# Jake Paul's Venture Capital Strategy: Attention as Capital

**Podcast:** The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
**Published:** 2026-04-18

## Transcript

Attention is more valuable than capital.
Can VCs become influencers faster than like native influencers like Jake and Logan can become VCs?
I just hang out with Trump and like the I go on stage and do a speech off the top, and the first thing he says to me on stage when I turn around is, Oh, you're gonna run for office someday.
And like then I we go backstage and he's like, You should be the president, and then he like endorses me.
I think he um is arguably one of the best presidents the United States has had in in this term.
Money buys freedom, and I think freedom makes people happy.
This is 20 VC with me, Harry Stubbings, and today we have such a different one for you.
Jake Pool, one of the most recognizable people on the planet, is in the studio, baby.
He's here with his partner Jeffrey Woo.
What you don't know about Jake, he's probably one of the best investors of the last few years with his fund anti-fund.
They've backed the lights of ramp, cognition, chronosphere, and many others.
And this is a show unlike any that Jake has done before, ranging from politics to parenting to the next generation of great investments.
This was a fascinating discussion, revealing a side to Jake that I don't think many people have seen before.
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You have now arrived at your destination.
Boys, it is so good to have you in the studio.
I'm so excited that we got to do this in person.
So thank you for joining me.
100%, man.
Thank you for having us.
Now I want to start on the fund.
This is a VC show first and foremost.
But I actually spoke to John Wonder, who is a portfolio company of yours, and he said that you've actually got to start with just mapping out the Jake Pool business empire ecosystem to fully understand what it's like.
Can you just give us like an overview and with whoever's best for this?
An overview of what the Jake Pool business empire looks like today.
Yeah, so it goes like anywhere from being a peanut farmer to uh fighting Anthony Joshua's to venture, you know, working with open AI and advising them.
But yeah, I have I have a ranch where like I literally sell peanuts, but yeah, like it's entertainment mixed, yeah, obviously with uh the entrepreneurial vibes, but it's you know, better, which is sports gaming.
It's I spoke to the founder beforehand.
Okay, Joey, yeah, he's great.
Yeah, I suppose.
Dude, I did.
I was like, listen, I you do Jake, obviously um you know, invests in you guys.
He's like, No, he didn't.
He co-founded it with me.
Yeah, and and so we had a lovely chat.
Oh, dude, I'm I do my work.
Yeah, you're locked in.
But yeah, that's why I like the show.
I mean, maybe the way like because I it's easier for me to brag about Jake, but I think the highest order bit is that I think Jake represents the next generation of Americans and what they want to be like.
And I think we have a unique opportunity to not just be in an you know, Jake being an inspirational model, but also be a capital force and an attention force to drive a future and a culture that we want to see.
So I think if you stem from uh just a demographic perspective, right?
The number one job that young people want to have is to be an influencer.
I think one of Jake's personal missions is how to inspire the next generation of young men.
Jake, are you proud when you hear that number one job aspiration is to be an influencer?
Yeah, and so it's funny.
I've actually like it's been that way since I was uh like 18.
They did like some company did a study when Vine and YouTube was like popping, and that and I've known that statistic for the longest time.
Like, do you think that's healthy?
Because I I I don't think you wanted to be an influencer.
No, exactly.
That and that's what I tell people.
They're like, Well, how do I be like you as I don't?
Like, be yourself.
And also, like, are you entertaining?
Like, you have to really ask yourself that question.
And like, can you actually do this?
And are you smart?
Are you creative?
Do you have the work ethic?
You know, like you know how much work you just put in just for this one podcast.
And people don't really like see the behind the scenes things that go into these videos, and it's become second nature to me, and I have a team and all that stuff, but it's still like a full-time.
What do people not see work wise that you wish they saw most?
They don't see the there's like so much genius in every point one second of content that I make.
Like every little millisecond is calculated and dialed and thought through.
I think that stems from being a creator from Vine, where you had 6.9 seconds.
People thought it was six, but it's actually six point nine.
And every second had to and millisecond had to be measured out and calculated and changed and edited around.
And so I think that like meticulous nature of what I do and create has obviously helped me since since the beginning.
It's almost like politics with my team where we're like arguing about every little second or song of the video or things like that that actually matter.
Do you lose the art in the science?
I don't think so.
I think the art happens.
Like when we're filming, the science is like in post and in the edit.
And so it goes back to the question of like people want to be influencers, but like, are you naturally good at it?
And are you naturally like able to talk on camera and tell the story?
At the end of the day, I'm like a storyteller in a sense.
And so that's the art.
And it's interesting.
So are the best founders and so are the best fundraisers.
What makes a great story?
Conflict, struggle, love would be the top three answers for that.
And and I purposely invoke emotions in people as an entertainer.
I want people to feel like fear or joy or hate or something.
I don't care what they feel, but I know in certain videos what I'm gonna make them feel.
Like I posted an edit where like I act like I was depressed and like couldn't find meaning in my life.
It went super viral because like people were like, yo, are you okay?
People were texting me, like, yo, are you okay?
Like, I saw your video, and I'm just like, no, I'm just I'm just an entertainer.
Like, I'm just making people think I'm depressed.
And I think the boldness of character too, right?
Like, I think Jake is very authentic and passionate about what he believes in.
So it would add that later.
I think does that ever make your life harder on the institutional side?
Is it difficult for you where you have to project confidence to institutions?
And with respect, Jake is doing content that might seem a bit down or distracted or whatever that might be.
Yeah, it's clearly polarizing, but it's very obvious, right?
It's a double-edged sword, right?
Like Jake has such a big persona and character that one can just be dismissive on first glance.
But I'm okay with that because at the end of the day, we're in the money-making business and our track record makes money.
If it's like, hey, LPs don't understand the marketing and the attention gathering, it's like, okay, we'll make ourselves and other people more money that are a little bit smarter than you guys.
So I think it's like you either lean into the brashness or the aggressiveness, or you try to hide it.
Every great story, every great founder, every great business is like you lean into strength.
You want to be the best in the world, and I think we have a chance to be the best in the world on our exact style of investing in company formation.
Is all publicity good publicity?
It's the age old saying, I'm never sure.
Yeah, it's a very interesting question.
Uh there is besides like a couple of things.
You know, like don't mention the island.
Yeah, no, that's what I was gonna say.
It's like, you know, I should like to go.
I was like, but is Epstein's publicity good?
Like, no, like not all of it's good, no.
It's a it's a bad saying.
Do you regret saying that you were uncancellable?
No, no, not at all.
Because I've never done anything that is bad, actually.
I've been a dumb, arrogant kid.
Oh, I filmed videos or things around fire.
Like, okay, cool.
If everyone's life was on camera from the time they were 14 years old, like we put a camera on you 24 7 through your college years, like what were you doing at that for our party?
Like, that's probably much worse than you know, me lighting a pool on fire in in Los Angeles.
So that's the thing is I'm uncancelable because like no one will ever find or see anything about me that is actually bad.
It's all just like fake hate.
We were talking about kind of the business empire at the start.
If we filter that down into like being the best investor you can be, the immediate thought I had was why does venture make sense if we're candid, you know, reports around the latest fight is you make 70 to 100 million dollars open AI says.
Why does it make sense to do a 30 million dollar fund?
Yeah, I think um if the 30 mil fund was like the end goal, it would be like no, but like we want to run 10, 20 million dollars at some point and look up to people like you know, Josh Kushner at Thrive, who started with, you know, I think it was five million dollars, and so you have to start somewhere.
And and the f you know, obviously made a shit ton of money for the past fights and as my career went, but I my first fight against Deji, uh a local here, I guess, uh in London.
Like w I think we made like a million dollars.
So like you have to start somewhere uh to to be able to make it big.
When you think about like the pillars of venture, like how it's done, there's finding, there's picking, there's winning, and there's helping.
Now I may be being assumptive here and rude, but I would assume that say Jake is the master of winning and helping on distribution, and then you are the finder and the picker.
Is that correct?
Yeah, and I think people underestimate Jake's reps and what he sees, right?
Like, even just describing like the nuances of like six point nine seconds on a product feature, right?
In some sense, he was a f early adopter in all the social platforms as a creator.
So I think that same skill set in terms of knowing what is coming around the corner, understanding consumer sentiment is essentially the same instinct as us as VCs being like, hey, you know, this guy's a winner or this girl's a winner, and their product and their vision of roadmap makes a lot of sense.
So I think the picking side, I don't think it's we shouldn't underestimate Jake's like taste there.
And I would argue that with AI making traditional smart people stuff like coding and financial analysis as just metered intelligence.
I would argue that having taste, having that cultural vibe.
And I think that's like one of your like big edges as an investor.
I think you're just cooler and more with it and vibe with like the next generation of founders much better than a boomer VC.
And I think you deserve like the success on the platform and your and and your funds.
I think that's the challenge or the gauntlet that we're like excited to fight with.
It's like I just saw that Bill Gurley was tweeting that um you know paid marketing is like the worst form of marketing.
And I'm just like, okay, Uber, like he's most well known for kicking out Travis from Uber, and Uber burnt tens of billions of dollars on straight up marketing and just got the profitability showing a quarter of net income positive 14, 15 years in.
So my sense is that the software and like the classic smart people stuff gets commoditized, and the attention, the taste, the culture side gets more and more important.
So I think the world goes into our favor versus away.
Keith Raboy from Cosla and pre previously founders fund said that it's really important to know what we sell as investors, like what our product is.
And I quite like that framing.
When you think of the product that you sell founders, do you sell founders distribution?
And how do you think about keeping the brand and the profile pure and not being like better partnership and sips morgs and all the other companies?
Oats overnight, I did my work that you partner with.
I think to each their own.
So you're super upfront, like, hey, we're not gonna be distributing you on our platforms, but we'd love to partner with you.
Yeah, and I think there's tons of other things to provide in terms of knowing culture and marketing and and just information in general.
Hey, you should do this, you should link with this person.
This would be a good access point.
There's, you know, like a religion app that we're investors in.
It's like, okay, do you want to like you know, link with Trump's pastor?
Like I have his phone number, like things like that.
That is the most random network.
But it's like it's like Trump's pastor.
Yeah, sure.
We can provide value and in in tons of different ways.
And I think each company is a different conversation.
What do the quote unquote best VCs even do?
A lot of it's those like introductions to revenue sources.
Like we are a phone call away from literally any executive, any billionaire in the world.
Would you rather have a Jake Paul introduction or some random boomer suited VC make that intro the response rate and the integration rate is like super high.
We can compete with the guys who've been doing this for 30, 40 years because one, the founders of those funds have been dead or or gone.
It's just other guys who got hired into doing this and I think we have a fresh take on saying hey let's compete.
I'd have like a sniper short late stage strategy if I was you have 10 of the best companies that we all agree at late stage and just aggressively go off to them.
You know I know you're invested in RAMP for one of them.
I think you're an Android and I just leverage the shit out of the personal brands and put 10, 20, 30 million dollars to work.
I I I think that's actually the correct way to think about it.
I think late stage I think we have unfair access advantage and I think our actual our our value at it is actually very valuable too because at that growth stage you're looking at IPOs.
They're looking at mass media branding and I think if you can look at track record, you can spend millions of dollars on like some marketing VP or some CMO or or some agency.
Literally, Jake has driven probably like billions of dollars of enterprise value and impressions and all like in in terms of new media.
And in some sense, like I see what Mark and Ben are doing with their podcast true media company is essentially like one thought I had was that can VCs become influencers faster than like native influencers like Jake and Logan can become VCs?
Like that's kind of like the battle.
Benchmark acquired Jack Altman's podcast, you know, A16Z, great media platform.
That's again like it goes back to like one of our founding principles, which is that attention is more valuable than capital.
Okay.
So when we think about that, we have early and then we have late stage.
And then we have incubations as well, because you do better as well.
Yeah.
Okay.
So we want to start companies as part of it.
Yeah.
Not too many.
Obviously it like takes a ton of work, but incubated better and W.
And then my brother's working on something now.
Obviously like he built Prime as well.
So that's a part of the strategy coming in with with ownership, but also, you know, just seeing a gap in the market with better.
It was all these sports gaming companies paying hundreds and hundreds and billions of dollars in marketing and seeing that their ads were terrible, their app was clunky, it didn't make sense.
I was like, yo, I could build a better app and promote it better and have better content.
And that's how we created better.
So better better, better, better.
What deal are you not in that you would most like to be in?
I want to do more.
I think we want to do a little bit more in Europe.
So I think Helsing is cool with geopolitics, I think there needs to be like a European Neo Prime for defense.
I agree.
We're chatting with Maddie over at 11 Labs.
I think they're doing great stuff.
Maddie's amazing.
But good going to your point, I think with the power law of just like the winners are just super big.
I think it just makes sense to just try to pick the number ones and maybe the number twos in every single category.
How much time can you realistically spend on venture?
I spend a lot of time on it.
I think people don't realize like how involved I am and work constantly on a day-to-day basis, talking, catching up, texting in a constant flow, weekly calls, etc.
etc.
So very, very involved and flying to SF multiple times a year, meeting on the ground floor with people, advising the companies that we're a part of, meeting with our different companies, et cetera.
So very passionate about it.
And I and it's because I like it.
And some of the other things that I do, I don't spend as much time like in the weeds, but this is like something I've always loved since I was 17, 18 years old and seeing the Ubers and the Twitters of the world and postmates and getting to see these companies when I was that young, like made an impression on me, and I've always loved it since then.
One thing I find hard is when we sell brand and we sell media, which is in some ways what we sell is our differentiator.
One challenging element is I feel relevance is this constant fight.
You constantly are on a treadmill and you say about your Jack Altman's going to ban, yeah, and Jack's got a fucking podcast, and so does Sequoia.
I mean, every fan has a podcast, and then you have net new people.
I sometimes feel like Madonna and there's fucking duo leaper at the party.
Okay.
I bet you kindly said I look 36.
Thanks, Jake.
Um as a proud 28-year-old, I sit here.
That treadmill for relevance is hard.
Do you find that treadmill for relevance hard?
I don't because I've like broken through like escape velocity.
Just me being me now, like keeps me there.
And I have a counterpart brother.
Like we're like uh the testosterone Kardashians, right?
So like if I'm not doing something in the media, he's literally at the flag football NFL beefing with Tom Brady, the most like talked about thing in sports for the whole week, right?
So like we go back and forth and we've built this ecosystem and we're just differentiated and in the right markets in sports in content in YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and we've been at the forefront of it since foundation.
So like I'm in a different league, but I think for other creators and influencers, it's like a dying market for sure.
And it's it's very hard for people to stay in in the know.
We we are seeing more and more creators, influences move into investing.
What would you say to them knowing what you know now?
It's a very tough game.
And if you like actually aren't good at it or know how to do it, then like maybe don't just like try to do it because you could end up it's it's almost second nature to me because I have vision and can see like where things are heading.
I'm ahead of culture and these things, you know, since I was a kid, and so we can see where things are going, and I think it is an actual talent and and skill set to be in the right rooms to know who to talk to, to know where to spend time and know how to get what you want.
And so I would say a lot of people like can't do that.
What do you see now that other people don't see about culture, about taste.
That's like asking like a karate master to like show you all of his moves.
Welcome to the show like it's almost like instinctual around the founder or the market both and culture content and I think it's just like a feeling right like how do I I don't know like how do I know like what video to make right like it's just like what's your hit rate on videos?
Pretty good.
Like I can I think me and my like me and my number one content guy before we post a video will predict how many views it's gonna get pretty much accurate like 85% of the time.
Really?
Yeah.
Wow.
Within like we'll say like this is gonna get 8.5 million or this is gonna get 30.
This is one's gonna get 40.
I don't know.
It's just like second nature in a sense an example is boxing where I saw to become the greatest like celebrity influencer boxer to the point where I wanted to become world champion because I knew that boxing was gonna have a a revival in part because of me and I saw the attention the the views how much people liked it the drama and the money that was in it and I made the point to become the best one in it and then I excelled out of the group of just being influencer boxer and went into like actually oh this kid can like become world champion because I saw where everything was going and that it was gonna have a revival and be on the forefront of things like Netflix and being able to make hundreds of millions of dollars from it before everyone else and there was a reason why all the other influencers fell behind.
Do you ever do or say shit and then go oh shit I met Anthony Joshua he's a big fucking guy like I I do my pushups.
Yeah he's a big guy.
Do you ever say things and then you're like oh dear went too far there.
No I don't think so.
When you stand next to him you're not actually like I shouldn't have done this one.
Oh no I think like it was so cool.
He's just like nah it was fine.
No like even someone literally came up to me this morning in the freaking spa area at the hotel and was like mate that was amazing.
It was crazy that you did that but you left with your stock higher that's what he said.
For me it was a win-win win across the board fighting him and I knew that going into it.
I knew that I could actually like hang in there with him and the world would be shocked by my heart and skill set and even if he was to knock me out or knock me down I would just keep on getting back up.
And so I think that the fight actually humanized me a bit and people got to see a different side of me.
It's funny Rahul said he's really dialed in that it doesn't matter if I win or lose attention makes me money boxing business.
Yeah.
You you stand by that?
Yeah 100%.
It's all math, right?
Like I was more nervous to fight Javante Davis.
If you lose to like a tiny person, people would be like, oh you suck.
So it's actually better to lose to a giant when we think about kind of culture and you mentioned AI there in terms of the tooling people ascribe that sport is the most exciting asset class because it is defensible to AI.
You're not gonna see robots fighting in the same way that you'd expect to see humans fighting.
Do you agree with that in terms of the rising stock price of sport in a world of AI?
Yeah w we've been on that side of the the thinking but I think things are gonna get weird.
So like I can't say for sure like w that's an open question for me still.
What do you mean things are gonna get weird?
You know, if you if I can put into cognition or or any of these things and develop my own game that's personally tailored for me with a couple clicks of a button why would I watch you know the NBA when like this game I made for myself has all my favorite things in in it and friends and storytelling and I made my own world of warcraft or Minecraft in a day.
It will that suck away the entertainment.
Or I made my own whole Netflix movie the exact way I wanted it with certain shit in it.
Will that personalization take away from other forms of entertainment, which is sport?
Like that's where I mean things might get weird.
Are you excited for the future?
Yeah.
Answer has to be yes.
Yeah, I love the I yeah.
Like I don't even I don't know.
In all honesty, I'm quite uh scared.
I'm quite scared because I think the majority of society will become unemployed.
Most of actually kind of low-level work, I think, will be replaced.
I think a lot of white collar work will be replaced.
I think we're facing this massive, kind of the depressed society of young people looking for meaning.
We've got terrible, terrible eating disorders that are worse than ever.
I'm nervous.
And then on top of that, we have world conflict like never before.
Yeah.
I always said this like a hundred years ago, you know, when they were coming up with the atom bomb and the nuke, and people were like, oh, we're so scared.
Oh, what's gonna happen?
There's always like fear in the development of you know, human society and new technologies.
And I'm sure people were scared of cars at some point.
Like, what's this gonna mean?
It's gonna take my job or I can go get another job.
Like it's you can either look at it on the positive, but I believe and obviously it's going faster now and developing faster, but I think humans will figure this shit out.
I think you have to look at the optimism and how do you be a beneficiary of this of this change?
I think we each need to make a decision.
Do you accelerate and drive faster into it and have a chance to take the steering wheel?
Or do you sit back and like be scared and crash into the wall?
Well, we're in Europe, so we'll we'll we'll sit back and be able to do that.
You guys are gonna crash.
Yeah, we'll sit back.
Yeah, that's if that's an option, we'll take that one.
I want to take a harder stance.
I feel like your thoughts go on.
I feel like Europe is like the sick man of of the world right now.
I feel like Europe could have some of the foundational civilizational of Western culture that came out of here, London, England, right?
And it feels that like they're not seizing the opportunity to lead to create the future.
Humanity is driven by people that seize the opportunity.
And I think you can decide are we going to be passive onlookers of change or are we gonna be driving that change?
What opportunity did you not seize that you wish you had seized?
Should I have just like been in the valley founding, you know, some company and being just more involved in tech?
I don't know.
I I don't have like any regrets or nothing anything comes up like that.
But I I do like the Drake line where he's like, uh, if we hadn't made it here, we would be out in silicon, try to get our billions on.
And I always relate with that.
Like, I think it's a good line.
Does money make you happy?
Does money make you happy?
Money buys freedom.
And I think freedom makes people happy.
There is the the famous saying, like more money, more problems is like all the way to true.
I think it's a double-edged sword for sure.
There's a lot more to manage, a lot more stress, but then there's also a lot more freedom.
And if you want to survive, it's like no different than food.
Like mom was a nurse and uh dad was a roofer.
We we were fine, but like it wasn't around anything like where'd you get your animalistic drive from?
I remember a specific moment where my parents were getting divorced and my dad had to pay like a lot of alimony, and he was crying.
It was one of the only times I've ever seen him cry because he had to sell like everything he loved to be able to like afford living.
I thought to myself like I never want to be this like crying father who doesn't isn't able to afford much and telling his kids we have to move to a different house and selling everything that he l like I remember he had to fucking sell his snowboard like his little shitty snowboard just for like a hundred fifty dollars and stuff like that.
And it's like now I'm blessed to be able to s even just a snowboard so I think of small things like that and that that moment definitely stuck out to me to be like yo, I don't want to be in that position.
So I need to figure out money.
We we were chatting before about I said yeah my girlfriend about having you on the show.
I think there's a lot that the world doesn't know about Jake but they think they know from the public persona.
You obviously work with him on a daily basis.
What does the world not know that you know from the unique perspective that you have yeah Jake I think is like a fundamentally a very kind generous human.
So I think a lot of the philanthropy supporting young up and comers, you know, anecdotes of like you know, friends that are suicidal coming to Jake for help and just Jake spending his time and money to just take care of people, I think is under told.
But maybe that's like a fine way to to be about it.
I don't think Jake is doing it for PR.
I think he just genuinely is like a very kind, generous human being, which may be like alternative to like the you know, I'm a boxer beating and talking shit to Mike Tyson type of a character that he that he projects.
Are you ever just sitting there like, oh no, no?
Be nice.
Don't say that to Mike.
No, I I think well, one, I'm fine.
We're selling fights, dog.
Oh, yeah.
I think we're thickest others in it.
So like I'm just I'm on the fucking roller coaster.
Yeah.
Yeah, I've laughed.
No, no, no, no, but I think I think part of what we later, I think I have like a troll tendency myself.
I just I kind of like seeing kind of the absurdity or the chaos of just like seeing funny things happen in the world.
I think there's like an amusement part of just like this is interesting.
I get to perceive an interesting experience.
I want to see more interesting stuff.
And if Jake is like out there making interesting things happen in the world, that's really funny to me on a personal level.
And then maybe that's the second point in terms of working closely.
Just I'm very impressed with the endurance and the context switching ability.
Maybe I I think I think we got to spend like three hours with the president a couple weeks ago.
And I and I maybe not to make the direct comparison, but I was just very impressed with the president just like on and like context switching really hard.
Remember of people's faces, having good conversations, going to a rally, dancing, going on a podcast, doing a TikTok dance, and just like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Just like switching and being in flow constantly.
I think that's one thing that I see some parallel.
Like I think Jake's just raw energy output is very, very high.
And I can speak to that as being top of my class at Stanford, graduated computer science, honors, and sanction had a perfect SAT score.
Like, you know, I've seen the caliber of like quote unquote smart people and like the endurance and energy levels.
And I think it's like Jake's endurance and energy is like very, very high.
And then I think the other part that I think is like an interesting nuance is that you can switch from being like a celebrity, getting like paparazzi when we're out in LA, to like talking shit as a professional athlete, but actually having to train like twice a day, like eight hours a day doing the recovery, then jumping on business calls with literally like the most famous CEOs that have been on your show, right?
Like advising them on their marketing strategies.
Sitting down with Sam.
Yes.
I mean, I would say like Sam is yeah, Sam is great.
Like we love Sam.
But I think that context switching, because I think people just see like snapshots of Jake, and it's like, okay, you just see like the full 360, it's like cool.
Like I'm inspired by the level of context switching and the flow to be able to move with all these different circles.
Yeah, no, thank you for the nice words.
Um Yeah, the I think a lot of people don't know shit about me, which is like even if they watch everything or no, like you still haven't met me or spent time.
I think the the number one thing that people say to me after like meeting for the first time is you were a lot different than I expected.
Oh, so you thought I was a dickhead fucking retard.
Like, I don't know, my bad, bro.
Like cool.
You mentioned getting to spent a couple of hours with the president.
This was from friends of yours, not from me.
So I'm I'm not sticking any flames.
Here they are.
Would you like to run for office?
Or be involved in politics a lot more?
I wouldn't like to, but I feel like it could be needed at some point.
I I've always said like it.
Jeff was actually the first one that mentioned it like six years ago or so.
He was like, You're gonna like be the president and like you should run for president, and I was like, ha ha ha.
And then it like slowly became less of a joke, and like people actually other people started saying it to me, and then I just hang out with Trump and like the I go on stage and do a speech uh off of off the top, and the first thing he says to me on stage when I turn around is oh, you're gonna run for office someday, and like then I we go backstage and he's like, You should be the president, and then he like endorses me.
But to answer the question, it's like I would only want to do it if I was a the best person for the job, and if B, there was like someone like Kamala Harris like running that like could have the potential to like ruin the United States, and I would have to like go and oppose them and yes, save the country.
But I don't really want to sign up for that workload, if I don't have to, and if there's someone better to do it, and that's that's how I feel about it.
I'm in the UK and I'm in London.
Do you think Trump's doing a good job?
Iran is is a challenging situation he's got himself into.
Deglobalization is a thing.
Do you think he's doing a good job?
Yes, I do.
I I think he um is arguably one of the best presidents the United States has had in in this term.
There's so much propaganda and and things, but at the end of the day, he's doing an incredible job.
There's always gonna be criticisms.
I mean, that's why, again, like I wouldn't maybe want to sign up for the job because no matter what you do, people are gonna think they have a better answer.
But we're not in the rooms.
You know, I believe in him as a person and as a human being.
I'm not gonna maybe agree with everything he says or does and like I think he just said, I'm glad someone died on the internet.
Like I don't agree with that.
But overall, that's my fucking president.
I'm gonna back him and support him and say that he's doing a good job a hundred percent.
Like to me, I think he's like a very founder president.
He actually makes bold decisions and tries to mold the future.
But I think a lot of politicians are just very much dictated by the flows of polling.
There's a boldness and a leadership quality there that I think in a very globally challenging, interesting time.
It's like do you want your leaders to have boldness to take some risks, or do you have someone that's more passive?
And I think that's like uh something that from a venture side, like you want to back founders and leaders that will be able to take risk, right?
Like venture capital is a risk-taking business.
And I think there's like a very unique time in history of are we gonna have a multipolar world?
Are we gonna have US hegemony continue for another you know century?
I I think it's an open question, right?
So then it's like, which founder, which CEO, do you want to be in that seat?
And I think you'd it's again from a venture capital hat on, you'd want to bet and put your money or your support to a bold, fearless leader.
Yeah, and like you don't want a career politician running a business.
The the first startup in America was America.
It's a fucking business.
And so you don't want a career politician running things and I think it's a a very difficult position to be in.
And I think no matter what you do as president, any of the terms, any of the US presidents, like there's always gonna be the 50 to 60 percent of people that are like, no, they suck, you suck that shouldn't have done that.
I have a better solution.
Like, okay, buddy, then go fucking do it.
Then become president and fucking fix it.
So that's my thing on it.
We released the show say with Matt Stackman, who's the president and CBO of Andrew, and I asked him, Do you feel any moral responsibility for how your products are used in conflict zones like Iran?
And he said, No, we support democratically elected governments only.
They are voted for by the people.
What they choose, we support because they are democratically elected.
Do you agree with that as a stance?
And like if you think about anthropic disagreeing with like Department of War and the Pentagon, do you think that's wrong?
I think generally, I think where is that nexus of decision making go, right?
It's like do you want an unelected tech executive making that call or your democratically elected representative making that call?
So I think from a fundamental like culture governance perspective, I would like to have the ego to be like, hey, I'm smarter than the present to make a game time nuclear decision.
Like I feel like it's a very egocentric to say that, hey, I built a tech, I get to make the decision for the rest of the world.
If we believe in democracy, which we do, then it's like, okay, then the democratically elected leader gets that call.
To me, it's if you want to talk about taking that like war-making decisions away from our government, okay.
Like we could have some weird techno fascist thing too.
Like I it's a competition of ideas.
Maybe like maybe that does happen in other countries and other regimes.
Like I think there's like a breed of arrogance around like, hey, I think I'm just smarter than everybody else, so I get to make the call, versus like we're in a society with like a lot of constituents, and we vote for someone to make that call.
Yes, and I and I think the human evolution is inevitable.
So like we're going to these systems anyway.
So if Andorra wasn't gonna build it, then okay, is someone who's evil in the wrong hands in another country gonna build it, and then we don't have it?
So it's needed, but I think also their mission is to make things safer for humans.
That's like the autonomous side of it.
And so if something needs to be done, then yeah, maybe less people will actually died because of their technology.
We mentioned Sam, we mentioned OpenAI.
They very, I don't know how to say it, maybe opportunistically took advantage of it and uh swept in and provided a solution.
You're the master of content, you're the master of storytelling.
He then got heat for it.
What would your advice be to him in terms of the messaging, the comms around the heat that he gets for jumping in?
Who gives a fuck?
Like, seriously.
Seriously.
Yeah, who gives a fuck?
Someone has to do it.
Rather to be in the rooms and and a part of that thing than than out of it.
At the end of the day, I don't have advice for him.
Like he's doing what he thinks is best in his decision making.
There's gonna be repercussions.
And I think we live in a society where no matter like what someone does, they're gonna be hated or loved or hated or loved or hated or loved.
So at the end of the day, you just have to make decisions and and march on.
My sense is that the tech leaders are becoming more and more politicians because they have a bigger, bigger impact on culture, on society.
Like Sam is in that position.
He has a lot of information.
He's trying to make his best decision.
My only secondary comment on it would be show the human side of himself more, right?
Because I think that I think President Trump does a very good job of showing like the raw human.
And I think President Obama also, I think, had a similar quality on on the other side of just showing like a humanity to his decision making.
You said about kind of showing your humanity.
You got me in trouble this weekend.
Because I said again to my girlfriend, Jake Poole, and honestly, I was expecting I don't know, mixed mixed response.
And she's like, Oh my god, did you see the video of him supporting his girlfriend at the Olympics?
Oh my god.
Would you do that for me?
Would you have been that?
I was like, no fucking way.
I'll be in the office.
Are you kidding?
I knew it.
I knew it.
See, why can't you be more like him?
And I'm like, I'm joking and for backtracking, you know, when you joke and it's like kind of not funny, and they're like, oh fuck.
Um it is something I wanted to touch on, which is like I think relationships are really an art.
What's your biggest advice on how to have an amazing relationship, but also crush it in fuck, where do we start?
Content, boxing, investing.
What's your advice?
I think in relationship uh it's communication, and I think the you should always in the relationship try to be the 60%.
Like if it's 6040, you you and your partner should be both be fighting to be the 60% and be there for each other and do more and and love more and support more, and like we should always be kind of in a competition of like who massaged who today, who gave the first who wrote the love letter.
Like if my fiance writes me a love letter, I'm like, I'm gonna write a better one back to you.
So and then she'll write another, like so friendly competition in a relationship is good and communication, letting them see you like every side of you and fully who you are.
I think that's very important from like early on, like tell them everything from like day one.
I think that builds the the trust and the foundation.
Is there a side of you that you're most scared to share?
I'm not really afraid.
I think I've talked a lot about my my struggles more so in the past because of that.
I was I was struggling struggling more when I was younger, like childhood, fame, living in Los Angeles, being so surrounded by the wrong people, but I do think like dealing with mental health, like my mind can become a like crowded and dirty and stressful place and it's a practice every day to to manage it and I think that's where I've like fallen in love with breath work and met meditation and spiritual journeys with ayahuasca toad mushrooms all of these things to learn more about myself and and my mind I would say like mental health is always something that can fluctuate for me and it's something that like personally I have to actively manage.
Do you know when it's going down yeah I I don't know it's like uh it's always different that's the weird part about it I think it's like not something you can like fully grasp and sometimes you like don't know until you're like in the thick of it and you're like oh shit I haven't been taking care of myself.
Do you hate so I'm I'm an addict in everywhere I don't drink anymore because did that I'm very grateful because it makes me good at what I do.
I'm so addicted to what I do.
Are you happy or sad to be an addict?
Am I happy or sad to be an addict?
Yeah, like I think being addicted to to working and like constantly doing something.
But like I do wish sometimes I like think about what it would be like to like feel normal where like I don't have to constantly be like progressing and doing things.
But I don't know.
Like this is my body, this is my brain, this is like my destiny, this is who I am.
So like I'm not I'm I'm very happy about that, but it is a double-edged sword sometimes.
Like you think I'm addicted to work is what you're saying.
Well, I mean, with the greatest of respects, I think it takes one to know one, and I think to continue.
No, yeah, yeah.
And I think I think to compete at the level that you do as quickly as you do in sport and to fight down to Mike Tyson, with the little ramp time you have, you have to be a bluntly psychopathic to get there that fast in a brilliant way.
I'm saying this in a good way.
Yeah, no.
Uh to do the multitude of things that you do at the quality that you do, you have to be an addict.
Again, I think we kind of mischaracterize addiction bad, and it's not always bad.
It can be I think every top top athlete is an addict.
You have to be to be the best.
Would agree one thousand percent.
I just think it's interesting the way you describe it as like an ad like but it but you're right, yeah.
When you think about your training, what was nuts about your training?
I mean, it's just so intense and demanding.
What's the most demanding?
I would say the track work, like sprints at the track is just brutal.
And my coach just makes me run and run and run and run.
And like my heart feels like it's gonna pound out of my chest, and your body like has like a central nervous system reaction because of how hard you're pushing yourself, and it's like very uncomfortable.
And then just the day in and day out, and then you just like get lost and counting on the days until the fight, and you're just like the monotony of it, I think can be very demanding and and difficult and dry and boring and lonely.
I mean, they say boxing is the the loneliest sport for a reason.
It's very true.
You're in there by the yourself.
Are you thinking when you're in it?
Yeah, but I mean I guess it becomes like a sort of flow state.
It's like a super high fast paced thinking match.
And I think that's where I told people like why I got good at boxing so fast is like pattern recognition, and I just think of it like recognizing patterns in the person that I'm fighting, and then being able to expose it and doing it at the right time, and it's very calculated.
And I see you dropped your hand in the first round after you threw this punch.
I'm gonna wait for you to do that again in two minutes and hit you with the right punch to counter that, and adding those things up over round by round and remembering everything that they're doing and their habits and all of that is like uh just pattern recognition game, and that's why I think I got good at it, is because it's just my mind is better than probably every boxer.
If I had been doing it my whole life, I'd be the the best boxer in the world for sure.
Who have you not thought that you'd like to fight?
I think that the only one that would ever come close to the Tyson numbers is is me versus McGregor, which would be fun.
What number would you do it for?
McGregor?
Good question.
150?
Yeah, I mean it's at least worth that.
Yeah, that's like minimum, probably, but that's a good number, you know.
So like when you get 150, how much do you actually take home after all the midlayer, mid layer, mid layer?
It's like an Andrew SPV, you know, with a 30% SPV and a this and a this and this.
Taking about 10 shekels home with an account.
I have the best setup in in boxing.
Because I'm my own promoter and I'm the one negotiating with the platforms.
I I don't have a lot of people involved.
It's just me and and Nikisa on the boxing side of things.
And so you'll take home like an 80% versus Eddie Hearn will take home 50% normally?
No, I take home like nearly a hundred percent.
Well, that's pretty fucking great, isn't it?
The percent I give is to my own company.
I think you're missing it, a content thread.
I think you should do something for the partnership, which is when you train for your next fight, you should bring Jeffrey to every session with you.
And everything you do, Jeffrey's gotta do.
I'll I'm down, but I'll puke out pretty early and play.
Yeah, like it's not fun.
And it just keeps on getting harder.
That's what it's also like nice about boxing, but also not nice, is that it's like an a never-ending challenge.
And it only gets harder as you continue to fight the best and the best.
So find a one before we do a quick follow.
Like, why why does the money matter anymore?
I didn't mean that badly, but like kind of 150, but after 90 and after all the other stuff, like, you know, you're kind of flying private anyway.
You probably go to Gulf stream anyway.
Like, why does it matter?
Yeah, no, it it doesn't in a lot of ways, but like on the boxing side specifically, there's still things that I want to do in terms of goals, and they don't have to do with money.
I I want to become world champion.
And you really do.
Yeah.
But just for the story, just to inspire kids that I was like the most hated, the most doubted, the biggest underdog, the YouTuber, the Disney kid.
And if I can become world champion, I think it would be the most inspiring sports story, or one of the most inspiring sports stories that in modern day history that I can inspire kids that even if all the odds are stacked against you, like, look what I did, and you can do something.
Did you ever doubt the next transition?
I've seen everyone always said, Oh, the YouTube, oh, the Disney store.
Did you ever doubt internally in your head?
I know we always tell the world, no, no, no, I'll be great.
No, for sure I did.
Um, YouTube, like I was done with it.
I didn't like it anymore and was running into a lot of issues just with like demonetization.
It just became a nightmare, and it was causing so many problems, and I was in Los Angeles and I didn't like what I was doing.
I was like, I need to do something else.
First, I had to stop doing YouTube.
I literally stopped filming.
I noticed a lot of times in life, you have to like create space for something else to come in.
And that's just the way life works.
And so I had to literally stop.
And there was like a space where I was trying to do things and maybe a little business over a here, music.
I was making songs.
And then I like fell in love with boxing out of out of nowhere.
But there was a time where I was like, I don't know what the fuck's going on.
And that was when I was like 21.
This really is a fun one pre-quickfire.
You can only be in Jeffrey.
I know which way you want him to answer this one.
You can be number one in the world at boxing, at content creation, or at investing.
Investing.
Actually, yeah.
Genuinely.
Yeah, 100%.
Why is why?
It's something that I can do forever.
And it's really enjoyable.
And I really love like being a part of the the cutting edge things in technology and like advancing society and human evolution and being able to meet with the and talk to and be friends with the smartest people in the world.
I think it scratches my itch in my brain.
I think like I'm sapiosexual in that sense.
I had actually no idea what he would say, but I think even like content, right?
Like I think all the th these things feed into each other.
Oh, they genuinely do when he's crushing at boxing when he makes better content, the investing will be easier to do that.
100%.
And I think it's okay to just like founders are okay to say to bad customers or not tackle certain markets.
I think it's okay to be like, hey, you LP, you get to allocate your money where you think you can maximize returns.
If you think other people will do it better, oh like great.
Let's just see the numbers in a couple of years.
Let's compete.
Right?
Like I think I know you tweeted to one of my friends, Jason Lemkin.
He's got a good one.
Yeah, no, we said we're gonna have more AUM buddy.
I was just like, whoa.
We're coming for you, buddy.
We're gonna do a quick fire.
Jake, you said about making room for things in life.
Would you like kids?
Yeah, but that's like my number one goal, honestly.
That's what I think life's all about.
I I can't wait to be a father.
My little best friends that I get to hang out with every day.
Jeffrey, what's the best performing investment so far by multiple?
I think a couple from our fund, you mentioned Raul Aerodome.
That was a 10x in 18 months, rolled a lot of that stock in the flock safety, which is crushing.
Rahul's now the chief strategy officer there.
Poly market is a good early one.
But just our incubations, right?
Like we were at the ground floor, those are like better, W crushing it.
If you can crush better with a high ownership, that's where you really make a lot of fucking money.
Yeah, no, it's like it's exciting.
So I think with you know the expansion of the prediction markets and all of this stuff, I think we're excited about the opportunity ahead.
But yeah.
But even just on the personal side, was uh Angel Invest in Ramp.
So that's like uh at a 50 mil entry value, so that's like a whatever, 300x on a personal side.
Jay, Jay dinner's on him.
Yeah.
Dude, that's so good.
That's fucking A.
I wish I was.
Do you want to hear something funny?
I met Eric Glyman when he was doing Parabus.
And then the night before he came out with Ramp, he was like, Do you want to invest in my next thing?
And I was like, Yeah, no.
Like, Parabusn's not that big.
But good luck.
Yeah.
No, so Parabase was my first angel investment.
No way.
I went to a high school summer camp at MIT.
It was like a s a selective summer camp called RSI with Kareem and Zach Frankel.
They're they're they went to Harvard.
I went to Stanford, so I was like their Silicon Valley plug.
I gave them the recommendation for Parabus to white combinator.
Oh wow.
And I was like, uh I don't really know what uh I think it's probably like 24 uh at a time.
You could have like co-founder of ramp, basically with that as the entry funnel into app.
I mean, I should have.
Jeffrey wouldn't be sitting here with me today.
Like, fuck Jake Paul.
Jay, what's the most expensive item you've bought that you've never used?
The first thing that comes to mind is like my my Ferrari has like a hundred miles on it, and I think it came with like sixty.
How much was that?
Uh like eight hundred thousand.
You just don't like it?
No, I'm just like, I have too many cars and other ones as well.
Like and there's a lot, yeah.
So I'm building a racetrack so I can use these cars.
I've heard about this at the ranch.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that that's I'm like, bro, why do I have these cars if I can't drive 'em?
But like I can't, it's not fun for me to drive them on the roads 'cause I can't like rip it.
So that's probably the thing that comes to Well, maybe we can cross a hundred miles soon then on that far.
Let's fucking go, bro.
Let's go.
I need I need to get my you very kindly suggested driving on the track before Jeffrey.
I don't have my license.
Actually.
Well, it's a private track, so Jake can maybe bless you or something.
Why don't you have your license?
Well, in London, dude, we don't need to drive, do we?
Because we have Uber and it's a city.
And soon, so we don't need to do that.
You just never need to drive.
Jeffrey, what fund product do you not have today that you would most like to have?
Could be growth fund, could be funded funds, could be secondary fund, you name it.
No, I think uh you just before the show, like I think we've just been scaling up AUM, so we're well within nine digits now.
I think Jake and I are very interested in the public markets.
How does that look in a product?
Like you guys do a public fund?
I guess the way to think about it is that one of the edges that Jake brings to the table is mass distribution, right?
And I think the public markets are just, you know, trillions of dollars of mark uh of assets out there that we could prosecute against.
So I think it's again it goes back to like the start.
It's just like, okay, if we don't set limiters in terms of our ambition and our skill set, like you play the largest markets.
Let's let's keep keep playing.
Axe Capital, watch out.
When I say high performance, Jake, who's the first person that comes to mind and why?
I thought of Michael Phelps, I guess.
I don't know.
I love Michael Phelps because he dispels the bullshit that you need to have a break, you need to have a rest day.
Yeah, I just think of like greatness at the highest level.
It's measurable.
And so I think that's why it comes to mind.
And you can't necessarily measure, like, okay, this is the greatest investor, but like that's in that time.
Like, who is the best right now?
And that's not like super measurable, but that's I think why Michael Phelps came to mind.
Final one for both of you, and you have to give a different answer.
If we sit down in 10 years' time, how would you define it has been very successful as a venture fund as an investing house?
You want to start or yeah, I mean, we we making our LPs uh very wealthy as as well as our ourselves and and being a part of shaping history and the shaping the greatest companies in the world and yeah, making billions of dollars doing it for for everyone and for ourselves.
Yeah, I think it's well said my take on it would be focused on there's probably like a hundred humans over the next 10 years that will change history, and we want to be supporters, comrades in arms in the trenches building like the civilizational changing companies and the people that are out at the ground floor doing it.
So if we can be associated and and friends with a large portion of that a hundred people, that would be a huge honor.
Guys, listen, this was such a joy to do, Jay.
I'm so glad that you'd sit down with a 36-year-old.
I really appreciate it.
Me and Jeffrey, I mean, he went to university and I'm 36, so it's a tough one.
Yeah, I'm gonna go to the right.
To be fair, we read it pretty well.
I mean, this guy, Stanford, he's smart.
Yeah, no, he's great.
The 36.
I'm gonna regret saying that to you, but but someone told me that once.
They're like, Oh, I think, and this was when I was like 24.
They were like, Oh, I think you're like 35.
I was like, that's fucked up.
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