Jake Paul and Geoffrey Woo ’11 M.S. ’11 present on their VC firm at BASES event
Last Friday, Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES) hosted an event with influencer Jake Paul and Geoffrey Woo ’11 M.S. ’11, a former BASES president from 2011. They presented their technology-focused venture capital (VC) firm, Anti Fund, founded in 2021.
In an Instagram caption following the event Woo wrote, “What a blast to return home to @stanford and spend time with the next generation of talent. @jakepaul and I started @antifund to fund and empower the very best starting their founder journey. If that’s you, let’s link.”
Paul and Geoffrey’s visit to campus generated notable buzz within and beyond the BASES community, largely due to Paul’s notoriety as an influencer.
“As for Jake Paul, one of the greatest disruptors of our era, it was awesome to share this intimate setting with him and hear his words of encouragement to challenge the status quo,” wrote Commy Alizadeh ’27, co-president of BASES, in a message to The Daily. “Our goal at BASES is to foster student entrepreneurship, and we hope by bringing the likes of Jake Paul and Jamie Dimon to campus, students can learn and feel inspired to change the world just like these notable figures have.”
Anti Fund invests in technology companies, including OpenAI and Anduril. Their founding principles are “the future is forged at the intersection of tech and culture” and “the best founders are ‘anti’ by definition, as their companies must be highly disruptive to the status quo.”
“The conversation itself stemmed largely around their fund, how they positioned themselves in a very competitive venture capital scene and Jake and Geoffrey’s advice to people and what drives them,” said Matthew Musson ’28, the moderator of the event and vice president of startup development at BASES.
There was also significant time set aside at the end of the conversation for Q&A from the crowd.
“Jake Paul was surprisingly mild mannered and down to earth. To be honest, this sounds super weird to say, but a lot of people also told me that he seemed kind of shy,” wrote Theo Kratter ’29 in a message to The Daily. “Just like most online personas he was extremely charismatic though.”
During the Q&A, Paul revealed his potential plans to run for president in future, alongside other provocative statements. Questions from the audience were generally more centered on Paul’s persona than his VC firm.
One audience member asked what Paul’s craziest take was during the Q&A, to which he responded jokingly, “this kid asked me what my craziest take is and then everyone pulled out their phones. They’re gonna get me canceled. I can’t answer that.”
Paul recorded this moment and posted it on his Instagram story as well.
“[Paul] did offer some very interesting advice regarding his business. I also think there’s a lot of people at Stanford that have some passion for the intersection of media marketing and business. We got to see those people ask their questions,” Mark Cherches ’29 said.
Musson added that the event was organized due to Paul and Woo’s success with Anti Fund, the advice they could share for BASES members as well as Paul’s cultural significance.
“I think their fund has made a lot of really high quality investments that I was frankly surprised by,” Musson said. “Maybe that’s why I thought it was worth bringing them, or why the club said yes. But I also felt like people just want to see Jake Paul because he’s famous, and we all grew up watching his vlogs.”
BASES has hosted similar events in the past to facilitate these relationships between Stanford Entrepreneurs and VCs. Some other past events included talks with Garry Tan ’03, the CEO of Y Combinator, and Francis deSouza, the COO of Google Cloud.
“Overall, I do think, he was just sort of a spectacle. Like, I went because I wanted to see Jake Paul in the flesh,” Cherches said.
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