Someone who can generate views and cultural impact just by living their life and being themselves is a more valuable partner than someone who has to burn $100 million to generate the same attention.
Jeff Clavin explains his investment thesis in Jake Paul: true, durable charisma that draws views for free is a rarer and more valuable skill than attention manufactured by burning huge amounts of money. ✦ AI generated
Jeff Clavin · a16z Podcast · 2026-06-22 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 31:47
One way I think about it is that like if Jake can just talk and get a bunch of views or 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? Who do I think has true skill and true charisma?
verbatim transcript · starts at 31:47
31:47terms of selecting the content format is very very strong. where I think Jake has a lot of durability is that like you you like follow his story. Like you I guess like one way I think about it is that like if Jake can just talk and get a bunch of views or just live his life and get a bunch of views and someone has to light $100 million on fire to get a
32:07bunch of views, who do I want to be partners with? Who do who do I think has true skill and true charisma um without overly calling other people? But like I think that is like a measure in terms of like how do you take like an analytical lens and like a structural lens to how do you backward engineer what has Jake has been able to accomplish >> to that end you you said you know c
32:28people you need to figure out how to monetize how have you figured out what's worth doing from a business perspective of what's not worth doing like for example um I I don't know if you've been in feature films yet or had major major roles like should you be doing that or is that a waste of time like there's a whole set of activities that where you could do it you'd have some special
32:46access or opportunity to do it. People might be telling you you should do it. How how do you think about that? >> That's something that we've talked about and explored. There's been opportunities on the table to act, for example. But I think it's just like what was the time expenditure, what was the like return in terms of, you know, how much money are we making here? And then who are the people
33:06involved and is it going to perform well? And do we like this script? And um there's the risk of of something going wrong. and just like it flops at the box office and everyone shits on you. Like it happens all the time. So I think it's yeah just staying focused right like having the boxing as the core of of everything for many years and um and content and so
33:34never getting away from your bread and butter and staying extremely focused on that and having a great teams around to to help with all of those things. Um, but yeah, I think things now have to be like 10, 20, 30 million dollar opportunities for me to spend time on it. And so I think it's pretty measurable um from that side of things to the, you know, figure out if if it's exciting in
- ·Jake Paul generates views by just living his life
- ·Others must burn $100M to match the same reach
- ·Investors should partner with the rarer, cheaper skill
- ·True charisma can't be bought with money
- ·Durable charisma is a harder-to-find asset
- ·Attention via spending is not a durable skill
- ·Jake Paul's free cultural impact = moat