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The a16z Show

Jake Paul & Anti Fund: From Creator to Investor

22 Jun 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What is the significance of Anti Fund's new $100 million growth fund?

0.031 - 13.852 Jake Paul

We're officially announcing the hundred million dollar oversubscribed growth fund and some of the tier one names, maybe all the tier one names. Andoril, Etch, Cognition, Saronic, Modal.

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14.232 - 32.335

When we announced Antifun, I was like, GW, like you're making a mistake. Jake is not like good. You're ruining your career. And we're just like... Whatever, bro. Mark and Dreesen and Chris Dixon were some of our very, very first LPs. When you have the living goats of the industry being like, hey, you guys are good. It's like, okay, let's do it.

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Chapter 2: How do Jake Paul and Geoff Woo define their investment strategy?

32.575 - 46.19

Jake, given your career, you could have partnered with a lot of different people. When did you guys know that you were going to be such a partner? One way I think about it is that if Jake can just live his life and get a bunch of views, and someone has to light $100 million in fire to get a bunch of views, who do I want to be partners with?

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46.21 - 55.326 Jake Paul

I think a lot of people in this space don't know how to actually pull cash out. They can have a lot of followers, but not the cash, and cash is king.

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55.346 - 80.147 Geoff Woo

What happens when one of the internet's biggest creators teams up with a longtime Silicon Valley investor? Jake Paul and Jeff Wu started Antifund with a simple premise. Back ambitious founders building the future. What began as an early-stage venture strategy has now expanded into a new $100 million growth fund with investments across AI, defense, aerospace, infrastructure, and software.

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Chapter 3: What lessons have they learned from investing in emerging technologies?

80.888 - 101.691 Geoff Woo

In this conversation, they discuss investing, entrepreneurship, resilience, and what they look for in the founders and companies shaping the next decade. Jake Paul and Jeff Wu join the podcast to talk about Antifund's next chapter. Jake, Jeff, we've got some big news. Thanks for coming on the podcast today to discuss it.

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102.192 - 125.593 Jake Paul

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 in some of the tier one names. A lot of the tier one names, maybe all the tier one names. Anduril, Etch, Cognition, SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, Saronic, Modal.

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Chapter 4: What role does founder psychology play in successful startups?

126.815 - 141.582 Geoff Woo

So yeah, the list goes on. A lot of work, collaborators in. Maybe we'll just zoom out first. Jeff, 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 we'll ask Jake the same.

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142.321 - 161.824

I think Jake from the outside could be like a entertainer or a professional athlete. But I think to me, Jake's always been a constant entrepreneur, one. And then two, I think he's really created himself as a tastemaker and a cultural leader of his generation, right? Like all the young kids today look up and want to be an influencer.

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161.944 - 177.447

Jake literally created the influencer term in that like job profile. If you think about him in Stanching, the daily vlog. So I think it's easy to, especially with an internet character, like you take pieces of that persona and just put that as a whole human.

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177.527 - 200.391

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

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Chapter 5: How has Jake Paul transitioned from creator to entrepreneur?

200.945 - 206.23 Geoff Woo

Thank you, Jeff. Why don't you say the same for Jeff? I'll ask you the same question and we'll get into both your stories.

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206.294 - 231.677 Jake Paul

Yeah, I think Jeff is one of the smartest people that I know just across the board. And I think the work ethic and his background being so different than mine as well. We make such a great team, you know, computer science, Stanford, but his deep, deep networks. And we just think similarly in a lot of things. And I think that lends itself really well to being great partners.

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232.217 - 256.308 Jake Paul

But yeah, he's nonstop thinking ahead. and sees a lot of things before they come around the corner. And he actually said no to investing in my first company when I was 18 years old and the company failed. So he was right. So just really great judgment, great people. You know, this is the people business.

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256.368 - 262.997 Jake Paul

And so just being able to really read people and have that EQ as well as IQ is really important.

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Chapter 6: What are the advantages of attention and culture in the AI era?

262.977 - 264.339 Jake Paul

You're just making us flattered each other.

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264.499 - 280.76 Geoff Woo

Yeah. Eric, you're an OG, so I appreciate that compliment you as well. I appreciate it. Well, I mean, speaking of OG, I remember Corey 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. And I was out of town. I was like, ah, you know, he ended up introducing him. We never ended up meeting.

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281.481 - 291.094 Geoff Woo

And I remember something to reflect back. I'm like, holy shit. First off, Corey's incredible judge of talent. But two, it's like you've got to take bets on the up and coming talent because you never know where they're going to end up. Jake.

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Chapter 7: How do Jake and Geoff view the future of venture capital and technology?

291.074 - 314.415 Geoff Woo

the idea that someone would become a media sort of mogul then professional athlete then a tech investor that's like 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 sort of your strategy or how do you even retroactively make sense of your sort of multi-hyphenate career yeah it's really interesting i think

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314.53 - 326.071 Jake Paul

Always being like entrepreneur first and very analytical. And when things are working, double, triple, quadruple down. And when they're not, just sweep the things under the rug.

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326.111 - 331.881 Geoff Woo

And so that's what someone said about A to Z. I love that they just launch a bunch of stuff. And then when it doesn't work, you just pretend it never happened.

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331.861 - 357.463 Jake Paul

Seriously, I've failed so many times to get to this point and made so many mistakes. And I think it's resilience in this day and age and having a public career as well and being a public figure. I think 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 differently.

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357.443 - 386.064 Jake Paul

from a business lens and always hustled and showed up every single day and knocked down every single door of opportunity and always wanted to grow my network. I think that's been a super powerful thing that differentiates me is Always knowing the right person at the right times to ask them for help or ask them for a favor and also doing favors for them when they need you and not charging for it.

Chapter 8: What insights do they share about resilience and handling public scrutiny?

386.104 - 389.391 Jake Paul

I think people in this entertainment world are very transactional.

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389.371 - 416.416 Jake Paul

short-thinking and not professional they show up late I've always tried to be the most professional entertainer and so that's lended itself well and then when I went to box it kind of started as this crazy thing but then it was a million pay-per-view buys 30,000 tickets sold out I had a blast doing it I was like okay content bear meant for you Or did you know you were going to go all in?

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416.637 - 438.717 Jake Paul

No, I didn't know I was going to go all in. But after the first one, it was like, this was absolutely massive. I'm going to become world champion. And that was like a pivot moment where it's like, yeah, this content stuff's cool and doing great. But I can still do content within boxing. But this boxing match was the most viewed amateur event ever. 30,000 tickets sold.

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438.697 - 463.732 Jake Paul

The press conferences were getting tens of millions of views. So I was like, clearly people love this and I love it. And 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.

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463.752 - 468.298 Jake Paul

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

468.802 - 493.459 Jake Paul

Yeah, so I think it was actually, again, just being an entrepreneur at heart, but it was actually one of my first loves was the Valley and coming out here when I was 17 with Corey and Alex Debelov, actually, and they showed me all these crazy companies and I got to meet some really smart people who were building the future and seeing like even Corey's after school setup where he had all the screens and all the

493.439 - 519.025 Jake Paul

employees were there and it was just like so different and so cool and that's when i fell in love with wanting to make my own startups and being a founder but also being in the investor world and even understanding how it works and all the vc lingo and started growing my network and so it's really always been there since i was a kid and it's always been something that i loved

519.005 - 541.788 Jake Paul

And then when I was 23, I wanted to take a bigger bite at the apple. And that's when I met Jeff and the stars aligned. And we just decided to go bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And it turns out that we're actually really good at it. So it's fun when things are working and it's fun helping shape the future of America with these companies.

542.168 - 562.147

And it's like a full story. Like Mark Andreessen and Chris Dixon were some of our very, very first LPs. So appreciate. them for helping us put us into business and also giving us confidence. They've seated almost every single emerging manager. So when they see, hey, like when you have like the living goats of the industry being like, hey, you guys are good. OK, let's let's do it.

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