Jake Paul, creator, professional boxer, and entrepreneur, and Jeff Wu, Stanford computer science graduate and longtime Silicon Valley investor, join the a16z podcast to announce Antifund's next chapter. Together they co-founded Antifund with a premise of backing ambitious founders building the future, with early backing from Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon as their first LPs.

The conversation covers the official launch of Antifund's $100 million oversubscribed growth fund, with portfolio companies spanning AI, defense, aerospace, and infrastructure. Jake and Jeff discuss how their contrasting backgrounds — Hollywood and boxing on one side, biohacking startups and Y Combinator on the other — combine into a distinctive investment partnership.

Beyond the fund announcement, the episode explores resilience and pain tolerance as founder traits, the durability of creator brands in an AI-saturated attention economy, the future of streamer culture, education reform, the Invest America Trump accounts initiative, and whether Jake Paul might one day run for office or walk onto the Stanford football team.

Antifund's $100M Growth Fund: Portfolio and LP Roster

Antifund officially announces its growth fund, described as oversubscribed at $100 million, with tier-one investments including Anduril, Etched, Cognition, SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, Saronic, and Modal.

Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon were among the fund's very first LPs. Jeff recalls: 'I was like all nervous before and didn't even have the full pitch perfected yet. And so yeah, by the end of the call they were just like, all right, yeah, we'll invest.'

The fund's strategy centers on high-conviction bets: 'Managing $1 to $100 to $1 million to $1 billion is kind of the same level of hard... you only need like 1 or 2 people or 3 people to manage $100 or $100 billion' — Jeff.

For defense investments, the team does direct reference checks with operators like Palmer Luckey's Anduril team before committing capital.

Why Jake Paul Is the Ideal Attention-Economy Partner

Jeff frames Jake not as an entertainer but as 'a consummate entrepreneur' and 'a tastemaker and a cultural leader of his generation' who literally created the influencer job profile by pioneering the daily vlog format.

Jeff's analytical case for the partnership: 'If Jake can just live his life and get a bunch of views and someone has to light $100 million on fire to get a bunch of views, who do I want to be partners with?'

Jake's context-switching ability — from red-carpet celebrity to professional athlete to deal negotiator to TikTok creator — is cited as rare even by Silicon Valley founder standards.

When Antifund launched, Jason Calacanis told Jeff: 'GW, you're making a mistake. Jake is not good. You're ruining your career.' Jeff now jokes: 'J-Cal, you're a podcaster. You're trying to be what Jake invented.'

Building Resilience: From Hollywood Haters to Founder Coaching

Jake traces his resilience to an intense father and to his entire high school turning against him when he started posting videos: 'There was never like a moment where me making the videos didn't have like a ton of haters.'

Jeff argues that surviving internet hate at scale is 'presidential, like head of state level courage and resiliency' — and directly applicable to what startup founders face under public scrutiny.

Jake's framework for bouncing back from controversy: faith, not victimizing yourself, and recognizing that 'God gives its toughest battles to his most important soldiers.'

On therapy, Jake advises caution: 'You don't want the therapy to turn into victimizing yourself and then always being in constant sad loops.' He values childhood trauma work that connects past experiences to present behavior.

Jeff adds that mission conviction is the secular version of faith: 'If you just choose the right battles to fight for and you're willing to take those arrows because you believe in the mission, that almost helps you with that faith.'

Creator Durability: Why Most Stars Fade and a Few Compound

Jake identifies only himself, MrBeast, and his brother Logan as having achieved true top-tier durability: 'You kind of had to be there from the start, and that's why you really see with brands that have stuck around at the highest level in social media, it's me, MrBeast, and my brother, and there's really no one else.'

Jake's original edge was creating a daily reality show format — 15-minute videos filmed all day, every day — combined with diversification across music, comedy, horror, and athletics.

Jeff contrasts Jake's charisma-driven durability with MrBeast's analytical approach: 'MrBeast is so quantitative and analytical that it doesn't matter if Jimmy's in the video or not. Swap him out for another game show host.'

Monetization discipline is the hidden differentiator: 'A lot of people in the 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' — Jake.

Jeff predicts that in an AI-generated content world, the small group of creators who achieved escape velocity will compound even faster: 'There's going to be fewer real people that you like care about.'

AI Maxing and Looks Maxing: How to Win in the AGI Era

Jeff's thesis: if AGI commoditizes raw intelligence via compute, the two remaining scarce resources are vibes/charisma (looks maxing) and deep technical mastery (AI maxing). 'Max your IQ and max your EQ — that's a simpler way to put it.'

Counterintuitively, Jeff doubles down on math and computer science even as AI automates coding: 'If you actually know underlying how these large language models are actually working, you actually can wield them and prompt them better.'

Advice for a 22-year-old in 2026: team up with the most ambitious people possible, whether at a startup or at a high-growth company like OpenAI or Cognition, to compress learning before going independent.

Jake revealed he has been experimenting with OpenAI's Codex: 'I got my GitHub's popping' — suggesting even non-technical founders are expected to engage directly with AI development tools.

College, Badges, and Peter Thiel's Contradictory Advice

Jeff critiques the anti-college stance popularized by Peter Thiel — whose contrarian views on higher education are central to Zero to One Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future — noting Thiel himself holds Stanford undergrad and Stanford Law degrees: 'Not that, but I think the underlying point is correct.'

Jeff's nuanced take: institutional badges matter most for people who haven't yet proven world-class excellence another way. 'If you're not like Jake, then you need to like get some external badges.'

Jake revealed he is seriously considering walking onto the Stanford football team as a stepping stone to the NFL, where he wants to play slot receiver: 'I was originally thinking I'll just go straight to the Cleveland Browns or Dallas Cowboys, but they're probably gonna want to see me play first.'

Politics, Education Reform, and the Invest America Accounts

Jake names education as his top political priority: 'It hasn't been reformed since the 1920s, the 1930s. There's been no change and the world has changed so much.' He specifically endorses Alpha School as a promising model.

Jake argues financial literacy should replace abstract math in schools: 'If you actually learn about maybe how to do taxes in school and not like about the fucking Pythagorean theorem, I think that would be a much better outcome for the people of America.'

Jake is actively supporting the Trump administration's Invest America accounts initiative, which would give every American child a stock portfolio to build early investing literacy and participation in private company growth.

On a potential political career: President Trump endorsed Jake on stage and privately encouraged him to run for president. Jake says he would only run 'if I was like the best person to do it' and if a harmful candidate had traction.

Jeff frames Jake's political engagement as genuine leadership courage: 'There's no leaders out there and we're totally screwed. So we need people to step up and lead.'

Founder Taste, Reference Checks, and What Antifund Bets On

Jeff distills founder selection to two attributes: 'Do they have a passion and a reason to believe why they can be world class at what they choose to pursue? And are they resilient and tough enough to eat a ton of shit to get there?'

Founder taste is built through reps, not innate talent: 'I think we just got a lot of reps at meeting people, getting pitched things, doing bad deals, making mistakes' — Jeff, crediting both his Y Combinator background and Jake's Hollywood exposure.

Jake is actively noodling on founding a new company, noting an 'open slot' has emerged as portfolio companies like Better have matured to the point of running themselves.

The risk calculus for new ventures in 2025–2026: 'You could launch a company and then OpenAI or Claude replicates it next week and you're kind of shit out of luck' — Jake.