, maybe all the tier-one names. [laughter] Anduril, Etched, Cognition, SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, Saronic, Modal. So, yeah.

The list goes on. A lot of work and collaborators went into it. Maybe they'll just zoom out first. Geoff, for those who are not familiar, from what you can see beyond the surface, how would you describe Jake's superpowers that led him to be the amazing partner for you here? And then I'm going to ask Jake the same.

I think Jake, from the outside, could be seen as an entertainer or professional athlete, but to me, Jake's always been a constant entrepreneur, first. And, second, I think he's really created himself as a tastemaker and a cultural leader of his generation, right? All the young kids today look up to and want to be an influencer. Jake literally created the influencer term in that job profile. If you think about him instantiating the daily vlog, it's easy, especially with an internet character, to take pieces of that persona and just put that together as a whole human.

But the underlying thread is, I think, he's a very generous, thoughtful, kind human being who is very ambitious and is not going to stop in whatever venues he chooses to participate and compete in. So I think if it's entertainment, media, sports, and hopefully, with venture capital, growth equity, and investing, we take that on together.

Thank you, Geoff. [laughter] Well, why don't you say the same for Geoff? Obviously, it's the same question, and we'll get into both your stories.

Yeah, I think Geoff is one of the smartest people that I know, just across the board. His work ethic and background are so different from mine as well, so we make such a great team. Computer science at Stanford, deep neural networks—we just think similarly in a lot of things, and I think that lends itself really well to being great partners.

He's nonstop thinking ahead and sees a lot of things before they come around the corner. He actually said no to investing in my first company when I was 18 years old, and the company failed, so he was right. He just has really great judgment. He's great with people. This is the people business, and so being able to really read people and have that EQ as well as IQ is really important.

You're just making us flatter each other. Yeah, Erik, you're an OG, so that complements you as well.

I appreciate it. Well, speaking of OGs, I remember Cory Levy, many years ago, said, “Hey, I've got this kid you've got to meet. He's building something super interesting. He's super talented.” I was out of town, and I was like, “I don't know.” He ended up introducing him, but we never ended up meeting.

I remember sometimes I reflect back and I'm like, “Holy shit.” First off, Cory is an incredible judge of talent. But, second, you've got to take bets on the up-and-coming talent because you never know where they're going to end up. Jake, the idea that someone would become a media mogul, then a professional athlete, then a tech investor—that's a pretty distinct path. Say more about what other people can learn from how you took your path. Was it all organic, or what was your strategy? How do you even retroactively make sense of your sort of multihyphenate career?

Yeah, it's really interesting. I've always been an entrepreneur first and very analytical. When things are working, double, triple, quadruple down, and when they're not, just sweep the things under the rug.

That's what someone once said about a16z. I love that they just launch a bunch of stuff and then, when it doesn't work, you just pretend it never happened.

Seriously, I've failed so many times to get to this point and made so many mistakes. I think it's resilience in this day and age, especially when you have a public career and are a public figure. You have to have tons of resilience. You have to know yourself. You have to go through ups and downs.

But I think being an entrepreneur at heart, I always looked at everything from a business lens. I always hustled, showed up every single day, knocked down every single door of opportunity, and always wanted to grow my network. I think that's been a superpower that differentiates me: always knowing the right person at the right time to ask for help or a favor, and also doing favors for them when they need you and not charging for it.

I think people in the entertainment world are very transactional, short-thinking, and not professional. They show up late. I've always tried to be the most professional entertainer, and so that has lent itself well. Then, when I went to box, it kind of started as this crazy thing. But then it was 1,000,000 pay-per-view buys and 30,000 tickets sold out. I had a blast doing it.

So it was an experiment for you? Or did you know you were going to go all in?

No, I didn't know I was going to go all in. But after the first one, it was absolutely massive. I was like, “I'm going to become world champion.” That was a pivot moment where it was like, yeah, this content stuff is cool and doing great, but I can still do content within boxing.

This boxing match was the most-viewed amateur event ever, with 30,000 tickets sold. The press conferences were getting tens of millions of views. So I was like, clearly people love this, and I love it, so I'm going to go all in.

And then that lends itself to now being one of the highest-paid athletes on the Forbes list, because of just following the numbers. So I think being analytical as an entertainer is also important.

So you have the content, and you have this massively high-grossing boxing career. Why get into tech?

I think it was, again, just being an entrepreneur at heart. But one of my first loves was actually the Valley. I came out here when I was 17 with Cory and Alex Dealov, and they showed me all these crazy companies. I got to meet some really smart people who were building the future.

I saw Cory's after-school setup, where he had all the screens and all the employees were there, and it was just so different and so cool. That's when I fell in love with wanting to make my own startups and be a founder, but also with being in the investor world, understanding how it works, and learning all the VC lingo. I started growing my network, so it's really always been there since I was a kid. It's always been something that I loved.

Then, when I was 23, I wanted to take a bigger bite at the apple. That's when I met Geoff, and the stars aligned. We just decided to go bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and it turns out that we're actually really good at it.

It's fun when things are working, and it's fun helping shape the future of America with these companies.

When did you know that you were going to be partners?

You know, I can start. It's really funny because we were just spending the weekend with the All-In Podcast besties and Jason Calacanis. I remember when we announced Anti Fund, Jason was like, “GW, you're making a mistake. Jake is not good. You're ruining your career.” And we were just like, “Whatever, bro.”

First, I think there's no beef. It was fun to play poker with those guys. But, second, Erik, Cal, you're a podcaster. You're trying to be what Jake invented. You are a VC-turned-influencer, and I think we'll give you guys a run for your money over who can be the better investor.

Shots fired.

No, but I remember that I found Jake was very wise at 23, 24. What I mean by that is, I think very few people have the amount of inbound and outbound requests for their time across so many different spectrums. One way I compliment Jake is that he context-switches so widely, right?

There's one moment where there's paparazzi, he's going to events, and he's a celebrity on a red carpet. He's blinged out in influencer gear.

Next moment, he’s a professional athlete training and preparing for a massive Netflix headline fight. Next moment, he’s negotiating business deals and in the weeds of numbers and his metrics. Then you pivot to the next thing, and he’s filming on TikTok.

I think in Silicon Valley there are a lot of smart people, and the context switching is pretty wide as a founder. But to go from entertainment mode to serious quantitative, analytic mode is very, very impressive.

And then, 2, Jake has the one word that you mentioned: resiliency. Jake has just seen a lot of shit coming up in Hollywood, going through the influencer phase, going through controversy, surviving it, and having haters. Most people do not eat that much pain.

I think that if you think about investing or startups, it’s pain tolerance. If you’re literally fighting and punching people, or getting punched in the face for a living, and then, 2, the internet is punching you—which is the most toxic environment, with internet trolls hating on you—if you can survive and thrive in that environment, that’s presidential, head-of-state-level courage and resiliency.

So those 2 things are what inspire me: how much I can context-switch to, how much pain tolerance I can have, and hopefully what we can imbue in our startup founders, our portfolio companies, and our co-investors. That human quality, which is very rare, is inspiring to me and hopefully to the people that we work with.

On that note, Jake, what can people learn from you about resilience and pain tolerance? Is it just something you’ve had since you were a kid? Is it something you’ve learned over time? Is it something you’ve just been pushed off the deep end?

Yeah, no, I think it’s a little bit of all of those things. I think I had a very intense father, so I think it started there—just being able to deal with him, growing up in that environment, and the hard work that led me to a very public career.

It all started with people actually hating on me from day 1, in my school. There was never a moment where me making the videos didn’t have a ton of haters. My whole school in high school turned against me and was talking shit, making anonymous accounts, and saying things about me. My principal and teachers were saying things, so it’s always been there. I think I’m just used to it because of that, which is pretty interesting.

Then you’re like, “What else are you going to do?” I don’t know—just be a coward and quit and give up and let people run you? I could just never be that person. I don’t think that way, and I know who I am.

I think that’s very important as well. I feel like a lot of people know who they are, but they let the comments and critics get to them very easily. If you can just look yourself in the mirror and be like, “I’m doing good. I’m a good person. I’m doing good things in the world. I have a good heart. I mean well,” and if you can mean those things, then it doesn’t matter what anyone says.

Yeah. When people ask you, “Hey, are tools like therapy or other self-care tools, whether physical, emotional, or mental, helpful for dealing with this? What do you tell them?”

Yeah, definitely. I fully believe in that. I think you just have to be careful—you don’t want therapy to turn into victimizing yourself and then always being in constant sad loops.

I think you have to be careful, and at some points, if it feels needed, yes. But I don’t think you should get trapped in the cycle of therapy and always having a call or an in-person meeting with someone that is generally probably going to be negative. I think it’s very important who that therapist is as well.

But I do think it’s important to learn about yourself and unpack things. I really like childhood trauma work, where you can connect to why you behave in certain ways as an adult. You can go back and realize, “Oh, you had this happen to you, and this is maybe why you have anxiety in this moment.”

Yeah. I think it’s important to unpack those things and learn about them. Totally. Geoff, why don’t you also make sense of some of this? When you’re reflecting on your career and looking back, you’ve taken some big swings in some different spaces. When you look back at the threads that have tied your career together, how do you make sense of it? What are some of the big insights you’ve had that have led you to go deep on certain things?

I guess I’ve always been almost an academic, an engineer, or a scientist at heart. What is the nature of reality? What is the truth? What are the underlying systems or rules that govern yourself, a company, or a society?

If I think about some of the things I’ve been interested in, whether it’s biohacking or how you optimize your singular person, I think there’s a tinkerer, a student, or an academic who just likes figuring out the different systems.

The second part is that, with a little bit of battle scars and wisdom, fewer things just compound really, really well. So now I think about why venture and growth is a very interesting problem to play with: managing $1 to $100 to $1 million to $1 billion is kind of the same level of hard, right?

It’s hard to spend $100 really well. It’s hard to spend $100 billion really well, but you only need 1 or 2 people or 3 people to manage $100 or $100 billion. The best investors are really strong-conviction folks who are just making big bets.

That’s where I think we’ve gravitated toward. I think Jake has a different lens on how he can scale his thought leadership, cultural leadership, and his ability to convene and bring people together at higher and higher scales.

I think that’s a shared level of ambition and maybe arrogance, in terms of thinking we can play at the highest levels of wielding capital, wielding technology, and wielding culture. If that is the endpoint—just asking, “What are the underlying rules of nature and the rules of reality?”—then what’s the most efficient way to start pulling and playing with those levers?

I think science, computer science, and physics are foundational to the nature of reality. Capital is the lever of human society and civilization. I think where Anti Fund has been quite unique is that, in a world where there’s more and more capital, attention is more scarce. Being able to control mindshare is more scarce.

Going back to the original question of why Jake is an ideal partner, you really can’t name a better partner than Jake Paul in terms of wielding attention and driving cultural taste. If we can really master those 2 levers, maybe we can control the world—or let’s just try and have someone stop us.

Yeah, there was a famous tweet: “If you’re smart, pivot to being hot.” Or, if you’re focused on intelligence, pivot to winning attention. You had this blog post about how there are 2 jobs: AI maxxing and looksmaxxing. Why don’t you talk about that?

Yeah, no, I think it’s actually true. The only thing that really will matter is that, if we assume that we’re pretty AGI-pilled and intelligence is just going to be metered out through compute, then what matters is, 1, your relationship with people.

I think looksmaxxing is a pretty narrow focus on physical appearance: people like people who look good, symmetric, and healthy. Fine. But I think it’s beyond just looks. It’s your vibe and your ability to be charismatic and engage with people. That’s an important skill set in the future. Can you just have better vibes than everyone else?

With venture, I think what you’ve done with the media strategy for Andreessen Horowitz—I mean, you guys are literally executing on looksmaxxing in the VC world, essentially. You have your own propaganda arm just pushing out your view of the world.

The second part is that, if you’re not maxing out on vibes, then you’ve got to be the best at wielding intelligence. All you’ve got to do is play with Codex and be on the computer all day long. Then, on the other side, work out, sleep a lot, and looksmax. Then you’ve got everything covered.

If you were 22, just getting out of college today, but in 2026, what would that look like in terms of how you’d want to spend your time?

I was—we were just stopping by Stanford, and Jake’s going to go back to college, so that might be an answer that he can actually think about.

Yeah, I want to play on the Stanford football team, actually. We’ll see what happens.

He’s going to do 1 year on the Stanford team and then get drafted by the Cleveland Browns. It’s happening. Let’s go.

I’m actually old-school in the sense that—I think I saw this earlier in my career—if computer science and math are automated, then you don’t need to study this stuff and can just do cultural or other fuzzy stuff.

I would just go deeper and deeper into actually understanding math and actually understanding computer science, because if you actually know how these large language models work under the hood, you can wield them and prompt them better.

So I’m actually doubling down: yes, get really good at math, and get really good at computer science. The people leading these industries are math champions, right? Scott Wu and all these guys are just hardcore at that stuff. We were hanging out with Scott at their office a couple of months back.

So, you would want to get technically brilliant.

A version of AI maxxing is basically just max your IQ and max your EQ. Looksmaxxing and AI maxxing are just the more cult-like, currently culturally relevant terms for it.

Would you start a company? Would you join Anthropic or OpenAI, or—

You just have to gang up with the smartest, most ambitious people possible. That could either be your own startup, or it could be joining OpenAI.

I think the most important thing is to team up with like-minded, ambitious people who will push you to be the best version of yourself. If that’s a company, then go for it, and Jake and I will back you. If it’s joining OpenAI, Cognition, or some of these really high-growth companies so you can learn a little bit before you jump into the deep end yourself, that’s also great.

I’m not technical, so I think it would be a harder place for me, but I would probably try to be in VC coming out of college.

And yeah, hopefully, if I made a lot of good connections at Stanford, I would seed my buddies’ genius ideas.

Don’t cut yourself short. We had Jake on his MacBook, Codexing, and—

Yeah, I’ve got my GitHub popping.

Go find that GitHub. I want to track his commits. I was going to ask: if you were 22 today, in 2026—or 18, even—could you run the same playbook? Or is there something about what you did on YouTube and these new platforms when you were younger that wouldn’t work in the same way today, and you’d have to find a new playbook?

To me, it’s obvious with boxing: you just have to be the best in the world. You have to beat the other person. But in terms of what works in the creator space, it doesn’t seem as obvious from the outside. I’m curious if the same kind of media playbook would have worked 10 or 15 years later.

No, I don’t think it would. There are very few people breaking through on the media side of things. It’s a lot harder to grow, a lot harder to amass a following, and to be a known brand and rise to the top. You kind of had to be there from the start.

That’s why, when you look at the brands that have stuck around at the highest level in social media, it’s me, MrBeast, and my brother. There’s really no one else.

For people who aren’t as familiar, what was your insight? What were you doing that was so new, or that amassed such an audience so quickly?

I think a lot of it was that you just have to be entertaining. My brother and I were posting every single day—15-minute videos that took the whole day to film. So, effort first and foremost, and the entertainment in it.

Then I think diversifying with characters. I basically created a daily reality show with all of these people on it and all these crazy things happening, and that was cutting edge at the time.

Then just always being the visionary about what’s working and what trends. We’d think, “Okay, let’s make a rap song,” and then all of a sudden it’s one of the generational anthems of this era. Younger kids know every single word of it. It’s like, “Oh, the music worked. Okay, let’s make more songs. Let’s make a whole album. Let’s make a Christmas album.”

So, it was constantly bits of iteration, but spanning the full spectrum of entertainment. It was songs, comedy—I would make scary videos to have the fear aspect of it—and then all of a sudden I was going into athleticism, which is boxing, and that whole side of entertainment as well. I think modern-day entertainers have to do it all.

We went to MrBeast’s place in North Carolina—Jimmy’s place, rather—and he gave us a tour. He was showing us how analytical the whole operation is. Was yours much more artistic, creative, or emergent, in terms of, “Let’s just mess around and find out”? How did you figure out what to spend time on and what to do in comparison to something like a MrBeast operation?

Yeah, I think it’s similar, but Jimmy is a numbers guy and is super analytical. Mine is definitely analytical, but not at the level Jimmy is with how he does things. Mine is more creative and entertainment-focused, and kind of a feeling thing, like you’re saying.

That’s why Jimmy just maxed out the numbers on YouTube and did every little thing possible to hack the algorithm.

It’s interesting because there are a lot of people who get big but aren’t super durable. You just mentioned that you, your brother, and Jimmy are the ones who really stood out. I’m curious why some people get big for a period of time, and I’ll hear about them—they’ll be on TikTok or some other platform—but I don’t hear about them years later.

Yeah, I’ve seen the biggest stars in the space from day 1 just not stick around anymore. It’s weird. It’s really weird. There was a group called Magcon back in the day. They were like the Justin Biebers of the internet world, and Shawn Mendes actually spun out of there. He was the one who obviously made it really big.

I think people maybe don’t have that resiliency. They get tired of working or making content, or going to the new platform, or they lose motivation—whatever it might be. I think the people who are truly destined to do this, love doing it, and are talented at it are the ones who have lasted longer.

You almost have to diversify. We’ve gotten into politics, business, and growing brands. You start to have this audience that follows you for multiple different things. Some people love my ranch YouTube videos and only know about that. They don’t even know that I’m on an a16z podcast, where people in the tech world are now hearing about what I’m doing, but they probably won’t watch my TikToks.

I’m doing all these different things and growing audiences in all of these different worlds, and I think that’s been the key. I also think knowing how to monetize it and make money has been important. A lot of people in the space don’t know how to actually pull cash out. They could have a lot of followers but not the cash, and cash is king.

I think that’s been another very important reason for the—I don’t even know—13 or 14 years of being at the top of the influencer game.

Yeah.

I think Jake is a startup in and of himself. In startup land, it’s all power law.

I think Jake has essentially hit escape velocity. I think Jake gets even more powerful in this new era of AI-generated characters and infinite noise, because you’ll have a lot of AI-generated content. The people you grew up watching, loving, supporting, or hating as a child—that generation is now going to take over from the boomers, who are going to be dying off and all of that.

I think you compound just like OpenAI and Anthropic are compounding even faster. I’m excited about the path forward because it’s basically a celebrity-survivor battle. Literally everyone has died off except for the predestined few. I think the predestined few should be the future billionaires and trillionaires if you just extrapolate that exponential, because there are going to be fewer real people that you care about.

I think where I would juxtapose Jake and Logan with MrBeast is that MrBeast is so quantitative and analytical that it doesn’t matter if Jimmy is in a video or not. Swap him out for another game-show host. Maybe they’re not as smooth, but I don’t think Jimmy would say he’s even that smooth of a natural actor or character. His analytics and his taste in selecting the content format are very strong.

Where I think Jake has a lot of durability is that you follow his story. One way I think about it is: if Jake can just talk and get a bunch of views, or just live his life and get a bunch of views, while someone else has to light $100 million on fire to get a bunch of views, who do I want to be partners with? Who do I think has true skill and true charisma, without overly calling other people out?

I think that’s a measure of how you take an analytical and structural lens to backward-engineer what Jake has been able to accomplish.

To that end, you said creators need to figure out how to monetize. How have you figured out what’s worth doing from a business perspective and what’s not worth doing?

For example, I don’t know if you’ve been in feature films yet or had major, major roles. Should you be doing that, or is that a waste of time? There’s a whole set of activities where you could do them because you have some special access or opportunity to do them.

People might be telling you that you should do it. How do you think about that?

That's something that we've talked about and explored. There have been opportunities on the table to act, for example. But I think it's just: what was the time expenditure, and what was the return in terms of how much money we're making here? Who are the people involved, and is it going to perform well? Do we like this script? There's the risk of something going wrong, it flopping at the box office, and everyone shitting on you. It happens all the time.

So I think it's just staying focused, right? Having boxing as the core of everything for many years, and content, and never getting away from your bread and butter. Stay extremely focused on that and have great teams around to help with all of those things.

I think things now have to be $10 million, $20 million, or $30 million opportunities for me to spend time on them. I think it's pretty measurable from that side of things, to figure out if it's exciting in that sense. Besides the money and the brand-building, I've just been doing it for so long that it's instinctual. Is this a good idea? Yes or no? It's pretty obvious.

There are strategy talks and high-level people who huddle around the board, and sometimes I'll film a piece of content and maybe not post it because it doesn't make sense. There are processes and teams that look at everything, conversations, and it is pretty strategic. But a lot of it is also instinctual and on the fly, and it becomes more and more obvious as time goes on what the good opportunities are.

Is all press good press—or, sorry, is most attention good attention? When you look at some of the controversial moments that you guys have been through, or that you see other people go through, do you think they've been successful in spite of those moments, or because of the instinct that led to those moments? How do you think about this new era of attention?

I would say that not all press is good press. For certain people—for me, yes, because I can survive it.

You're antifragile.

Yeah. What are they going to say? The first reason I was hated from the very beginning in the mainstream was because I jumped on top of a news van. That's seriously why people started hating me. They were like, “Look at this douchebag.” I was making fun of the news reporter's shoes.

It seemed like bad press at the time, but that was really my first mainstream moment in the press. So I think for certain people, all press is good press, but I don't think that's a saying that's good for everybody or holds true for everybody.

Everything you do has risks. Just don't take fatal risks. Don't get yourself killed, and probably don't go to jail, though people have come back from that. But don't go to jail, don't die, and as long as you take risks, make calculated bets, and keep compounding, you'll eventually end up somewhere good.

So I think that's my take on that question: most people are just too afraid to do anything that even warrants press. When you already have a platform, then yes, maybe you can be a little bit more cautious. But most people are just totally irrelevant. You need to do something a little bit risky to even get to a place where you can be canceled. Most people can't even be canceled because they didn't exist.

Looksmax.

Yeah. Another way to looksmax is cool, too. [laughter]

I want to understand this new media environment by analyzing a couple of people. Can you guys explain Clavicular—what's his talent, and what makes him so successful? What advice might you have for someone like that? How do you make sense of it?

I mean, kind of what you just said, what Jake just said, is that he's doing it on the highest level.

It's entertaining. I've had this saying that I've used, and I think it holds true in the world of entertainment: people want to see something they've never seen before. It's so new and fresh and different and kind of crazy, but a lot of the stuff he says is true.

His delivery isn't always the best, and he's very abrasive. He doesn't care, but he's talking about a lot of relevant things, and everything is out there about him, so you fully know him. He's not afraid to be fully authentic and expose himself to the world. I don't think people have done that, and that's why I think he's been successful.

He's also doing things that generate bad press, but good news travels fast, news travels faster. So it's growing his brand like wildfire, and then it turns into this loop. He's able to convert it into views, and then he keeps on going.

I think streaming culture is really interesting and probably not the best for society, because there are so many kids watching. I actually feel like what I was doing on YouTube—this is the final iteration of it. I feel bad for contributing to where this has gone, but at the time I never thought of it that way. I never thought, “Okay, I set the bar here as crazy, and now streamers have to do it every day for multiple hours.”

To keep people's attention, they're having to do out-of-pocket shit, which I don't think is a good influence. But obviously, it's entertaining.

Just to clarify for people who aren't as familiar, my understanding from my limited observations is that he's a streamer, and some of his content is him going to the club and talking to girls, having very humorous conversations. Some content is focused on his looksmaxing journey, giving a lot of advice, doing interviews, and saying out-of-pocket shit, to use your term, around relationships, gender norms, or just how to look much better.

He's invested so much in it that there were rumors for a while that he might not be able to conceive or something. I can't remember exactly. Is that an accurate summary of what he's doing?

Yeah, I would say that's accurate, with the note that he's definitely very controversial and taking drugs.

On the stream, and doing pretty crazy things like that. So, yeah.

Yeah, he spent some time—he joined Jake's first livestream ever. What was he like in person?

I thought he was nice. Yeah.

Thought he was a nice guy. Definitely pretty wild on his stream, though. And I'm wild, as an entertainer known for that. I can turn that on. But if I'm saying that, then he's probably pretty wild.

Yeah.

Is streamer culture today the previous evolution of what you were doing? Where do you see it all going? Is it just going to get crazier and crazier? Are we going to see new formats? How do you envision the future of what you helped create?

Yeah, I think we'll see new formats and people pop up who are unique and different. But I think the players who are in it now and are the biggest now will likely remain the biggest. I don't think it'll shift too much in terms of all the personalities, but I do think things will get slightly crazier.

It's probably already near its peak, because the platforms aren't allowing certain things to be streamed anymore. They're already getting deplatformed if they do certain things. So I think it's probably at its peak right now with some of the things that are going on.

I mean, talking about how you can't die and you can't go to jail, at some point someone's going to step on that, and boom—you peak. That's the endgame of that.

Yeah. I recently learned that Kick is like Twitch but more edgy, and Rumble is an even edgier version of that. There are just different streaming platforms for different levels of edginess.

Yeah, exactly. To your point, when you look at some of the stuff that's been hardest for you to handle—the biggest controversial moments—or when other people come to you and say, “Holy shit, I'm in this massive scandal,” how have you bounced back from that? How do you advise people to bounce back from the toughest moments, when people are actually trying to cancel you and succeeding a little bit?

I think faith and God. I think God gives his toughest battles to his most important soldiers. In all of those moments, I always had to learn something, go through something, and grow. Once I've gotten out of certain situations and learned a lot of things, it's always on the other side of them. Those experiences have prepared me to fly higher in life and do more things.

And so, I think everything happens for a reason. You can’t victimize yourself, and you have to know that if you come out on the other side of it, you will be stronger, and that will lead and lend to a bigger and better life.

Yeah. Geoff, how about you?

I think Jake puts it really nicely in terms of whether it’s faith in a higher power or just a conviction in yourself that what you’re doing is truly worth fighting for, battling for, and standing and dying for, right? I think that’s where choosing the right mission is so important. A lot of things that people choose to do, they probably do not care for, right? But if you hate your job and you’re still putting 40 or 50 hours a week into it, and you’re getting attacked or critiqued for it, then there’s no conviction there.

In some sense, if you just choose the right battles to fight for and you’re willing to take those arrows because you believe in the mission and the message, that almost helps you with that faith, because you actually believe in and have conviction in what you’re fighting for. We’re invested in some of the top, most high-profile AI companies, and those are some of the topics that we’re able to discuss. I think Jake, especially, can share his perspective on that.

If people are going through really high-profile hate on social media, or litigation and controversy, I think Jake, having lived through that at some of the highest levels and sharing how he deals with it, is super helpful for founders that we talk to and work with. But I think it just goes back to: If they believe in the mission they’re doing, right? If you think that you’re banking beneficial AGI, or you really believe in fusion energy or defense tech and making Americans have the best weapons systems—which we think is really important—then having that strength to fight and battle for that makes it easier if you have that self-conviction that what you’re doing is correct.

Yeah. Someone once asked Clifford Cler something like, “It seems like you’re not that interested in politics. Why is that?” And he said something like, “It doesn’t help me with my looks maxing journey.”

So, how have you guys approached politics—or not approached politics? How have you guys thought about that?

I think it’s always been my goal and a part of who I am since I was younger to help the people around me, be a leader, and speak my mind on certain things. When I’m in this position of having a large audience, and as an American, we all have the right to our opinion and to voice our opinion. That’s one of the most beautiful things about this country.

With a lot of people following me, I’ve taken it upon myself to speak my mind on what I believe in and hopefully help others understand as well and grow a deeper understanding of politics and some of the things that are going on. I believe it’s important, as an American, to exercise that right to our opinion and to voice our opinion. I’ve just slowly started to talk more and more about it openly.

I think it comes from my dad as well. He was very political growing up. I’ve always been involved in it, seeing it, and talking about it. I think it’s the biggest game in life. I think it’s interesting to be in those rooms and talk to those people and help them potentially win certain elections, whether that’s governor, president, or senator.

It’s been interesting and fun, and I think it truly does make an impact on the American people and society.

I just want to say that’s one thing I respect about Jake, because I know that a lot of people in the public eye are too afraid to step into politics because it’s not good for business, right? Michael Jordan like everyone buys shoes or whatever like that quote.

But I respect that Jake, and we just had conversations about this, where it’s like, if you actually have conviction, God or your faith will pay full dividends for that conviction, right? I think there’s something, too: Life and your family and your culture, your neighborhood, your community, are arguably more important than just stacking more zeros behind your account, right?

At a certain point, you win the money-maxing game. You win the money game. Then it’s like, can you actually create a better livelihood for yourself, your kids, your neighbors, your community? It takes courageous people like Jake to be like, “Hey, I’m okay taking a little bit of risk.”

Yeah.

And maybe piss off a segment of people, but I truly believe in this. It’s not some B.S. There’s a deep conviction that he will sacrifice monetary opportunity or just reduce optionality because there’s true belief and true conviction behind his perspective. That is what leadership actually is.

If there are no leaders out there, we’re totally screwed. We need people to step up and lead.

Could you see yourself running someday for some sort of elected position?

Yeah, I could see myself being involved for sure. It’s become more and more of a thing. I think Geoff was actually the first person to talk about it, 6 years ago, and then, obviously, President Trump endorsed me onstage to run for president. Backstage, he was like, “I think you should really do it,” etc.

I would only want to be involved in it if I were the best person to do it and to help the country. If some other people on the other side of things who weren’t good for the country felt like they had traction, I would probably do it to help the people of America and make sure we don’t get wrapped up into this whole socialist-communist thing that’s going on in New York with Mamdani.

It’s really bad, and it will lead to America being in a very, very bad place. If something like that’s going on and there’s something I can do to help, then, yeah, of course I’m going to want to get involved—or maybe just help push a candidate and support them.

So, you spent the first 15 years or so—we talked about media, boxing, and tech. If you were to guess over the next 5 to 10 years, what’s something else you might add to your repertoire? Besides obviously going much bigger in the areas you’re already in, what could that be?

I would probably say the most obvious one that I’m super passionate about is definitely politics. That seems to grow as I get older as well, because of what Geoff was saying: How do I—okay, we have the money, we have this stuff; how do I help the world and do my part?

I have the courage, and I believe I have the right mindset for it and the right way to think about it, and finding truth not only within myself but also making that a practice out there in the world. I believe that a lot of my takes and opinions and thoughts on it are the ones closest to truth, and really just finding what’s best for the people, for the country, and for creating the future for my kids.

If I can be helpful in that—and I think, and I know, I can, and I know I have a very good way of thinking about things—then, yeah, I would definitely see myself in the next 10 to 15 years in that arena for sure.

One last question on this topic, at a high level: What is a topic, or what are the topics, that you care most about in that arena, that we really need to get right?

Yeah, I think education, first and foremost. It’s bad. It hasn’t been reformed since the 1920s or the 1930s. There’s been no change, and the world has changed so much. In the investing world, you see some of these newer-age startups focused on school popping up. What’s the one? Alpha School. I’m very impressed with what they’re doing.

I think creating that future is almost like planting seeds of a fruit tree. By changing the education system, then in 30 or 40 years, the country is going to have a lot smarter people, a lot better-educated people, and that ripple effect just impacts society so much and in a massive way. We also don’t want to fall behind other countries.

It also lends itself to finance. The number one problem I think that’s out there right now with young men—and young women, even—is: How do they make money? Where do they make money? If that education is in place and you’re prepared, and you actually learn about maybe how to do taxes in school, and not about the Pythagorean theorem, I think that would be a much better outcome for the people of America.

It’s just wild to me that something like that isn’t taught, amongst many other things. I believe the economy would thrive more from education. The list goes on.

I think one thing that’s cool is the Invest America accounts, the Trump Accounts.

I know that Jake is supporting the team there on that. Maybe you want to talk a little bit more about that. But I think in terms of allowing the next generation of young Americans to actually participate in the fastest-growing private companies, and having them be a shareholder and a stakeholder in the success of American innovation, is really important.

That ties into education, right? To Jake’s point, if people don’t grow up knowing how to compound their money, I think people should know the Pythagorean theorem and the quadratic equation, but yes, you should know how to—

They shouldn’t.

It’s literally taking up space in my brain. I don’t have a lot of space. Okay.

But knowing how wealth compounds is really important, and I think with the Trump Accounts, having every little kid see their little stock portfolio and realizing, “Hey, this is how money and investing works,” is super important. To that end, Geoff, if you were 18 today, knowing what you know, would you go to college, or do you advise people to go to college? How do you think about that?

Yeah, I think Peter Thiel is, in some sense, kind of hypocritical when he says, “Don’t go to college,” when he had Stanford undergrad and Stanford Law School. He got all the badges, right? But I think the underlying point is correct.

To me, getting a badge is useful if you don’t have any other badges, right? Jake doesn’t have to have the institutional badge of being educated because he became world-class at what he does as a content creator, an athlete, a media personality, and an entertainer. But if you’re not like Jake, then you need to get some external badges, right? You’ve got to win a science fair or win a math competition. If it happens to be that you go to Harvard, that’s a really good badge to say, “Hey, there’s some external validator that you’re at least good at something,” right?

So, to me, I think all of us should try to aspire to be the best in the world at something. It could be the best violin player, the best businessperson, the best boxer, the best—I don’t know—podcaster, or just the best artist or the best doodler, right? But everyone should have some God-given talent to potentially be the best in the world at.

If there are education badges that help you validate that and give you the confidence that you can be, I think that’s actually very valuable. But in terms of the educational content, I think that will be reformed. I think the education system will change, but I think the badging system will not change. So my advice would be: collect some badges as a kid, right? Become the best YouTuber, or go to Stanford or Harvard, get some badges, and that gives you a lot of confidence.

To do the next thing, like a real thing. Jake, have you seriously considered going to Stanford?

I went there today and I was like, “This is beautiful.” We went to the church, and, yeah, I don’t know. I think it could be funny or interesting, but I definitely think it would lend itself to what I want to do. I do have NFL aspirations.

After boxing, I want to play slot receiver, and so I think getting that experience in college first would be good, so I could walk onto the Stanford team. I’m being serious, though.

Well, this might be the first podcast you mention it on, so—

It is.

That’s amazing. I want to close on some anti-fun topics. Geoff, you talked a little bit about founder taste, how important it is, and how rare it actually is. Talk about what it means and how you guys have developed it.

I mean, through both our journeys, I remember some of our early conversations with Jake. Jake’s met some of the most weird, crazy, hustler, scammy people through his career, going from 16 to Hollywood and just getting thrown to the wolves, right? And me coming up in Silicon Valley, Stanford, and Y Combinator, I think we just got a lot of reps at meeting people, getting pitched things, doing bad deals, and making mistakes.

So I don’t know—there might be some talent or EQ or people-reading skill, but I think a lot of it is probably just a ton of reps. Again, maybe going full circle to the top, I remember catching up when Jake was 23 or 24. It was like, “Oh man, this guy’s got a lot of reps on a lot of stuff that 50-year-old men never deal with,” right? Litigation, business deals, business issues, or success. He just had a lot of experience. He lives in dog years.

I feel like that’s Laura, who recently joined us to set up Jake’s family office and is running it. The amount of stuff that we’ve done in the last couple of months is probably 2 years’ worth of shit in 2 months.

So I think there’s that people-reading aspect, but I think it ultimately goes down to, first, do they have a passion and a reason to believe why they can be world-class at what they choose to pursue? And, 2, are they resilient and tough enough to eat a ton of shit to get there? Those are the 2 attributes. I think that’s some measure of IQ, then personality read, and just track record.

Leaning on other people that we trust and respect for background on certain people and their dealings with them is important, too. I think reference checks are also very important for us. One of the companies we invested in was a defense tech company, and we hit up Palmer Luckey’s team and were like, “Yo, what do you think of this group?” So we’re always referencing our network for the certain categories of things that we’re working on, and that’s proven to work really well.

You’ve made investments in some iconic companies, but you’ve also incubated Betr. Could you see yourself incubating more companies where you have an unfair advantage, like you did in betting? How do you think about that?

Yeah, definitely. I think I’ve been noodling on certain things to found currently, and just seeing how the world is evolving with this current AI boom, seeing the world change, and all of this stuff. There have been ideas, and we’ve grown some of these companies so that they run themselves—Betr, for example—and I spend a limited amount of time on it now because the team is fully built out.

So I think there is a dynamic shift happening for us right now where there’s kind of an open slot to potentially found and start something new in this current landscape, and it’s definitely enticing. But obviously there’s so much going on right now, and you could launch a company and then OpenAI or Claude replicates it next week, and you’re kind of shit out of luck.

Yeah, totally. We were talking earlier about the need to monetize. Anecdotally, I’ve seen the creator class get a lot smarter and more sophisticated about it. We’ve seen people like yourself getting into venture and private equity, but even MrBeast was originally making chocolate. Now he’s just bought a bank. He’s like, “Hey, I can make a dollar off a customer. Maybe I can make hundreds of dollars off a customer.”

And so you guys getting into actually building software products and companies—I feel like people are getting more sophisticated about where the value is, and I’m excited to see that trend continue.

Yeah, thank you. And, yeah, I think as we become more sophisticated, it’s cool to sell—I won’t say which companies or whatever—but we want to play a bigger game.

Yeah, totally, and shift humanity.

While doing that.

Yeah, I think it’s a good place to wrap.

Yeah.

Jake, Geoff, you guys are doing some really exciting things. We’re excited to be co-investors in a number of companies together, and more to come. Thanks so much for coming to the podcast.

Thank you, man.