#170 with Jake Paul - Why Jake Paul Thinks He's Worth Billions
I feel like I could rule the world.
I know I could be what I want to.
I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back. Jake, do you know anything about this podcast? Do you know anything about the hustle? What's your context here?
Because we know, I mean, I know everything about you, Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty up to speed, you know, I'm not an expert on My First Million podcast, but I know Sam, I know you from some Gary Vee videos and I've watched you and yeah, just Jeff has spoken super highly of you and yeah, excited to be on the podcast and learn what it's all about.
Well, yeah, so I can give you the, which I'll give you the short rundown, but I'll say that whenever we talk about numbers, I feel pretty proud of them. And then I talk to you and I'm like, fuck, yeah, that's not that interesting. So like, so anyway, The Hustle got like 2 million subscribers and, uh, read by those folks each day to get their business news. And then we have a bunch of other businesses, uh, that are, uh, subsidiaries. We have this thing called Trends where we analyze cool companies. We have this podcast which, um, uh, Sean started, but we just sold the company for, uh, a fair bit of money to HubSpot, like, uh, 60 days ago now, 30 days ago, and Sean had a company that he sold to Twitch, uh, or Amazon. Yeah. Um, so that's kind of like our, our, our experience here, which is actually similar to you, Jeff. I think that Jeff, you and I, and Sean are a little bit similar. But, uh, Jake, like when we say our numbers of like X million people, that's like 5 million downloads.
That's cute. I remember I farted once and got 5 million downloads.
So do, do you do— for, for some of these YouTube folks, so what, what we're going to talk about today, we'll talk a little bit about you, uh, boxing. So oddly enough, uh, Ben, so we have this thing called Trends where we have a team of analysts who break down interesting companies, and then we have a community where people discuss it. Ben is a paying member of that group. Um, I think Jeff either— I think you, I don't know if you're a paying member, but I invited you to it and I commented in the group. I go, hey, I'm interviewing Jake. He just launched this fund with Jeff, who's another member, and they're going to be investing in X, Y, and Z. And we're going to interview them in a couple of days. What should we ask him? And Ben was the top comment. He commented right away. What did he say? Ask him why he's such a jackass.
He said, like, ask him why he sucks, which is like classic Ben Askren shit talk.
I love it. We can answer that question, but I invited him to make money on both sides, right? He's going to make a little bit of money from the fight. And we'll help invest that money and make them even more money. Right. Like, I think— I mean, Jake has obviously a personal tie-in here, but I think we're all about business and making people money here with Antifund.
Yeah. And it was just funny how, like, you know, usually Sean and I are like, we like MMA and stuff and we talk about that. And then we have Tech over here. It's like, oh my gosh, this is all—
once in a while on the pod, we'll do like a fighting section at the last 5 minutes of just shit we're nerding out about., and, uh, nobody listens to it and like nobody gives a fuck because our, our audience is all business people. But, uh, you know, that's me and Sam's little time that we have at the end. But, um, I want to talk about 3 things. So first, uh, I guess the headline stuff, which is you got a big fight coming up. I think it's next week, right?
Next Saturday?
Yeah, 6 days from now.
All right, cool.
Um, the second— and so that's on Triller, right?
Yeah, trillerfightclub.com if anyone wants to order it.
And, uh, I'm gonna watch it because, uh, A, I'm a fight fan, but B, this is one where it's actually very interesting because normally, like, okay, I'm gonna talk about your brother for a second. So your brother Logan Paul was scheduled, or is scheduled, to fight Floyd Mayweather, which is like, you know, let's call a spade a spade, it's pretty fucking lopsided matchup. You got the greatest boxer ever, probably never been, never been beat, never been knocked down, uh, going against somebody who's, you know, a very much an amateur and has made their name in entertainment more so than anything else. But you versus Ben is like actually something I've gotten into many debates about because you've legit been training for years. Ben is kind of like the worst boxer in MMA. And so you sort of take a guy who was a champion-level fighter but not a great boxer against a guy who's actually getting pretty fucking good at boxing. And put them together. And so there's actually— it's pretty torn. Dana White, I think, bet $1 million on Ben Askren. He didn't even like Ben Askren. So, so the MMA guys are really trying to back him up. But I think that's a super interesting fight that's coming up. Sam, are you into this?
Yeah, 100%. I just watched your Friends with Logan's podcast with Ben.
You're friends with Ben and you have like your Midwestern— like you love Midwestern guy. You love Ben. We have Jake here right in your face. Do you have, Sam, who do you favor here?
Dude, Sam and I have a prop bet.
What is the bet?
You want to talk about the bet?
Next week Sam's not going to have any hair.
Ah, you know about this.
Oh my gosh.
So yes.
You shaving your head?
Shaving my head. Yeah. Is your hair thinning, Jeff? Because mine is a little bit. And I'm like, I made this bet and I saw I started doing research and watching Jake spar and stuff.
You got nervous.
And I heard— I was like, oh my God, I wish I would have just bet money.
You made your assumption before watching any footage or looking into it?
Emotional bet.
Yeah, I did it purely on emotion because we had Ben on prior and I like Ben. I mean, I don't know you yet, but I imagine I'll like you too. But I knew him first.
Yeah, so just to summarize for the audience here, we have it on record so no one punks out here. Sam and I were chatting on Facebook Messenger and we were just talking some shit. And basically I'm like, hey, let's put something on the line, right? I think money is one thing, but I think there's something fun, something of a prop bet. And I think we came up with, we're going to turn into just like whoever loses, I got my boy Jake, you got your boy, Sam got his boy Ben. Whoever loses is going to go shave all their hair off. With a razor.
Big razor.
Yeah, we're gonna go hardcore.
I like how you clarified with a big razor, like it made it better.
No, bick.
A bick.
Like, uh, it's called— we used to call it bickin' it. You gotta bick it. It's like a straight razor. Yeah, right, like, like skinhead. Yes. Um, yeah, so anyway, we're gonna see what's— what will happen with that. But either way, I'm gonna win because it's exciting. So we're all gonna win, I think. So that's good.
Um, I'm gonna keep my beautiful hair and it's gonna be funny to see you as a skinhead, Sam.
Well, it's Unfortunately, I already look like one, um, so the odds aren't in my favor.
The second thing is you guys launched this fund called the Anti Fund. It's a rolling fund, right, Jeff?
Correct. It's on AngelList rolling fund.
AngelList rolling fund. Uh, we've talked about rolling funds before. So, so Jake, actually, to your point of like the power of a niche loyal following. So I've been doing this podcast for, I think I did it for like a year and then I was like, you know what, I'm gonna launch a, a rolling fund. And I said, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm not gonna go to anyone I know in real life. I didn't go to Sam, I didn't go to Jeff, I didn't go to any of my friends who kind of were like, I think if I went to friends in Silicon Valley and say, hey, I'm starting a fund, they would have cut me a check. It would have been great, but not a remarkable story. Instead, I said, I'm going to only raise this from people I've never met who just follow me on either Twitter or from the podcast. And I tweeted out, I said, I'm going to try to raise $1 million in 21 days. And we're like, I think we crushed it in like 3 days. And we are now at $4 million a year on the rolling fund from people I never met. And I never did a phone call. So I never did a pitch meeting or anything like that. And that was the power of kind of like a niche following or a trusted audience that really isn't that big. But the power of the trust and the quality of the audience made it so that I could raise one of the bigger rolling funds.
That's huge. Yeah, that's a remarkable story. And that was sort of why we chose to go through the AngelList rolling fund platform is because we wanted to be able to sort of crowdsource from our fans and people who support me and be able to market it out there so that everyone can get involved. Because when we're coming into these startups are sort of differentiating factors like the traction and marketing that we can bring to them. And if we have an army of investors who want to see these products succeed, then we're all going to be pushing it and it sort of creates this movement.
How much have you guys raised so far? Can you say or no?
We're not going to say, but I think in terms of just like anchor LPs, we have Marc Andreessen, Chris Dixon, a bunch of friends. And it's also very interesting to see and talk to a lot of institutional investors.
But do they go through the Rolling Fund platform? Because then you're gonna have to give AngelList their cut.
No, you don't have to give them a—
I mean, I think we're—
we're—
I think AngelList has been good partners, honestly, right? Like, I think the back office and, and smoothness on that platform, we're very happy to share. I mean, I think, I, I think Jake and I, I think resonate because we're long-term players here. And I think it's a very interesting evolution of the venture capital ecosystem, right? Like, I mean, I know, Sam, you're starting to invest. I mean, Sean, you have a great portfolio. I mean, I'm sure we should talk about this, but it is very interesting to see how Wall Street hedge— crossover hedge funds are coming downstream. Uh, top-tier venture capital firms are going upstream into public market entities. I think the growth equity people in the middle are getting crushed. I think you see solo capitalists raising hundreds of millions of dollars in SPVs. I mean, I think the ecosystem is really, really changing. And I— in our thesis is that we're all entrepreneurs here, right? Like, just look at the people on your cap table who are actually people who add value. And these old-school funds who are middling, like, I think people like us should eat their lunch.
What— what—
but it's not to say that, like, we can't be complementary, but. But I think just, I think as a founder, I'm looking at the cap table that in my businesses, and it's very easy to see like in terms of dollar dilution to value add, like the best people on my cap table are entrepreneurs and operators. And I think Jake and I wanted to be those people on our portfolio company.
And I think, well, how much is the fund? How much is the fund gonna be, you think? So I think you, you, you guys said you wanted to be number one. Um, I don't know who the biggest is. Sean, you're at like what, $5 million?
But that's not the biggest. Sahil, I think, has the biggest rolling fund right now, maybe $10-15 million, something like that.
I think Pomp has a big one too.
Yeah, but the biggest— you guys gotta be in the 15 range.
Uh, having a big—
it does matter, that, bro, that's what they said they wanted to do in the press release.
They go, we want to be number one. If that's your goal, you should want the best returns, not the largest size fund. Uh, so, so bad goal if, if that is your goal. Is that your goal, Jeff, to have the largest capital base, that's not going to do anything for you.
Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's just like us in a competitive spirit, right? But I think the core metric for us is best cash-on-cash returns, right? End of the day, it's IRR and returning capital to our LPs.
So Jake, were you angel investing before this, or is this kind of your first foray for you personally into startup investments?
Yeah, I've been angel investing since I was like 18. I'm 24 now. And then I also had a fund when I was 2019 called TGZ Capital. We raised a pretty decent amount of money but was just getting my feet wet into the tech business, but invested into over 20 consumer startups. And the fund is performing well. We're seeing exits and we're basically tripling— we basically tripled our IRR capital. So pretty successful there as my first fund.
But now— So give us some names. What are some companies Sorry, it's a little lag, but what are some companies you invested in that we might have heard of?
So Quip, I think, is one of the biggest ones that's like performing. No Foods, Triller, which is—
Yeah.
Hush Beauty. Just a lot of consumer brands. And, you know, that was again, just me getting started and I was 18, 19, 20 years old at the time. And now it's like my reach is bigger than ever. My knowledge is more than ever. And I have Jeff who has such a great reputation and is an amazing founder and entrepreneur. So just really excited to go head down.
How did you guys meet? Is there a good story? Because Jeff, Jeff is kind of like, you know, Asian guy from the tech scene, successful, you know, tech entrepreneur. Jake, you're like, I don't know, YouTube playboy. How did y'all even cross paths? Is there a good story there or is this just whatever?
I mean, I think like I was talking to Chris and Elena and then Jake came in and like we just shook hands and I was like, oh, like I saw this, I've seen this kid on YouTube. He was trolling the Fuck out of Conor McGregor, that was hilarious. This guy is awesome. I mean, so I don't know if this is public or not but fuck it, like Conor is a big customer of HVMN and obviously he's had, you know, kind of on record had some issues with endurance. So, we just knew that through HVMN, we have some exogenous ketone technology that's been supporting folks in special operations, elite athletics. And Connor was a customer and I was like, hey, Jake is cool. I saw him trying to want to pick a fight with some of the top elite boxers. Let's just talk about human performance. And we just hit it off from there and we realized that human performance was really just the start of what an overlapping interest was. And maybe Jake, you want to tell about your 3 goals this year? You had a couple of goals that you wanted to accomplish this year and they just really overlap in terms of what you're interested in.
Yeah, I told Jeff, I was like, I have 3 goals this year. One is to to fight 3 times. The second is to start a VC fund. And the third was to learn to do the splits.
Just a lot of stretching, just literally sitting in that position and trying to get lower and lower each time. It's not really rocket science.
Dude, I just signed up for a front splits course. I send Jeff shirtless pictures all the time of me doing a back bridge. Same, same. We could just talk about flexibility if you want all day.
Flexibility equals speed. So that's why I'm— that's one of my goals. But yeah, that's sort of how we connected. And Jeff was like, oh, I want to do a fund as well. I've been wanting to do it. I've been wanting to do it. And we just had mutual friends and just sort of hit it off right away with our goals and our network and our vision for what we could accomplish.
I want to ask you guys about some specific companies you're looking at, and we could bring up some as well. But I wanted to ask you, um, so I've been doing angel investing a little bit now. So I made a great living starting and selling a company, and I'm going to continue doing that. The thing about angel investing that is like, I'm like, do I want to spend a lot of time doing this? Is that you're not going to see any returns, if ever, for like 6, 7, 8 years. And I'm talking to Sean all the time. I'm like, Sean, like, you think this is a good use of time? Like, this is kind of crazy. I don't know if it's Do you guys think you, uh, Jake, Jeff, do you guys think that is this going to be a needle mover for you guys financially, or are you doing it because, um, it's cool, it's exciting? I mean, what, what's your motivation here? And don't say like, we want to help founders, because I, I can't stand that, that answer, because I think that's mostly bullshit. You're not doing it if you're not going to get something.
For me, it's having the finger on the pulse of what's going on. I think That's sort of what I've been best at over the years is being ahead of trends and knowing what's going on in the business world and what things are hot and new. I can leverage that a lot for a lot of different reasons, both financially, both in my career, and I can form my opinion on what I think I should be putting money into. And then, I think part of it's just legacy for me. Wanting to be this generation's Jay-Z or Dr. Dre, where, you know, they're a part of these massive billion-dollar companies and do more for the celebrities around them than just be a rapper or just be a producer. You know, I want to be that bridge between the business world and the influencer world and be sort of the one that— the influencer or celebrity who's known for that in this generation. And I feel like As a 24-year-old, I'm sort of already starting to lead that and accomplish that.
Jake, something— let me ask a quick question. Something that I've always been curious about, and we've actually talked about hiring CEOs on here, which is a little bit similar, but the Jay-Z thing interests me because he's got his hands in everything. So he just sold a significant part of Tidal, I think, or maybe the whole thing. He had the alcohol thing, and then he's had like He's had hits, like, it seems like one hit every year. Clothing, his record label. What I'm always curious about, and I actually just talked to a guy the other day who Jay-Z invested in his company, and I talked to the guy and I was like, what's it like talking to him? And what I'm curious about is guys like Jay-Z and you're, if you're not there already, you're on your way there, but you probably are. What I'm always curious about is how do they structure the office? So how are they actually structuring the day-to-day? So like, there's this, this, the face. So Jay-Z's the face and he's got to do good at music, otherwise everything else fails. But he's got his hands in all this stuff. How are you actually structuring your day or structuring like the Jake Paul Corporation in order to effectively do that?
Yeah, I mean, for me it's about, it's building out team. And, you know, for me it's a little bit different right now with being in training camp where like I'm traveling all over and training twice a day and so on and so forth. But my team comes with me and we're sitting like, there was a couple more people here literally right now, but we're sitting around this table throughout the day going through operations, checklists, to-dos, hitting deadlines. And so for me, I'm very much a part of the operations and running things as a CEO.
But are they structured as— what's your— do you have like a holding, like a, like a, like a Jake Paul Media LLC or something like that?
Well, it's like, it's sort of like a parent company, and then there's like, you know, the branches underneath it.
But then most, and most all the revenue is some YouTube, I imagine, related, or some type of brand revenue, advertising revenue. And then, uh, you just have like maybe 8 or 5, I don't know how many people you said, and they just get a biweekly, bimonthly salary off that. So I mean, it's just run like a pretty straight-laced, normal media company. Is that how you have it set up?
It's pretty much like a media company.
Got it. Yeah. I've always been curious about how those guys do that.
Jake, you said something a second ago. You were like, you know, I've been good at having my finger on the pulse of where's culture going, where's attention going, where's business going. And so I'm curious, what, what are the trends that you're seeing right now? What are you excited about? You can either name kind of like categories, or even better would be, you know, specific ideas that you're interested in or concepts or businesses that you're interested in. Where do you see opportunities that not everybody thinks it's obvious today, but you kind of see it a little bit ahead of the curve?
Well, I think the hot one right now that sort of has evolved in the past 2 months is every celebrity trying to get involved in NFTs. And digital assets or digital goods. I think a lot of people are doing it wrong though, and they're sort of just doing it as like a flash in the pan and don't necessarily see the vision of where NFTs and why digital assets are so important and where it can go. And then on top of that, things like the metaverse where we have, you know, these digital museums and digital real estate, that's something that I think is super powerful right now. And then everyone sort of in the past week was talking about BitClout and how big that's become. And I think both of those things are sort of digital businesses that are backed by influencers and celebrities or sort of built on the backbone of digital celebrities and artists. And they're both super interesting. I think BitClout, you know, we will hear about for 5, 10, 15 years to come. And it's just such an interesting concept. And decentralizing social media is such a powerful, powerful thing. So those are two just like right off the bat that are very interesting to me right now.
Are you— all right, let me show you guys a company. Let's talk about specific companies in that space. I'll tell you one that I'm looking at and you tell me your opinion. Sean brought this to my attention. I got a meeting with them actually in like 7 hours because they're based in Australia. So it's like Monday morning their time when they're meeting. But I just posted you guys the link. I don't know why the links always show up like that.
Yeah, these horse NFTs.
It's crazy, dude. I've had friends that have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on buying these horses. It's so fascinating. Now I think, so I'm going to try and invest in them, but I think that there's a ton of reasons why this can't work. But I, there maybe is a world where they become this like massive, like, you know, uh, uh, I forget what the big fantasy sports, fantasy draft or whatever it's called. Uh, there is a world where, yeah, DraftKings. There is a world where it becomes, have you guys seen this?
Can I tell you a little bit about this one? So yeah, so for those who don't know, so Zed Run is basically a platform where you go on and you buy a digital horse. So you buy a horse and the horse can be one of these 4 different breeds. There's one breed that's known for speed. There's another breed that's known for, let's say, its endurance. And so there's 4 different classes, almost like Gryffindor and Slytherin or whatever else, right? So 4 different master breeds. So you go on, you buy a horse, and then you can race your horse. Now it's so it combines the fun of digital horse, of like horse racing and betting on horses, which I've done it. Sam, I know you're from redneck country. You've definitely gone to horse tracks and bet on horses. So, so betting on horses is super fun. But now you actually own the horse. Like in a normal horse race, the race happens and like 5 seconds later you don't give a shit about, you know, horse number 8, you know, Happy Go Lucky. It's like, I don't care about Happy Go Lucky anymore, but in this case it's your horse. And the better your horse does, the more other people want to breed with your horse. So these are— the underlying technology is NFTs. But if you just take that away, it's a game basically, but it merges like the best of like a Tamagotchi where you own your little pet as well as horse racing where you actually race your pet and you can win money gambling on the horse races. And so, and so I know people that have made like $3,000 this week just because their horse was winning. I was doing pretty well and people started paying him to breed with that horse because he had a 25% win rate.
But how do you make your horse better or worse?
It's just like a game of sort of random chance, right? So you sort of buy the horses at the auction and the horse has some probability of being one of the top horses. And then even then, anything can happen in a race. So the race itself has some probability. So it's just a bunch of math equations that's deciding whether this horse is going to win that race or not, or be one of the premier horses.
So it's just random.
It's, it's random in the same way that like you open a pack of Panini basketball cards and you might get a Luka Dončić rookie card, or you open Pokémon and you might get a holographic Charizard or not. So there's just a set of probabilities where you get the common stock that are like not that great, or you get the premium rare ones. And when you have that, it's this asset that just drives a bunch of cash flow because it'll win races, which wins you money, or people will breed with it and it'll win you money. And so it's this mix. And the people who go heavy on it, there's this crew of guys I've talked to them that are like the same guys that are the whales on all the daily fantasy sites. These guys bet, you know, millions of dollars. I was talking to a guy yesterday. This guy basically himself bets about $3 million a month on DraftKings and FanDuel. And so it's that same crew that became the cream of the crop. They moved to Top Shot and they basically bought all the Top Shot stuff, like all the Top Shot cards when it was really cheap. And then they started—
who was this guy?
They started trading with each other. I can't say his name, but they started trading with each other. And they started buying each other's things up. And so all of a sudden the prices went up and it's kind of like a little bit fugazi because these guys, like, they're all buying from each other. So it's sort of like a wash trade. It's like, I'll pay you $5 million and you pay me $4 million back and then I pay you $3 million. And it makes all the price of, it makes the price of all of our assets that we bought dirt cheap go up to the mass public. Now the public just sees it and we talked about it on the pod, like, oh my God, $160 million has been traded on Top Shot. Oh my God, that one Top Shot is worth $4 million or whatever. And it's because these guys basically pumped the market themselves. And like this month, this month, Top Shot's like crashed. It's like down 70%. And all these guys have moved to Zed Run. And so like the place to be right now is Zed because that's where you go buy some horses and the whales are all there betting against each other and driving up the prices.
So Jake and Jeff, would you write these guys a check based off of the 3 minutes of information you know about them?
I think Jake and I like investing the picks and shovels of the space, right? So I think, I think, Sean, I think you're very astute. I think there's a lot of inside dealing, and it's a very similar dynamic with the fine arts market, or the, like, the nightclub social clout. Like, hey, I'm gonna drop X hundred thousand dollars popping bottles and, and doing the model nightlife lifestyle. I think we believe that the market for this exists,. And I think that for Gen Z and forward, it's just as cool to have digital stunts versus real life stunts. So I think enabling this economy, I think, is a real market. Just like Warhols are a real market, I think Beeple are like a real market in the sense that there is some liquidity in this space. But I think it's very hard to choose which specific art or artist is to be made. And I think where I think we have some alpha is there is going to be a similar infrastructure around the Christie's, the Sotheby's, the gallery owners, the tastemakers, the curators. There is a multi-billion dollar industry that chooses winners, right? Like, who, who, who says that a Rothschild $40,000 wine is worth $40,000, right? There's a, an ecosystem that chooses that wine. Or that chooses that artist to be the next winner.
So the question then is, is Jake and Jeff, do you think that Zedd— are you willing to bet? Are you— would you bet that this is going to be the next Kentucky Derby? Or—
I think, I think a lot of these games are hits-driven businesses, right? I think it's like, uh, just like how there are a bunch of mobile games that were super hot that like spiked and then crashed. I think these are like movie franchises, right? Like which ones are durable and which ones are a flash in the pan, right? And I think there's a lot of self-dealing with folks that come in early. And exactly as you mentioned, like, I think we've seen and looked at a lot of these deals, right? Like the Beeple art piece that sold for $69 million at Christie's, the buyer— Beeple had 2% of that, uh, stake, right? Like, they were pumping up Beeple's art value, right? Like, that is like well known within like the hardcore NFT art collection. Like, it was a self- deal, don't trade. Like, he is pumping his own art pieces, right? It's almost like a— like, because they're not securities, it's probably not insider trading, not illegal, right?
No, I just say I wouldn't—
he laughed at something.
Yeah, that's good. That was a trick question. Good point. There was a great tweet I saw yesterday by somebody, I think their name is, I don't know how to say it, Ferdose Bai or something like that. But they said, here's the scenario. I have $2 million of Ether. I create an NFT art piece. I pay an artist 5 grand, hey, make me some NFT art. Cool. Now I use my $2 million of Ether to buy my own NFT. Now I still have $2 million in Ether 'cause I bought my own NFT. The money went to me., and I have an art piece that's valued at $2 million. So now I put that NFT back up on the market and let's say it sells for, at a 90% discount, it sells for $200K, right? Oh my God, I took a big bath on this. Whoever bought it got a great deal. They bought a $2 million Ether. This thing just sold for $2 million. They got it for $200K. Great. I now have $2.2 million in Ether, right? And it's like, that is how simple the sort of self-dealing can be in this space right now because it's the wild, wild west. Now, I got to tell you, the same sort of shenanigans were taking place with Bitcoin really early on. And sometimes there is a fake it till you make it nature to these things. Right now it's happening on BitCloud. So I came on here talking about BitCloud a few weeks ago, and everyone's making fun of me because they're like, oh, are you pumping this? Like, is this a Ponzi scheme? Like, oh, you know, it's like that scene from The Office where Michael's all excited and then Jim goes and draws a pyramid around the thing he's drawing out. And it's like, yeah, that's a pyramid scheme.. But I, you know, I sort of saw something different in Bitcloud. I think actually Bitcloud has a lot of potential. I pumped in $100K because I know that for all these platforms, they don't have to work in the long run for them to be successful. They can be successful in two other ways. One is they can just show the world that, hey, this is not maybe the end, the winner, but this is a good idea. And, and then somebody will come up with a V2 later and it'll be better. The second thing is if you get in early and there's a speculative run where people get excited and more, more people get involved, it doesn't have to like replace Facebook and replace Twitter for you to make a bunch of money. And so that was my view on BitCloud. Jake, I'm heavy in your coin right now on BitCloud. I'm just waiting for you to claim that baby because you're one of my—
Yeah, I'm claiming in the next couple of days here. But it's so interesting. And again, it goes back to like being able to get the general public involved. For me, when I saw— when I'm looking at crypto, like, I understand it more than the average person. I'm not an expert by any means, but I've been following it for years and investing money into it. But it's still a bit confusing, and I don't know all the different coins, and I have to, like, look and research their functions and all this stuff and figure out who's involved and if they're legit, if I want to put my money in. When BitClout came out, I was like, oh my God, this is perfect for me because I know who these influencers are. I know who these celebrities are. I know who their managers are. I know if they're actually smart. I know if they work hard. I know if their career will have longevity. And I think also for fans, you know, they can be like, oh my God, you know, I love this kid on TikTok. I think he's going to be the next big thing. But his BitClout's only $500, I can put in $500, and then who knows if, if they actually blow up. And so I think for, for the general public, BitCloud is so much easier to understand. It's easier, like, entry point, and it's, it's just the start. Um, and that's part of the reason why I'm, I'm bullish on it as well and think that it has a ton of potential and that it'll, it'll be around for a while. And you sort of have this direct access to your, your most loyal supporters and the people who believe that you will be successful in the long run. You're able to connect with them, message them, and see who's, who's backing you.
So can I just say one thing on that? So I joined the thing like 3 weeks ago and, you know, was excited initially and put a bunch of money in and I've made a bunch of money on it. But now I'm— I guess my thoughts of something has clicked in my head where I now get I can now better articulate why I think this idea, whether it's in Bitcloud or some other project that comes up 2 years from now, this idea is never going to go away. I'll explain why. Because a lot of people said, "Okay, what's the point? Why would I buy this coin? Why would I buy Jake Paul's coin? Why would I buy Jeff's coin? What's the purpose of it?" Here's how I would explain it now. Everybody gets and actually likes things like Patreon, where it's like, "Well, I like to support a creator I like, right? So I want to give them money so they can keep creating content. And Patreon has this like feel-good vibe to it where I'm just sort of donating and I get back, I get some kind of access, right? So when I pay on OnlyFans or Patreon or Substack, I pay for access, I pay for stuff. And so I give you money and you give me content. And what Bitclout does is it takes that same trade, but it makes it even better for the person giving the money because it says, Hey, this time when you pay, when you buy my coin, yes, you get access, you get content, you get exclusives, you get more from me and you're helping me do what I do because now I can make a living doing this. But if you were early, if you think that more people in the future will want that same access, you're going to not just like pay for stuff and, you know, it's money going out. You're actually going to make money because your coin is going to appreciate in value. And so you as an early tastemaker get to like— if I knew Jake Paul was going to be Jake Paul, actually, Jake, I saw you. We were at a party together. You were coming, you were leaving. I was coming at a house party like 5 years ago, 4 or 5 years ago. And I remember you were walking around with a backpack on. I just remember thinking, why is this guy got a backpack? And they're like, oh, that's Jake Paul. I thought, oh yeah, I've seen some of this guy's stuff on Vine. I think this guy's great. If I could have bought your coin then by being an early— identifying earlier on that, hey, this guy's going to be big, not only would I have got the access, pay for content, but I would have made 5x, 10x my money by believing in you early. So it takes the concept of 1,000 true fans, which was like a, like a 20-year-old concept that a lot of people talk about. Hey, if you can get 1,000 people to pay you $10 a month, you can make a living as an artist. 1,000 true fans is gone. Now it's 100 true believers, 100 people who actually invest in your coin. Not only are they enough for you to make your living, but they will get rich by being early in you too. And so I think that's the one thing that will stick around. I don't know if Big— I don't know who's behind Big Cloud. I don't know if it's a scam. I don't know if they'll run away with our money. I don't know if it'll get hacked. Nobody can guarantee those things, but I can guarantee you this idea that the curators, the tastemakers, the people who identify talent early as a fan, and they are going to get— it's like buying Amazon stock early now. They're going to make financial rewards in addition to being an early supporter. That idea is never going away. And that's what Bitclout brought to the world.
Yeah, I hear this, like, legit. I don't know if it's like an open secret now, but like, there's legit people behind and like legit operators behind.
Yeah. Chamath and, and Andreessen.
Well, they backed it.
It's public. Yeah, yeah, they backed it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, the operator, the founder is like a legit guy who's raised like hundreds of million— like $150 million of his previous crypto projects. So I think like the team is like going to be reasonable. It's underwritten by like reasonable people. Yeah, I mean, I think the long-term scheme is that like for Twitter, Instagram, right, like Jake offered so much freaking value to those platforms but he has to monetize off platform.
Jake, how much money, how much value do you think you created? Just gimme a wild ass guess, you know, a wild ass guess. How much value did you create for Vine, for Twitter, for YouTube? What would you put, if you were throwing a number out there, how much value was the Paul, were the Paul brothers for those platforms?
Oh, easy. Over like billions, billions of dollars. In, in media value, in market cap, for sure, hands down, every day.
So let's, let's take the conservative angle. Let's, let's take it most conservatively. Let's say you only added $100 million over the last 10 years. I think that's an extremely conservative estimate, right? Uh, or, or, or we can go— we can just say $100 million. Um, roughly right now, what do you think— what percentage of the value that's created do do YouTubers capture? Do they capture like 1% of the value they're creating? 10%? Like, how one-sided is the deal in your opinion?
It's very one-sided. And I think that's why you see, you know, YouTube and creators not as, you know, in sync as before, because they're finding ways to go off platform and make money like OnlyFans, Bitcloud, their own subscription platforms. So it's not the same ecosystem that it was before, but even before it was still very, very lopsided. And, you know, we're bringing all of this attention to YouTube and we're bringing those eyeballs. Without that content there from the influencers, you know, the fans aren't necessarily going to come back all the time, I think. And I think that's a value you can't even really put a put a price tag on.
Yeah, I mean, just look at it from like a Netflix model, right? Netflix spends billions of dollars, Disney+ spends billions of dollars on content, and then YouTube basically gets it for free and then kicks an ad revenue shit split to the creators. So what, like, I just don't think it's a stable equilibrium just from like Economics 101. Like, that will have to change in the medium-long term. And I think that's part of our thesis as Antifund.
So what do you call that? What do you call this genre of companies? Companies that basically help people like Jake or us make more money versus just making, uh, uh, you know, a tiny bit of money from ad revenue. What do you, what do you call this like niche? Niche?
Yeah, I think, I think people are deeming it creator economy, passion economy. I mean, it's just like, I think there's a new way. I think like What is the ultimate commodity? It's time. What is the best proxy for time? It's money. What's the second best proxy for time? Attention, right? Like, so I think it's like literally time is what everyone has limited resource of. Money buys you a lot of time because you can pay people to do stuff for you. And then attention, right? Like, attention is very, very scarce. And I think what creators and influencers offer is a lot of attention.
So let's Let's, let's actually talk about some of those companies that you guys are looking at. I know, I mean, I know the past ones. Jake said that he helped build or was, uh, very tightly associated with Fanjoy, which, um, I, if I had a guess, I, I just, just from what I've read online, I would imagine that they're doing north of $100 million a year in— well, they're for sure doing north of $100 million in gross merchandise revenue, gross merchandise sales. Are they doing more than $100 million in like net revenue? I'm not sure actually. If I would bet, I would say 50 or 60.
Explain what it is for people who don't know.
I'm technically co-founder on the books of Fanjoy, but also investor and like just been very involved in strategy from day one with the CEO, Chris. But essentially Fanjoy is the best place for influencers, celebrities, athletes to go for their merchandising creation, shipping, fulfillment, and fan experience. So, you know, let's say there's a big influencer and they need merchandising, Fanjoy is the best place to go. They take care of design, fulfillment, shipping, customer service, the website. And it's basically A to Z one-stop shop.
What do you— what's going to be the— how does Fanjoy end? Someone like one of the massive t-shirt companies or something like that buys them for hundreds of millions of dollars?
Yeah. And I think just continuing to scale and scale and bring more influencers and, you know, doing unique things like disrupting retail in many ways because You know, when some of these influencers, we've seen them go into retail in different places like Zumiez or Target even, they're going crazy because their fans can actually go to the store and buy physical products. So, I think there's a lot of value in that. And then, just getting super smart around the actual product and the customer acquisition and there's always going to be an influencer, a celebrity, or an athlete that's super popular at the time. And so the business obviously continues to grow and grow and grow.
What other products are you seeing in the space that are interesting that most of our listeners won't even know are a thing? I mean, Big Cloud we've talked about, but that's something that a lot of people don't know.
So companies that help creators.
Yeah, monetize better than just plain advertising.
I mean, maybe just to like, we don't want to like scoop some announcements, some investments, but we've already started making some investments. And I think we've looked at novel ways to do commerce, right? Like, I think SMS conversational commerce is very, very interesting. You know, Sam, you've been awesome to kick over some interesting deals.
Yeah, we could, I could tell you, so we, I sent Jake and Jeff, this company called Tails. And what it does is, um, the reason it interests me is there's already companies in China doing this that have like $50, $70, $80 billion in market cap. And Tails is a platform where an author can upload the text of their past books, and through a bunch of different technology, it turns into an interactive book which you can sell for more money and make the author more money. And that's kind of interesting. I think that there's a ton of reasons why that business can fail, but there's a few reasons why it could be quite massive. And so I invested in it for for the few reasons I think it could be big. I think I sent that to you, Sean.
Yeah, I saw that one too. So Jake, let me ask you the question a different way. The people who listen to this podcast are like makers of some kind, they're product engineers, everybody from, we have like execs at Twitch or YouTube or Facebook that listen to this podcast, Twitter, and then there's like, you know, the 18-year-old college kid who listens to this because he loves getting ideas about like different things that they could go build. And so a lot of them, the one of the biggest DMs I get is just like, hey, like, do you have an idea? Or what do you think of this idea? I can make anything. I just don't know where— I don't know what the problems are that people have. Because imagine you're a 20-year-old kid. It's the apps that those people build are typically the apps that solve problems of 20-year-old kids, but they're not because they don't know what problems that Jake Paul has. And same thing with execs at these companies. They don't always understand what are the problems that an influencer like you would have. So what are some pain points? Or like, if you could say kind of like, man, I wish somebody would make it easier for me to do X, or man, it really sucks that, you know, I'll just throw out some examples while you think, because I know that's a tough question, but like, you know, I want to buy a house and like, it sucks you can't get a mortgage even though I got millions of dollars of no W-2 income.
Okay.
Yeah. So I think in this space there are very few people who are great at just social media in general, from understanding it, knowing what's going on, knowing the players involved, being able to create content in the space, edit videos, graphic design, you know, understanding Twitter, being able to run a Twitter account. Everyone I meet ever is like, I need a social media person. I need someone who can edit film. Understand, post, do the captions, tweet, make the TikToks, come up with the videos. I need ideas. Like every single company, every single influencer needs that person. And there's— where are they? I don't know. I've had to— it took me a long, long, long time. My John right here, he's my guy. He's like, I'm right here. But But it's so hard to find them. It's so hard to find them. And so I wish there was a place where I could just go and be like, who's the best social media people? I think that would blow up instantly.
We just went through this.
Yeah, we just— we—
We just had a fun version of this where like you said, like, so my studio looks— you can say it, Jake. I look pretty legit right now, right? Got good lighting, got good audio, got it, got it, got a good camera. I didn't know how the fuck to do that. And so these guys basically flew out to my house and built me the studio in my garage, and they did the same thing for Sam. And then they said, great, we're going to take your podcast and the videos from this and we're going to chop it up and make awesome social clips and just have them ready for you on a platter to post. And then some guys are posting them for us. So now we have this machine behind us that's taking the raw content and turning it into something awesome. It took us a year to find that, and we were just lucky that we found it. So let's just riff on that idea for a second. It seems like there's two ideas that come to mind. You tell me if either of these are exciting. One is a way to, like a job, like a, like basically like a place to go hire. Like, you know, LinkedIn is too broad, you know, Upwork is just too random. A place to go, a marketplace where you could find trusted content creator, like allies, digital, like kind of like editors, social media people, graphic designers, stuff like that. So like a place to go find high quality people like that. Like a marketplace.
Exactly. Yeah. But the thing is, though, is like, a good creative artist, editor, slash videographer isn't gonna go and fucking make a LinkedIn profile. Like, how do you get these people who are actually good and like, super talented to maybe be on one of these, uh, one of these, these sites. I don't, I don't know. And a lot of them are young.
So, so one company is called Dribbble where, like, great designers didn't want to go to LinkedIn and just say, I'm a great designer. And even if you went to LinkedIn, you couldn't tell if they're a great designer or not. What Dribbble did was it let them upload little shots. So it's like, while they're in Photoshop, if they're doing something cool, they kind of take a screenshot, upload it to Dribbble, and other designers see it. So it kind of became this social network for designers to share their the coolest stuff they were making. It's like our portfolio. And then once they got everybody building their portfolio on here and sharing it with each other, then it became the best way to hire designers because now you could go just go browse their portfolios and they got higher paying jobs. So that's one angle of attack. The other is Lambda School. So I invest in this company called Lambda School that basically was training people to become software engineers. Like every tech company needs to hire engineers, you know, like every influencer needs a social person who's making, you know, editing and posting stuff. Every tech company needs more engineers. And so Lambda School was like, yo, college is not doing it. We need to make a 9-month bootcamp where we'll make you like from zero to ready to be hired. And we only make money if you get hired. So like we're fully aligned with you. If we can't get you a high-paying job as an engineer, then we failed. We don't make any money. It's on us. And Lambda School is gonna be like a billion-dollar-plus company. Now you could make potentially a Lambda School for whatever, content creation or media creation.
Yeah, I mean, let's just put it out there. Like, I'm sure all of us would invest in a company that would like prime up people that doing social media management. I think, I mean, I'm talking to Sam Trung, one of your lead writers for this, for HVMN. I think there is a scarcity in this type of skillset.
But Jake, what are the solutions to the, all right, so somehow we got to the solution of like some type of job board. Is she like, vetted thing. The other like obvious one is, well, we're just going to build up an agency where we hire thousands of people. That actually probably could work. It would be kind of a pain in the ass and not that exciting. What other solutions are there that you would, that you propose for this?
I guess it would be maybe like a place where the people could put their highlights. Yeah, maybe like their videos, but then maybe their understanding of social media, like almost if someone had a resume spot that was more robust for this specific type of thing. But again, it's difficult.
It's because this is a challenging thing. Yeah, I have this problem as well where I'm like, I just want to hire someone who I could just say, just do it. Uh, it is, but so I hear you. I'm— and I've— I haven't come up with a good solution. I just looked at Fiverr. Do you guys know— you guys definitely know Fiverr. Uh, they're—
they're—
maybe you could do just a more exclusive Fiverr. They have a pretty good market cap, $8 billion, publicly traded. It's pretty fascinating.
Yeah, but I think— I think to your— to Sean's point, I think Lambda has like a good model where there is, I think, best practices that some, you know, You know, someone like, you know, you know, John, who works with Jake, is like literally teaching, curating, like just giving the best practices of what like a top tier, top 5 creator is actually doing with their setup, right? Like your guys' setups are beautiful, right? Like why isn't that replicated across everywhere, right? I would pay to just have that just set up for me.
So would you guys invest in that? Would you basically just launch, Jake, like a— I mean, you wouldn't do this, but maybe someone would for you— a Jake, like a, like a, like a, some cooler name than Social Media School, but a social media, you know, like a school like that.
Yeah. So I've tried, I've dabbled, I've dabbled in it. I've dabbled in trying to teach kids about social media and how to do it and like, and so on and so forth. And what I found was, is that just people weren't dedicated, honestly. And it was a lot of shit and lots of hours of content and me explaining. And it just, I think people don't understand how hard of a job this is and how it's 24/7 and there's so many different, you know, parts to it. So I've tried to educate people.
I actually think what would be far more— what I think could be interesting is if we created a, like, where it's not geared towards young kids, it would have to be geared specifically towards companies. And what you do is charge $10,000 to $15,000 and your employees would go to it and you would have recorded talks by Jake Paul, by Logan, but then you'd also be like, all right, now we're going to talk to these editors. They're going to show you how they do it. And it's a 3-week— no, you do a 6-week thing. You meet twice weekly for 3 hours apiece and you just have a curriculum and it's just like a boot camp. I'm pretty sure you could build at least a $10 million a year company doing just that. And potentially it could become much larger, like a larger— like a Miami School for Advertising, which is like $100 million a year company that's been around for 50, 100 years, whatever, yada yada yada. You probably could do— you could probably get quite wealthy doing just that.
Well, I, I think anti-fund would invest in something like that if there's a cred— credible operator, right? I think Lambda showed the path for software engineering, right? And I think you're exactly right. This is not like the trained kids, like 18, 19-year-olds that are just like dabbling around. They just want to kind of like hang out and get affiliated with Jake Paul. This is like, hey, we want to train legit social media managers for top 500 enterprises. I think that there's a clearly a demand Again, like, you know, the business I've worked with, like, we would pay for that.
And can I—
so I think it's like, if you guys chip in, like, we can— like, and if the audience here, there's entrepreneurs out there.
Every time we put out there, hey, here's an idea. Like, anytime we put out an idea that says, hey, I have this problem, or here, I think there's a genuine problem in the world and somebody could fill it, maybe doing this, maybe doing that, and I would back you if you wanted to do this. Dude, we get incredible operators coming out the woodwork. So when they hit us up after this, I will share, you know, we'll share it amongst the four of us. And if somebody is legit trying to do this, great, we'll go for it. Like Jake, I don't know if you saw this, but we did a mini SPAC where I just straight up said, hey, there's all these little small like SaaS companies out there that are, you know, they're not doing great, but they're not horrible. And I said, instead of going to business school and wasting $200 grand and 2 years of your life, I will gift you one of these businesses. I'll buy you a business for $5 or $10 grand that's making, I don't know, $1,000 of profit per month right now. And, and you run it, you'll learn more from this than you will from business school. And a bunch of other people on Twitter chimed in. They're like, I'm in for $5K. And so it kept going. And now we basically gifted this kid— he's a college senior— we gifted him a $100,000 business. It was a Shopify app and it's a Shopify app that it's already profitable and the person behind it hadn't run it. And so this is like a new education model, right? Like this guy is not, you know, instead of going to business school, he's going to get to run a business And for us, we get a kickback if this guy's able to grow it. And if he's not, no problem. Like the business is already profitable, so there's already kind of like a floor on how bad this can go for us. But we're pretty ballsy with the stuff we put out and people step up when we do. So I'm curious, is there any other pain points or like, dude, somebody should do X, or I wish somebody would solve this problem for me or for people like me. Is there anything else that comes to mind? I'm curious.
I'm trying to think of like right off the top of my head.
I can bring one up if you don't have one as well.
It's crazy because like to actually sit there and think about like this, I would want to like put it out on Twitter more and maybe I need to become better at putting out some of these ideas like, guys, we need help with this on Twitter. It's obviously fight week, so I'm just posting all this stuff about the fight. But I think, I think I need to get better at posting like this business sort of stuff on my Twitter and utilizing it to capture and engage audience because I have ideas like this that come up all the time. But I'm just like, no one's ever going to do this.
I think you'd be surprised. I think particularly if guys like Jeff or me or Sean eventually start like sharing it and then you start, you're going to start capturing like, you know, our side of the world, which you already are. But, uh, I think you'd be surprised at who would pounce on some of these stuff, some of these things. Can I bring up one quick one really quick? Because I know we're getting close to time. I just— again, the reason why this is interesting is because I've talked to Jeff a ton about this. And it's also interesting because Jake's younger than us, but is like, I guess technically you are a professional athlete. And then Sean doesn't care about any of this, but I think he's the ideal customer. So here it is. The average 22-year-old male today— this is a tweet that went viral the other day— the average 22-year-old male today has roughly the same testosterone levels as a 67-year-old had in the year 2000. The average testosterone level has fallen close to 50% in the last two decades. Pretty wild. A company that I've been looking at, and I actually passed on them and I kind of regret on it, is called Peak. So I actually— it's called Get Peak Today. And so, the idea here, and I want to hear what Jake kind of like, you're kind of speaking on behalf of like the a little bit younger folks. Sean, you're speaking on behalf of people who maybe should consider taking this but you don't, and I do take it. So basically, TRT, testosterone replacement therapy, it's an incredibly scammy industry. This company, Get Peak, their URL is getpeaktoday.com. I think they're doing something like $15 million in recurring revenue in the first 18 months. What do you guys think about this industry, TRT? Basically, what we're explaining listeners is just fucking injecting yourself with a needle with testosterone, basically a PED.
Well, I actually have some experience here as a biohacker interested in human performance. So, I actually did an angel investment in a company called Maximus. Keith Raboy and Formation 8 led the seed round and they're just rolling out of alpha. The founder CEO is, uh, Cam Sepah, who is a UCSF—
yeah, I know him—
uh, trained, uh, clinical psychologist. So he's doing some interesting work there, exactly solving that problem. I think it is an underspoken issue where— yeah, exactly, like literally the average man today, their testosterone levels is like their grandfather's of 30, 40 years ago. Is that— I mean, we can go down all sorts of rabbit holes that might not necessarily be PC to talk about, but it is a very interesting— where T levels are just dropping.
Like, have you explored this, Jake, as you've gotten into athletics? Have you explored like your, your T levels at all?
Yeah, yeah, I've definitely, I've definitely been tested for it and obviously like mine aren't terrible like that, but it's definitely, it's definitely something that I think men talk about even at this age already. Like it's starting to become this, this bigger conversation. That needs to be fixed. Obviously there's a massive problem there. I think obviously due to our diet, our food, our chemicals, our pesticides, all that bullshit obviously has to do with it.
And 30, or when you're 30, 35-ish and you're no longer, and you no longer like, you know, are you tested by USADA? I imagine you are, right?
USADA, one of those.
Yeah.
I don't even know which one it is.
Yeah. So, when it's no longer an issue of using a performance-enhancing drug, would you be adverse to injecting yourself weekly for the rest of your life with testosterone? And, how do you think some of your peers would feel about that? Would they do it as well?
I think they would do it for sure. I mean, if it's going to increase your life performance and your libido and your muscles and all of that stuff, then for sure. You know, especially it's only going to get worse as you get older. And so if it's already this big of a problem in our generation, then, then of course, you know, and it's— this is something that again is becoming a bigger conversation. And I think hair loss and all of this stuff are all part of that.
We should incubate or seed this company, dude. This is a— this is one you— I think you said this on like the first brainstorm we ever did this, and this is still, I think, probably the best idea you've brought to the table. You peaked on day one of this TRT subscription company because you see what Hims and Ro have done where they took the same thing, a taboo topic like erectile dysfunction or, you know, early, early balding, and they basically created a top, like, consumer brand that built trust, and they went crazy building a D2C brand on, you know, through Facebook and advertising around that topic. And this is, I think, an even better, uh, business because it is— I think the market is actually larger for something like this. I think some people are scared to inject.
I passed on this on the seed round. On the seed round, I passed on this company, and I was like— and now I see their numbers now, and I've got so much frustration.
This type of thing, it's not even just like a one winner take all. Like, Hims and Roman are both multi-billion dollar companies, both fighting in the US. I just invested in, you know, Roman for Canada, because it's like the same thing. If it works in the US, it's also going to work in Canada. It's not going to not work there. And, um, and these, you need a very different, like, kind of, uh, legal and logistical setup to do it in Canada. And these other guys are doing it better. So I think that it's not like there's one company that's just going to win here, especially if you had the power of distribution behind it. Like, if Jake and Logan or whoever, if, if they invested in something like this and had it, had skin in the game to be able to bring awareness to this crazy fact, right? A company only needs one insight to start. And if that one insight is the average 25-year-old today has the same testosterone as their grandfather did at 67, like it's dropped that dramatically. Like that one insight alone, you can go start a company on. You'll figure the rest out as you do it. You don't need anything else to get started.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a thesis behind Antifund. I think it's like, how do investors help, right? It's like And like, again, you guys are all operators too. Like, who are the best people on your cap table? It's like, can they make introductions? Can they give you attention? Can they give you customers? And it's like, and I think like you guys, I would invest in your funds because like you guys have channels, you guys have people that actually listen to you, you guys are sharp, you guys get a lot of deal flow. And I think in some sense, you know, we're starting a little bit behind in terms of our fund status, but like obviously Jake and I are personal investors and have some track record there. But I think people like us, I think, will have outsized returns compared to the middling VC funds who are run by people in the previous generation who don't get the strategy that we're trying to execute here.
Yeah, I buy that.
Okay, we should— I know we're coming up on time. Sean, you want to, you want to wrap it up?
Yeah, I think we should. Uh, how do people get more? So where do they follow you guys? How do they invest in Antifund? Watch the fight. Plug, plug everything you want to plug. For people who have listened this far?
Yeah, I mean, I think in terms of the fund information, we're on AngelList. I think we're the top featured rolling fund right now. So AngelList, search for Antifund, we're there. We have profiles on Instagram and Twitter. You can find Jake @JakePaul. You can find me @JeffreyWu on all the standard social channels. And then watch Jake's fight. I don't know.
Yeah, Triller. Triller. Dude, on your AngelFund, And I love bullet point number 4 on your angel fund rolling fund sales page.
What is it? Is it the earth is flat?
The earth is flat.
Yeah. I mean, I think it just shows a little bit of the personality where I think, yeah, I think it goes back to the thesis that if time is the ultimate commodity, what are the proxies of that? And I think it's like if you can command capital or if you can command attention, those are like the most powerful assets today in today's economy. And hopefully we can execute and utilize what we think we have some advantage here to return, you know, returns for ourselves and our LPs.
Good. Right on.
Go ahead, Sean.
Okay, we can wrap it up. Jeff, Jake, thanks for coming. Jake, good luck at the fight. I think you're gonna win. Uh, sorry Ben if you're listening. I, I just think that, uh, Jake cares more and is going to try harder to win. I think Ben is, is okay with the decision, and because of that, I think he's going to lose rounds. That's my prediction. It's on the record. Sam, you're gonna shave your head. That's how I think this all plays out. Thanks for coming on, guys. We should do this again. We should do this again in like, I don't know, 6 months or a year, and we'll see what you guys are investing in. We'll keep shooting the shit and talking business.
Yeah, a quick debrief. So I still feel like crap, and I don't know if I told you, but I was in St. Louis when this happens, which is 13 hours away. We were supposed to meet with Jake on like a Wednesday or Thursday or something. Something changed. We had to do it on Sunday. He told us like 24 hours in advance. So I just drove back here and I got home at like— I drove through the night. I got home about 5 a.m. Oh shit.
I had no idea.
And then we did, we did the podcast at like, I forget which time. Noon, maybe. Yeah, I was exhausted. I'm still exhausted. So I was— I hope, I hope it went over okay.
Well, yeah, I hope it turned out okay. I know that when we were talking to him live, there was like a little bit of a lag or like a delay just on his connection. Or something. And so that made it really hard. Maybe just remember like how much more fun this is to do in person than online. Like, I don't care how good these tools get. I don't care what Zoom is worth. Like, doing the podcast in person is so much better than doing these online.
Speaking of which, although actually, let's talk about Jake. Do you want to say anything? I don't really have much to say. I thought it went okay. It went fine. Yeah, exactly.
It was fine.
I would say great. It wasn't bad. It was fine.
Yeah, he, uh, you know, he was like, you know, he took it seriously. I thought he did a good job. He was trying to like, you know, he brought, he brought like, he brought it to the table what he, you know, what he had to bring to the table, which was like, yeah, here's how I think about my business. Here's what I'm focused on. Here's some things that other influencers I think don't get right, but here's what I think I'm doing better. Or, you know, here's my, here's how I think about it. So I thought that was all good. I thought a bunch, I thought I was a little bit disappointed in a couple things. One was Jeff's great. I love Jeff. But also there was questions where I want like tougher questions for Jake that Jeff would take for him.
And I thought, oh yeah, Jeff was totally blocking for him.
Yeah, he was blocking, which I think you got to do if, you know, if that's your relationship. You're like the business guy in the partnership. So you're like, okay, I'll handle that question. It's kind of like, but it's the same thing. Like, you know, if you ask a CEO question and their PR person answers, you're like, no, no, I don't want to hear your answer. Like, I know your answer. I want to hear that person's answer. And so that's the only thing where I felt like there were some times where I was like, shit, like, Jeff, I know you have a good, smart answer for all this. I want to hear what Jake thinks about that. Because, you know, he's the interesting personality, frankly, of like, you know, of why I was excited to do that was like, I wonder how this dude who's totally different than me thinks about this type of stuff, whose life is totally different, right? You're one of the biggest YouTubers in the world. And you know, you're gonna have a different perspective than like me and Sam and Jeff, who's— we're all kind of like the same, like kind of like tech entrepreneur.
What, um, how much do you think Jake Paul— so like, we— I asked him about the Jake Paul, like how it's set up. And so basically there's probably a— he kind of said there's like a Jake Paul LLC, which probably most the revenue is like YouTube ad or brand revenue. And then, um, then there's a variety of like, I bet, minor things. So maybe his investments or or something like that. But how much do you think the Jake Paul media company earns a year in revenue and profit?
Man, it's hard to say. Okay, let's, let's just—
I didn't bring this up to him, even though this is something everyone wants to know, including myself. I didn't feel I wasn't on that level. We're not talking.
Okay, so like, if you just take YouTube, I'm sure people can do, you know, on the fly here, I'm not going to do the back of the envelope, like How many monthly views does this video get? Okay, then you assume a $5 CPM for his YouTube ad, you know, rev share. And then you say, okay, he has these sponsors. I think they're going to be 7-figure, you know, I would say his media side of things should be bringing in about $10 million a year. That'd be my guess.
I was thinking a little bit more, but give or take, give or take, uh, no, uh, 15 to 20.
his issue is that he's not entirely brand safe, um, which there's no judgment there. I'm just— that's probably the truth.
Yeah, exactly. Uh, and then I would say the boxing stuff is probably gonna bring in about the same because they own a lot more of that. So even though the total pie is less, you know, they don't have— YouTube takes such a big cut that I think, you know, comparatively, I think his boxing stuff— I think if they're smart, they're doing it like Floyd Mayweather where they are the promoter. Um, so they're the promoter and they're the talent and they put on the show and then they cut a licensing deal with Triller or whoever to, uh, split the like pay-per-view buys on top of that. So I would guess their boxing stuff's gonna bring in like $5 million to $10 million also. Um, and then on top of that is like anything else, you know, which is like maybe t-shirts, maybe merch, maybe, maybe other stuff. So I feel like the whole—
I bet you they— I bet you, I bet you him and his brother sell collectively $20 to $30 million a year in merch.
Yeah, which is insane. I think his brother does, does more. I think his brother is a bigger enterprise than Jake is because that his brother has the Impaulsive podcast, which I think is like the number one podcast, you know, or like it's like top 10 or something like that. Because, um, if you include like the YouTube views they get. So I think that podcast has turned into a big thing for them. And then Logan also has like Maverick as his brand and like his merch brand or whatever. And I think that that's like a stronger brand overall and has like a larger following than, than what Jake has. That's my guess, but I'm not like—
I bet you—
I don't follow the professionals.
Me neither. But I bet you he spends a ton of money. If I had a bet, I would bet that the difference between like Jake Paul person and Jake Paul media is probably quite like every, all, every expense is probably media expense or the company expense. So it's not the same or not really different. I bet he spends at least half a million a month.
That's a lot. Yeah, but he's got his crew, right? It's like all celebrities.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That rolls with you. It's like, all right, we're flying here. You know, like they took a private jet after our podcast. He got on a private jet and flew to wherever they're going to do the fight for fight week. And because he's got, you know, a big boxing match on Saturday. So You know, the one thing I was gonna ask you is, you know, whenever somebody meets a celebrity, I always ask, what's he, you know, what's he like? What's she like? Which is, it doesn't really matter what you say. It's like the conversation is usually not typically that interesting. But it is interesting to be like, what's that person like in real life? So what was your impression? What's he like?
Respectful, kind of quiet, listened more than he talked. He was just like a quiet, a quiet young person. I mean, uh, he seemed confident enough, but he was very polite. In the podcast, on the podcast, Sean basically put me on the spot and was like, oh, so Sam wants you to lose. And he handled it gracefully, right? So like, respectfully, like he didn't say like, oh, you effin' suck. He didn't disrespect Ben at all. So I thought he was very— he was polite.
He didn't big time us. He did, you know, which We've had that experience with other people who either come on the pod or were trying to get on the pod. They'll, you know, people who are famous and have a bunch of like obligations, and everybody wants a piece of their time, everybody wants to have them interviewed or whatever. It's easy to kind of big time other people. I thought he was extremely respectful, did not do that at all, uh, you know, brought his, you know, A-game to the table. I thought like, you know, this guy really is in some ways a marketing genius, uh like to build his self-brand up the way he did is actually quite impressive. It's to me as impressive as building, you know, I don't know, whatever, uh, the brand of JNCO Jeans or, you know, whatever, like any brand that kind of like hits some pocket of culture.
Well, let's put this in context as well. I think he's 23, 24. Yeah, uh, she's 24. So I think before the podcast started We were like, by the way, maybe we should put this segment like at the end. We should move it back. Yeah, yeah. But he said something like, yeah, we're like, do you invest? He invests. He goes, yeah, I've been angel investing since I was like 18. But is that what he said? Something like that. But he's like, I have a pretty large real estate portfolio. Like, I invest in real estate. I'm like, oh wow, you're— you've been doing this longer than I have and I'm 7 years older than you, right? So That's pretty amazing. And you forget that. You forget that. Like, whenever I see LeBron, uh, like young videos of LeBron when he, you know, his rookie year, because I like to watch like old YouTube clips of him doing stuff, I'm like, wait a minute, this guy's 19. He's got reporters in his face asking him like, you know, you, you threw the towel and you were kind of disrespectful. And he handled it with such poise answering that question. I was like, what was I like when I was 19?
Yeah, I was a total shithead.
Yeah, there's videos of me goofing around, pranking people, or trying to make funny YouTube videos when I was probably 16, 17 years old that, you know, I'd get canceled for today, right? Because I was just a dummy. I didn't know anything about anything. I couldn't handle like any kind of serious conversation. I wasn't— I didn't have a real estate portfolio, you know, I wasn't that guy. And I think this type of, you know, getting, getting famous forces you to grow up one way or another.. And also like a big part of it's who's around you. I'm pretty fascinated by all these like childhood celeb— child celebrities. And it's like, you see that their dad is the manager and then like they get to kind of take advantage of by their best friend who stole from them. And like, this is so common. Like that's not, it's not, it's not surprising when you hear that. It's like, oh yep, that's the pretty much par for the course here with athletes and musicians and child actors. Like that's just how it goes. And I would say the transition from like a, platform to platform, right? Getting big on Vine. So go to new platform, get big there, boom, move to YouTube, then from YouTube, Instagram. Okay, so cool, you're building up your social following, then it's like, alright, what got me famous was, you know, me being pranks and jokes and silly stuff. And then now, you know, Logan Paul's podcast is like, actually, like, more like real conversations. And they bring on, you know, crypto people, and they talk about investing, and they talk about this other thing, they bring on you know, a porn star, they'll talk about that. They'll talk about a wider variety of things. And then you go, then there it's like, okay, so they stayed relevant on social media for a while, which is hard. Then transition to this boxing thing, which I think is kind of a genius move, this like celebrity boxing angle that they took because they're making a lot of money. And now they're like, it's just like a different chapter. It's like they got off the daily vlogging treadmill, which every YouTuber burns out on. And they're like, all right, screw it. I'm going to go train for 9 months. I'm going to do a boxing match against this other YouTuber. Neither of us are really in any danger because we both suck at boxing, but we're each going to pull down millions of dollars and do something different with our life. Right? It's like, oh, that's cool. Then it's like building businesses, starting a rolling fund. It's like continually reinventing yourself is interesting to me. I think if you, if you listen to like whenever we do Billy of the Week, it's usually somebody who's reinvented themselves and 3 or 4 different chapters of their life. That is interesting. And this guy's— I thought that was kind of cool how he's done that. He didn't say any of those things, but just when I was doing the research, I was kind of taken aback by, oh yeah, that's cool. He's already had like 3, 3 to 4 pretty interesting chapters before the age of 25.
Feeling it like no days off, on the road, let's travel, never looking back.
Oh yeah! Feeling like gold, I don't wanna hide it. Ain't nobody telling me no, I'm catching feels wherever I go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, feel like I can rule the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like I'm on top of the world.