Jared Kushner

In my previous career, obviously, it was very successful.

The New York Times, they violated and they published my financial statements.

They showed I was making about $50 million a year in the private sector before I went to government.

I went into government and I...

I volunteered, I didn't take a salary.

I paid for my own health insurance for four years, my wife and I. And then we went and I was thinking, should I go back to my old company or should I start something new?

And my thinking was, is that through my time in government, I'd met so many people.

I'd learned so much about the world.

I had a big understanding now for how the macroeconomic picture worked.

And I did feel like there was a lot more that I could do than just going back to real estate.

In the meantime, I was getting a lot of calls from different CEOs and companies saying, can you help me with this company?

Can you help me with that company?

Your knowledge could be helpful to help this company navigate this challenge or to expand internationally.

And so I said, you know what?

Maybe I should create a business to do an investment firm.

where I can do something different, where I'm putting together geopolitical expertise and traditional private equity and growth investing and figure out how to do that, where I can do something differentiated, where I can invest in growing things and help with my navigation skills and relationships.

So that was kind of the thesis of what I thought could make sense as kind of a next step.

I called different friends.

They were very excited to back the effort.

Obviously, this was coming off the success that I just had in the Middle East where I did six peace deals there.