Jeff Clavin lays out a framework where, in an AGI-saturated world, people either win by maximizing charisma and vibe ('looks maxing') or by maximizing technical fluency with AI tools ('AI maxing'), and ideally both. ✦ AI generated
Jeff Clavin · a16z Podcast · 2026-06-22 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 19:10
“You had this blog post of, you know, there's two jobs, AI maxing and looks maxing. Why don't you talk about that?”
If we assume that we're pretty AGI-pilled, intelligence is just going to be metered out through compute. Then what matters is your relationship with people, and looks maxing is a pretty narrow focus on the physical appearance... but I think it's beyond just looks. It's your vibe, your ability to just be charismatic and engage with people. That's an important skill set in the future.
verbatim transcript · starts at 19:10
19:10attention. You you had this blog post of uh you know, there's two jobs, AI maxing and and looks maxing. Why don't you talk about that? >> Uh yeah. No, I think it's um I think it's actually true. um which is that the only thing that really will matter is that if we assume that like we're pretty AGI pill um intelligence is just going to be metered out through compute
19:36um then what matters then it's like one like your relationship with people and I think looks maxing is like a pretty narrow focus on like you know the physical appearance matters and like people like people that look good and symmetric and healthy so fine. Um, but I think it's beyond just looks. It's like your vibe, your your ability to just be charismatic and engage with people. So,
20:00that's like an important skill set in the future. Can you just have better vibes than everyone else? And I think with venture, right? Like I think I think what you've done with the media strategy for Andre Horowitz, I mean you guys are literally executing on looks maxing the VC world essentially, right? like you guys have your own propaganda arm just pushing out your view of the world. Um, and then the second part is
20:25that like okay, if you don't have maybe you're not maxing out on vibes, then you got to just be best at wielding intelligence. So all you got to do is like play with codecs and be on the computer all day long and then on this on the on the other side work out, sleep a lot and look smacks. Then you got everything covered. if you were 22, like just getting out of
20:47college today, but in 2026, um what would that look like in terms of how you'd want to spend your time? >> I was we're just we were just stopping by Stanford and Jake's going to go back to college and uh so that might be an answer that he can actually think about. Um >> yeah, I want to play on the Stanford football team actually. [laughter] So, we'll see what happens.
21:08>> He's going to do uh one year on the Stanford team and then get drafted the Cleveland Browns. It's happening. Let's go. Um I'm actually like old school in the sense that like and I think I've saw that earlier in my career where like oh is if computer science and math is automated then you don't need to study this stuff and just do like cultural or other fuzzy stuff. Um I would just go